Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire?   – Corrie Ten Boom

When I heard this quote, I knew it was worthy of a blog!  I am afraid sometimes I try to put prayer in the trunk and have it just in case things don’t go smoothly with my own plan.  You know, like a spare tire if the current tire blows.

Then when things don’t go the way I think they should be going or I make a mess of things on my own and it all blows up, then I reach for help from the trunk.

There are other days I use prayer as my steering wheel and boy, do things seem to go a whole lot better.

The key to using prayer as your driving force versus your spare tire is 1) remembering to do it and 2) learning to listen.

I Thessalonians 5:18 says to pray continually.  This means to be in the attitude of prayer all the time.  Thanking God when things go good and not just crying out to him when things are not so good.  It means asking for His direction in situations and asking for His peace in others.  When we get in the attitude of prayer all the time, we will always remember to do it because it will be a part of us.

The second thing is learn to listen.  This is very hard for us sometimes.  We send up our prayer requests and expect God to handle it but sometimes He wants us to do certain things or WAIT to do certain things and if we don’t listen, we’re going to mess it all up.

Psalm 46:10 – Be still and know that I am God.

My challenge for us this week is think about Corrie Ten Boom’s words and make prayer the steering wheel of our lives and not wait to pull out the little spare tire when things go flat during our journey through life.