May 28

The Power of Prayer

            When our enemies heard that their plot was known to us, and that God had frustrated it, we all returned to the wall, each to his work.  From that day on, half of my servants worked on construction, and half held the spears, shields, bows, and body-armor; and the leaders posted themselves behind the whole house of Judah, who were building the wall. The burden bearers carried their loads in such a way that each labored on the work with one hand and with the other held a weapon.  And each of the builders had his sword strapped at his side while he built. The man who sounded the trumpet was beside me.  And I said to the nobles, the officials, and the rest of the people, “The work is great and widely spread out, and we are separated far from one another on the wall.  Rally to us wherever you hear the sound of the trumpet. Our God will fight for us.”

Nehemiah 4:15-20

I was in Guatemala just after high school on a missions trip.  On our final day we were having a going away party with our host families.  There was great food and laughter and some of my team were bouncing on a trampoline when tragedy struck.  One of my teammates was bounced off and landed directly on her head, injuring her spine.  She was rushed to the hospital and x-rays showed that she had crushed two of her vertebrae.  Specialists were coming in the next morning to see what they could repair, but the pictures showed the back of a paraplegic.

No one on the team slept that night.  There was lots of crying and lots of praying.  I was up talking with my host family and this is the passage that they pulled out.  Nehemiah was building the wall and the enemies of Israel were not happy.  There was a conspiracy to attack the Jews and end this restoration.  Nehemiah set up a guard and had the workers labor with one hand while keeping the other hand on their weapons.  My host family talked about prayer being the weapon of Christians and that when we face resistance we are to have half of our mind and heart focused on the task at hand and the other half focused on prayer.

I have carried these wise words with me throughout my life.  Parenting our children is hard and we face a lot of resistance: from them, from the world and internally as well.  To have the best chance of success, we need prayer.  We need people who will pray for us and our children.  Grandparents are phenomenal for that kind of thing but really anyone who will commit to praying for your parenting process is pure gold.  We also benefit from having one ear tuned into God as we are working with our kids.  Not just prayers of desperation like, “If you help him fall asleep I promise I will start tithing.”  I regularly pray for peace and hope.  I pray for wisdom as we are working through stressful projects.  I pray for the right words to communicate.  I pray for patience.  I try to listen both to what my child is saying as well as what God is saying as we figure out how to move forward.  There is an immense amount of comfort that comes from knowing that God is invested in your child even more then you are.

To finish out my Guatemala story, the next day the doctors went in to take x-rays from a different angle to see if there was a better way to approach the operation.  The pictures that came back were of a fully healthy and restored spine.  We had two sets of x-rays from 12 hours apart.  One showed a woman who would never walk again.  The other was of a young woman who would return home the next day, running into the arms of her family.

Prayer is powerful and a vital piece of our parenting toolbox. 

A moment to reflect:

Try praying while being with your child today and see if God has anything to say.