Why Thoughts Aren't Prayers - Amy Lively
According to my car, the outside temperature was 103 degrees. But inside the car, where a glitch caused the air conditioning to intermittently stop working, it felt like the surface of the sun. My GPS showed a solid red line of traffic on the parched Florida highway stretching on for miles and miles.
“God can fix it!” I thought, wondering if he would send an ambulance, sirens blaring, to administer intravenous fluids just in time to save me from heat stroke. Maybe he would open a new lane before me like he parted the Red Sea, or send a vexing spirit to the three mechanics who’d been unable to find the problem.
But even with hot, humid wind blasting through the open windows and a podcast playing to distract me from the sweltering heat, I sensed God whisper, “Honey, you know you’re not actually praying, right?”
I’d been thinking about God’s power to zap me out of this jam, but I hadn’t asked him to do it. So I turned my heart and mind toward him, pounded the dashboard with my sweaty fist, and whispered back, “Lord, please help.”
Cold air instantly gushed from the vents like a fresh mountain breeze.
Now I’ve prayed a lot in my life (though not nearly as much as I should), and I know God doesn’t always answer the way I want, when I want, the split second I bang on the thermostat gauge. But this time he did, and I’ve been thinking about what he said ever since.
