In his email this week, my missionary brother strongly recommended the power of specific prayers, and I ended up testing it rather successfully. My workplace has been stepping up the security significantly over the past months, and I lost my IDs early in the week. So after searching in multiple places, I prayed one night before I went to sleep, "Heavenly Father, could you help me find my tags by noon tomorrow? I need them to take a test and to get into work. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen." The next morning, I found them within 20 minutes of waking up. I think it takes a bit more faith to ask for specific prayers, but God is more than up to our test; it's often been tempting for me to think "I'm sure Heavenly Father can do it, I'm just not sure if He will do it...", but for me, I feel like I developed better faith when I asked for slightly different things with the faithful expectation that the promise will be fulfilled. I want to try the power of more-specific prayers again and again, and see what happens to and within me.
Saturday night at work, I discovered that one of my coworkers was the missionary companion to one of my best friends from freshman year (in college), which resulted in much happiness and joy in hearing the dated information about how he's doing, to the point where I was skipping and singing "Oh What a Beautiful Morning" on the way home from work, gushing to our mutual friends, and (after my coworker friended me on facebook) finding all sorts of pictures of my missionary friend that incited laughter and nearly a few tears. He and I were super close, and I've only gotten 1-2 letters from him in the past year, so finding someone else who knows the joy of his more recent acquaintance made me really happy.
I got to hold the newborn again :) My friend and I didn't stay as long as we did for our first visit earlier in the week, but it was still great to hold the baby, to rock him when he got fussy, and to enjoy conversing with his parents and their friends. It's kind of amazing how attached we get to comparatively unresponsive infants. They are little miracles.
Speaking of miracles, I felt a strong sense of divine guidance as I was studying for and taking a test this week. It was really last-minute preparation, but I was able to study the right topics and recall things when I was in the testing center. Probably nothing really big, but it meant a lot to me.
Also, I went to the temple on Saturday afternoon (SO crowded on the weekend!), and enjoyed the peace and recognized some things I need to work on. One of them is more consistent temple attendance - I loved the feelings I had and the learning I experienced this summer when I made it 4 weeks in a row, with thoughtful preparation in the scriptures beforehand, and I want to get that feeling back. It's going to take persistence and sacrifice that I need to be willing to give, so I need to get myself up to the challenge and make it happen. The results will be great :)
I've got a lot of blessings, and that's a very humbling thing to realize. Sometimes it's actually prompted me to shrink with fears of inadequacy, that with such great blessings, a lot is expected out of me. And it's true, but those expectations are in the Lord's timetable (something I can actually be grateful for). And hey, the amazing, miraculous thing is that I can do it - it's possible! I can do amazing things today and years into the future as I exercise faith (faith and trust are the opposite of fear and distrust, if you think about it) and trust in my God to support me! My capabilities are maximized when I give my abilities to the Lord, and He will not let me fall. All of my personal life experience proves to me that I can trust Him with my life, and that I can never be as happy on my own as I am when I'm in harmony with God. On the micro- and macro-scales, God is a God of miracles.
From Mormon 9, in the Book of Mormon:
And again I speak unto you who deny the revelations of God, and say that they are done away, that there are no revelations, nor prophecies, nor gifts, nor healing, nor speaking with tongues, and the interpretation of tongues...
Do we not read that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and in him there is no variableness neither shadow of changing?
And now, if ye have imagined up unto yourselves a god who doth vary, and in whom there is shadow of changing, then have ye imagined up unto yourselves a god who is not a God of miracles.
But behold, I will show unto you a God of miracles, even the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; and it is that same God who created the heavens and the earth, and all things that in them are...
And if there were miracles wrought then, why has God ceased to be a God of miracles and yet be an unchangeable Being? And behold, I say unto you he changeth not; if so he would cease to be God; and he ceaseth not to be God, and is a God of miracles.
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