Prayer Part 1

Until now, all of my prayer requests have been short term, such as “pray for a successful surgery next week”. I have never been is a situation such as this where I am asking people to continually pray for me for months at a time.  I have prayed for people for years, in some cases, but now I am seeing prayer from a different perspective.

Last week, I received a simple email that said, “Still praying, Bill.” The impact that this had on me was overwhelming. Today a simple email came that said, “I continue to pray for you and your family”. These are just two of the many such emails, texts, phone calls, cards and conversations that I have had in which people were assuring me that they were continuing to pray for us. The constant reminders that we are being prayed for is so encouraging and uplifting. At times, they come in moments of doubt and discouragement such as when the side effects from chemotherapy are getting me down.

These subtle, yet constant reminders are something that, unfortunately I did not do for people I prayed for. I’m not sure why I did not remind people that I was praying for them. That will never happen in the future. I now see that “Bearing one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2) includes constant reminders that I am praying.