Life Is Fragile: Handle With Prayer
Life is fragile: Handle with prayer.
Remember that Jesus will always be there
To hear our problems and to gather our tears,
To calm the storms, and to settle the fears.
It does not matter how great or how small,
Jesus will answer to our every call.
Just call on the Lord, it matters not when-
His office is not closed at half-past ten.
He's never on lunch, He can't take a break;
If He did, this old world would just crumble and shake.
His lines are never busy, He won't put you on hold.
He won't ask you twice what He's already been told.
There's no account number, nor address to give;
No matter where you've moved, He knows where you live.
Yes, the Lord always answers, He never leaves home.
He won't leave us to handle it all on our own.
So when things get rough, and things aren't fair,
Remember: Life is fragile, so handle with prayer.
By Gloria J. Ames
James 4:14 Whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. (And that is a fact) For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.
Recenlty my friend Franklin Becker gave a powerful witness to both the fragile nature of life and the wonder of family and the power of prayer. Franklin gave us all a wake-up call. He testified that sometimes we do need to just stop and ponder what a miracle it is to be alive. And we ponder just why do we have to go through life that includes suffering.
Sometimes there are all kinds of acts of depression, sometimes acceleration; oftentimes there are challenges that seem to be beyond our ability to cope. What is it all about? Some people seem to think that whoever gets the most goodies at the end wins? When we read very clearly the bible says when you die you do not get to take it with you -- although some people live their lives as if they do not believe that.
Life is fragile and we have to pray for one another, and dry the tears from each other’s lives and life each other up.
You know the prayers avail much of God's people because when we pray for people's suffering we understand that suffering is a great roadblock to accomplishing our mission and we need to have deliverance, we need to have encouragement, we need to learn from all of our sufferings. I might just add to that thought, pray that he understands how fragile life is and what a gift God wants to give to those who understand His purpose; that is we get to live as a member of God's family for eternity.
Christ didn't say, "All your prayers will be granted," but He said, "All things, whatsoever you ask in prayer, BELIEVING, you shall receive." (Matthew 21:22)
So, the first step to receiving your desires is to trust in God and believe in His love. Whenever things appear to be going wrong, it is just God telling us that He has better plans for us. That's why it makes sense to submit to the will of God. God always answers our prayers. he does this by giving us either what we prayed for or what we SHOULD have prayed for.
We are called to submit or surrender to God. It is hard to do, Most of us are bull-headed and naturally selfish. But we surrender to the will of God not to be enslaved, but to be set free from making bad decisions. Pastor Nicholson told me that "The greatest prayer is patience." We not only should be patient, but we should pray persistently, for as William McGill wrote, "The value of persistent prayer is not that He will hear us, but that we will finally hear Him."
An ancient Jewish proverb teaches "Do not make prayer mechanical. Let it be a cry for grace and mercy, so that love replaces fear in the place in which you stand."
A pastor friend of mine in Wisconsin told me that Your requests do not become holy just because you ask God for His favor, Rather your requests be4come holy and worthy when they are aligned with His will as found in His word.”.
We need to head the advice of St. Augustine who said, "Pray as though everything depended on God, and work as though everything depended on you!”
Remember that the Holy Spirit will help you with your prayers. Prayer is the work of God's Spirit reaching out to us with an invitation to travel the highway of Spirit seeking after and being found by God. It is waiting upon God, it is listening to God, it is calling upon God and giving ourselves to God in the moment by moment events and actions of our lives.
To pray is to pay attention to God, to enter into conscious contact with God whereby we learn the ultimate faithfulness of God. Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness.... It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.
Whatever the posture of the body, prayer is the soul is on its knees.
Prayer is the soul on its knees, the soul longing for God, the soul longing for God's reign, not only in the world, but in your life, in my life, not only in our crises, not only in our successes, but in every aspect of our living--paying attention to God.
As a poster I had on my wall in college said: "Life is Fragile, Handle with Prayer."
Without a doubt, "Prayer Changes Things." While prayer may or may not change your present situation or circumstance, there is always a good chance it will change you, the one who prays. It can change the way you look at your circumastances. Can prayer change the world? Not always, not right away; but it will change the way you look at it, and through whose eyes you see it.11 Can prayer change things? Absolutely! But unless you are prepared to change, as one writer put if. Don not pray, because prayer will change the one who prays! That is for certain, too.
Prayer is the sound of the mustard seed of faith in your life; it is the gratitude that transforms healing into wholeness; it is the pesky persistence of the widow demanding what is right for herself and for the world. The life-blood of faith, your prayer will mark the difference between faith and faithlessness, and that is a wonderful blessing!
But – know this – as much as God desires for us to pray for one another, the devil wants us NOT TO PRAY. What various hindrances we meet In coming to the mercy-seat.
We have hindrances to prayer, many of our own making, but all things that keep us from praying make the evil ones happy! God wants you and me to pray. The devil does not want you and me to pray, and he and his fallen angles do all they can to hinder you and me. They know full well that we can accomplish more through our prayers than through our work. The evil ones would rather have us do anything else than pray. They oppose prayer. They despise prayer.
Fallen Angels our march oppose us who still in strength excel
Our secret, sworn, relentless foes, Countless, invisible.
But we need not fear them, nor heed them, if our eyes are ever on the Lord. The holy angels are stronger than fallen angels,
and we can ask the celestial hosts to guard us.
Billy Graham said that the hosts of evil start those wandering thoughts which so often wreck prayer. We no sooner kneel than we "recollect" something that should have been done, or something which had better be seen to at once.
RESIST THE DEVIL AND HE WILL FLEE. (James 4:7).PRAY AND PRAY AGAIN> LIFE IS FRAGILE< HANDLE WITH PRAYER!
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