Prayer is a valuable practice of personal spiritual discipline and developing one’s relationship with God. We teach about prayer quite a bit at Titus 2. Here is a lesson on prayer that I learned this morning:This morning I was reading the day’s Proverb and reviewing some notes from the book of James (did you know that James repeats the themes of the Beatitudes?). I reached for a Halley’s Bible Handbook that had been my Daddy’s. In it was one of his homemade “bookmarks”, cut from cereal box cardboard. It was tucked into the chapter on Luke and noted the Lord’s prayer in Luke 11:2-4. Below it was written “Isaiah 46:4” – I read in my Bible, “Even to your old age, I shall be the…same, and even to your graying years, I shall bear you! I have done it, and I shall carry you; and I shall bear you, and I shall deliver you.”
I am so very grateful for Daddy having claimed that promise. I could see in his final weeks that he was trusting God and was ready to enter into God’s presence. That comforted me greatly and even now gives me confidence to trust that promise from God, too.
He had placed a photographed paper on prayer in the Halley’s, too. As was his practice he has stamped it with his name and dated it- Jan 7, 2002. I expect he may have gotten it from his Sunday School teacher. Other than mealtime prayers, I never heard him pray much, but he did invite me to pray for him several times and I stood by one time as a group of deacons from his Baptist Church came to his home, gathered around him as he sat and prayed for him. I believe it was at a time of a significant health concern, perhaps before his surgery for prostate cancer. It is clear he believed in praying and in the power of prayer.