I’ve always been amazed at the gift of prayer that God has given us. The door of communications to our Father in the heavenly realms is fully open to us through belief and trust in His son Jesus. Think about it for just a moment. The One who created billions of stars and planets, some of which would make our sun look like a pin point on a beach ball, wants and even longs to communicate and relate with us. This truly amazes me, but what amazes me even more is the power of His words when he answers us. 

Many years ago God impressed upon me, in a moment of prayer, the desire to be in ministry. That’s a mystery in and of itself. The call, or voice of God, as many have come to know it, came first as I listened to a missionary speak about surrendering his life to God. That day, the voice within me directed me to “begin to lighten the load for we would soon be moving.” Little did we know how greatly life would change for us that day. We would surrender a new “dream” house we had built in the rolling hills of Upstate New York, sell many of our possessions, and move. 

The journey took us to a college in Colorado where we began preparation for ministry. I like to refer to it as God’s preparation and a whole new level of prayerful communications. You have to understand that when I received the call into ministry, I was 46 years old, I had spent my life as a carpenter, and continuing education was never on my top 10 list of things to do. So, naively, I jumped right into 16 credit hours of classes, along with working 30 hours a week at my new job. It did not take long into this new experience of education for me to learn that I was in over my head. I had taken my first exam and failed it miserably. However, this brought me to a whole new level of prayer.

I went home that night after classes and sat at the end of my bed and poured out my heart to God. I told him that I did not think that there was any way I could possibly succeed in college. I felt that I was just too old and far removed from being a student to meet this new challenge. Incredibly, God’s words to me that night changed this in a remarkable and powerful way. He simply told me “Paul, I want you to begin to pray for a people you do not know and a place you have never been.” Now it might seem that God didn’t really answer my dilemma with the difficulties of returning to school, but he truly did in a much greater way than I ever expected. I learned a great life lesson that night about the power of prayer; when God speaks a promise into our hearts it will carry us through even the most difficult times of life. Not only did God and His promise get me through schooling, but it brought me here to Monroe, a people and place I never been before. I’ve come to love the community and its people who hunger for God. Jesus, through the Scriptures, encourages us to “Ask, Seek and Knock”; in other words, pray. Prayer truly is an amazingly powerful gift from God to us. Try it today; possibly you will be amazed, as I have been.      

— Reflections appears regularly on the religion page. The column features a variety of local writers, coordinated through the Monroe Area Clergy Group. Paul Watkins is pastor of Church of the Nazarene, Monroe.