GOD LOVES ME

Yesterday I blogged about the positive assurance of faith. Today I've been thinking about the other side of the coin -- the knowledge and assurance that God can ANSWER a specific prayer, a prayer that you and you alone have prayed.

The Living Bible paraphrase of Romans 8:26 tells us that " . . . the Holy Spirit helps us . . . in our praying. For we don't even know what we should pray for, nor how to pray as we should . . . " (Read the entire passage if you have a Living Bible. It's so good!) Sometimes we're not necessarily aware that the Holy Spirit is praying through us until we receive a miraculous answer. (It's called "hindsight!")


Some of you have heard me relate how a few years ago my husband had such a satisfying and uplifting telephone call from his only daughter, Esther, one Sunday night. Two weeks later her daughter called him, in tears, stating that the doctor had given her mother two weeks to live at the most. Esther had known for some time that she was terminally ill with cancer but had told no one, except her husband -- not her dad, not even her three children.

All afternoon I repeatedly prayed a prayer I had never in my life prayed before. Now I know it was the Holy Spirit praying through me (that "hindsight" thing). My prayer was that the Lord would take Esther easily and quickly and not only give her a glimpse of Alice (her mother and Rex's first wife) before she died but also enable her to tell those around her what she had seen. Twenty-four hours later the second call came: "Mom's with Grandma (Alice) now. Her last words were, 'I see Mom.'" As her husband told her it was all right, she could go now, Esther slipped quietly away to join her mother and her Savior.

I burst into tears, and Rex, wanting to comfort me, said, "Do you miss her that much?" (We had been married less than a year at that time, so I didn't really know Esther very well.) It was then I shared my prayer of the day before with him. My tears were because I couldn't believe God loved me so much that out of all the millions, billions and even trillions of people in the world, He had looked down upon this earth, saw me here in Washington State, had heard and answered my prayer!

To me, that experience was as much a positive assurance of answered prayer as any positive assurance of faith could ever be.

Yes, God loves even me, little ole me -- just one person lost in the multitude of people worldwide -- but not lost to God!

Preacher's Kid