ONLY GOD – PART ONE

part 1/4

TAP TO LISTEN

A prayer that I have prayed and placed on our church prayer wall for over a year now reads, “Heavenly Father, please reveal yourself to me, to Matthew, to Porter, to Shepherd and to Conrad. Reveal yourself to us in every detail. Help us know your presence on a deeper level and to feel your power and peace that could clearly only be from you.”

Well, when people say be careful for what you pray for, it is so true. We all have a straight line to God with prayer. Prayer helps keep us in connection with God and to be able to feel His power in all circumstances. How you communicate with your earthly friends is similar to how God wants us to come to Him. God wants us to talk with Him, to trust Him, to be in close contact with Him everyday. The more you pray and chat with God, the closer you will feel to Him. What a gift He gives us in just being a chat away. The verse that I cling to about prayer and God’s will for our lives is found in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

Being able to rejoice always is closely associated with how grateful you are for all things, good and bad. It is a perspective that I’ve always leaned towards because of the journey God has carried me along in my forty-three years of life. Suffering and grief, love and joy, hardships, disappointments and death as hard as they are this is where God carries us closest and reveals Himself to us in big ways that no words could ever explain. He breathes on us His eternal peace that we as earthly beings will never fully be able to understand, but by faith we know and trust that He holds it all. So we continue to surrender and rejoice always.

Praying without ceasing can feel overwhelming, but with years of reading His word and diving into commentary I think this verse is encouraging us to keep in constant communication with Him, running to Him in prayer with all things, big and small. Not being in constant formal prayer out loud all day everyday, but just as you see a friend and chat with them. Pray without ceasing reminds us that He is always with us so chat with Him as you would with your best friend throughout your day. For me, just saying Jesus in my head or out loud puts me in a prayer mindset and helps me cling to Him on a deeper level in all aspects of my life. Communication with our creator is such a gift and keeps us grounded and rooted in Him and His plan for our lives.

Giving thanks in all circumstances, even the really hard moments. Within the heartache we give thanks to God, for Him allowing us to feel the love for the time He gave us. Within the success, within the failures, within the wins and within the losses, all of it is a gift from God so we should give thanks for what was and what we trust He knows is best.

We all have moments of searching and asking God to show us His will for our lives. In other words, what is our purpose on earth? What does God want us to do with the time that He allows us to live on earth before He calls us home? Well, the answer is pretty clear in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18,  “rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” 

When God is working in us and revealing His plan for our lives, there is a lot that we can’t explain. We all have a unique calling on our lives that can’t be discovered by looking around, but only by looking up. We must “seek God and His righteousness, and all these things” that He has for us, even the things that can’t be explained “will be given to us.” ( Matthew 6:33) Seeking God and having a real relationship with Him keeps us going in the right direction, which is towards Him. There is a knowing and yet sometimes there seems to be no plan, but we trust God knows the plan. We may not know or see what is coming next in our lives, but we do know that whatever God is doing in us, through us and around us will never leave us the same.  

This prayer that I have prayed continuously over the past year really started to unfold the first morning of Spring break 2025, just a few months ago. It was the first school break we planned to stay put and get some rest instead of traveling. I was sitting at my desk reading and Matt looked over at me and said, what do you think about moving to Alabama? I hesitated to respond looking at him to make sure he wasn’t kidding. If you would have told either of us that we would eventually move back to Alabama, we wouldn’t have believed you. This wasn’t in our plan, but after so many moves, six with children to be exact, and plans that have been shifted here and there, you would think this wouldn’t catch us both off guard like it did. I knew by the look on his face, he was serious. I went straight to prayer asking God to reveal what He wanted for us. I listened to Matt that spring morning, supporting what he was feeling while recognising his courage of bringing this up to me when he didn’t even fully understand it. I believe that was God nudging him to speak it and start the conversation. How could I be upset if God was revealing Himself and His plan through Matt? I had prayed for this moment for years. I listened more than I spoke that morning. I processed a lot within the next two days. Was this the answer to the prayer all along? I begged for God to give me the whisper I clearly hear from Him in my prayers and through reading His word. I sat outside with the birds, with His creation all around me praying for God to give us His strength to be diligent in our obedience to His plan, even if we and nobody else understood it. As confused as I was, I knew this was God working in us and that He would bring us the answers just as He promised to answer us in Isaiah 65:24. “I will answer them before they even call to me. While they are still talking about their needs, I will go ahead and answer their prayers! So with two weeks in constant prayer with God, wrestling a bit and asking Him to show me His way, it was pretty clear that He was walking us into a move back to Alabama.

To be continued.

All glory to God. 

“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.” Psalm 46.1

Family photo by Christine Johnson.