Illustrate Your Faith Along the Way | Matthew 21:21-22

What I love about the #illustratedfaithdaily2016 tag is the encouragement to get in the word and get creative with it EACH DAY, and I love dating my entries within the margins of my Bible so I can look back over time and see what I was learning in this season. My current season looks like a lot of travel and a lot of prayer; with family health issues, graduation looming, and grad school commitments, my heart can be in any number of places, and I always try to take a few journaling supplies with me.

I don’t know about you, but travel can throw off my routine, and extra time to paint in the morning can sadly be the first to go. I can feel it in the rest of my day if I haven’t been in scripture, and that is not something that I am willing to give up. Therefore, taking Illustrated Faith with me on the go has become a must.

So now, no matter the hustle and bustle of being home for a weekend or heading to a conference for grad school, I fight to find the quiet corner of a coffee shop to work in. The baristas may give me a funny glance as I pull out my paints, but they will either end up ignoring me or it provides a great opportunity to share about both Illustrated Faith and the faith that I am illustrating.

Most recently a trip home from school included some tough news about a family member’s health and many an errand to be run for my Mom and Dad. When I found my way to a coffee shop with time to reflect over the week, I felt positively spent. I poured out my heart in my journal and began to make a list of verses about prayer. I had been praying what felt like silly or small prayers, and now faced with a situation that only God’s healing hand could change, I needed to be saturated in truth about what prayer meant and how it worked.

Today, I chose Matthew 21:21-22. “And Jesus answered them, ‘Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea’ it will happen. And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.” Woah.

Years ago a mentor gave me a list of daily declarations and one of them said, “My prayers are powerful and effective.” If those verses in Matthew don’t back that up, I don’t know what will. So to the margins of my Bible I went. In big bold letters to leave a big bold reminder in both the pages and my mind I wrote MY PRAYERS ARE POWERFUL AND EFFECTIVE.

And you know what? Your prayers are, too.

So if there is ever a time I cannot bring my pens and paints and wide-margined Bible with me, prayer is something I can carry no matter where I go. My prayers can move mountains. My prayers can seek peace from the Lord. My prayers can ask for a miracle for my family.

My prayers are powerful and effective, and yours are, too. 

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