Today's Prayer

We all say we want God to do something big in our lives.

We all want a miracle.

Everyone had that one thing in their life that it would take an act of The Lord to change. 

But when it comes to those really big things,

The things that only The Lord could control,

Sometimes, I find myself not praying for those things.

They seem too big,

And too impossible,

And when there are so many other things to pray for,

Sometimes those big, miracle type prayers, tend to be the prayers I add in if I have time.

And if I was going to be completely honest, sometimes I don't ask because I've asked before-

And nothing has happened.

I get frustrated,

And impatient,  

And I just give up.

But today, when I was reading in John, I had a moment of realization-

How many miracles have I missed getting to see God perform because I simply stopped asking,

Because I felt like it was hopeless?

Jesus was in Gailee and he decided to go down to a pool that was surrounded by five communities, a pool called Bethesda. 

Around that pool is where the disabled people in the community used to lie.

Ever so often, an angel of The Lord would come and stir up the waters and the first one into the pool after would be cured of whatever disease was ailing them.

Can you imagine the hopelessness that surrounded that pool?

People, who the communities all but cast out, laying around this pool, waiting for the chance, the miracle, to be the one person to be cleansed by those healing waters.

 

It was there that Jesus met an invalid, who had been suffering from his condition for 38 years. And when Jesus asked him if he wanted to be healed, he responded as so many of us often do when it comes to asking God for those big miracles. 

“I can’t, sir,” the sick man said, “for I have no one to put me into the pool when the water bubbles up. Someone else always gets there ahead of me.” (John 5:7 NLT)

This man had to have known that the person standing in front of him was Jesus. He had just  healed a dying boy in the same city.

People were talking about the miracles he had performed.

And this man was so frustrated,

So downtrodden,

So discouraged from 38 years of ailing that he didnt even say the simple words that we all would like to think we would say-

"Lord, I want to be healed. Heal me."

But really can we blame him?

If we had to wait for 38 years for a miracle, would we really think that today could be the day that our prayers would be answered?

But, what if it was?

What if today,

Today's prayer,

Was the one that God choose to answer.

What if today,

Today's prayer,

Was the one that got you that new job,

Or healed that illness,

Or brought back that prodigal son?

But because you were so frustrated,

Or so downtrodden,

Or so discouraged, 

You didn't take time to ask it.

You didn't see that the savior of the world was standing in front of you ready and able, to answer those prayers,

And create those miracles.

So today I choose to ask,

And believe,

Because you never know which prayer will be the one that turns the Lord's ear.