A Conversation with God

18 months ago James and I were going through a lot of transition and felt like we were getting hit over and over again with hardship and difficulties. I kept praying through it all and maintaining faith knowing Jesus will provide and come through. However, I was feeling God was far away. Anyone else feel that way at times?  While praying I heard God speak “I’m even in the little things” and I just knew that clearly I was missing God’s work in my life.

I am a visual person. I learn by seeing and I wanted to see God move.

So, one day I cleared a space in the corner of my bedroom. On one wall I wrote down every single prayer and dream I could possibly think of on post-it notes. Then, I decided that every single time God answered one of those prayers, I would move it over to the opposite wall.

I have prayers of all kinds. There are post it notes for people battling cancer, financial issues, and for salvations. We have different ways we want to bless and give to specific people and ministries, so those get a post it note. I even have written down some things we want to buy for our family that we have to save up for. Literally, everything.

How often do we pray and ask God to provide or move and the second he does we are on to praying for the next request and TOTALLY forget to give gratitude and acknowledgement for what He just did? I wanted to not only see what God was doing, but also have that moment to sit in his presence, with a grateful heart, as I moved the post it from the ‘Prayer Requests’ wall to the ‘Prayers Answered’ wall.

I was in awe at how quickly I was moving post it notes over. I was amazed at how many answers to prayer I would have otherwise overlooked. The ‘Prayers Answered’ wall has filled up! It is now at the point where I have to take old ones down to make room for new ones. To see a prayer get answered and rushing home to move the post it note has reminded me of God’s presence in our lives.

I spend a lot of mornings sitting on my bed staring at the wall. Some of the post it notes have been there since the beginning.  I wrote a post it note about finalizing our adoption. I will FINALLY be able to move that one over next week, after 18 months.

Now I am building a prayer wall 2.0 😉 I’m going to hang two poster size pieces of white plywood on my wall so that I can just poke the paper through the pegs. (Post it note glue doesn’t stick forever, I found that out). That way I can just keep stacking them on top of each other.

We had some friends over and they saw our wall. Most of the time people don’t even ask why the heck we have hundreds of post it notes in the corner of our room. But, this time our friends stopped and looked. We shared with them what they were looking at and our friend had the best explanation for what our prayer wall is. He said he felt like he was looking at a conversation with God. I loved this description because it really is a conversation. It shows us how often God is so present in our lives, even in the little things.