Submitted by: Jeni Kopp
“My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long, “Where is your God?” These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng. Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.”
Psalm 42:3-6
On a resent trip to a family member’s wedding, my mother, my children, and I were nearly hit three different times by cars that lost control on the last leg of our twelve-hour journey. With only twenty minutes to go until reaching the safety of our family’s home, black ice proved to be the last and final attempt to ruin our nearly perfect drive up into Oregon from California.
As each careening vehicle came closer to us than the last, we prayed for safety. Our car never swerved or slid as I applied the breaks, hoping to avoid the cars resembling hockey pucks atop the slick road. At one point the only distance between a brown sedan and my crossover was a few inches. Yet, we remained safe for the rest of our journey.
I was thankful for his blessing of protection and shared the story many times while on the trip, acknowledging that only God’s hands saved us. However, inside my heart there was an entirely different thing going on. I had a selfish and disdainful attitude toward the whole situation. In clarity now, I can hear the question I was really asking God, “If you could easily do that, then why not this other thing I have been praying about for months?”
Days after the incident I was traveling by myself and began to think back on the last year, and all the times I had cried out to the Lord. My excitement didn’t last long, before a shadow of pain and discouragement came over me. There was this one request that I had petitioned God for months ago and nearly everyday since. I really felt like he would answer the prayer of my heart and I have clung to the verses that he gave me during that prayer time.
Alone in the car I turned off my radio, and began to voice my opinion to God. My arguments, although they were honest, sounded more like a three year olds’ than that of a twenty-six year old woman. “God,” it started, “Why in the world when I ask you to show me that you have heard my prayer about this major pain in my life, have you simply ignored it, but yet you have allowed me to be safe from cars so that I could continue to live through it? Why can’t you show me that you have heard my cries to you and that you will keep your promise that you spoke?” I admit, it was a raw and not very thought out prayer, but it was my prayer nonetheless.
My eyes filled with tears as I saw my heart in its ugly selfish state, and immediately apologized for my sinful stubborn act of selfishness and hard heartedness. I had allowed one prayer request to be so important in my relationship with God, that I was ready to trade the prayers of safety on the road that night for an answer to my other prayer. WHAT WAS I THINKING?
Moments after confessing my sin, my heart was filled with joy for all the answered prayers, blessings, and miracles that God had done in my life, starting with the making of Adam and Eve, and working my way through the Bible to the present, I thanked him for every trial and tribulation that brought about victory and glory to his name. I wept as I drove, wiping one tear just in time for another to fall.
The prayer is already answered, and although I have no proof, I have faith and trust. I don’t have to remind him of it or hold it up to him anymore. Instead I can choose to focus on seeing the things that build my faith in him, rather than the one thing that can cause me to question it. Thank you God, for saving my life that night so that I might be able to praise you today!
————-
Devotions are posted on Monday of every week. For comments click here.
I took my kids to church camp in North Carolina. The two teens were getting ready for their service as junior counselors, so I dropped them off a day early. The younger boys and I had an afternoon, evening, and the next morning before dropping of the 10-year-old for his first camp experience. We were able to swim at the camp pool that afternoon, and they wanted to try out their new goggles. When one set of cheap goggles broke, a squabble broke out over the remaining pair. ”Mine!” “No, mine!” So Mom stepped in: “Mine. I paid for it. It belongs to me.”
