You can pray even when you're not praying.
Catherine Marshall calls this "waiting prayer". What she means is that you can entrust something to God in faith and wait for him to answer - not losing heart or insisting on your way.
In her book Adventures in Prayer, Marshall talks about praying for a wife for her son Peter John when he was a child.
Prayerfully, she considered all the qualities - physical, mental, spiritual - she believed that a lifemate for her son should have.
She prayed about this and wrote these qualities down on pieces of paper, using them as bookmarks in her favourite Bible. After doing this, she trusted God with finding the right woman for her son, even if he had to "correct any flaws in [the image she had] and bring it to fruition in Peter's life in His own time in His own way".
Over time, he did. Marshall writes that she found it hard not to anxiously "dig up the seeds" she had planted and bombard God again and again. But when Peter John finally proposed to the woman who would become his wife, she looked back at her pieces of paper and found that she fit exactly the image she had imagined.
On another occasion, a friend whose marriage was falling apart came to her for counsel. Marshall saw the problem immediately but felt God tell her not to point it out to her friend. Over a period of several hours talking and praying, her friend gradually realized what the issue was.
Her friend returned home, took charge of her life, changed her attitude and the marriage was restored.
Marshall notes that waiting on God is a frequent theme in the Bible.
Many outstanding Christians over the centuries have found the truth of Isaiah's famous words in Isaiah 40:31: "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint."
They have learned, as Jesus teaches in John 15, to "abide in the vine" - depend on entirely on God in faith. As they abide, they are changed - they grow.
Believers who have waited on God through dark times often emerge with "qualities like more patience, more love for the Lord and those around us, more ability to hear his voice, greater willingness to obey," says Marshall.
I think of Joseph in the Old Testament, a dreamer who had a vision of his brothers all bowing down to him. He was sold into slavery in Egypt, cast into prison by a vengeful woman, and sat there for years without outward hope. But he clung to God throughout and, in God's timing, he emerged as the second most powerful man in Egypt.
When his astonished brothers came to this powerful man, begging for food in a famine, he revealed himself and told them that they intended evil against him, but God used it for good.
That can be true of us, too, as we wait upon God.
Catherine Marshall calls this "waiting prayer". What she means is that you can entrust something to God in faith and wait for him to answer - not losing heart or insisting on your way.
In her book Adventures in Prayer, Marshall talks about praying for a wife for her son Peter John when he was a child.
Prayerfully, she considered all the qualities - physical, mental, spiritual - she believed that a lifemate for her son should have.
She prayed about this and wrote these qualities down on pieces of paper, using them as bookmarks in her favourite Bible. After doing this, she trusted God with finding the right woman for her son, even if he had to "correct any flaws in [the image she had] and bring it to fruition in Peter's life in His own time in His own way".
Over time, he did. Marshall writes that she found it hard not to anxiously "dig up the seeds" she had planted and bombard God again and again. But when Peter John finally proposed to the woman who would become his wife, she looked back at her pieces of paper and found that she fit exactly the image she had imagined.
On another occasion, a friend whose marriage was falling apart came to her for counsel. Marshall saw the problem immediately but felt God tell her not to point it out to her friend. Over a period of several hours talking and praying, her friend gradually realized what the issue was.
Her friend returned home, took charge of her life, changed her attitude and the marriage was restored.
Marshall notes that waiting on God is a frequent theme in the Bible.
Many outstanding Christians over the centuries have found the truth of Isaiah's famous words in Isaiah 40:31: "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint."
They have learned, as Jesus teaches in John 15, to "abide in the vine" - depend on entirely on God in faith. As they abide, they are changed - they grow.
Believers who have waited on God through dark times often emerge with "qualities like more patience, more love for the Lord and those around us, more ability to hear his voice, greater willingness to obey," says Marshall.
I think of Joseph in the Old Testament, a dreamer who had a vision of his brothers all bowing down to him. He was sold into slavery in Egypt, cast into prison by a vengeful woman, and sat there for years without outward hope. But he clung to God throughout and, in God's timing, he emerged as the second most powerful man in Egypt.
When his astonished brothers came to this powerful man, begging for food in a famine, he revealed himself and told them that they intended evil against him, but God used it for good.
That can be true of us, too, as we wait upon God.
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