A prayer away

Personal Photo: This photo was taken on October 15, 2016 at my final cross country race in High School. Both boys were there to see it, to cheer me on. With Josh in Missouri and Jason in Michigan, it was often a challenge for them to attend, but running formed a bond between the three of us, and it is something that we will always share. They are never too far away from me, and I am so grateful that I can pick up the phone and call them anytime!

When I was growing up, my family was about as tight-knit as you could be. My two older brothers were not only my siblings, but also my playmates, my teachers, and my friends. Even though the age gap between us spanned six years, we hardly felt it. The fact that we ended up all being runners only brought us together, and I could share many, many stories of the laughter that echoed through the forest on those trails during our time together. We spent hours at the metropark, sometimes twice in one day, exploring the woods, working out, and building our friendship. When my oldest brother, Josh, went to college, he only attended two years there before getting an internship in Missouri. The next two summers he was there, before permanently residing in St. Louis. He moved away, visiting almost every month, but it still just never felt like enough time with him. As time went on, my younger older brother, Jason, got a job in Georgia, and he packed up and began a life miles and miles away. Even further than Missouri, it felt like we rarely had time together.

For a little while there, when we were all planning our weddings, moving from one place to another, and figuring out our place in this world, our closeness wore off. We found ourselves busy, focused on just getting from one day to the next, worrying about other people and our responsibilities. We drifted apart and we talked less and less. And while the change of being so far apart in distance began to show in our relationships, after a little while, my brothers and I found our way back to each other. I talk with both Josh and Jason every week, spending about an hour with them on the phone and catching up. It almost feels like a run in the park again :)

Life is full of adjustments, of changing and tweaking in order to get things right. We go through seasons of chaos and seasons of settling, times of distance and times of closeness. And just like the ebbs and flows of the relationships we experience here on earth, we can often go through them with God as well. Even though God never abandons us, we can sometimes find that we have abandoned Him. We can find ourselves feeling very close to Him, and then wake up one day and recognize that we have gotten too busy to talk with Him. Our once solid routine of spending time with His word, in His presence and in prayer have all gotten overwhelmed and faded into the background. When we realize this distance, we have the chance to adjust, to tweak our routines and make time for those who are most important, and God is at the top of that list.

The closeness we crave with God, the intimacy we desire, it is never as far away as we sometimes feel it may be. The truth is that God is no further than a prayer away. And even though our circumstances may have changed since the last time we spoke with Him, or had a closeness with Him, God never fails to hear us. 2 Chronicles 7:14 tells us "if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land." In this verse we are able to see that when we prioritize our relationship with God over all the noise around us, we are rewarded with peace, forgiveness, and closeness with God. This verse is a direct promise from the Lord that He will hear us, that He will forgive us for the time we spent away from Him, and that He will bring restoration to our lives.

Praying is the only way for us to directly communicate with God, and it is a powerful tool and an incredible resource. We have such an amazing opportunity to utilize prayer to get to know God, to express ourselves to Him in a way that can only be understood by Him, to be painfully vulnerable in order to submit to His plans for our lives. Psalm 145:19 explains that "The LORD is near to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth." I love the powerful simplicity of this verse. When we become vulnerable enough, humble enough to realize we need intimacy with Christ, we need God's help and His guidance, we are therefore rewarded with exactly that. Taking the first step is to pray, and not to pray empty prayers, ones that are not genuine or faithful, but to pray to the living God, knowing and trusting that He hears us, listens to us, and responds to us as His beloved children. From there, we can understand how to build our relationship with our Heavenly Father.

Not knowing how to pray is another reason why many of us never do, or sometimes fall away from it. Our prayers can feel distant, or repetitive, and we can feel as though it is not worth our time. Aside from the Bible providing us with the Lord's prayer, which is always a good choice when reaching out to God, we can also trust that the Holy Spirit is doing His work when we sit down to pray. Romans 8:26 states "In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us." This verse once again intertwines vulnerability and submission to God with intimacy with Him and peace. When we feel like our prayers are not going anywhere, that we are not sure what to pray for, it is still important that we pray. As long as we do not abandon prayer, the Holy Spirit will be able to guide us in that action. When we siply fall away from it, instead of tweaking and adjusting, we cut out the chance for the Holy Spirit to work in our prayers. In this way, we can recognize how prayer is not something to fear, or worry about rejection, but rather we are promised that we will not fail when we come to God, we will not waste God's time with our prayers, and when we submit to the Holy Spirit, we are able to use our prayers valuably.

I titled this article 'One prayer away' because I was really having a hard time choosing what topic to write this week's article on. Some weeks I know right away what I want to dig into, but this one was one of the harder ones, where I waffled back and forth on a few different ideas. In nothing but frustration, I set the computer down, folded my hands and closed my eyes and just talked and prayed for about five minutes about all of the help I need, the ways in which I don't want to get in the way of His will for me, and how I could use some of His guidance. It was less than ten seconds and I had my answer. We don't have to wait until we are bursting at the seams with frustration to reach out to God, and we shouldn't, but my point is that He is always right there, listening to us, caring about us, waiting for us to come back to Him. Mark 11:24 tells us "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." I felt nothing but complete submission to Him when I felt so convoluted in my attempts to choose a simple blog topic, and as soon as I stopped trying to figure it out on my own, the Holy Spirit reminded me that trusting in the power of prayer brings with it some amazing things.

God is never as far away as we might think He is, and when we find ourselves getting too busy to find time for Him, we can seize the chance to adjust our pattern, to realign with the importance of our faith, the importance of our relationship with the Lord. Prayer is our chance to talk directly to God, to create a friendship with the most powerful force in the universe. Let us never forget that God craves intimacy with us, and that He welcomes our prayers, our time with Him. When we experience the different seasons of our lives, I hope that we can all remember to prioritize God through every step of it, that we can utilize the incredible power of prayer to find God's glory in everything around us. He is only a prayer away!