Do we pray as if everything is depended on us and our prayer?  Or as if it is not really dependent on me?  When Jesus one day long ago said to me: “Jerry, only I can do for you what all along you have been trying to do for yourself”; I At that time was truly touched, but obviously I must have had little idea what was meant.  Oh, that moment changed me in some positive ways.  I no longer thought that I could be righteous in His eyes without Him.  

I know you’ve heard me give that testimony before, but I just today really got a glimpse into much more of it.  It came suddenly in Pastor Tom’s sermon.   No, he didn’t tell me.  Not in so many words, but God used him.  Yes, after all this time, what God had said to me so very long ago still had more of its meaning to give.  Today I remembered back and connected, how years after having heard those words, Ellen, was in sever depression, and I was praying each day with her.  Early in the morning when she couldn’t even seem to get out of bed.  Yes, “I” prayed, I was doing it.  God see me, here I am:  I’m doing it. 6 months I did this every day.  “I” was trying to bring about what Jesus had already told me that only He could do.  And, this particular morning I was finished my 45 min. workout in a bedroom that I had set up as a gym, I had my shower afterward, and (I am only now seeing) that at that time I was once again going to repeat my same dutiful prayer for Ellen.  I entered the bedroom all dressed for work, and suddenly I got angry, I have always said that my anger was with God, (but was it really with myself?) but back then, I looked up at the ceiling and said God I’m not going to do this anymore, “I’ve” come to you every day with this request for 6 months.  (I mean look at me.)  I’m not ever doing it again.  You know what Ellen’s need is, and I refuse to ask You again.  You are either going to heal her or You’re not.  I turned and slammed the bedroom door and left for work.  

Today as Pastor shared, I realized that, that last prayer was the only prayer that I had prayed to God for Ellen that was genuine.  Before that prayer, I was always going in to pray and initiate God’s action; but this prayer was the only one where He could only do what for 6 months I had been trying to do without success for both Ellen and me.  

What God did at that point, you likely already know, if you’ve read my books or my blog.  In fact it was already being set in motion and the next morning I would just then (thirty years ago) learn about it. 

But, how dense, am I really?  For just today, I realized that God hadn’t let me know before He again had to do it, likely because I had not truly laid Ellen’s situation at His feet before, but then, I’m not really sure why.  What I do know, was what I had done way back then was crude.  It was, some might say, insolent.  I even did say that, looking back as I often had done, but from today forward I am to realize that I had never given it over to God as I was doing at that very moment.  I was washing my hands of any part whatsoever in the healing that would now be released into God’s hands on Ellen’s behalf.  I was no longer doing my praying for appearance’s, but I was truly asking God to be God of our lives, and those of you who have heard me speak of this before, know that He began her road to healing the very next morning.  The circumstances were miraculous, and what I did, did not bring them about, but only He could do what for 6 months I had been trying to do for Ellen.  

I wonder just how often the big “I” gets in the way of God’s working in and through us.  How often, I wonder do we want the glory for what God is doing in us or through us?  Thank You Lord for showing me just how much I still need You.  Thank you Pastor Tom for being humble and obedient so that we can still hear from God.  

Ask yourself: was Jesus prayer to His Father not meaningful to His Father, when He cried out: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  When I understand that though I many times fail Him, even at that very moment of His agony, even then would Jesus nor His Father fail us.  For we must know, that He could have at any time come down from that cross and stated: “none of them are worth it.  What can they really do for me?”  For we are nothing without Him.