Praying Outside the Bubble

For as long as I can remember, I have prayed a very simple and repetitive prayer. “God, place a hedge of protection around my children. Protect them. Keep them from harm or hardship all the days of their lives.” A noble prayer indeed, but one that lacks faith.

I am so fearful of my boys going through what I have had to endure. I wanted to pray a very safe prayer for them. A very sterile prayer…as if I was praying for the “boy in the bubble” on Seinfeld. God revealed something important to me. And so today I begin to pray a very different prayer.

Real growth and utter dependence on God happens in the hard times…the times when we realize that it is only God who can save us. A time when if God doesn’t come through, we’re through.

I can’t imagine the range of emotions Noah must have felt as he stood on the bow of his ark, watching those he knew and loved breathe their last slipping beneath the rising water below. But, because he obeyed his God in the times of ridicule and persecution, his family lived.

Joseph must have thought his life was the pits when he hit rock bottom, but that is where his faith grew and God allowed his hardship to humble him to become a great leader.

With his wind worn face and sandals full of sand, it was in the desert where Moses met with the Lord and became the leader that God had intended him to become.

Tied to a stack of rocks watching his elderly father wield a sword above his head, Isaac was all ears, pleading that God would intervene. He did.

As his hair grew like the feathers of an eagle and his nails like the claws of a bird, the banished King Nebuchadnezzar submitted to his God and was restored to his Kingdom. God knew exactly the amount of pain the he would have to endure to bring Nebuchadnezzar clawing back to Him.

And, Bart’s faith has never grown more than when he kissed his wife and 3 boys goodbye as he was wheeled down the hospital hallway to have my skull removed. My darkest times in life are those where I have been willing to be placed on God’s anvil.

My boys will fall. I know that. I pray that God will reveal himself to them in those times. I want to have a faith in a God who is bigger than anything I have ever known or imagined.

“Sons, as you begin this journey down the winding road of life, I pray that when you fall, your faith is solid. I pray that your God is so close you can feel his breath. I pray that your faith in God enables you to get up quickly. Get up and rise above your circumstances. And as Nate would say, I pray that you realize you serve a ‘Ginormous’ God. His mercy has no end. I pray that your faith is increased and your wonder of God has no limit. I thought you should know what I am praying.”