A Prayer for Friends - Encouragement Café - December 31, 2015

A Prayer For Friends

Café Menu for Thursday, December 31, 2015

Today’s Special is:  When I Was Lonely

Carefully prepared just for you by your friend, Annah Matthews

Main Ingredient:

The heartfelt counsel of a friend is as sweet as perfume and incense.

Proverbs 27:9 NLT

Entrée:

I recently had the opportunity to spend time with girlfriends from high school, celebrating our 40th birthdays together.  We came from three states, several different cities, to spend a weekend at the beach.  For over two decades, we have loved one other, walked through life together, and seen each other at our worst, most awkward and embarrassing phases of life.  (Can we say baggy pants and unwaxed brows?)

I think what joins our hearts together is, we have seen each other in the good, the bad, and the really ugly times.  We have been through deaths, births, weddings, and graduations together.  We have laughed, cried and been angry with one other over the years.

Somehow, we found ourselves sitting together on a beach 25 years later.  We spent the weekend laughing, promising to keep some things in "girl code" forever.  The fact that we still love each other and our conversations pick back up so easily, still amazes us.

It is a great reminder to me, there was a time when I was lonely.  I had recently married and moved to a city where I knew absolutely no one.  All of my friends were in different places, starting their own lives like me.  The social butterfly in me was dying and I needed friends.  I was yearning for girlfriends who would know me and love me in spite of my mess, like these gals from high school.

I began praying for friends who would love me, allow me to be myself, and stick with me through the ugliness.  God is so good, because not only did He reconnect me with these close friends from high school, but He gave me new friendships with women in my hometown.

Within the last 8 years God has brought three women, moving them from different states, to love me and share life with me.  They are moms in the same stage of life as me; they shoot straight, they love me in my mess, they encourage and pray for me regularly.  I am so endeared to them for the way they love me.  I share my fears, laughter, and most embarrassing moments with them.

God has also brought me women in this ministry, who love Jesus like I do.  They live all across the country and they love, pray for and encourage me and other women like me.  On a recent trip to California, I had the opportunity to have lunch with one of these friends.  We talked for hours with almost no break in conversation; our hearts too have been knitted.

I have been triple blessed from one small prayer; from one lonely gal, who moved to a town with no friends, to an abundance of blessings called friendship!  I look back now and see how God gave me the desires of my heart.  Now in my 40's, I can’t even fathom the length to which I am loved in my friendships.

Take Out:

What is your prayer?  How have you seen God answer specific prayers in your life?

I don’t know your heart’s desire, but I promise you our Lord knows.  Sometimes we have to wait for our prayers to be answered over time.  Other times we need to reflect, to remember what we have been given as direct answers to our prayers.

Dessert:

God, we ask that You allow us to seek You first and Your heart’s desire for us.  We know that we were created for relationship with You and one other.  We ask that whatever we are missing in our lives, that You will allow us to give it over to You.  We know prayer sometimes takes time to be answered in the way we want it, but we know every prayer offered up to You is heard.  Allow us to reflect upon the many prayers You have answered as we wait in hopeful anticipation for that which is yet to come.

© 2015 by Annah Matthews.  All rights reserved.

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