Radio TranscriptTwana:Other than the love of God, there is non greater than the love of a praying mom. Sarah Watkins shares with us the wisdom of a lifetime of prayer, beginning in the early days of motherhood are her 2, now adult, sons, to reflect on her own growth in prayer, an amazing intervention from God, and the subsequent result of her life as a praying mom.Sarah:There was a period in my life when I had a good prayer life and that was between when I was a young lady and growing up, when I had kids, because my mom made me go to church. But then as I got older and I had kids of my own. My prayer life changed to start being concerned with them so I stopped praying for me and started praying mostly for my kids.Then there was another period where I kind of dropped away from praying period because I became angry because I had a separation from my spouse and I had the responsibility of my kids. And he just was free to go and do whatever he wanted to do and I just felt like, you know, I'm stuck with the kids. I was a little bit upset because I had to make a way for everybody and he was free and single. Then one day it just dawned on me and I looked at my boys and I said 'they didn't have to come here, I brought them here, it's just me and my boys.'Twana:It was an affirmation that not only reignited her prayer life but set her on the path of succesful single parenting.Sarah:Once I made that decision that it was me and my boys, I started going back to church because I could see at this particular age, they were 12 and 13 and I figured 'well I don't want them to start getting with the wrong crowd.' So I said 'I got to get back in church.' Then I got back in church and I realized I didn't need a whole lot and all I needed was God. Then they got into church and I kept them in and I started praying and I prayed for them more than I prayed for myself because I wanted to make sure that they had a discerning spirit to know how to stay away from the wrong crowd. And by me praying for them, my spirit got better and the better I got, the better they got.Twana:As time went on, Sarah's saw the fruit of her labor; God answering her prayers but not exactly in the way she had planned.Sarah:First I started seeing it in my kids because at one point I would have to chastise them and I realized when they got about 13 and 14, I never had to chastise them. They did maybe one or two things, but I sent boundries; certain things they weren't allowed to do, certain areas that they weren't allowed to go. And I spent most of my time with them; taking them this place or to the library, or taking them fishing, which I didn't like fishing, but I took them fishing because I didn't like worms.So I did all kinds of things with them that, even though I didn't want to do it, but I wanted them to do wholesome things so that they would experience the goodness of God, and know that all the things weren't so good; we were struggling sometimes, trying to make ends meet. But we had eachother; we would do a talent show on Friday night, just me and the boys, we would do games and stuff like that just to keep them busy. So I realize that God was answering my prayers, I just had to accept the way that it was being answered.Twana:Sarah would find that her prayers for them went beyond their general well being, but also included help for their moral integrity.Sarah:My prayer was that they would be good, honorable, decent young men with good moral character, treated the way that they wanted to be treated, not worry about the color of their skin or of anybody, not worry about if the girl or young lady that they want to date was beautiful or ugly, not worry about their beauty because I always taught them that the beauty on the outside is not the beauty on the inside, and that I would be happy with them even if they didn't think the girl was beautiful, that as long as she had a good heart and a caring spirit. I always used to tell them "Never look at the outside beauty of a woman, but look at the heart, and if they can respect older seniors, then you know that they have a pretty decent heart."Twana:Looking back on her prayer life over the years, her boys now full grown men, Sarah can see how she's grown spiritually and is reminded of a difficult time when God made his will knowsn to her, directly.Sarah:One of the biggest problems that came up for me was my son when I prayed for him to get off of drugs. And I prayed and I kept saying "God, I know you got him." And I didnt trust it, I didn't trust it. For the longest time I kept praying and when he would call I would be always trying to send money or I would try to bargain, but then I made up my mind one day through prayer and through a revelation and through a vision. I woke up at 3 O'Clock in the morning and it was like a vision from god and it said to me "I'm working a miracle in this man, and if you don't leave him alone and let me do what I got to do, I'm going to take you out of here." That was 5 years ago. Right after that happened I said to myself "Somethings going on in my life." I went to the doctor and the doctor said "You have a clogged artery in your brain and it's inoperable." So I said "Woah, so that's what he meant." So at that point I changed my thought.It didn't change completely but every time something came up and I tried to fix it I said "Oh, I can't do that." I backed away, I said "God you got it." When I progressed with leaving it alone, he progressed on getting his life together. And today that I can say he's gotten his life together. So when you pray to something and you mean it, you need to constantly talk to yourself to leave it to God. You cannot pick it back up. There's nothing wrong with repeating it over and over because that depends on how much fatih you have. Everybody doesn't have the same amount of faith because faith, it grows. So the amount of faith you have depends on you constantly talking to God and giving it to him. And then you continue to give it to him and you see the end results and you're going to start to grow more faith. And the more faith you got, the more faith you get.Twana:I love that; the more faith you got, the more faith you get. That type of wisdom only comes from having a consisten prayer life. Before our interview was done, Sarah left me with a few more pearls of wisdom.Sarah:I just tell anybody if you take the worry and the thought about yourself and you put that in God's hand, just say some simple words, God's got it. But I'm going to continue doing what I can do for someone else, and you just believe that God's got it and he'll take it. And you won't even think about it when you realize your problem is already solved. If you wake up one morning and you're feeling down and out, instead of concentrating on that, think about what you can do for others.I get up in the morning and I say "Lord what is it I can do for someone else today that would be pleasing in your eyesight?" Then I think on it and most of the time I know that my prayers answered because someone will call me on the phone and say "Sister Sarah, can you come and take Mr. so and so?" or "What can I do? So and so going on in his life." And I'll start concentrating on them. I forget about my situation, later on in the day, my situation is solved.Twana:What a beautiful testiment on the importance on interceding in prayer on behalf of our children. Not only does it benefit them, but in the long run it benefits us all as we gain wisdom and knowledge that can be shared with others. Sister Sarah, as she is so affectionately called, is living proof of the power of a praying mom, no matter your religious faith. My name is Twana James, I'm a praymaker, I'm a mother and I'm a wife, also a member of the online community where women of all different faiths share the priority of making prayer a priority in our everyday lives. And I'm going to the phone line now. Joining us on the line is Kendra. Now Kendra I know that you are definitely a praying mom.Kendra:Yes I am, and how are you this evening?Twana:How are you? I'm great, I'm great. I'm glad to hear your voice on the line, and you know we all have a story or two about how God has really just stepped in and how we've interceded on behalf of our children, you know, before they go out to that world, we really have to start building those block along the way.Kendra:Definitely. My journey so far, my 9 year journey with my daughter, so far has been wonderful in the least because I realize, I guess, that when she was around 3 or 4 that I had to strengthen my prayer life for our family, not just for her, but everyone that was under my roof. And noticing as we all do as mothers, we become more in tune to the world and, you know, to all the insanity and crazies and violence that seem to constantly surround us because we cannot protect our children 24 hours as we would like to. That's when I really realized how important and how necessary prayer was.What I found is that God answers our prayers and that we will always find what we seek. Meaning that my daughter, I have a strong faith that she is okay when she's not in my eyesight, but she also has a spirit where she will talk to me and function in a way that is so Godly. You know, it's just so interesting because that's not what I asked for. You know, specifically, even though that's what I want, I didn't ask for that. And that's a wonderment of God, that is why I love him so, because even though... honestly we can pray all day everyday, because for all the things that we need to ask for, whether it's for us, our neighbor, or family or strangers, there's never enough time to cover what you can pray for. And that was one of the things that I realized reminds me actually of how important God is in our lives. I mean, she has said things to me that would bother her and unfortunately the first thing she would say to me was "Mommy, before I share this with you, I'm going to tell you that I'm going to take it to God first."And then she would go on to tell me the story about, you know, such and such that got on her nerves you know and I just told her, you know, that that meant a value to God. You know it's amazing the spirit that she carried with her and you know sometimes I don't feel like praying at night sometime because I'm praying throughout the day, God is steadily in my mind for whatever reason, and sometimes I just want to go straight to bed and on the way to my bed my daughter stops me and says "Mommy you need to pray." And it's like bless you baby, bless you, thank you, God forgive me, she's right I'm being lazy and so that has been my blessing. I've obviously prayed for her because I realize the challenges that she has so much really emotionally, physically and I pray for her healthy speaking process because of how the world is going today.Twana:So true. They're growing up in a very different world than we did and it's so important to keep on interceding and as you said, they will start to lead us in the end because then they start to pray and I found that in my own child. I don't want to cut you off, I want to keep this coversation going, unfortunately we only have a minute left and as we close, as we usually do, at the end of our program we go to a prayer from the Prayables.com prayer collection. And this one is actually "For the Boys" by Lori Strawn.Amen.Kendra thank you so much for joining us tonight. Please log on to Prayables.com to learn more about this community of women of all different faiths. Tune in again next week!