Your 100 Day Prayer: Day 72 – History Therapy

by TJ Bates

Many, O Lord my God, are the wonders you have done. The things you planned for us no one can recount to you; were I to speak and tell of them, they would be too many to declare. -Psalm 40:5

This is another day when I feel it is important to include everything Dr. Snyder wrote on this day in his book, Your 100 Day Prayer: The Transforming Power of Actively Waiting on God. I also highly recommend that you do what he suggests regarding history therapy. It is amazing what you will learn:

Today let’s begin a new spiritual discipline we can call ‘history therapy.’ It works like this. Take a note pad and pen and sit down alone at some quiet place. Think back as far as you can and try to remember the very first thing you’d regard as a sign of God intervening in your life. Write down anything that might even border on what you’d classify as a ‘God-event.’ Maybe it’s a last-minute rescue, being snatched from a fire or grabbed before you sank in a pool or lake. Maybe you were healed from some fatal illness or an amazing coincidence changed the course of your life.

As the days pass and you recall different events, keep adding them to your growing ‘God-event’ list. Now include those rescues of your friends, relatives, church relationships, and neighbors as you remember them.

Okay, now let’s turn to the Bible. People in the Bible aren’t merely interesting historical personalities—they’re members of our family, and the Bible is our family album. In it we see that the things we go through are very much like what they endured. We are part of their story, and they are part of ours. This is the bond that ties us all together, for God tends to work, rescue, and help in the same way today as he has so many times before.

So what is written in the Bible is written not just for ‘way back then’ but also for and to us (Rom. 15:4). When we put together the list we have created for our own lives and add to that the long list of rescues and deliverance of many others, we have an enormous weight of evidence testifying to God’s involvement with people in every generation.

As we mature in our faith and our spiritual eyesight improves, we’ll be able to look back and see God’s hand in all of our life. With ‘history therapy,’ we’ll learn to relax and know for sure that God is in charge. It will finally sink into our minds and hearts that he is involved (and always has been) in our struggles, and we can know that it’s really irrational and unreasonable to think that God has abandoned us, because we would have to deny all our personal history as well as years of world history to believe he doesn’t act for us. And if he was with us then, he’ll be with us now and every day forever after.”

TODAY’S PRAYER: Ask God for enlightenment. Pray for him to open your mind and quicken your memory in order to see all the various ways and means he has used (even the more hidden ones) to bless you and keep you through the years of your life.
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Photo by ifranz via Flickr