{"id":18,"date":"2006-04-02T18:48:01","date_gmt":"2006-04-03T00:48:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/martha.4jcg.org\/2006\/04\/02\/prayer-a-mops-devotion\/"},"modified":"2006-04-02T18:48:01","modified_gmt":"2006-04-03T00:48:01","slug":"prayer-a-mops-devotion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/martha.4jcg.org\/?p=18","title":{"rendered":"Prayer: a MOPS devotion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>     I&#8217;ve been thinking a lot about prayer lately.  I&#8217;m trying to consciously depend on God and think about Him as often as I can throughout the day.  A few days ago, I came across a little story that has to do with prayer.  It&#8217;s in a devotional booklet called &#8220;Our Daily Bread&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>     &#8220;Several mothers of small children were sharing encouraging answers to prayer.  One woman admitted that she felt selfish when she troubled God with her personal needs.  &#8216;Compared with the huge global needs God faces,&#8217; she explained, &#8216;my circumstances must seem trivial to Him.&#8217;<br \/>\n     Moments later, her little son pinched his fingers in a door and ran screaming to his mother.  She didn&#8217;t say, &#8216;How selfish of you to bother me with your throbbing fingers when I&#8217;m busy!&#8217;  No, she showed him great compassion and tenderness.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>     Psalm 103:13 says, &#8220;Just as a father has compassion on his children, So the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him.&#8221;<br \/>\n     So this verse shows us that both humans and God respond with compassion when we love someone.<\/p>\n<p>     Now I&#8217;d like to share some verses from Isaiah 49 (13-16)<br \/>\n&#8220;Shout for joy, O heavens; rejoice, O earth; burst into song, O mountains!<br \/>\nFor the Lord comforts His people and will have compassion on His afflicted ones.<br \/>\nBut Zion said, &#8216;The Lord has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me.&#8217;<br \/>\n(this is the Lord speaking)  &#8216;Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne?  Though she may forget, I will not forget you!  See, I have engraved you on the palms of My hands;&#8217; &#8221;<\/p>\n<p>     I just love this illustration.  Think about how hard it would be for a nursing mother to forget her baby.  I mean, when it&#8217;s time to feed your baby, you can&#8217;t think much about anything else!  But God says that even if it were possible for a mother to forget her child, He could never forget His children.  It&#8217;s as if He has even engraved us on the palms of His hands.<\/p>\n<p>     This kind of intimacy with God belongs to those who fear Him&#8211;those who are in awe of Him&#8211;who rely on Him rather than on themselves.  As that child with throbbing fingers ran freely to his mother, we can also run to God with our daily problems.  <\/p>\n<p>     And our compassionate God doesn&#8217;t neglect others to respond to your concerns.  He is all-powerful and He has unlimited time and love for each of His children.  No need is too trivial for Him.  Aren&#8217;t you glad He is always there for you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been thinking a lot about prayer lately. I&#8217;m trying to consciously depend on God and think about Him as often as I can throughout the day. A few days ago, I came across a little story that has to do with prayer. It&#8217;s in a devotional booklet called &#8220;Our Daily Bread&#8221;. &#8220;Several mothers of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/martha.4jcg.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/martha.4jcg.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/martha.4jcg.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/martha.4jcg.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/martha.4jcg.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/martha.4jcg.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/martha.4jcg.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/martha.4jcg.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/martha.4jcg.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}