Start With Prayer

Start with Prayer

Fools think their own way is right, but the wise listen to others.

Proverbs 12:15

Colleen knows the most profound prayer we can pray is just one word: help! She’s grateful she finally invited the Lord into her situation, asked for his guidance, and then followed it.

After her divorce, she reconnected with her high school boyfriend, Phil, and felt like a teenager again as she waited for his calls and checked her e-mail often for his “thinking of you” notes. He said he couldn’t take calls at work and his cell phone had been acting up, so she couldn’t call him. For their dates, he preferred quiet evenings, so Colleen often prepared dinner, and then they would watch a DVD, sitting close together on the sofa. Once when they drove to a mountain park for a sunset walk, he stopped for gasoline and had to borrow money from her to pay the bill because his credit card wouldn’t go through.

“The company must not have posted my payment yet,” he said.

The next weekend, he borrowed two hundred dollars to tide him over since his employer’s accounting office hadn’t gotten around to reimbursing him for out-of-pocket expenses. Then, over dinner, he contradicted himself about when his divorce had been finalized. When Colleen questioned him, he shrugged. Warning bells were clanging in her head, but she refused to listen.

The next day, though, a nagging doubt hovered. Finally, she did what she wished she had been doing all along. She prayed: Lord, you know how lonely I’ve been. And you know how Phil has brought fun and energy back into my life. But something is wrong, and I don’t know what it is. What do I do?

The question was barely formed when the idea popped into her head to call a private investigator. She grabbed the phone book and called the first one listed in the business pages. The man listened, said he’d heard her story too many times before, and asked for Phil’s full name and date of birth. In a few minutes, with the help of modern computer software, Phil’s financial problems, dates of his marriage and the births of his children were on the investigator’s screen. There was no record of a divorce.

That simple answer to prayer gave Colleen the courage to leave a toxic relationship and avoid a future broken heart. —SANDRA

Lord, help me to ask for your guidance rather than rush ahead into potentially harmful situations. And thank you that as I ask, you will guide.

Some of our shortest prayers are our most effectual ones.

—RAYMOND EDMAN (1900–1967), PASTOR, DEVOTIONAL WRITER, AND FOURTH PRESIDENT OF WHEATON COLLEGE