Women's Devotional for 03-25-13

Monday March 25, 2013

Pray in the Spirit at all times and on every occasion. Stay alert and be persistent in your prayers for all believers everywhere.

Ephesians 6:18, NLT

When I reach the end of the list of God's armor (Eph. 6:10-18), I also reach a moment of truth. First, will I put on the armor? Second, once I have put on the armor, what will I actually do? Note what Paul’s "marching orders" turn out to be: pray. I struggled for a long time with this idea of what it means to pray "at all times and on every occasion." Then I began to observe how my wife's mind works. She taught me a valuable lesson. When I look at this entire passage, I realize that prayer isn't just work. Prayer is war. Prayer isn't time out from the battle. In fact, prayer can be full-on engagement in the fray. If I think of prayer as work, it becomes an issue of lifestyle and convenience. If I think of prayer as warfare, it takes on life-and-death importance. Paul told the Thessalonians, "Never stop praying" (1 Thess. 5:17). Words like these are both challenging and puzzling--particularly for me as a man. Since it seems like I can only do one thing at a time, how can I pray and get anything else done? That's when I noticed an amazing thing about my wife. My wife does certain things all the time. I mean, she never stops. For example, she thinks about me and about each of our children constantly. If I approach her at any moment and ask, "What were you just thinking about Nathan (one of our kids)?" she can tell me. If I ask her, "What's Katherine (our daughter) doing right now?" my wife knows or was wondering. Both of these are grown and married kids. What my wife considers important, she thinks about "at all times and on every occasion." To compare it to computer structures, my mind is a program with various files that I can only open one at a time. My wife's mind is like RAM (Random Access Memory) on a computer--at any moment, everything is on her mind. Both of us know that prayer needs to be our default setting. No matter what else may occupy our minds at any moment, we want to learn to have an attitude of prayer running in the background. She reminds me that it can be done.