I spent yesterday evening with two of my best friends - Kim and Allison, and Ally's family. We made a veggie pizza and a huge cookie and just hung out before Al headed off to Las Vegas on a family trip. Surprisingly, i got home by 11 and tried to go straight to bed. It didn't work. I turned off the lights, only to turn them on a few minutes later, feeling a need to read my book and turn to scripture. Those nights when you're so exhausted and just want to sleep and you can't are definitely frustrating - when your mind keeps racing, or you're too hot/cold to fall asleep, etc. But last night was different. After reading for a while, i ended up listening to some Shane and Shane and dozed off eventually, in the early hours of the morning. I woke up again at 5:30 am and was alert. My eyes were exhausted, but i could not rest. I felt awake and a need to press into God. I don't know what's different about today, or why i was so restless last night, but it's definitely the Lord working on my heart.
As a lover of reading and writing, i am so blown away when the Lord speaks directly into my situation through a passage, a book, an excerpt. In this situation, late late at night, not knowing what God wanted or what to pray for, i read a beautiful reminder about prayer. While this spoke to my heart and affirmed different ways to pray and dwell in the Lord, it also reminded me of the difficulty and fears we have in learning HOW to pray. Some of my lovely middle schoolers and high schoolers are apprehensive about praying out loud and often claim they don't know how. While i was reminded of some of them in particular, i think this is an issue people have in many other walks of life, as well. We need to affirm and encourage each other regarding the beauty and intimacy of, and the inability to mess up prayer. God just wants us to do it - to commune with Him, spend time with Him, behold Him, however that may look. Let me share this passage with you:
Prayer is another area that many struggle with because they aren't aware that in the freedom of the Spirit there are as many ways of praying as there are individual believers. The cardinal rule in prayer remains the dictum of Don Chapman: "Pray as you can; don't pray as you can't".... A little child cannot do a bad coloring; nor can a child of God do bad prayer.
A father is delighted when his little one, leaving off her toys and friends, runs to him and climbs into his arms. As he holds his little one close to him, he cares little whether the child is looking around, her attention is flitting from one thing to another, or just settling down to sleep. Essentially the child is choosing to be with her father, confident of the love, the care, the security that is hers in those arms. Our prayer is much like that. We settle down in our Father's arms, in His loving hands. Our mind, our thoughts, our imagination may flit about here and there; we might even fall asleep; but essentially we are choosing for this time to remain intimately with our Father, giving ourselves to Him, receiving his love and care, letting him enjoy us as he will. It is very simple prayer. It is very childlike prayer. It is prayer that opens us out to all the delights of the kingdom
-The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning (p 155-156)
Prayer is communion with our Creator, our all loving and merciful Lord. In prayer, He may reveal something to us, He may do a working in our hearts that is unseen or undetected by us, He may answer a prayer. Whatever the outcome, we are spending time with our Lord and Savior.
To end, listen to this song. I can't get enough of it (ignore the video) :) Have a blessed day.
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