Nothing Deep, Just Something Neat

Countless times in this journey God has taught me about the Holy Spirit and how we tend to overlook Him. I often tell my kids He's like the red-headed step-child of the Trinity...everyone knows God the Father, He's our heavenly Father, the one who loves us. Everyone also knows Jesus, He's God's Son, our Savior, but mention the Holy Spirit and it's 'who is that? does He have anything to do with me?' or in some cases, He's taboo because people get 'filled with the Holy Spirit' and start testifying in tongues and doing a holy dance down the aisles.
     Time and again God has shown just how much the Spirit does for me, especially in this area of prayer. One of the greatest things I have learned about Him is that He is my voice to God. He carries my prayers to the Father, editing them and adding to them the things I don't know or think to add to my requests. Not only is He my voice to my Father, but He is the Father's voice back to me. I cannot even begin to list all the things that God has shown me to pray for in this request, how the Spirit has guided my thinking and desires so that they match God's thinking and desires.
     Last night was one of those times. I love when God does this, it adds a newness and freshness to a long-standing prayer. I so loved what He showed me last night that I stopped in the middle of my prayer and sent a message to Stephanie sharing what it was. It wasn't so much what God showed but that He showed me anything at all. Our pastor says often that God will give you what you need to serve Him and then reward you for doing it...this is kind of like that. God gives me reasons why He should answer this so I can pray them back to Him and if He's the one saying pray this for that reason, He'll answer. I'm so very thankful that God doesn't give us a task and then leave us to figure it out on our own. So many reasons I pray for an answer are things I wouldn't have come up with on my own. So many things I desire to come out of this come from God Himself, I would have never thought those things could happen from an answered prayer. God is amazing...and that's an understatement.
      Oh, would you like to know what new reason He gave me for answering this request? As I was praying for Tebow, I prayed for him to keep close company with the right people. Friends are so important. They influence our way of viewing things, often without us realizing it. He is surrounded by Godless thinking and philosophy by the nature of his job, so I prayed that he would be careful about purposefully exposing himself to that outside of his work. I prayed that God would impress upon him the importance of solid, growing Christian friends and that he would make right choices in friends because my students needed that reinforced in thier lives. I thought about that for a minute. The reason I even thought to pray this for Tebow is because from time to time I read/see in the media that he attends one event or another with one celebrity or another. I then thought, 'okay, so how God  could my kids learn about right choices in friends from their role model if all the media shows him with are unsaved celebrities?" that's when God gave me another argument for an answer. The only way they'll know the impact his Christian friends and mentors have on him is by meeting him, hearing him tell them face to face how very important solid Christian friends are, to hear him talk about, by name, the influence these people have had and do have in his life. They need to meet Tebow so he can reinforce in them something they have been taught by countless spiritual leaders...how neat is that?!