Cody, Running, and Prayer--and Charlie!

I've got three different things to talk about tonight, ok, bloggerbuddies?

Here's an email from Linda about Cody--
"They got back to Fayetteville last night to get a phone call to come back tomorrow, Friday. A world renown surgeon looked at his MRI and wants to do his surgery. Then they called and told them to come today for another MRI and then consult tomorrow. We still don't know when the surgery will be." So they weren't getting jerked around at ACH, after all. It's comforting to know they'll have such a good surgeon, although that probably means it's either a rare or difficult surgery to do. Please keep praying for him.

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Today was my last training run for the race Saturday. It was pouring down rain at Paris and nobody was running, so I ran at the church track. I set my Nano at "5K" and ran until I was finished. I was pleased with my time, and I feel ready for the race!

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Awhile back a friend and I were praying about something, and I got confused about how to pray. See, I go to Bible Study Fellowship every week, and it seems like every week they talk about the sovereignty of God, and that made me feel like God was going to do what he wanted to anyway, so we just had to pray "Thy will be done," and maybe not even THAT!

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Then I read something from David Wilkerson (who is NOT a "name it and claim it" guy), and he pointed out that scripture tells us that God WANTS us to come BOLDLY before the throne of grace and present our requests to him. And of course, there are lots of other scriptures about prayer (you have not because you ask not, for instance, and the effectual prayer of the righteous man availeth much, scriptures I obviously memorized in the KJV)!

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So I asked boldly, and even though it didn't turn out like I was asking, at least I felt like I hadn't let my friend down. (Both of us wanted God's will above all, of course.)

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Anyway, this week's BSF notes addressed my confusion, so I want to share what they said:

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Does prayer get God to change his will so that he conforms to our wishes? No! But prayer is the necessary channel that he has established for accomplishing spiritual work.

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There are two common errors at this point.

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First, there is a superficial belief that understands that God is sovereign and that his will is always done. It errs in deducing that prayer is unimportant, except in regard to how it changes us.

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The second is the error that makes God somehow weakly dependent upon us. It ties God's hands, as if he were made impotent apart from our prayers.

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The right understanding is that God not only appoints the end to be obtained, he also appoints the means to attain that end, and God's appointed means to all spiritual blessing is prayer. God works through human channels.

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Hmmm, so perhaps it's God's sovereign will to answer our prayers, unless for some reason, it's not good for us. That makes sense to me!

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BREAKING NEWS FLASH! I just got this email from Shannon--I just wanted to remind you that we have our tests on the baby’s well-being tomorrow at 3:00. They are the same tests as last week. I am expecting everything will be ok and they will send us home. They will continue to monitor us and baby’s IUGR closely. We have our iteral growth test next Wednesday. Pray for a good report, ok?