There came a time when I had to make a decision: do I trust God enough to seek his face in prayer, or am I willing to stay in the same situation that drove me to pray in the first place? When I was growing up,  words mattered. If I heard someone say, “you will never be able to do that,” my first reaction was to fire back, “watch me.” I made a choice to prove them wrong. Other options might have been to give up and yield to defeat and depression, but for me, that was not an option. You see, my whole life I have been in survival mode. Life hasn’t always been so easy, yet I wouldn’t trade my upbringing for anything, because it taught me that I could depend on the Lord for every need. It didn’t mater how minor it seemed, if it was a concern to me, then it was important to God to honor my petitions.

It never even occurred to me that I was building a lifetime foundation of trust. The many small and insignificant prayers that I prayed were just as important to God as the great big out there prayers that would be prayed later in life.

Step by step, I kept walking with the Lord, until one day I started walking through the darkest time in my life. It was as if I couldn’t find God, no matter how diligently I prayed. My wilderness experience lasted over a decade. It wasn’t until I had exhausted all of my options, that I was able to see that the whole time I was in the darkness, that God was leading me through it. When I came to a place that I could no longer go on without him, I slowly found my way back to him.

Psalm 121:1-2: I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.

My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.

Being faithful didn’t keep me safe in the church, being generous didn’t stop me from wandering outside in the dark. The one thing that kept me through it all, was and is prayer. It is our weapon against the world of naysayers. When you reach out for hope, you will find it through prayer. There is no sorrow, or pain, or heartache, that can’t be healed through prayer. When life gets real, I have a God who becomes even more real for me as I learn to seek his face in prayer.

My hope is in him; my life is in his hands; my joy sustains me as I learn to trust in the Lord. In this week’s Lattereign, I ask a simple question:

Will you choose to believe?