Prayer Pt 3 Rooted

As my youth are in day 6 of our 21 days of prayer. I thought about my own days as a youth. I know. Wayyyyy back in the day! I lived in prayer. I really did.  I started following Christ at age 15 and he really was after me. My  life in little less than two weeks would be turned upside down and slam dunked and my family and I would never be the same. Our much beloved matriarch of our mother's side was dying and it was taking a toll on everyone.  She was peaceful, prayerful, and  the glue of the family. Then she died. I knew my mom was devastated. She had just lost her mother and best friend.  Then the wheels came off. Just an hour after the funeral. We had come back to the house my mother grew up in. We were packing  and getting ready to leave. My sister had asked my grandfather if she could use the phone and he said she could use the phone in his room. Then the unthinkable happened. My grandfather comes in and seemingly forgets all this and begins to yell at my sister, my mother comes in to see what the commotion is all about. They begin to yell and my mother says "keep your hands off of my daughter!"   Then my grandfather begins to strangle my mother and my sister screams for help. My dad runs back to the room and pulls my grandfather off of her and he begins to choke my dad. This was so heartbreaking as a 15 year old boy to watch unfold. Following this my grandfather comes out and tell us..."You are cut off. You are all dead to me!'

Now I said all that to say if I had not been taught to pray first. pray often. I really don't know how I would have made it through all of that. Our prayer life has to have roots. It can't be a surface relationship  or as my wife and I like to say, a rescue prayer life.  Those next 4 years of my life would be a lot of pain that most of my friends would never know or often thought I exaggerated. My mother would suffer from depression and addiction and lose her job because of it when she was only a few years from retirement after 27 years of working for the same company. My brother would drop out of high school and suffer through addiction. I  didn't know from week to week if my mother would end her life. I did my best to hide my pain.  Most every Wednesday was a night of war for me. I would go to church, only to have to come back to what waited for me. Usually my mother would be drunk and what always followed was chaos. Violence. Verbal abuse. Physical abuse. She would lock herself in her room for hours and I would be on the other side listening to her cry and say she was going to kill herself.  Now, it would take years before my mom finally healed. I am so proud of the many changes she did to get to a place where her will is stronger than the bottle. 

I spent many of those nights just locked in prayer. I still do. When Paul writes in 1st Thessalonians 5  as  his  final advice.

Paul’s Final Advice

¹² Dear brothers and sisters, honor those who are your leaders in the Lord’s work. They work hard among you and give you spiritual guidance. ¹³ Show them great respect and wholehearted love because of their work. And live peacefully with each other.

¹⁴ Brothers and sisters, we urge you to warn those who are lazy. Encourage those who are timid. Take tender care of those who are weak. Be patient with everyone.
¹⁵ See that no one pays back evil for evil, but always try to do good to each other and to all people.
¹⁶ Always be joyful. ¹⁷ Never stop praying. ¹⁸ Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.
¹⁹ Do not stifle the Holy Spirit. ²⁰ Do not scoff at prophecies, ²¹ but test everything that is said. Hold on to what is good. ²² Stay away from every kind of evil.

I think if we focus in on verse 16 & 17 . Stay Joyful. Never stop praying.
Lay the roots of prayer in your life. It takes time to develop. If we develop this we can stand when the storms of life come and become stronger. Stop and thank God for all and start today!