Understanding the Power of Prayer and our Divine Relationship

Imagine you're at the end of a long day, finding solace in your favorite pastime, and then - a profound revelation about prayer strikes you like lightning. That's exactly what happened to me, Connie, while I was watercoloring and pondering on the spiritual implications of prayer. In this enlightening episode of the Weed Seeds and Beautiful Things podcast, I share how I realized that God's assistance isn't conditional on our pleas, but rather, our prayers grant us the spiritual sensitivity to recognize His ever-present help. We delve into how active participation in our relationship with the divine enables us to see His hand in everything, even the seemingly insignificant moments.

The second part of our soulful conversation circles around the indispensable role of prayer in providing clarity and wisdom to align ourselves with the divine plans unravelling in our lives. We also acknowledge that this podcast isn't a soliloquy, but a symphony composed of all of your voices. Your likes, subscriptions, reviews, and shares are the wind beneath our wings - they help us soar higher in the exploration of spirituality. So, join us in this journey of understanding the power of prayer and active participation in our divine relationship, and how it can transform even the most ordinary moments into extraordinary spiritual revelations.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Hey friends, welcome to the Weed Seeds and Beautiful Things podcast. I'm your host, connie, and I am so glad you're here. I want to start today by letting you listen to a short one minute commercial regarding something that I am super passionate about, and then we'll get on to the show. Okay, well, thanks for listening to that. I do hope that if you know anyone who is in need of one of those watercolor keepsake pieces that you will reach out. Let's get on with the message. Today I have a special one that I want to share with you. I think it will speak to you. It sure spoke to me.

Speaker 1: 0:43

So I was reading my Bible a few days ago and I was asking God to just be present in my day, to help me, to stay close to me. I kind of have like a habit of doing that and just kind of praying for him to help me to be aware of his presence. Anyway, after I had my quiet time and I started my day, I was getting going on things. There were different things that came up out of the blue and I was aware that the Lord was helping me. There was a time that I knew that he was helping me to be calm with my daughter and there was another time where I knew he was helping me to have the courage to stop procrastinating on something that I kept putting off and to actually sit down and get it done. There was just a number of things that came about that morning and into that afternoon that I was just aware of the Lord being right beside me. So that evening I was getting the girls ready for bed and after I had accomplished that, I got in my bed, where I normally sit and do my watercolor and yes, I watercolor in bed. It's great. If you haven't tried it and you are an artsy person, you're really missing out, but anyway. So I got in my bed, got all my watercolor stuff out, I turned on my praise music and I was just sitting there, kind of getting in what I call the zone, and I started praying and the initial thought that I had about that day and being aware of the presence of God was and I remember saying this to the Lord thank you, god, for answering my prayer and for being present and helping me. And it was like.

Speaker 1: 2:30

Immediately the spirit showed me that what I was essentially believing was that God showed up because I prayed, and I got to thinking about that and I asked myself because this is just how I do when you're an introspective, highly sensitive person, you have a lot of conversations with yourself and I said, connie, do you really believe that if you didn't pray, that the Lord wouldn't have been there? And I thought, no, I don't, I don't, that's not right. And so then I went a little bit deeper and I thought, okay, well, I think I'm onto something, because my initial thought was that thank you, god, for answering my prayer, for being present and helping me. But if I'm not saying that I think that God showed up because I prayed, then do I believe that he was there all along? And then, if so, how did my prayer really impact the Lord being there and present and helping me? And I got to thinking about all of that and what I realized is that my initial belief was that the Lord showed up because I prayed, and then I was able to see that that, of course, isn't correct, that the Lord is always there, he's always helping me, even when I'm unaware. So then I said, okay, so, god, if you're always there, then what is my prayer accomplishing? And the Lord showed me that my prayer allowed me to participate in a visual, spiritual awareness of his constant, unremove presence in my life. So my prayer was more for me than it was for God, because Scripture shows us some very, very clear characteristics about God.

Speaker 1: 4:33

I'm going to read from three different passages. It's just several verses. The first one is Ephesians 1, verses 18 and 19. And of course I'm reading from the wordy amplified classic version of the Bible, and it says by having the eyes of your heart flooded with light, so you can know and understand the hope to which he has called you and how rich in his glorious inheritance, in the saints, his set apart ones, and so that you can know and understand what is the immeasurable and unlimited and surpassing greatness of his power in and for us who believe, as demonstrated in the working of his mighty strength. What this verse lets us know is that we need to have the eyes of our heart flooded with light, that our heart has a spiritual ability to see, and that spiritual ability to see is given to us by the Holy Spirit.

Speaker 1: 5:44

And so, every moment of every day, god is very near to all of his children, and by his children of course I'm referring to believers. But we don't have to participate In that closeness. So when I was praying, my initial thought was that I was asking the Lord to come and to be present. Well, that was kind of silly, because he is present, he's always present. So, without realizing it, the Lord showed me that I was praying for myself, to participate, for the eyes of my heart, to be aware of his presence. This is a big deal, because what this shows us is that there is a level of participation that we need To be showing up in our relationship with the Lord, to take full advantage of what he's doing, and when we do that, we get the privilege of seeing how he's coming through for us in the mundane moments of every day.

Speaker 1: 6:44

There have been a lot of things in my life that I've been convinced that the Lord has done for me, not because they matter Eternally or they're a big deal to anybody else, but because they matter to me, and something my mom has taught me to do is To ask God for things, sometimes just to be nice. Here's a for instance when we lived in Oklahoma City, may would come around every year and we would have a very terrible season of Thunderstorms and tornadoes, and if we weren't getting rain, we would be getting a lot of wind and one year in particular, I had a really, really beautiful, amazing Sunflower garden. Now these were the very, very huge, tall, eight foot tall Sunflowers and I had Several hundred of them that I got to grow in my garden from seeds and it was just one of the most beautiful sites you know you can imagine for a little backyard garden and it was maybe about an eight by twelve plot of ground just filled, stem to stern with these gorgeous sunflowers. And there was a storm that was coming and I remember standing in my kitchen and specifically asking God. I said, lord, these flowers, they don't matter to anyone else but me and they certainly don't matter to the kingdom, but if you could, just to be nice, please let them survive the storm. The storm came and it was very terrible. I believe that there were 40 to 60 mile an hour winds, there was some hail and there was a boatload of heavy pouring rain. And, I kid you not, I woke up the next morning and there were a lot of tree limbs down in our yard and a lot of just kind of you know, things that were flooded, pots that had been flooded and things that have been waterlogged, and you could just see that the storm had taken a toll. There were different things on the porch that had been removed, like some wreaths and and stuff that had been blown over, but out in the backyard this very fragile Garden of sunflowers looked like there had been no such storm. Now that's something I've held on to there. There have been many other things that have been like that.

Speaker 1: 9:14

The point that I want to get across, that's the level of intimacy and involvement that the Lord has in each one of his children's lives every day. The problem is not that the Lord is present and working and cares and is tender towards us, tender friends. He's tender even when we make mistakes. He's tender. His hand is to redeem, the rod of correction is to restore, and he certainly cares about the things that we care about. And so this prayer that I prayed that morning, I'm so glad that the Lord showed me the error of my belief, that somehow my prayer Was causing God to show up. My prayer was causing me to be able to see the presence of God that was already there.

Speaker 1: 10:06

I Want to read you another passage. It's in James, james 1, verses 17 and 18. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above. It comes down from the Father of all that gives light, in Whom there can be no variation, no shadow cast by his turning. This is good news for us. I. We change, we get hardened, we enter into sin, we enter into doubt, depression, fear. Jesus doesn't change, jesus is constant, jesus is working behind the scenes, even when our eyes are burning with tears. We can trust that every good gift is from Him and that he loves us. And I want to finish this episode up by reading you one more verse from one of my favorite books of the Bible.

Speaker 1: 11:09

I think you'll find it kind of odd, but it's Deuteronomy. If you know me any at all, it may not seem very odd because I'm an oddball. Deuteronomy 31.6 says this Be strong, be courageous, be firm, fear not, nor be in terror before them, for it is the Lord, your God, who goes with you. He will not fail you, he will not leave you and he will not forsake you. I want to call to attention the different meanings of these words. It says that the Lord will not leave you and he will not forsake you. Leaving is this emphasis of just walking away from someone, out of maybe frustration, irritation, whatever it may be. They just walk away, but to be forsaken by someone, that takes a whole other meaning. Now, yes, it is the same in the sense that it's leaving someone. But to be forsaken the dictionary describes this as something.

Speaker 1: 12:17

Two words stood out to me that describe and are used to describe what forsaken means. One of them is to maroon, and that means to put ashore on a desolate island and leave to one's fate, to place in isolation without hope of escape. So to be forsaken has this connotation of leaving you alone to die, leaving you without hope. If someone just leaves you, it's not good, it's very painful. But to be left knowing that someone will die, that's like a mother not just walking away from a child that could go out and get a job and possibly survive. There's trauma in that. But for a mother to leave an infant knowing there's no hope of escape, that it is utterly dependent on the goodness of that parent, the involvement of that parent, the caretaking of that parent, that's being forsaken and that's a whole other level of being left. And the same word for forsake in scripture refers to the definition of the desert something that is desolate, an area that is devoid of life.

Speaker 1: 13:40

The Lord does not leave us and he does not forsake us, because he not only won't traumatize us by getting irritated with our humanity, but he also will never put us in a position where we are left without escape or without hope.

Speaker 1: 14:01

The God that we serve is a good God and I am thankful that half the time I pray that it's more for me to be able to enter into what he is already doing. So, friends, prayer is important because, yes, god hears it and it affects everything that goes on. There is power in prayer, but a lot of time it gives us clarity and wisdom to see how we can participate with what God is already doing in our lives. I hope that this episode blessed you. I hope that you will join me by clicking the like and subscribe button to the podcast. Leave me a review, share this episode with your family and friends. Do all the things. My small business, slash ministry, greatly benefits from any support that you are able to give, especially the support of prayer. I love and value all of my listeners and I look forward to seeing you next time on the Weed Seeds in Beautiful Things podcast.