Have You Prayed About It?

The words kept ringing in my ears. “Have you prayed about it?” They were the same words that I have spoken many times over the years, and the same ones that have been directed at me many times as well. Yet, for some reason, this time I stopped and wondered if I had, in fact, prayed instead of saying “Yes” and then going ahead with doing what I had already intended in my heart to do. Perhaps I realized that rather than allowing the Lord the opportunity to infuse his perspective and will into my heart, I had tuned him out. It grabbed at me almost like a new revelation. It was like I asked myself, “Hey, aren’t you supposed to have a different attitude about this situation?” If I had really stopped to interact with my Daddy, then I’d have been a lot more interested in what he had to say. Instead, if my innermost thoughts were put on display, my part of the dialogue would have gone something like, “Well Lord since you were so thoughtless as to let this happen to me, your favored child, I’m going to take this into my own hands and straighten things out.” Now, even though those words never came into my head, by my response to the situation, I was communicating the same thing.

I’m so glad that the Lord knows everything about us, including all of the thoughts in our own heart that we don’t even realize, and loves us anyway. He loves us enough to allow us to face situations which reveal the attitudes of our hearts. In my situation, He showed me that I wasn’t trusting Him to show me the BEST way to handle things. He showed me that I had not prayed about it, not really. The best way to go is to pray about everything before doing. We don’t have to pray long. It can be as short as, “Lord, what do you want me to do?” In addition, we don’t have to put the world on hold while we wait for the Lord to answer. Many times, we already know the answer because the Lord has been working in us ahead of time. The key is to grow in our trust that God really does know the best thing to do in every situation we face. So let me ask you, “Have you prayed about it?”