God said to me, "Pray and watch what I can do."

It’s been so long since I journal anything on this site.  I’ve been so busy with everything.  I constantly feel like I have 10 pots cooking but only 9 lids, so I have to constantly switch lids to cover the most urgent thing first.   Journaling helps my forgetful brain to remember all of God’s blessing.  

When the kids were little, I feel like I have some form of control.  I can dictate where I send them to for childcare, I can control what they eat, I make them obey to a certain extend, and I can control and limit things that may have a bad influence.  But as they grow older, I have less and less control.  They want more control and less likely to take my advice.  They want to do things their way.  As I loose control in their lives, I became afraid of what they will become.   This summer, as I prepared to send my eldest to middle school, I heard God’s calling for me to lead a moms’ prayer group for the elementary school.  I felt God is saying to me, “Pray and watch what I can do.”  I do need to draw close to my Creator through prayer.  So in the summer, I pray for ONE mom to join me to pray on Friday when the school year starts.  The previous prayer group only had three people so I didn’t expect too many interested moms.  I held a social for people to come hang out and find out more and for the previous leader to share all the miracles God did through her prayers.  To my amazement, there were 13 who came.  The prayer meeting now consistently had 4-6 people.  WOW!!!  I only asked for one and God blessed the group 4-6 folds.  I see how BIG God is, I can ask for BIGGER things. 

Ever since I started praying with this group of moms, I started to be more conscious of how I pray.  Moms in Prayer International is the organization that gives guidance to the prayer group and they pray using the 4 steps prayer: praise, confession, thanksgiving, and finally supplication.  Asking is the last part.  In praise, confession, and thanksgiving there shouldn’t be any requests.  For example, in the praise portion, we are supposed to focus on one attribute of God and praise Him regarding that attribute (not making any prayer requests).  This is so that we realize how powerful and awesome God is.  We are so needy that we constantly ask and never focus on the other parts of prayer.  So I have been more conscious about starting my prayer with praises and thanksgiving and I have been making the boys aware that they need to do that as well.  But of course this is hard for them since asking for help is easier than thinking of attributes of God.  Sometimes I don’t know if anything I say is getting through to them.  But as I “pray and watch what God can do,” He gave me hopes and encouragements on this very difficult parenting journey.  Last week, Dai-dai prayed with Mui before putting her to bed and I heard him say, “God you are the Creator of this awesome universe, thank you for creating today.”  I was soooo excited!!!!! He is getting it!!!!!!!  He is beginning to praise God and beginning to realize God’s greatness.  HE is awesome and worthy of my praise.