On Prayer

“Submit to God and be at peace with him; in this way prosperity will come to you. Accept instruction from his mouth and lay up his words in your heart. If you return to the Almighty, you will be restored: If you remove wickedness far from your tent...Surely then you will find delight in the Almighty and will lift up your face to God. You will pray to him, and he will hear you, and you will fulfill your vows. What you decide on will be done and light will shine on your ways. When people are brought low and you say, ‘Lift them up!’ then he will save the downcast. He will deliver even one who is not innocent, who will be delivered through the cleanness of your hands.” –Job 22:21-23a,26-30.

This past Sunday at church, Pete Gregg came to speak with us about the importance of prayer. He came all the way from England, and is a friend of Pastor Mark Jobe. He was really interesting. He started a grassroots movement called 24/7 prayer, which is exactly as it sounds; he started a meeting place in England where people come to pray for one month 24/7, to see what God can do when we submit to him in prayer. He said that everything we do must be birthed in prayer, or it is not worth doing. He also talked about how we as Christians generally have a poor time with prayer and we spend a lot more time doing and much less time praying. Pete said there are three stages we typically go through, and struggle with each one. He said that the first is knowing and understanding God’s unending, and pure love for us. He illustrated this by describing his baby Hudson, who is the only person who has ever done such horrible things to him(yelled in his face, spit in his mouth, pooped on him and thrown up on him), yet he loves him more than any human being he has ever loved. This is how God loves us; while we are dirty and horrible and do many of these same things to God, he loves us unconditionally as a father loves his children. (I completely understand this illustration, but don’t think I will ever truly understand this until I become a parent.) The second stage then is truly finding the time to be with God. Luke 6:13 says, “When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated as apostles.” God chose us to be his disciples, as his apostles. It is really humbling, and exciting to rethink the idea that God chose each one of us, and God chose me to be one of his Apostles! Because God chooses each of us, and calls us by name, He wants to be with us! This means He wants us to spend time with Him; and spending time with Him means being with Him in prayer. This is where I began to feel convicted. I often do my prayer time in the shower each morning-which is not to say is the wrong place to pray, but it is not time set apart to be with God. I also pray throughout the day as I’m driving, or running errands, or even running, again, not bad times or places, just not set apart. I know I need to seek God more intimately and spend time just being with Him. And then the third thing, after we know and understand who God is, and spend time being with Him, then we can go and do-we can serve and know we are serving and doing the things God calls us to be doing, not just do what we think would be fun or should be doing, or have to do.