Climbing a mountain can be tough! But, the view is worth it.
Our heater just came on for the first time of the season. You know what that means, that disgusting, burning smell fills up the house. As I was driving my daughter to school today, they even had a radio call-in segment where everyone was complaining about that heater smell. Now, as much as we hate that smell, we sure do love the heat that comes with it. If you had to go without heat to get rid of the odor, wouldn’t you choose to keep the odor? The heat only has to run a couple of cycles and then the smell is forgotten until the following fall, but we enjoy the toasty heat all through the winter and into early spring.
There are a lot of life experiences like the first heat cycle of fall. At the very beginning, it may be misery, but if we keep going, it’s so much more comfortable and rewarding. Exercise is a perfect example of this. When you haven’t exercised in a while, you feel out of breath and out of shape. The next morning, everything aches and you wonder if it’s worth it. But, if you keep exercising, you begin to feel better and the soreness goes away. You feel stronger and you sleep better. You even look better and you are definitely healthier. But, you have to be willing to get past the beginning, uncomfortable phase.
Our faith walk can be uncomfortable in the beginning too. If you are searching for a new church home, walking into a new place full of people you don’t know may be intimidating. Walking into a Sunday school class where everyone is chatting like they have known each other forever can be uncomfortable. Attending a Bible study, when you have never read an entire chapter of the Bible much less a book, can be daunting. Learning to pray about everything can make us feel kind of foolish. We ask ourselves, “Does God really care about my little problems?” The answer is yes. He knows what you need before you know.
The Bible tells us in Philippians 4:6, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God.” We know what thanksgiving means, but what exactly does supplication mean? The dictionary defines supplication as, to ask humbly. Uhoh, we’re not big on humility these days. Humility is defined as: the quality or state of thinking that you are not better than other people.
Okay, so we’re supposed to pray about everything, (especially the big stuff, but including the seemingly trivial stuff), and we are supposed to be thankful every time we pray, which is not always easy because sometimes we wait until we are in a bind or facing some kind of tragedy before we pray in the first place. It’s difficult at that point to be thankful. Finally, we are supposed to pray with humility, which means we accept we don’t deserve what we ask for, but we ask it anyway. That requires faith.
This prayer discipline, this attitude, takes lots of practice and can be uncomfortable at first because it’s contrary to our human nature, but if we are diligent, our entire lives can be transformed. As I sit here enjoying the toasty heat (with no burning smell), coming from my vent, I think this faith journey and prayer life is worth the work. What do you think?
Have an awesome day!
Wendy 🙂