Ask God

Recently our family has been prayerfully considering a change in a very important area of our lives. When this new leading from the Lord began to stir in our hearts, I intensified my prayer life. I began seeking out prayers in the Bible that speak of knowing God’s will, understanding His plans, and His ways.

The women’s leadership team I was a part of started to study the book of Ephesians about this same time. In this book, are prayers that Paul offered up to the Lord for the believers in Ephesus. These were the prayers I began to pray on a daily basis:

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, would give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of the Him. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the glorious riches of His inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of His power to us who believe, according to the working of His vast strength. Eph. 1:17-19

I pray that He may grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, and that the Messiah may dwell in your hearts through faith. I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love and to know the Messiah’s love that surpasses knowledge, so you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Eph. 3:16-19.

I also began to ask for wisdom as James tells us to do, knowing that if I asked for it, I would receive it. As I prayed, unity really began to build in my marriage concerning the direction of our decision. God moved in both my husband’s heart as well as my own.

I began praying most intensely in March, and now in the middle of May I find myself drawn to one book of Scripture. Funny that book is known as the key source of wisdom in all the Bible. I can’t get away from it. I find my heart hungry for it alone. I have been in the book of Proverbs since the last week in April.

I am working on a book proposal and developing a new speaking topic, so I have been searching through Scripture, but each time I begin looking I am pulled back into Proverbs. My heart races to read it each mourning, then I read it again to my kids for our devotion, only to be drawn back to it over and over again throughout the day.

Should I be surprised? No, I asked for wisdom, and God placed the foundation of biblical wisdom within my heart.

Now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives to all generously and without criticizing, and it will be given to him. James 1:5