HOLY SOVEREIGN GRACE: Part 2

Part 2: The Pathway Toward Healing

Prayer is the primary way that we communicate with God, our Sovereign Lord. We can communicate with God in a wide variety of ways: through our words, through songs sung, through our actions as we live our faith, & primarily by listening to God rather than focusing on having God listen to us. However, unless we surrender our whole selves to God, our words spoken in prayer are simply our thoughts. Our life is an unmitigated gift from God. We are players but we do not direct the play.

Prayer is not the same thing as prayers. Going to church in a community of believers where we can add our voice to those voices of the whole congregation, is a beautiful cadence & in many ways is an important part of a worship service. However, though prayers & prayer are both lifting up our voices & our concerns & thanks to God, individual prayer is more than saying prayers at a set time, in a set place. Individual prayer is waking up to the presence of God no matter where we are or what we may be doing. When we are able to give ourselves wholly to the moment we are in, fully alert to whatever & whomever is right in front of us & alert to the tremendous gift of being alive, then we are in prayer. It is not necessarily something we are doing but rather a way of living. Prayer occurs when we focus all of our attention on listening to God instead of trying to get God to listen to us. God is happening at all times, in all situations. We are blessed to know that we are part of it. The longer we engage in residing with God & listening for God to hear us, the more we will come to realize prayer is something that is always happening, like a radio wave that carries music through the air whether we are tuned in or not.

Our gracious, Holy Sovereign, inescapable God is ever present with us, surrounding us with His steadfast love & healing grace. He knows our thoughts, our joys, our concerns, our words, our needs, before we speak them. Prayer brings us into His circle of love & gives us hope. We can trust God. The Glory of the Lord is the only light that can stop the darkness from coming through. In prayer we need to listen to God. Prayer is between us & our Heavenly Father. When we listen to God in response to our prayers, He gives us more life than we know how to ask for, more healing, more love, more hope & subsequently more faith. Prayer is alive with God’s love. How we receive God’s prayer & gift of unconditional love for us is our response to Him. The answer to our prayer to God is so far beyond our doing that we cannot find words to forswear it but we can live into it. God is unchanging. In humble hope, we can attend to His will & trust that in His time healing will come & the destruction will be turned into the Light of His Glory. Prayer given & received between God & His people, is the pathway to the healing we all long for. In prayer, let us never be afraid to trust an unknown future to our known God, whose prayer for us is rekindled hope, love & mercy for all of His creation, as we continue to move through these days. AMEN

~Posted by Rev Kathryn Bindig, MDiv. MS; Pastoral Care Minister with assistance from Rich Muscatello; Director of Business Development & Strategy