September 2018

My part of the communication equation wasn’t very good. I did what I knew to do in my time of reading the Bible and praying to God my Father. Nevertheless, I definitely experienced a plateau in my spiritual growth, especially during my college days.

My husband and I raised a son who was (and still is) high on the intelligence scale. He was asking deep questions from a young age. I think he would wake up in this deep frame of mind, because he often seemed to ask these kinds of questions while I was trying to get him, his sister, and myself ready on a work-day morning.

In Praying with Purpose: Taking Your Prayers from Vague to Victorious, Haddix presents practical ideas for your prayer life, ways to creatively motivate and guide you in prayer, and suggestions on what to pray. She opens pages in with this strong observation: “When you pray for your loved ones, you unleash eternal impacting power upon their lives.” Those words were enough to make me, a life-long Christian, pause and rethink prayer. Wow, that’s some power.

As I read just the first few pages, I realized her idea about journaling, shared by many of her colleagues, has a clear, specific, meaningful purpose: to connect with God. Here’s How Deborah says it:

I’ve recently taken a break from teaching Sunday school after twenty-five years or so of continual teaching. As I think about it, I wonder what all the children I’ve taught through the years will remember about me, about my class. Ideally, I want them to remember me as someone who really loved the Lord and loved them and who showed them Jesus.