Are Our Prayers Before Us, Behind Us, or With Us?
Pastor Calvin Cook
September 26, 2026 – Day 15 of 30
The weight of the day ahead is already on my mind. The list of items and issues that need completed, the celebrations of life that I have been given responsibility for, the preparation that stretches beyond the day. In the midst and thought pattern, I need my time to just sit with God in the quietness and darkness of the morning, with the new light of a new day pushing into this sanctuary and calling me forward.
While I pause this morning, I feel the Holy Spirit asking as I surrendered my list of prayer concerns “Will these prayers go before you, stay with you, or be left behind.” All places and ranking of these prayers I am lifting have importance and merit but what will they become after they have been spoken? A memory, a surrender, a plea, a motivation to respond, or just something that is checked off my list.
I suddenly was taken back to a prayer group in a little country church where the Pastor was trying to teach a group of us kids to pray so that we might face the challenges, frustrations, and pains of life in a way and place that only we in our individual lives might experience in the presence of God. In that prayer cupboard that only we might know and where we encounter that personal relationship with God the most.
I remember the scripture the Pastor taught and brought to our young minds to be a scripture that we should write on our heart until our minds automatically take us to 1 Thessalonians 5:16-22.
“Be joyful always, pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. Do not put out the Spirit’s fire; do not treat prophesies with contempt, Treat everything. Hold on to good. Avoid every kind of evil.”
The focus becomes pray continually! Or as some versions might say, “without ceasing”.
Thankful for this encounter with the Holy Spirit this morning and with the following thoughts as I sit and listen:
Some prayers are before us. We pray about the conversation we know is coming, the decision we need to make, or the person we are about to see. We ask God to prepare our hearts before we take the next step.
Some prayers are behind us. We look back and see where God carried us through a day we thought we could not face. We give thanks. We may also remember words we wish we had spoken differently and ask for forgiveness.
But what about the prayers that are with us?
It is easy to pray in the morning and then move through the day as though that prayer has ended. Yet Paul’s call to “pray without ceasing” invites us into an ongoing conversation with God. We can pray while walking into a room, listening to someone’s story, working with our hands, or waiting for news. A prayer might be only a few words: Lord, help me listen. Give me patience. Show me what love requires here.
But the elephant in the prayer room is the big question. What about the prayers God isn’t answering? The truth being that all prayers are answered just not in the way we desire or want or with an answer we don’t like because it isn’t the way we want it. We don’t like the way of the Lord’s prayer where it says, “thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven”. The greater frustration is yet we don’t like submitting to God’s will and allowing God to be God.
Today, let prayer go before you. Let it help you look back with gratitude and honesty. And as you face whatever this day brings, remember that you can turn to God in the middle of it. God is there with you.
I write this morning knowing that I am frustrated, confused, hurting, and in need of God’s abundant grace – I will try my best to submit to the will and answers to my prayers in the name of Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen
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