Life-changing revelation can bump into you in much the same way my husband and I were bumping into each other in the bathroom as we went about getting ready, dropping reminders and thoughts for each other as couples are wont to do before going their separate ways for the day. I called to Rich in the shower, asking him if he’d remembered to apply (again!) for certain legal forms we needed from a government department for Samuel's adoption process that had been dragging on for years. He responded, eyes closed as he washed his hair, “Yes…” And then added, "You know, we really need to make those forms a point of prayer!”
His words bumped into me with spirit-quickening revelation. A point of prayer?
Of course. That’s exactly what we needed to do.
“Don’t stop nagging,” said no-parent-ever, yet God says that and teaches us how. “Always pray and never give up,” Jesus coaches his disciples. [Luke 18:1] Because God’s not like other powerful people—unbending, rigid in his path. The unchanging God is supple, quick to bend to supplication.
We’re often asked if the adoption process is difficult, and we try not to put people off, but…heck, yeah, it’s taken forever! Like those who’ve travelled a fertility journey will know, we’ll go to any lengths to hold the children in our arms that are meant to be there. And sometimes it gets you down when it seems like there are just too many closed doors, too many closed departments, too many passed bucks, and it seems like dead-ends are the only roads we travel.
But, hear this from a woman dead-ended in concentration camps who never lost her freedom:
The wonderful thing about praying is that you leave a world of not being able to do something, and enter God’s realm where everything is possible.—Corrie Ten Boom
Where anything is possible... where everything is possible... always pray and never give up! Leave a world of dead-ends and closed doors, leave behind hopelessness and despondency. Prayer is not just ‘Amen’s and ‘Bless us, Lord’s... oh no! A point of prayer: a perfectly-shaped key opening specific doors into specific places, calling heaven to earth even now.
We need to make that a point of prayer, he said, and it all came rushing back to me in deliciously fresh revelation. The many victories won by praying specific prayers, by naming needs before our King, and calling on the help of a God of unlimited power, whose love ties him to our burdens. We pray and everything is possible.