I was headed to LA for a trip with a layover flight in Minnesota. When we arrived, it was snowing outside and very cloudy. Looking through the window from my gate, I became a bit anxious about flying, as I watched the plane get drenched in deicing fluid in preparation for takeoff. After sitting under the pressure of my thoughts while waiting, we boarded and were soon off the ground. The next thing I saw was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen, that in its own way, taught me something special about prayer.
Within a few minutes of staring from my window seat at the gloomy clouds and enduring the nerve-wrecking turbulence, we suddenly passed through the clouds into the most blissful sight of sun and sky with the clouds resting under the plane like a rug! It was such a defining moment to realize that we had literally risen above the storm! I couldn’t help but to think of the spiritual implications that it revealed. We too can rise above any storm through the act of elevating our minds.
This is where prayer comes into play. It’s easy to get weighed down with the pressures of life and the worries of this world, but prayer helps us to elevate our thinking by changing the perspective from which we view our circumstances. Pressure occurs when we cannot control or fix our situation. For example, certain diseases, bareness, lack, and more. After all there’s no pressure with bills if the money’s in the bank or with decisions if the answers are simple. Prayer helps to relieve the pressure of things we cannot do anything about and places them in the hands of the One who can.
Often, pressure creeps in within our state of being “pre-sure”, which is the place of thinking that happens before we become sure that God’s got it. It’s when we freak out before anything bad ever happens. Sometimes it’s not God’s power that we question, but it’s His plan. We know that He’s able, but wonder if He’s willing. Prayer aligns our hearts with God’s heart and allows His Spirit to intercede when we don’t even know what to pray. He reminds us that what are obstacles to us are opportunities to Him. He will give us breakthrough in areas we cannot break through on our own. It not only shifts our thinking, but connects us with true power to experience change.
So, the next time you feel yourself bending under pressure, I encourage you to “take a flight”. I’m not referring to a vacation, but to elevating your mind through prayer. Worrying is easy, but sometimes you must press your way above the circumstances around you. Remember that through prayer, you rise above the storms of life to view situations from God’s perspective, which brings strength, relief, strategy, power, and so much more. The best “get away” we can ever have is to the realm where the impossible becomes possible in the presence of God. As we fly high, our hearts behold the greatness of the Son and a future as limitless as the sky.