A friend is praying for her sister who has fallen on deadly habits. She can’t stop. I crave chocolate every afternoon near 2-ish. I guess you could call it addiction. The verse she is praying for her loved one is Jer 32:27, “Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh (mankind); is anything too difficult for Me?”. There are many situations in life where a wall has been hit and we stand facing the bricks with a bloody nose because we keep running into it instead of running into God. How does one run to God? Pray. Pray then pray again. I often mention the list of people in my prayer journal who are ignoring my wish that they serve the one true God. I am nothing but God is everything. I am satisfied with prayer. Knowing we are out of options removes the guilt over that which we want to control but we do not have the ability to control – what people decide for themselves. The other Jeremiah verse that I adopted when a cool girl at Christian camp said it was her favorite is Jer 29:11-13a, “For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. And I will be found by you…”. These are promises to all. They comfort me because I want there to be a plan that benefits me. There are a couple of actions due that produces a plan that benefits me. The actions area call, come, pray, seek, and find. Seek is a verb. Look for God with your whole heart. Declare is an action and God keeps telling us stuff. There is so much we can do that smashing our noses into a brick wall does not seem necessary. Another verb is listen – our prayers have an audience. Find is another promise. It also encourages me to know that the enemy is a liar. Here are a few of the enemy’s lies listed in Our Daily Bread, May 15, 2024 by Jennifer Benson Schuldt, “First, our prayers don’t matter. Not true. the Bible says, ‘The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective’ (James 5:16). Second, when we’re in trouble, there’s no way out. Wrong again, ‘All things are possible with God’ (Mark 10:27), and he will also provide a way out’ (I Cor 10:13). Third, God doesn’t love us. That’s false. Nothing can ‘separate us’ from God’s love through Christ Jesus’ (Rom 8:38-39). We are often out of options but our eternal and all-powerful God never is.
