It’s been a good start to the semester. I’ve had a great time being back around all my friends at Patrick Henry, I’ve got some very interesting classes in my schedule, and as I write this I’m travelling to my first real parliamentary debate tournament with the PHC team. Needless to say, it’s been both fun and exciting.

College has been and still is an incredible experience, but it also demands a lot from you. Between debate, classes, over a hundred pages of reading a night, and the ongoing process of forming your intellectual and spiritual identity, it can feel like there’s very little time for rest and calmness of mind. Even times of great growth can make it feel hard to simply be still and experience God’s peace. Every day, I’m encountering new ideas, new spiritual food for thought, and when I begin to feel overwhelmed I sometimes find myself wishing that I had a lot more wisdom than I do. (Trust me, I’m fully aware that I can’t find a lot of wisdom in myself.)

This is where something that God has been working to impress upon me for quite a while comes in. I’ll confess to all of you that I’ve never been much of a “prayer warrior.” I applaud people who have the self-discipline to dedicate themselves to praying without ceasing. One of my professors spends nearly three hours every morning walking around Patrick Henry’s campus pond, Lake Bob, interceding for the school and its students. I can’t tell you how much I admire this. I also can’t tell you how hopeless I would be if I tried to come anywhere close to it. For the longest time as a Christian teenager, I was in the habit of offering up quick prayers as needed. I never really focused on extended conversations with God. In my junior and senior years of high school, a spiritually rocky period in my life forced me, out of desperation, to work at more purposeful prayer, (although it took me quite a while to wake up to this need, and even then I could only manage about fifteen minutes a day, and I was somewhat fickle even with that.”

But, as I’ve been realizing how impossible it will be to get through the ups and downs of everyday life in my own strength, God has been slowly waking me up to how vital prayer is. I’ve felt that I desperately needed wisdom. But for so long I missed the promise in James that “if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.” God has given us access by faith in Jesus Christ to all the incredible abundance that He can give. However, he places the responsibility on us to take advantage of His gifts. He wants His children to come to Him, to build our relationship with Him by asking that we might experience more of His amazingly rich grace. It struck me that for years, I had been acting as though I was standing in the desert of my own strength, a “dry and weary land where there is no water.” God had given me a stream to drink from, a limitless supply of the pure water of His grace, right at my feet. But to drink, of course, I had to get down on my knees. I was too proud, so I just stood there dying of thirst. How foolish! God has offered us everything we need, and yet we fail to ask for it.

We desperately need to learn the habit of purposeful prayer. Living with a disability presents a lot of needs, but God makes it possible to meet every single one. We have only to get on our knees, to seek his face and drink of the abundance of his glorious grace. The strength he will lend us, as I’m slowly and happily learning, will completely blow us away.