prayer.

As I was driving home from work tonight, I was thinking. I enjoy spending time just thinking, it helps me to sort things out. Anyway, I was thinking, in particular, about prayer. There are so many concepts and things I have yet to learn in my developing faith, and I look forward to learning a great deal throughout the course of my life. Prayer is something that has baffled me somewhat for quite awhile. If God is in complete control, and is unchanging, what's the point of praying and petitioning Him for things? It won't change His mind, so what's the use? I mean, I understand that we pray according to His will, and that our prayers help us to grow and to glorify Him, but still... As I dwelt on this concept, I had somewhat of an epiphany.

God uses our prayers in much the same way as He uses our evangelism.

We are commanded to pray; therefore, we pray. We are commanded to evangelize; therefore we evangelize. Prayer doesn't change God's will, just as evangelism doesn't change God's will. We don't know what the answer to our prayers will be, just as we don't know who will respond to the gospel call, but we pray in faith, knowing that God's will will be done, and that it is what's best. God has chosen to work through our prayers as a tool, much as He has elected to work through our evangelism. So our prayers do matter.

Isn't God awesome?

purity.

"One day we took the children to see a goldsmith refine gold after the ancient manner of the East. He was sitting beside his little charcoal fire. ("He shall sit as a refiner"; the gold- or silversmith never leaves his crucible once it is on the fire.) In the red glow lay a common curved roof tile; another tile covered it like a lid. This was the crucible. In it was the medicine made of salt, tamarind fruit and burnt brick dust, and imbedded in it was the gold. The medicine does its appointed work on the gold, "then the fire eats it," and the goldsmith lifts the gold out with a pair of tongs, lets it cool, rubs it between his fingers, and if not satisfied puts it back again in fresh medicine. This time he blows the fire hotter than it was before, and each time he puts the gold into the crucible, the heat of the fire is increased; "it could not bear it so hot at first, but it can bear it now; what would have destroyed it then helps it now." "How do you know when the gold is purified?" we asked him, and he answered, "When I can see my face in it [the liquid gold in the crucible] then it is pure." -Amy Carmichael, 'Gold Cord'