Forgotten Prayer...Answered

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

The testimony essay I mentioned Sunday night....

Just after the service ended at our previous church one Sunday several years ago, a friend stopped me before I could get out of the pew.

“I was watching you and Bruce today…and, well, don’t misunderstand me, but I just want you to know how blessed you are to have a husband like him. I hope you appreciate who he is.”

I knew her husband, and I knew where her remark was coming from, and I didn’t misunderstand her. I assured her that I did, indeed, appreciate the character of the man I married (see The Tenth Man) We chatted a bit more then headed out the door.

As I collected our kids and walked to the car, I puzzled over the incident. She was at least the third friend to make a statement like that to me. All of them were women who were married to men who did not…would not…take the role of family spiritual leader. There were other issues, too, but that was the biggest common denominator.

I looked at my husband as we got in the car. What did I do to deserve him? I wondered. I’m nobody special. So, I asked God, “Lord, how is that I ended up with such a good man?”

Immediately I saw in my head a picture of something I had not thought about in years and years. A rather gawky, awkward 13 -14 year old girl who always seemed at odds with her peers, getting off the school bus and kicking at the gravel as she walked up the quarter-mile plus driveway from the road to the house at the top of the hill, praying for her future husband….whom she wasn’t even sure existed.

Now, the thing that I must emphasize is that I was not praying faith-filled prayers. This was not spiritual warfare. There was no tangible anointing, no manifestation of the Spirit. I had Sunday School teachers and youth group leaders who told us that we should pray for our future spouses…and, because I wanted to be spiritually correct, and because I had a five-ten minute walk with nothing else to keep my mind occupied, I decided I would pray for my future husband…whoever, wherever he might be. So, I did...with about as much enthusiasm as I had when I sat down to do my homework.

Yet, in a pretty obvious way, God was showing me that those prayers really brought forth fruit. I had very nearly forgotten all about those prayers. I was amazed. God honored those prayers.

So now, when I'm teaching on purity and dating, or even teaching on prayer itself, this little story works its way into the lesson. Pray…even if you don’t think it’s important, even if you don’t feel like it’s spiritual, even if you may think it’s silly. Pray.

You might forget, but God won’t.