Big and Bold with Childlike Faith

Over the last week, God has brought prayer to my mind again and again.  Last week I was praying for a specific health situation with a family member.  All my prayers were that the health issue would be identified and would be treatable.  Yet when the answers came from those health tests, God chose to answer in a way I didn’t think was possible – all the tests were normal and there was nothing to be concerned about. 

Then, sitting in church on Sunday, absorbing Pastor Daryl’s message about prayer, it was hard to contain myself.  The thoughts bursting through my head in response to Pastor Daryl’s message and illustrations were hard to keep up with, specifically the encouragement to pray big and bold prayers.  What we think of as big and bold, God can and will outdo.  Yet we are always surprised when He does do it.  It is too easy to put God in a box, forgetting that He is the God of the universe and He CAN AND WILL DO even the impossible. 

Just last week, during family devotions, Jaelyn and I started keeping a prayer notebook.   Just two days after starting the prayer notebook we were able to mark our first prayer as ANSWERED – the prayer for the health situation with a family member.  Each night after reading our devotions I ask her if there are any prayer requests that she thinks we need to add to the list.  Tonight Jaelyn added one to the list that I was thinking shouldn’t be on the list – it seemed frivolous and selfish, of something that she wanted for herself. 

Yet I caught myself, thinking about big and bold prayers.  Who am I to say that what she wants to pray for is wrong? I’m not sure that there are too many prayers that God would classify as wrong – the only type I can think of might be praying for someone’s death or harm to come to someone.   I am grateful that she wants to pray and I am thankful and blessed to witness the growth in her prayers in the short time we have been doing family devotions together.  Too often I think that I think things are too trivial or selfish to pray for.  I find it much easier to pray for others than for myself.  Yet, how often has God changed my prayers over time from self-focused to focused on His will.  That journey from self to Him has been a rich learning experience.  I don’t want to do anything that will take that journey and that learning experience away from Jaelyn.  I love her child-like approach in prayer – anything that she would ask me for is something that she sees as important to ask God for in prayer.  Instead of teaching her about prayer and God, Jaelyn is teaching me, without even realizing it.   I want my prayers to be like hers – Big and Bold with Childlike Faith.