Ahhh, Another satisfied customer!! After a Larapin dinner of Peanut-Chicken vegetables and rice with Bok Choy, Dad somehow found room for a piece of No sugar added Apple Pie!! Imagine that! He has been doing really good recovering from his surgery, the physical therapist claims he is her star patient! He has been walking a lot and doing really good on his eating.I was glad to hear that my Son - In Laws did such a good job of treating their Valentines today - Way to go guys, well, except Luke, he was a bit of an over - achiever, he gave sushi, flowers, and a couple gift cards. Like dad told him: he may have to stand before the husband committee for such behavior. Husbands have a range of generosity that must be observed or it reflects poorly on the rest of the group! I haven't heard a report from my favorite daughter in law yet on how Jake did but I am confident that it will be positive.
A couple thoughts on prayers: Sometimes we think that praying should be like going through a drive Inn. We give our order to the microphone hidden somewhere on that plastic sign, then we pull up and are handed exactly what we wanted and we go on our merry way.
The way I see it is there are some things requireed for prayers to be efective
We must approach God in the name of Jesus Christ. This way we come as disciples of Jesus, only asking for things that Jesus would approve of. We don't ask selfishly, or for trivial things. If you haven't been receiving answers like you thought you should start by thinking about what you are asking for. A few things that I think would be on the approved list - Humility, a greater capacity to love, the ability to forgive, courage, opportunities to serve, the strength to serve, blessings on those ( and it could be you also) who are having a rough time, and the list could go on, but you catch my drift.
When we approach God in prayer, we need to also be forgiving of others. Mark 11:25 mentions that when we pray we should forgive, to insure that we can be forgiven, but I cant help but think that communication in prayer will happen much easier if we don't have ill feelings toward others obscuring our hearts.
A couple verses earlier in Mark bring up another requirement for getting answers to our prayers. We have to believe that we will get an answer!! It is possible to overlook an otherwise obvious answer to a prayer simply because we don't really believe that we will get one!
If you believe there is a rabbit in a picture then you will look until you see it.
I would refer you to the list I started about what would be good things to pray for. If you have doubts that God answers your prayers, then pray for something from the list, surely you could believe that you will get an answer to one of those things, so really believe it and look for your answer, through the scriptures, through your spouse, through a speaker at church, or a friend. Personally , my answers come in quiet meditative times (often while on a mountain:) )when I am pondering things, especially words from the Book of Mormon.
Congratulations to Jake on his promotion to Driver!!!
Dad, we really enjoy reading your posts everyday! Matthew asks me everyday after dinner if you have posted yet. :) I appreciate your thoughts on prayer, and agree with them. Sometimes if I am lacking in faith in the prayer department, I have to just make myself get on my knees and (with a humble heart) just start praying. I am then reminded of the overwhelming love the Lord has for me, and how important it is to have that communication of prayer with Him. I also love hearing my kids pray. Sometimes I chuckle to myself, and think "I hope they get an answer to that..." I definitely need to have more faith like they do that the Lord will answer even little prayers. Every night, they just know that if we all pray that they will have no bad dreams, they will. And you know what? We haven't had any bad dreams since we have been praying for it every night, (at least 2 months..) because they believe, and know, that He can help keep them away. I think it's ok sometimes to just know that He will answer our prayers, when we are humble, faithful and thoughtful in our communication with the Lord. We can't expect it all the time, because most the time we do need to ponder & study for ourselves, but we do need to have the faith of a child that He can and will answer our prayers. Thanks for the thoughts! Love ya!
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