Day Eight: Shrunken Prayers (Genesis 17:17-18)

"Then Abraham bowed down to the ground, but he laughed to himself in disbelief.

'How could I become a father at the age of 100?' he thought. 'And how can Sarah have a baby when she is ninety years old?'

So Abraham said to God, 'May Ishmael live under your special blessing!"

​Genesis 17:17-18, NLT (emphasis, mine)
​

The audacity of my prayers show the level of my faith...
I'm guilty of praying shrunken prayers.

Much like Abraham, there's a disconnect between what God says and what I see and so I pray in accordance to what I see, instead.

Here, in Genesis 17, God tells Abraham he's finally going to be dad... at the age of one hundred! Crazy, right? 

A little too crazy. Especially for Abraham.

So instead of saying, "Alright, Lord, cool! Bring it on!" he asks something a little more realistic..."Um, sure God. That's great and all, but, well, could you at least just bless the one son I do have?"

But God is not about to take that for an answer so He repeats, "No, Abraham-- your wife is really going to have a child." 

Audacious.
Inexplicable.
Incomprehensible.
Whoever heard of a 90-year-old woman getting pregnant?

Confession time: I see myself in Abraham. There have been times I knew God was prompting me to pray similarly audacious, inexplicable and incomprehensible prayers. But in my limited view, limited understanding and limited faith, I shrunk those prayers to fit what I believed to be "actually possible".

I'm a prayer-shrinker.

Which is why I love God's statement to Abraham in the next chapter.
Sarah catches wind of God's plan-- and laughs. (Cant' say I blame her.)

God's response?
"Is anything too hard for the Lord?" (Genesis 18:14)

What a comeback! Who can answer THAT rhetorical question?

Oh, we of little faith.

All this got me thinking that this is why it says in Romans:

"the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit intercedes for us..." (Romans 8:26, NLT, emphais mine)

God, in His infinite wisdom, mercy and understanding of our human nature has such amazing grace for us that He provided the Holy Spirit to help us- even in our frail faith! 

This is why He wants us to, "pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests" (Ephesians 6:18) so that we can truly experience the "infinitely more" (Ephesians 3:20) that He has for us. 

No. More. Shrunken. Prayers.

"Is there anything too hard for the Lord?'

No. Nothing is too hard for the God who gives children to the barren, makes the sun stand still, and raises the dead from the grave.

Dwelling in Him,