Discovery

Yesterday I happened to pick up an old quiet time journal of mine and started flipping through the pages, not sure of what I would find. What a blast from the past it was! Sometimes funny, sometimes inspiring, sometimes saddening--always convicting. The journal was only about half used, so I'm going to begin again with it and fill up the rest of the pages. The first half of the book was from 1999...and now, 8 years later, I hope to finish it!

On September 23, 1999, I wrote this:
I enjoyed reading about Josiah in 2 Chron. 34. He was 8 when he became king; and 8 years later (when he was 16), he began to seek God. I pray for the son Jeff and I will someday, by faith, have, that our Josiah will be seeking God at least by the time he's 16, if not earlier!

Now that I'm a parent, I'm hoping that it's much earlier than age 16 when Josiah begins to earnestly seek God! :)

Today in my quiet time, I was reading in Yancey's book on Prayer; and this stood out to me:
After surveying Jesus' practice of prayer, I realize that his example does answer one important question about prayer: Does it matter? When doubts creep in and I wonder whether prayer is a sanctified form of talking to myself, I remind myself that the Son of God, who had spoken worlds into being and sustains all that exists, felt a compelling need to pray. He prayed as if it made a difference, as if the time he devoted to prayer mattered every bit as much as the time he devoted to caring for people...To discount prayer, to conclude that it does not matter, means to view Jesus as deluded.