Prayer life

I have been stirred as well in a way beyond anything I have ever experienced to get back into prayer.10 years ago, I felt the Lord call me specifically to pray. I started down the path and read books and spent time in prayer, and God taught me many lessons and moved in my heart through those years. Then as can so often happen, I gradually diminished in prayer until over these last years, my prayer life has been sporadic at best. Recently I had been sent a link for some Paul Washer mp3’s and my life was convicted of my laziness and disobedience. I started listening to more of his teaching… especially on prayer, and I was again stirred to spend time in prayer. This time however, I have been doing much more than petitioning and supplication. It will take more time than I can spend to explain the entire history of it, but some years ago, I started moving into waiting prayer or listening prayer. I would read some small portion of scripture, then meditate on the word and wait. I never felt like I was accomplishing much so I eventually moved on to other things.But this time, I really feel the Holy Spirit telling me to wait and learn. So I have been asking the Lord to teach me how to be with him in prayer. How to pray and spend time in his presence. I have been spending much more time in waiting and listening, meditating and praise, as opposed to petition and supplication. Although those things are still very much a part of my prayer life. I am once again sensing God’s Spirit speak to me and teach me. I am learning actual prayer and the habit of prayer: specific prayer times as well as learning to continually sense the presence of God. And true to form, the Lord is bringing me back to weaknesses I had 10 years ago that I never let go of. So here I am once again needing to learn these lessons. But praise God he is working in me to help me. I am leaning more and more towards 2 Corinthians 3:18 as a life verse:”And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” When I read this verse, I get a picture of a person with the veil lifted from thier face, and spending time face to face with the Lord. As that person spends time with him, he is literally transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory.  Having tried and often failed, I am well aware that I cannot transform any aspect of my life through my own efforts. I can not change myself any more than a leopard could change his spots, like Jeremiah would say. But something happens through simply spending time in the presence of the Lord: he begins to supernaturally change us from the inside out. so if we are ever going to live out the calling we have been given, it will mean we MUST spend time with him. It is this very essence of prayer that incorporates us in a tangible sense into the body of Christ… we become vessels that he can organize and send and manipulate according to his plan and good pleasure. Back in 2001, this was our verse for the La Mirada mens retreat and I designed a T-shirt based on it. Here is my visual representation of that verse.mensretreat2001.jpg 

dave  

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