God Answers Prayer!

I will admit something to you all that I am not very proud of. I am not a patient person. I try. I try very hard. Sometimes I think God gave me children to in fact teach me patience. After fourteen years, I do not think I am any closer to being a patient person. The funny thing is, it is through prayer and patience that we are blessed. In this day and age of instant gratification, sometimes that's hard to grasp. "For ye have need of patience, that after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise" (Hebrews 10:36 NKJV).

God is however so patient with me. He constantly reminds me I need to be patient. Even recently when I was blessed to see Beth Moore with Shona Neff, Senior Editor of TRW, her message touched on patience! She talked about Hannah who waited year after year for her child. And He does remind me that patience is faith. You have to have faith that God will answer your prayer. Even if He tells you no, or takes longer than you want Him to, He will answer you. "But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength" (Isaiah 40:31 NKJV).

I once even went so far as to look up how many times the word patience is mentioned in the Bible. It is in there thirty three times! And the word long-suffering which means the same thing is in there seventeen. So I don't know about you but when something is mentioned fifty times, I think we should pay attention! Yes the microwave is one of my favorite inventions but in this day and age of instant gratification, I can't be the only one who struggles with this. I am here to say waiting on your prayers to be answered is hard!

Well, today I am going to tell you about my answered prayers. It took three long (and I mean long) years, but finally, my prayers have been answered! You may remember me writing a little bit here and there about my struggles with my teenage son. If not, I will give you a brief little run down on the situation. Let's put it mildly and say once he hit middle school, he morphed into a completely different child! One I was not happy with. His teachers were not happy with him, and I don't think he was even happy with himself! My once honor roll student went to straight failing everything. I will also admit I wanted to smack him more than I wanted to hug him.

His dad was not any help. My guy friends who talked to him were not helping. The counselor the school referred him to see did not help at all. They just wanted to blame all his problems on the divorce. I know that if I did not believe God would help me, I would have given up on him. What a sad thing for a mother to say. I think so many children today have been given up on. And while I use to think it was barbaric for people to give up on their kids I now know how it can happen. I pray for those parents who do not have God in their lives to help raise their children.

Our road to healing and our miracle came when I was finally at the end of my rope with him. I was ready to send him to the detention home (D home). One day I went to the youth pastor and told him my son needed counseling. I remember I could not even finish my talk with him without the tears flowing. He said he would agree to meet with him after he had attended three sessions of one-eighty. One-eighty is our church's teen service. Before then he had just been attending regular service with me.

He went to three one-eighty teen services and we scheduled his first session with Pastor Matt. He went to two alone before we had a family session. This all started in September 2008. Pastor Matt was moving at the end of October, so we saw him once a week until he left. Even though he has moved, he and Dominic are now My-space friends, and Dominic credits him with bringing him into the kingdom. Before he left, Matt introduced Dominic to the pastors who would be taking over, someone he could talk to, and to the guy who does the teen boys Bible study. At first he wanted nothing to do with them. I am pretty sure I made him go to Bible study the first few months. Now, he wants to live there!

Not only has my son made wonderful friends through the church, so have we. All these people have been such blessings to us in so many ways. Little by little he has gotten more involved in the church and is also now in drama there. AND here's the kicker: the kid who was on the waiting list for the D home, the kid who use to physically fight with me, the kid who "ran away" twice, now wants to be the next youth pastor! Really! He even told the current youth pastor that he was going to take his place one day. They're great friends now so he told my son he would help him with that.