Who Are You Devoted To?
By Drenda Keesee
“Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful” Colossians 4:2, (NIV).
No matter who you are or what your situation is, no one is immune to life’s struggles—but the more you have on your plate, the more important it is to devote yourself to prayer.
I know life gets busy, especially if you are raising children, caring for an elderly parent, or working a lot of hours. Here’s the thing. The busier you get, the more overwhelmed you will feel, and the more overwhelmed you feel, stress and anxiety can start to carry you away from your God-given joy and purpose.
Happiness returns when you make prayer your anchor in every season of life.
When you have a problem, issue, or task, do you pray first or do YOU take charge of the task at hand?
Before any major business endeavor, the owners of a company spend hours in meetings weighing their options, discussing plans, and running scenarios. Do you plan a meeting with God before making any major decisions?
Involve God at the ground level, and you will save yourself many headaches later on.
Proverbs 3:5-6 instruct us to “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”
God wants you to succeed in life, but you have to step into His will, and you can’t do that without being devoted to prayer. Don’t let the desire to have a perfect prayer life keep you from having any prayer life at all!
God does not expect hours of perfect prayer from you.
You don’t have to be at home in your prayer closet and spend hours on your knees. God knows your life, and He is aware of all of your responsibilities. You can pray in the car on your way to work or when you’re picking up the kids. You can bow your head before you fall into bed after a long day and ask for God’s guidance.
Sometimes the best prayers are the prayers that feel imperfect, confused, and messy. God doesn’t seek perfect prayer; He only asks for honesty. He wants to meet you right where you are.
I encourage you to step into the shelter of God’s Word and to devote yourself to prayer. I know your life will change!
Prayer: God, don’t let my fear and anxiety carry me away from Your will. Grant me the resolve I need to step into prayer before I step into decisions. Amen.
~Drenda
Listen in Now to Faith Life Church!
Drenda Keesee’s contagious zeal and humorous personal experiences help make her ministry of spiritual, emotional and relational wholeness one that will bless your life and spark a new fire in your spirit.
A wife of over 30 years and a mother of five children, Drenda has ministered at churches, seminars, and conferences, and through the mediums of television and radio, for more than 20 years.
Her books, The New Vintage Family, Better Than You Think, and She Gets It are available wherever books are sold. In these heartfelt books, Drenda shares her personal journey and the life lessons that have brought her to where she is today, as well as practical answers that all people need to live a joyful life.
Drenda and her husband Gary founded Faith Life Now, a ministry designed to spread the message of freedom in the areas of finances, faith, marriage, and family. Tune in for their weekly messages here. Faith Life Now hosts conferences worldwide, and sponsors both Fixing the Money Thing, which Drenda co-hosts with her husband Gary, and Drenda.
Through their own life experiences, the Keesees have found the principles from God’s Word to be powerful and effective. At one point, Drenda was a young, suicidal feminist with no hope of ever being “good enough” for her own standards of perfection. She never wanted the “inconvenience” of a husband or children, and she was on her own path to success. But the stress of trying to achieve perfection and perform for love left her broken and used. She had success, but it was nothing compared to the pain and loneliness it had also brought.
That’s when God got a hold of her heart. It was there—at her lowest point—that she found the One who accepted and loved her, faults and all. Since that transformation, Drenda has had a passion to reach women who find themselves where she once was.
She married Gary after attending college, and there she found herself in a personal boot camp of sorts. She says, “I cried and told God, ‘I can do anything but be a wife and mother.’” She committed to learning how to do it God’s way. Through the many years of raising their children and struggling to make ends meet, Drenda learned from their mistakes. “I didn’t know how to be a wife and mother, but God saved our marriage, taught us how to parent our children for success, showed us how to have financial success, and then irony of all ironies, He called us to ministry.” It’s truly because of these life experiences that Drenda can now share so many insightful principles for people who are now going through the same struggles.
