I will extol You, my God, O King; and I will bless Your name forever and ever. Every day I will bless You, and I will praise Your name forever and ever. Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; and His greatness is unsearchable.
-Psalm 145:1-3
During my time as a Fellow, I have felt the Lord gently asking me over and over, “Even if you receive nothing that you are praying for, would you still believe that I am faithful?” A couple of weeks ago, I attended the Women of the Word Conference at Fourth, the theme of which was “Proclaiming the Lord’s Faithfulness.” As we read and reflected on Psalm 145 together, I wrestled with what it means to declare that God is faithful and to praise Him for His faithfulness, even in seasons marked by seemingly unanswered prayer and unexpected circumstances. In fact, as our speaker Salmone Nengean reminded us, it is often these very seasons of waiting on the Lord that cause us to understand His abundant faithfulness. Our trials become the places where we encounter the Lord deeply; they are the places where God glorifies Himself the most and where we begin to understand just how unsearchable His greatness really is.
Knowing this, I have come to believe that the beauty of prayer lies not in what we receive after we pray but in how we are transformed as we pray. The way God changes our hearts through prayer is what makes prayer truly beautiful. I have come to realize that underneath every prayer we pray is a deeper longing to know God–to know His strength, to hear His voice, to feel His presence, to believe that we are held in the palms of His hands. I have come to realize that the greatest answer to prayer is that very longing within our hearts to know God deeply. And there is something about being brought to our knees by the weight of our trials that causes us to know Him so deeply. It is there, on our knees, that we simultaneously declare our weakness and God’s strength and, in doing so, that we truly discover that the God we worship is faithful, always, without exception.
As a Fellow this year, the Lord has shown me what it means to proclaim His greatness, not just on the tallest hills but also in the lowest valleys. He has challenged me, tested me, grown me, and provided for me in ways that I never could have imagined. Journeying with the Lord over these past several months at Fourth has prepared me to testify wholeheartedly that, even when God’s timing is different than ours, even when God’s plans don’t align with ours, even in the midst of illness, heartache, sin, and brokenness, even when we lose heart, even when we doubt, even when we are not faithful, even when we don’t receive anything that we pray for–even still, He is faithful, immeasurably more faithful than we could ever comprehend.
My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.
-2 Corinthians 12:9
