Sun Stand Still

Our pastor, Edgar, has been teaching from the book of Joshua, regarding the praying of audacious prayers. If you recall the story, or if perhaps you have never heard it, Joshua looked up at the sky before going to battle with the Canaanites in the Promised Land and basically asked God to allow the sun to stay in one place until they had won the battle. God heard his prayer and the sun stayed overhead until the Israelites were victorious.

What this is teaching us is that we don't always have to have all the facts. We don't always have to have all the right words or sound like a professional orator for God to not only hear our prayers but come through for us in incredible, mighty ways. Sometimes you can ask God for something or ask Him to work for you and you can ask Him boldly!

I went to Baptist school as a kid. We were not taught to pray audaciously. In fact, the phrase "If it be Your will" was standard in every prayer. I'm not an audacious person anyway - I'm actually fairly quiet and my relationship with God tends to be more in a whisper than out loud. But I decided to put this to the test!

I've been struggling at work with a few things. It's better than it was, but it isn't my cup of tea. Being a bank teller requires a lot of thought, attention to detail, routine and thick skin. I pretty much lack ALL of these things. But one thing that I need to 'earn my keep' as they say, are referrals. Referrals are my point of contention! My view is that people are coming into the bank to do specific things and they don't feel like being coerced into a new benefit, product, savings or checking account or whatever! This is difficult for me! I hate asking people to sign up for a new credit card, or ID protection, or trying to convince them that they really need to upgrade that checking account to a different one. It is NOT in my personality to 'sell' things to others. I'm not convincing.

Since April, I have averaged about 3 referrals per week. Yesterday I was inspired to ask God boldly to bring me the right people. I told him I would ask EVERY customer about something, but I needed Him to bring me the right customers. The funny thing is that I did this on my break, right in the break room. I actually said it OUT LOUD - "God! I need referrals this week! I need LOTS of them!"

You know what happened? I got more referrals yesterday than I did in 5 days last week!

Now, this may not sound like something really urgent, like being healed from cancer, or having a relationship miraculously restored, but I really needed God to come through for me at work. It's hard working at a place that views you as being nice, but not really doing 100% of your job. My manager even told me that I definitely earned my keep yesterday.

Big thanks to my Big God, who cares enough about me not to leave me hanging on by threads at work!