Nora Koonce Avery
May 2, 20143 min
Updated: Sep 24, 2020
“You should ask God’s guidance in everything you do, even choosing the clothes you wear every day.” What a strange thing to pray about, I thought, as the minister continued with his sermon. After all, God has any number of catastrophes that need His attention on any given day, I surmised. Surely He didn’t want to be bothered with such a mundane task as showing me what to wear! Through the coming days, though, I took the message to heart and began carefully choosing my attire as I got ready for work each morning, pausing first in front of one outfit, then another, until I sensed a nudge toward a certain ensemble. I can’t exactly say what I felt, just that certain choices felt “right.” Soon it became a normal part of my morning routine, and I started to pray for help in other areas of my life.
While visiting a friend in the hospital with little time to spare, I prayed for God to open up a parking space near the front of the hospital. When I pulled into the parking lot, a car had just exited a spot on the first row. I prayed a prayer of thanksgiving, and I pictured my Heavenly Father smiling down at me with delight in my gratitude.
I still had a lot to learn, though. Sometime later, I lost the diamond that my husband had given to me when we got engaged, and I was heartbroken. I looked for it in every nook and cranny, and then I prayed. Why didn’t I pray first? I thought that calling upon God to find a trinket was being vain. After all, there are people starving in the world, and I felt guilty asking for help with jewelry. I shouldn’t have worried about that. I told God that I knew it was just a superficial piece of adornment, but it had a lot of sentimental value to me, and if He could find it in His will, to help me recover it. Not long after I prayed that prayer I glimpsed the diamond in a bag of watches on a shelf. How it got there I’ll never know, but I know Who helped me find it. Would I have found it if I hadn’t prayed for guidance? Maybe eventually, but I could have spent days, weeks, or months looking for it first. Turning everything over to God makes perfect sense, and life goes by so much smoother.
When we ask for help with the fine details of our lives, it creates a daily dialog with God. He wants us to spend time with Him, and He delights in helping us on a day-to-day basis with the challenges of life. Nothing is too small or too big for God to handle. He is always available. How many times do we fret and worry over minor details when help is just a prayer away? “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?” (Matthew 7:11).
Skeptics would explain away all of these occurrences as coincidences. But those that experience similar happenstances every day would beg to differ. When they occur on a regular basis, a pattern emerges that defies any explanation other than God working in the lives of His children.
Not long after I started praying for help in choosing my clothes, an incident happened that brought everything into perspective. As I got out of my car at work one morning, my coffee mug tipped over and spilled the brown liquid all over my pants. It was no big deal, though, because the coffee stain didn’t show on the navy blue pants God had chosen for me that day.