Come In Prayer

A couple of times each year our Ladies Group exchange names for a Secret Prayer Pal. The idea is to pray for your Pal, and maybe drop her a gift or two during your time together. Knowing that someone is praying for me is very comforting, and very special.

I was fortunate a couple of times over the past years to have a family member as my SPP. My granddaughter’s first year as an adult, when she moved from Youth to Ladies, was actually the best time. I never guessed it was her – until the final gift, a wooden picture frame with such lines as "What a wonderful grandchild!" and "My grandkids are the greatest!!" While true, it was a good clue.

I also have a ceramic orange flower holding a sign, "Hi", that tells me she’s with me all the time. But my favorite is a small, leather-bound book, "God’s Promises For Your Every Need."

Many people who come to the Bible do so unprepared. They flip open and read the first verse they see on the page. Which could possibly be: And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself. (Matthew 27:5)

Now that would be enough to try again, without applying that verse to one’s own life, wouldn’t it? Perhaps to find: Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise. (Luke 10:37b)

This small book opens with sections on the Bible’s central figure, Jesus. The Old Testament speaks of Him as the prophesied Messiah, the New of how the prophecies were fulfilled. He is our Savior and our Everything. The book has sections on What To Do When we need confidence, have physical sickness, financial troubles, alone and deserted by loved ones and when we are waiting on God to show us the way.

But this book is not the Bible and does not have the full scriptures that are to be studied prayerfully. Let us pray as Solomon did: And now, O God of Israel, let thy word, I pray thee, be verified, which thou spakest unto thy servant David my father. (1 Kings 8:26)

Let us come as the Psalmist and commit: With my whole heart have I sought thee: O let me not wander from thy commandments. (Psalms 119:10) I will delight myself in thy statutes: I will not forget thy word. (Psalms 119:16)

Come to know For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12)

Ask the eternal God to open His word. To know Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. (1 Corinthians 2:12)