Putting Feet to Our Prayers

I would not say that my prayer life is the greatest.....out of all of my spiritual disciplines, that one is probably the weakest. I'm faithful to pray for friends and family when they need it, but as far as a "talking with the Lord" and really just conversing and opening up to Him, I don't do that as well.

But my friend Nanette, she is a prayer machine! She is actually amazing at most aspects of a spiritual life.....I love to spend time with her because she challenges me, encourages me, teaches me, listens to me.....when I walk away, I feel like I want to go and dive into the Word, read a book, write in my journal, etc. I've learned many different things from this dear friend....to write down everything would take weeks. Just our discussions on Romans alone would fill a book! But recently, I learned a very simple yet valuable lesson from her.....
We were at our weekly prayer meeting. Everyone was sharing requests....some heavy, some more practical. Bruce, our maintenance guy shared one in particular. He had lost his glasses while working one day....as a result, he could no longer drive and some of his normal day to day things. He didn't seem too distraught, but I knew he wanted to find them badly. They were very particular prescriptions so he really didn't want to go through the hassle of going to Phx (where his eye doctor was) and getting a new pair. So I wrote it down, we prayed for that and the many other requests from the morning, and then all went on our separate ways. Later that day, I was walking on camp and Nanette drove past me, asking if I had seen Bruce. I hadn't, but asked her if I could help. She said that she has been at the maintenance shop for the past hour or so, looking for his glasses....she had found a pair and wanted to know if they were his. She drove off, continuing her search for Bruce and I continued my walk home. But the whole time, I was struck by what she had done. All of us had heard his request, wrote it down in our prayer journals, then left......Nanette did all of that PLUS, decided to go down to the shop and actually LOOK for them. It seemed like such a simple thing, yet I was struck by the simple obedience and faith of it all. How often do I hear a request, or much less, MAKE a request and then just sit back and wait for it. Now I am a firm believer of "expecting" great things out of God, but how many times do I expect Him to do it all, while I just sit back, lazily, and wait.

Nanette showed me that God actually expects great things from us as well....that was kinda mind boggling to me at that moment....even though it is a simple truth. Nanette put feet to her prayers and instead of sitting around and waiting for the glasses to magically appear, she got up, put aside her scheduled tasks for the day and went looking for the lost glasses. She put her own agenda aside for the needs of others and she allowed God to use her, in a very humble way. Even when I tried to tell her this, she blew it off and said anyone of us would have done it. The thing is, we didn't.....she did. And in that small act, she taught me so much about our relationship with God, the Almighty.

And just to say, I found out later that the pair of glasses she found did not belong to Bruce....so she went back down there again and spent a big chunk of time looking, until she finally found them. :)