The Prayer that Changed Everything (My Story Part One) | Walking Worthy: The Prayer that Changed Everything (My Story Part One)
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Tuesday, March 11, 2014

The Prayer that Changed Everything (My Story Part One)


Tears streaming down my face, I rocked on the deck in the early morning, Bible and journal in hand, begging God to move.  I was desperate, my heart had been ripped out.  All of my hopes and dreams had come crashing down. All I had left was to beg God to intervene. Over and over I repeated, God please change his mind, God please change his mind. It felt like God was silent yet God in His sweet gentle way met me in that rocking chair. He gently asked me “Ashlee, are you willing to hear no?” I brushed off the feeling with dread, fearful of what it would mean for God to say no.

A few days went by, there I was on the back porch, kneeling on the hard concrete, a sheet of rain blasting on my face. The wind blowing all around me. Rejection freshly gnawing at my heart.  Again I begged over and over “God please change his mind!” Once again God met me and sweetly whispered in my ear “Ashlee, are you willing to hear no?” And I knew what He was asking me to do. Yet I clung so tight to my hopes and dreams and desperately wanted God to put the pieces back together. I knew what God wanted, yet I was afraid to let go. I was afraid being willing to hear no meant He would actually say no. And that would just ruin everything. And there on that porch, I opened up my hands and I cried out to the Lord and I gave it all over to Him. I told Him, that even if the answer was no, that it was okay.
I woke up out of a dead sleep that night and I heard God speak so clearly I would have swore to you He spoke audibly to me “Ashlee, let it go.” That was all that He said and I knew exactly what that meant. For days I had asked him to change the mind of someone else and I knew without a doubt, that God wanted me to change my mind.  I went back to sleep sure of what God told me, my heart heavy.  
God is NOT my genie.... 
Up until that point I had treated prayer as Aladdin’s lamp and God was my genie. Yet God taught me a vital lesson. Sometimes His answer is no. I do not always get what I want when I pray, because God is not a genie waiting there to abide by my request. Instead, He is the Lord God Almighty, who reigns and rules in my life. I submit to Him, He does not submit to me.
What I want MAY NOT be what HE WANTS. What HE wants is BETTER!
God also taught me that what He wants is not always what I want. What I thought were my hopes and dreams were really nothing compared to what God had for me. In fact what He had planned for me was better than anything I could have ever imagined. 
 It changed the way I Pray. It changed EVERYTHING...
And it changed me. It changed the way I viewed God and the way I approached Him. It changed the way I seek Him and even the way I pray. I desire changed from "God do...." to "If your presence does not go with us do not send us up from here" Exodus 33:15. In stead of telling God what to do I began asking Him where He wanted me to go and what He wanted me to do even who He wanted me to date. And I began to wait on Him and His presence instead of trying to make things happen.
You see, I am quite the control freak. I want things to be my way (all the time). And for the first time in my life God said no in a very big way. It left me lost and confused. I wasn’t sure which way was up. All of a sudden the story of my life was completely blank. I was headed into my senior year of college with no clue where I was going or what God wanted. So I began to seek Him more than I ever had before. I began to seek His will before I did anything. I began to ask Him to make His will clear to me, so clear that I could not miss it. And He did, He called me to ministry, and seminary, and a state I never would have chosen. His plan was really so much better than the one I desperately clung to on the porch with the rain and the wind beating around me. 
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