Harder Family

Harder Family

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Lessons Learned: Part 5

Jesus did it, Moses did it, David did it, the prophets did it, the apostles did it, and we can do it. What am I speaking of? I am speaking of prayer. A quote from a small, country church pastor in Mississippi named John Synder comes to my mind, "A church that does not pray is a prideful church." Prayer is the acknowledgement that you need some strength or help from a power outside yourself.

When I went in for surgery to remove the tumor from the left frontal lobe of my brain in March, we were told that I would experience complete loss of movement and speech for at least two weeks, until my brain could learn to use my right frontal lobe. The doctors told us that I would be in the hospital for at least a week and then in rehab for a month. The morning of my surgery, a friend asked Rebecca if she had any specific prayer requests. Rebecca asked her to pray boldly that I would be able to move and speak after my surgery, despite the doctor's warnings. Rebecca figured it couldn't hurt to pray for a crazy miracle and see God move. God is sovereign and He could have answered that prayer any way He desired, but it was phenomenal to see God answer YES! It wasn't something she had shared with anyone else, it was just a prayer request between friends. The answer to those prayer requests (my moving and talking after surgery, leave the hospital for rehab just three days after surgery, and being released from rehab after only two weeks!!) were just the first of many prayer requests that God has answered the last 10 months. 

Even now, especially with my aphasia, I struggle to have personal prayer time. But prayer is crucial to holiness and our Christian walk. How are you supposed to walk with the Spirit if you don't know what He is trying to communicate to you? Who's strength are you relying on, your strength or God's strength? 

In Ephesians 3:14-21 Paul says, "...I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of His glory He may grant to you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith - that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen."

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