Marriage from A to Z

“A Prayer for You and Me”

      Many of you know that I had my 50th birthday last week.  What a blessing, I am still celebrating!   When I reflect on what God has done in the past 50 years, my mind goes to what I would like to accomplish in the next 50 years.  I don’t know all of the specifics, but I can sum it up with a simple prayer that God has placed in my heart.  This week, I want to share the prayer with you because, I believe that it is a desire that we all have.  I am going to call it; “The Palm Tree Prayer.”  

     What is “The Palm Tree Prayer?”  I am so glad that you have asked.  Someone once said when you don’t know what to pray or have the specific words to say, pray the Word of God!  Psalm 92:12 says, “The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree:  he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon.”  That’s the prayer.  Lord please bless us to flourish like the palm tree.  The second part of the prayer is,  help us to grow like a cedar in Lebanon.  However, this week I am focusing on flourishing like a palm tree. Fifty and flourishing sounds nice.  (smile)

First, let’s look at the meaning of the word flourish. To flourish is to be in a vigorous state, to thrive, to be in one’s prime, to be successful and to prosper.  It is my prayer to flourish at fifty and the years to come!  Don’t you want to flourish? I pray for flourishing families, marriages, finances, relationships, ministries, careers and flourishing lives in the name of Jesus!

Second, let’s look at the attributes of a palm tree and see why we should pray the Palm Tree Prayer.   The Bible says,  “The righteous shall flourish like a palm tree. . .”

Why should we want to flourish like a palm tree?

1. It’s constantly green and flourishing
2. It spreads its branches very wide, and it grows to a vast size
3. It provides a most refreshing shade to travelers
4. It produces dates, a very sweet, luscious and grateful kind of fruit
5. It is a most beautiful tree
6. It stands erect, sending all of its strength upward in one bold column
7. It is an invaluable treasure to the inhabitants of those in hot countries
8. Other trees, when old, leave off bearing, but in God’s trees the strength of grace does not fail with the strength of nature
9. It grows slowly but steadily from century to century
10. It brings forth fruit in it’s old age
11. It doesn’t droop under drought and the burning sun of the summer (It perseveres)
12. It is uninfluenced by the alternations of the seasons which affect other trees

These are just a few attributes of the palm tree that I gathered from various commentaries however, there are many more.  May the Lord bless you to flourish like a palm tree!

Until next week . . .

Carolyn