Room Makeover

Prayed: May, 2014- “Lord Please Help Me Reorganize and Redecorate a grandkid/Daycare Room”Janicemr55@hotmail.com sent this prayer request in along with how the prayer was answered by The Lord.

Over time, I had accumulated more stuff than I could use simply because I had the room in my house available. As my daycare business grew, I saw the need to locate a play room closer to where we conduct most of our activities. Being on a limited budget, I cannot always just act on an impulse. I had a vague notion of what I wanted to do, but I had no idea how I was going to be able to do it in a timely and affordable manner. The room I wanted to reorganize and redecorate had almost become a junk room. I said a silent prayer sometime in early May, 2014, asking for The Lord to help me transform this room into a more useful part of my daycare resources.

 Answered: Praise The Lord. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills (Psalms 50:10-12) and cashed in part of one to answer my prayer. This account of how The Lord acted on my simple prayer to make this room more useful for my daycare business.

In church we are often told that The Lord will give us our hearts desires. Sometimes we jump to conclusions by assuming that we can pray for anything and it will be given to us. We all too frequently and conveniently skip over the fact that what we pray for must be for His good purpose (Romans 8:28). The “name it and claim it” mentality of some pastors espouse sometimes do more harm to our faith than to reinforce the fact that God is capable of granting anything we pray for. The catch is that what we pray for must be aligned with the good purpose He has for what He gives us.

The other thing we often assume is that The Lord will act on our request when we want Him to. The Bible addresses this difference in timing this way: “But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with The Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.” (2 Peter 3:8 NAS) Further instruction that is often conveniently overlooked is that He acts in what He considers to be “due time”. (Psalms 145:15, Galatians 6:9)

When our prayers are aligned with His good purposes and when He considers the timing to be right, He will answer our prayers. This account is a testament to the fact that such answered prayers may not be quick, in this case, about two months went by before The Lord apparently had all the pieces to my prayer request ready to deliver to me. The provisions He manifested were complete and just what was needed to make this room useful for a daycare business. As you read through it, notice how intricately and thoroughly The Lord answers our prayers. Also, notice how often Janice gives thanks to The Lord and Gives Him the glory for the makeover.

This past Saturday, June 28, 2014, I decided to go to some yard sales, which I enjoy doing any way. I wanted to find a changing table or a dresser I could use for that purpose in the room. I also needed new toys and a place to put them in the room. So, I asked The Lord to lead me to the right yard sale to find what He knew I needed. 

Soon, after stopping at a couple of yard sales, I found a box half full of Lego, cars and 31 good books. I was amazed that the lot only cost me $2. I began to sense that The Lord was acting on my two-month old prayer request. Then, I drove to another yard sale that didn't seem to have many appealing things for sale. But, I had to catch my eyes from popping out of my eyes as I saw a 3 drawer dresser sitting in the yard.

I was sure it was too expensive as I asked the young man overseeing the sale how much he was asking for it. I was prepared to barter for it if it was out of my affordability range. I asked kind of tentatively how much he wanted for the dresser and, again, I gasped at his answer, $5.  And here it is after I driving it home and putting it into the room I was working on, definitely Heaven sent.

At this time, I knew immediately that this was an answer to my prayer, and I said so. “What a blessing!” I exclaimed. He looked a little puzzled, perhaps a little disbelieving that people still acknowledge their blessings the way I had just done. We loaded up dresser and I happily drove home. I was thrilled at how The Lord’s economy worked to enable me to gather much of what I needed to transform my heretofore junk room into one more pleasing and functional.

When I got home I was thinking about hanging a picture that my daughter made with my granddaughter in the playroom (see link to Mothers & Daughters Rays of Sunshine). Also I noticed some nail holes in the wall where the paint was removed as the nails were pulled out. I wondered if could ever match the color of the paint on the walls, and said a small prayer for that to somehow be possible.

You know, that's the thing a lot of people miss about praying.  No prayer is too small for the Lord to address.

My landlord has a shed where he stores a power mower and a bunch of other things useful to him on the property I rent, and I wondered if I could find anything useful in it. I went to the shed, climbed across the power mower and a few boxes. I stumbled over a large box that said bedroom on it that contained some paint stored in plastic bin containers. I took out one of the containers, that appeared to have paint in it similar to that in the room where I needed to cover the nail holes, and looked at it in the sun. Sure enough, it was a little bit of the saved color that had been used on the wall.

“Thank You, Lord,” I thought, “Your thoroughness in answering my  prayer makes me so happy.”

Then, a friend called to ask, “Weren't you looking for yellow curtains for the room you are decorating? I have some that just came into my possession, do you want them?” “Yes, I do,” I said. Then she said someone had also just dropped off a pair of Veggie Tales curtains trimmed in yellow, and asked if I could use them. That is just what I needed because I wanted curtains that could be for a girl’s or a boy’s room; Veggie Tales worked for that. I mated the yellow and Veggie Tales together as shown in the room below right. So, The Lord delivered my window accoutrements.

Slowly, but surely, the Lord was working on every detail of my prayer, and it was coming together before my eyes.

A few weeks ago I had attended a 1/2 day child care seminar. At the end of the seminar they gave each participant two big bags of new toys. I knew I could use those new toys, but only now did I connect them to this prayer request.

The Lord has been so faithful all through the years to me in big ways and in small ways. I love the constant reminders that He will take care of every need we could possibly have. He will give us the desires of our heart when they coincide with His good purposes! (Psalms 37:4, Ecclesiastes 11:9) Thank You for Your wonderful blessings, Lord.

I did buy a quart of paint to paint an old wooden shelf that the toys and books sit on. I also bought a 5x7 rug for the middle of the floor; it is so nice and ready to be used!

Here are a couple of picture of what the Lord had in mind for the room I wanted to makeover.  It matches my ideas perfectly!

But, while I thought I was finished, The Lord reminded me that He was still not finished. Just today, July 9, 2014, a friend delivered three baskets of books to go into the made over room. I had just happened to mention last evening when I talked with them that I needed some book baskets to finish up the room. And as I said, The Lord impressed upon my friend to deliver them to me gratis!

Now, the room is up to The Lord’s standards; as the Bible reminds us, "The Rock! His work is perfect…” (Deuteronomy 32:4)

How much cost in time and materials does it cost to makeover a room? In this case, it took about two months of patiently waiting as The Lord located and put in position everything for my needs.  The total cost was maybe $40 and a total of about 6 hours spread over the course of a couple of weeks. “Now, that’s God’s economics! I shout. I dedicate this room for His glory, because I know I would not have been able to make the room as usable as it is now without His help.

God is good all the time, all the time God is good!.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.