The first prayer from the book, Ten Prayers God Always Says Yes To is, “God, show me that you exist.” Here is an excerpt from chapter one, I Wish I Could Believe:

Does God exist? Can there be a simpler yet more important question in all the universe? Can there be one that has been the source of more mental anguish and emotional confusion in the history of mankind? It’s ironic that a question that so many people struggle with is also one that can be most easily answered by God when we put it into the form of a prayer. For when we lift our minds and hearts in humility and say to God: “Please show me that you exist…Give me some sign that you are really up there somewhere” he is only too happy to respond–sometimes with a speed that can astound us.

And that’s what happened to me in my twenty-third year. I had been a believer since I was four years old, but as happens with some of us, life gets in the way of our beliefs, causing us to either forget about God altogether or give him very little of our time. I remember going through a very difficult time both physically and spiritually after the birth of my fourth child. One day, I stood stock still in my tiny little kitchen, surrounded by three little ones and a brand new baby, feeling completely overwhelmed. Suddenly, I cried out, “God, where are you? If you exist, please give me a sign!” Shortly afterwards…like about twenty minutes…a knock came to the door. There stood two Jehovah’s Witnesses wanting to talk to me about God. They held up one of their magazines with GOD in bold letters, but I didn’t pay any attention to the rest of the message, and shooed them away, being busy with my family at that precise moment.

It wasn’t until a few days later that I realized that I had closed the door on what was probably God’s sign to me that he does exist. “Was that my sign?” I wondered. Maybe yes, maybe no, but to this day I firmly believe that it was a very quickly answered prayer. “Yes, Patricia, I am here.”

Tomorrow: Why Should I Get Involved? … God, Make Me an Instrument