Expressing Thanks

I feel like I am pretty good about being grateful for the multiple blessings in my life. I am aware of how lucky I am and I realize (most of the time) that these things are a direct blessing from God. What I am not very great about is recognizing when my prayers get answered and then immediately giving thanks.

Sometimes when I am struggling, I wonder about how effective prayer is. I think we have all been there (or at least I hope I am not the only one). Where something is so bad that it feels my prayer is irrelevant. Specifically, I really struggle with this when someone has been diagnosed with a terminal illness; I keep praying but the person keeps moving closer to the end of life here on Earth. During times like this, I recognize that God is in control and that I can not understand his ways.....but I get to the point where I don't feel as though my prayer makes any difference. Although I go through phases like this; for the most part I strongly believe in prayer and just don't recognize the answers.

At the beginning of every year, my church (Northpoint) always really pushes "self feeding" also called quiet time. Each January, the church makes journals with reading plans to help each member of the congregation during quiet time. At the front of this journal there is a prayer list with a place for answers. At the beginning of the year (Jan-March) I was really good about using this journal. Once I began this blog, I quit using the journal and have instead been journalling privately on here. Well this morning I pulled out that journal so I could see what I needed to read next. I started glancing over the prayer request page and the number of prayers that have been answered is amazing!!! When I look through the list, I realize that not only did I ever acknowledge that these have been answered but I defiantly have not expressed thanks to the one who answered them.

So this is one very small part of my acknowledging how awesome it is to have a God that answers our prayers....