Here are three little prayer requests I prayed for last week that God answered:
- I had a dip in my milk supply one evening, panicked a little, prayed, and He righted things
- I had water trapped in my ear, prayed, and He healed it
- I prayed that the baby would sleep till 7am after I was up with him at almost 5 and he did!
These matters feel trivial in the grand scheme of life, but don’t the little things matter to God as much as the big ones?
Right now my life-focus is on motherhood, as I am on maternity leave until August, so life has a much different rhythm than it has had, and the lens I’m writing through will likely reflect this. Hang in there with me in this time! I believe the lessons I’m learning here will extend far beyond just motherhood.
As a mom, it’s easy to dismiss our circumstances as “not as important as [fill in the blank].” As if raising our littles is somehow less than! Motherhood, especially those first months with a newborn, can feel as if your world collapsed into a thimble. As if raising littles isn’t divine kingdom work!
Jesus took time for the little children and encouraged them to come to Him, scolding the big people who tried to prevent them! Clearly children mattered to Jesus, and they matter to us (Story found in Matthew 19:13-15).
Just like praying the little prayers.
God wants to hear ALL our prayers and requests, not just the “important” ones or the “big” ones.
He wants you to bring all the things to Him because He is plenty able to handle every single thing, the “bigs” and the “littles”.
We know this because Jesus took time for the little children.
We know this because He taught with stories and illustrations from life that were both big things and little things.
For example: the prodigal son coming home is a big important event (Luke 15:11-32) but so is the widow giving her two copper coins to make a difference in the world (Luke 21:1-4).
Jesus didn’t rate one thing above the other. He taught them both, so both are equally important. The unseen is just as important as the seen.
In fact, Jesus Himself spent the first 30 years of His human life in Nazareth in obscurity (Luke 3:23). He likely made furniture and helped provide for His family. He was obedient to His parents. Most of all, He was faithful in the waiting and those years mattered in His formation prior to His years of public ministry (Luke 2:51-52).
If God Himself in human flesh took 30 years to prepare for ministry, what’s your hurry?
In 30 years, I have no doubt that He faced trials of little things. Sibling squabbles growing up. Going to school. Losing teeth.
He probably faced bigger trials as well, like ebbs and flows in the family business and possibly even the death of His earthly father figure (the Bible doesn’t say expressly that Joseph died but after a while he isn’t mentioned while Jesus’s mother and brothers are).
When Jesus did begin His ministry, He still withdrew often to pray. A habit like that doesn’t just appear when you begin something new. I feel confident that He made prayer a habit during His early years, beginning with taking the little things to God.
Confidence in prayer grows when we trust the “little” requests to God and see Him answer. Then we feel brave enough to take slightly bigger requests to Him, and so on until we are moving mountains with our prayers! But it starts in the small things.
It starts with trusting my milk supply to Him.
It starts with asking for healing from water in my ear.
It starts with praying over my baby’s sleep.
Those little prayers matter just as much as the big things, because they become a foundation we can stand on and pray on when the going gets rough. Jesus described it as faith like a mustard seed, one of the smallest seeds that can grow into a tree for birds to nest in (Matthew 17:20; Mark 4:31-32).
Faith starts small. So does prayer! Be brave and take your little requests to God. He delights in hearing ALL your prayers because He delights in hearing from us!
Philippians 4:6 invites us to not “be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (NIV, emphasis mine). Bring it to the Lord in prayer–the small things AND the big things–and see how He will answer!
Blessings,
~Lynne
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