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Prayer Can Change the Heart

For the LORD is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.

Psalm 100:5

I used to have the worst attitude before I was under new management. Nothing was my fault. I was a victim. The odds were stacked against me, and everyone, including God, was in opposition to me.

I spent every day in that mind set. I woke up mad and blaming everyone for my troubles. If things didn’t go well at work, it was my co-workers’ fault or the personnel department, the car broke down the electric was shut off, I couldn’t buy groceries somehow it was always someone else’s fault. I accepted absolutely no responsibility for my life. I would pray by complaining.

That is all I did at the throne was complain and whine. I just wanted God to fix it, fix my husband, fix my finances, fix my situation, but I didn’t want to make the adjustments needed in my life, heart and mind, I didn’t want to take responsibility.

It was a sad, wasted time in my life.

That lack of responsibility in my choices blocked the relationships between God and I, my family and my friends. I lived in this slum of self-pity for years; until I found out I was pregnant. Once I realized I had a life in me, growing, fully dependent on me, I began to take better care of myself and worry about the future of this tiny being. Finally, my eyes had been diverted from just myself. That was the awakening for me. Soon after the birth of my first, I was pregnant again. Now two lives depended on me.

The journey was underway.

God rarely acts immediately. Instead, He has carefully orchestrated everything to work together for your good and His Glory. He has begun the restoration before you realize it.

The Israelites’ cried out to God for 400 hundred years to be delivered from the slavery of the Egyptians. Generation after generation passed, but God was working. There could be only one man, Moses to lead the people. He would be reared in the house of Pharaoh—he would understand the customs, the way of the Egyptian thinking. He was groomed for that moment when he would be the instrument of God on behalf of the people.

It would take 5 more years after giving birth before I would relinquish and begin taking up responsibility for my past actions. Three more years after that to begin trying to mend relationships through acknowledging my mistakes, and still today I continue to live the consequences of my past choices. Taking up responsibility is not easy, nor is it glamorous.

Being responsible for your actions takes courage and character. Both of which I had traded for the easy path. I had to start from square one. It took time, a lot of time to build up courage to do the hard things in my life that needed to be done, courage that would have been impossible without the Holy Spirit. It took time to develop the character which had been corrupted by my selfish pursuits. It took years to rebuild trust with the people I had hurt and time to heal and forgive those that hurt me and to forgive myself.

If it had not been for the prayers of my mother, father, grandmothers and friends, who knows what could have happened to me? They did not waver in their prayers. I imagine in time as the years rolled by they must have thought I was lost forever but they kept praying. I am very thankful they loved me enough to pray without ceasing.

Is there a situation in your life that you have been praying about, but day after day there is no answer? Be assured that God is working on that petition. Know that though your human eyes or ears sense no evidence of change, it is happening. God hears your prayer, He feels the despair you feel, His heart breaks when yours breaks.

Trust that your earnest prayers still live in the Father’s ears. Your prayer is eternal because it was offered up to the Eternal Almighty. That prayer lives on and God is working on your behalf. I will always regret that my grandmothers never knew that I was returned to my earthly as well as Heavenly family, but I am renewed knowing that even as they left this world their prayers, though their lips were stilled, lived on in the eternal throne room.

Pray without ceasing.

And those who know your name put their trust in you, for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you. Psalm 9:10