Miracles in the Mundane: How Answered Prayers Strengthen Family Faith

Do you look for miracles in everyday life? I do. Answered prayers and miracles have strengthened my family’s faith, and they can do the same for your family.

God’s Faithfully Provides

Being pregnant with your first child is a unique mix of excitement and nervousness. It’s a time to be savored and enjoyed, especially during the last months when you start nesting and preparing for the baby’s arrival.

When we were one month away from the arrival of our first child, we were asked to leave our rental home. I’m sure you can imagine the anxiety we felt. A frantic search for a new place to live began, but in a college town, the prospects could have been more appealing and exorbitantly priced.

Then, our prayers were answered. God provided a house that was not yet on the market through word of mouth. We put in an offer sight unseen. When we finally went to see it, we held hands with the realtors and prayed in the living room. We ultimately moved in two weeks before our daughter was born. That was a miracle.

We love to retell this story to our children as a lesson of God’s faithfulness. Repeating this story in their lives became even more helpful after four additional daughters joined the family and the 800 square feet of that miracle house began to burst at the seams.

Approach God With Confidence

A long (six-year) house hunt began, and at times, the outlook was grim, but we would remind our children of our first home and of God’s faithfulness.

There were so many aspects of that first home that seemed perfectly designed to fit the life that we grew into over eleven years living there. God was so good in making a space that would be perfect for that season of life, filled with simple blessings. So how could we not trust Him to find us another home?

We did finally find a home big enough for our family, which allowed us to have the animals we had been dreaming of. Thus, the story of God’s faithfulness continued.

We have many other stories of finances met, health recovered, and lost items found. I hear stories like this from my friends and read them online.

These stories shout the truth: “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him” (1 John 5:14-15, NIV).

Trusting God With Your Needs

A family’s needs are many: finances, health, discipline, education and the list just keeps growing. When we see God’s hand moving in areas of need, it bolsters our faith and increases our trust.

Sharing these experiences with our children and allowing them to see how God is working can help to increase their faith as well. They all recall the time they prayed to see a bearded dragon on our hike and the excitement they felt when they did!

The key is being able to see the answered prayers, and the best way to do this is to look for God’s work in even the most mundane moments.

My husband has an excellent habit of asking me, “Did you pray about it,” even if the issue is as small as a missing spatula. When you pray about the simple things, you receive reminders that God cares about all the intimate details of our lives, including missing spatulas. Realizing this makes his presence feel more continual as we seek His help and offer thanksgiving for his gifts through the natural ups and downs of our average days.

In this way, “Pray continually” as 1 Thessalonians 5:17 (NIV) instructs.

Write it Down

In one season of my life, I would write down prayers and then go back to read them to see the fruit of God’s work in my life.

In another season, our family wrote down how God had blessed us on slips of paper and put them in a jar throughout the year. Then, on New Year’s Eve, we read them to remind our family that God had taken care of us throughout the year.

As parents, we need to be reminded of God’s faithfulness because parenting is hard. We need His strength and help every day. When God answers our prayers, we see His care as our Father, and we are inspired to be parents who care for their children as well.

Keep Looking

Just like we don’t always give our children exactly what they want or when they want it, God lovingly deals with us. His ways of providing for us remind us that He knows and wants what is best for us in the same way we do for our children.

Look for His answered prayers today. Thank Him. Remember that He is constantly working in your life, and be grateful for this working, remembering that “He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it” (1 Thessalonians 5:24, ESV).