Are You Doing This When You Pray?

I heard the door shut behind me and my heart sank.

I grabbed the door knob and tried to turn it, but only confirmed my reason to panic. I was locked out of the house. And while that is a problem, the real problem was what was locked in the house.

I had stepped into the garage to feed the dog, leaving our newborn baby girl asleep in the living room. Since I didn’t expect to stay in the garage long, I also left all sources of communication in the living room.

So to recap, my baby, my phone and the dog were inside the house. I was not.

My heart raced as I considered my options.

As a Christian I knew I should pray.

So I did. Then I said Amen and grabbed a hammer. I swung as hard as I could at the glass-paned door … nothing. It turns out it wasn’t a glass-paned door. Instead, it was some kind of material that a hammer couldn’t crack.

Hmmmm.

I noticed a window, so I climbed out of it. No, I wasn’t inside the house, but at least I was going somewhere. Somewhere with more windows. And maybe one of those windows would break when I hit it with a hammer.

I chose the window that I believed would make the least amount of mess and hit it with all of my might. This time it did break, however it turns out this window was double paned. And the more I thought about it I wasn’t even sure I could squeeze through the window if, in fact, I did break through both sets of glass.

Out of options and now wet and cold (did I mention it was raining?) I crawled back into the garage to regroup.

As I realized my best effort had landed me right back where I started, I decided to pray again. But this time was different. This time, when I told God my needs and asked Him for help, I didn’t have a pre-determined plan. This time I asked Him to move and my only option was to expect that He would.

Our actions expose our expectations.

Let’s say you’re driving down the road and see a sign that says, “left lane closed ahead.” What do you do? Most of us probably turn on the blinker and merge into the right lane. Some of us likely slow down. The sign said “lane closed”, so we alter our actions based on what we expect to happen down the road.

But sometimes I think we come to God and ask Him to help us or lead us, then just like I did in the garage, we get up from our knees and set off to figure things out alone. We act like we don’t expect God to answer.

Psalm 5:3 says,

Listen to my voice in the morning, Lord. Each morning I bring my requests to you and wait expectantly.” (NLT)

I bring my requests to you and wait expectantly. The Amplified Bible adds “watch and wait [for You to speak to my heart]”.

How often do we pray then wait expectantly? I’m guilty. It’s as though I give my request to God, but I’ve already determined the outcome. There is another option, though.

I can expect God to do what only He can do.

And that’s exciting. When we exchange our assumptions for holy anticipation, we can live expectant that God will provide all the time, resources and energy we need to accomplish His purposes for this day.

When I paused long enough to wait for God to speak to my heart, the scene in the garage changed. I went from panic to peace, from chaos to a sound mind.

In a matter of seconds I popped open the locked door. No hammer. No broken glass. No rain soaked clothes. I found the baby still sleeping and the dog, too.

Today, let’s exchange our assumptions for anticipation. Instead of drudging through a mundane day or pacing through a stressful one, let’s sit on the edge of our seats expectant of what God will do.