Did I Forget Anyone?

A simple prayer, "Lord, thank you for this food...", sometimes comes not so easily for me. A friend suggested that I lack faith so much so that I cannot visualize the Lord receiving my prayer. I'm not sure that's it though I cannot say for sure what holds me back.

In some ways, I feel like there is no point. I am a very impatient man and when I don't get my way pretty quickly, I turn pretty ugly. I also sometimes feel as though the reason I'm not getting any quick response is because my greatest fear is true: He's no longer listening to me.

It is not that I really ask for much of anything. I have a wife who is my greatest supporter, my children are healthy, we live in a pretty nice home, we both have jobs, and there is never a lack of food in the house. I have never known a hungry day in my life beyond those times when I've fasted. So what could I possibly need?

I think perhaps I have such a difficult time praying because I become so overwhelmed with this "laundry list" of joys and concerns so that I don't even know where to begin. I ask, then, that those of you who are kind enough to read this post please consider this list in your own prayers. I also ask that you feel free to list your own concerns. Names are not necessary: He knows who you are.

• Service men and women who will not be home this Christmas
• Their families who are keeping the home fires burning
• Marriages that will suffer as a result of the long separation
• Children across the world who are stuck in war zones
• Teenagers who are lost in their lives and unable to find their way
• Children of those incarcerated
• Those who are incarcerated
• The elderly who struggle from month to month to make ends meet
• Christians who somehow have come to believe that an evergreen tree in December has come to define our Savior
• Non-Christians struggling for fulfillment, that they are enabled to hear the voice of the Spirit
• Christians to be blessed with the heart and the soul to be enabled to see others as the Lord God sees them
• I know a particular family struggling with a child who is diagnosed as bipolar - SPECIAL ORDER ON THIS ONE, PLEASE!
• That this Christmas season will be one in which Christians may actually live like we believe what we preach
• The President of the United States
• The Congress of the United States
• The pope, bishops, missionaries and other religious workers answering their call to the ministry

Even as I have difficulties praying, I have no doubt that the Lord God hears our prayers. I also realize that He works in HIS time and not mine; for HIS glory and not my own.

This is the real deal. I'm begging for help. I am also eager to help you if you will allow me and others to offer prayers in your behalf. Even if you do not believe it is true, I ask only that you open your heart and believe it is possible.