It was about 8 or 9 years ago. I was sitting at my computer, and, in what used to be the trend of posting to Facebook in the third person, my friend’s Facebook status read, “Jenna* is dead.”
I woke up in a panic. It was still dark, very early morning, and I paused to listen. My baby wasn’t crying. I wasn’t at the computer. No one was dead, but why did I still have this awful feeling? It felt SO real. I didn’t know why, but I prayed for my friend as I drifted back to sleep.
When I awoke at a more reasonable hour, I still hadn’t shook the vividness of the dream. After feeding my children breakfast, I went to the computer to check Facebook. Was it a dream? I wasn’t really convinced. I checked her status. It did not say that. But then a reasonable voice inside my head reminded me that if a person was badly hurting or, in fact, dead, you wouldn’t typically find it on their own page. I check her husband’s. He was soliciting prayer for his wife, my friend. She was in the hospital undergoing emergency surgery. There was a very serious medical complication in her intestines, which nearly killed her.
This was not the first time I had dreamed about someone needing help. But it was the first time that I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt that God had awoken me to pray for her. As I came to understand what had happened, the miraculous nature of this was astounding and humbling. God used me. In some very small way, He used me in the healing of my friend, who was miles and miles away.
This has happened a few times since then. Sometimes I discover what the prayer was needed for. Sometimes I don’t. But when I wake up now, with someone on my heart, I immediately begin praying for them.
I say this not to boast about myself, but to brag on God.
He uses the weak, the small, the young, and the old…the sleeping. Could He have healed my friend without waking me to pray? Absolutely. He could have healed her without doctors. But He uses people for His glory. It is because we are human, because we are imperfect, because we are not God, that the miraculous becomes miraculous.
Similar to what we talked about last week, God could have parted the Red Sea before Moses and his people even arrived. He could have had it ready and waiting for them. Instead, he chose to use a man with a stutter, to show them the power of their God.
The Bible shows us time and again, how God uses the weak, how He speaks to and through the sinners, how He uses the least of these, for His purpose, His glory, His Kingdom!
When we talk about that which we should put into practice, after love, or rather as a part of love, prayer should be next. I am not anyone particularly special. I do not have a better direct line to God than any of you reading this. If you put prayer into practice in your daily lives, watch what He can do! Whenever a name lands in your thoughts, on your heart, or on your lips, pray. Lift them up. Put this into practice. He tells us that we need not know what to pray for. Just show Him that you are listening, and watch how He can use you.