I take prayer requests very seriously. I carefully place them on scraps of paper and pin them to a bulletin board in my bathroom. I can pray over each of those requests as I get ready in the morning for my day and at night as I get ready for bed.
This last week I came home to find that my cats had taken down all of the thumbtacks and prayer requests. The tacks were scattered around the bathroom like a “Legos versus bare feet” game of frogger. The prayer requests were scratched, torn, and bitten.
Out of a dozen scraps of paper with valued words, I could still only read three. Apparently, my cats’ slobber melted ink and those sharp little razer teeth (or possibly claws) shredded the few that weren’t wet from the slobber.
I stood there for a moment in stunned silence. As I started gathering tacks, I chatted with God. I asked that if there were prayer requests that still needed to be prayed over, then He was going to have to lead my hand to rewrite them. If they didn’t need to be prayed over anymore, then I was asking for discretion to throw the scraps away in the trash.
I was worried that I was throwing away requests that people had entrusted to me. Even though I’d chatted with God, I was worried about the scraps I threw away. I worried about a full night and part of the next day. With His perfect timing, He then let two separate people come to me with updates on their prayer requests. Guess what? They were praise reports and I would have removed those slips of paper anyways.
Maybe the cats were just giving me a “reset” message on the prayer board. Or maybe I just needed to listen to God’s perfect timing in confirming how He works.
In this next week, I’m praying all the Iron Porch readers to have a prayer-filled week with listening ears attuned to God’s direction!
~Emily
“Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” ~Mark 11:24 (NIV)
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