Prayers Answered

If you know me you know that from the 2nd week I hung out with Justin I was ready for a ring : ) and if you know Justin he takes FOREVER to make up his mind. So our two year anniversary was coming up and I needed to figure out what I was doing with my life (once again, if you know me, I like to have a plan) because it was time for Student Teaching and I needed to figure out where to start looking for a job. So I was really starting to panic about what was going to happen to us...I had my speech prepared for him (ya know, where is this going? do you want to marry me? I don't wanna date for another 3 years, you're almost 30 hehe) : )

I sat down on January 6, 2009 to do my quiet time before bed. The book I was reading is called The Power of Praying Through the Bible. Amazing book. The title of the page was "Making Sacrifices" and the verses were Genesis 22:1-19. In these verses they talk about God testing Abraham with the sacrifice of his son (the son he had waited 25 years to receive) and yet Abraham was so willing he didn't waste any time, it says "early the next morning, Abraham got up..." It just hit me right there. Abraham had COMPLETE trust in the Lord. Here I am, thinking of MY plans and what I want to happen but the LORD had HIS plan. The book continues on about could any of us trust God that much? It just hit me over and over again about how I needed to put my trust in the Lord for his plan for me. At the end there is a little prayer, it is as follows:

Lord, I know you always ask me to surrender everything to You- including the dream in my heart. And even when that dream is from You, You still ask me to let go of my hold on it. So I surrender every dream in my heart to you right now. I don't want to cling to something you will not bless, or give up on something that is your will for my life.

Inside that prayer, I underlined "including the dream in my heart" and "So I surrender every dream in my heart to you right now" and arrowed to the empty space in the page and wrote MARRIAGE in big letters. I wanted to get married since the time I was a little girl, but more than anything I wanted the Lord to have his hand in it and be what he wanted. So needless to say this quiet time was quite revelation. I also wrote on the bottom - Surrender- Barlow Girl


4 days later...Justin proposed. Need I say more...if you didn't have complete faith in Jesus and his ability to hear your prayers and ANSWER THEM I hope you do now...