Saturday, October 26, 2013

10 Things That Have Changed My View on Prayer


      As the third part of my spiritual discipline series, this is one of the disciplines that I have been more attuned to lately.  I have also noticed that God has taught me a lot lately.  We could probably go on for chapters talking about this, but I wanted to give a brief synopsis of what I have been learning.

It is first and foremost a conversation with God:  When I think about prayer, it is not necessarily a formal or rigid process.  When praying with others, I will sometimes joke around while praying and talk to him like he is my neighbor.  There is no specific formula, you just start chatting with Him and share what’s on your mind.  What I have found is that most people who spend a lot of time talking to God know his voice and know his heart very well.  Just like any relationship, the more you communicate the better you understand the other person.
2.     There is power in our words: Recently I have struggled with the notion that my prayers are ineffective and that they don’t change people’s lives, and it affected me to the point where I was going back and forth on whether or not I should join a prayer ministry.  What I have learned is that I have the power of life and death in my tongue (Proverbs 18:21), therefore I am responsible for praying life into people and into myself.  Whether or not people accept it is a different story, but even if I am not seeing major or immediate results, I can be confident that I am saying something that is beneficial to the person.
3.     Sometimes I’m on the wrong channel:  I can be so guilty of this!   When I think about prayer that I think is getting unanswered, it could be getting answered in a different way.  For instance, I ask for patience and it seems that every irritable situation comes up.  God never handed me patience, he allowed me to go through tough situations where I can work on myself and grow into the man that he wants me to be.
4.     God is more concerned about my character than my comfort: Growing up I was taught that God works on a reward system.  If I have the faith, he gives me what I want.  At one point I struggled with school stress, depression, injury, and the effects of manipulation, and I was being told that I was not blessed because I lacked faith. I was looking for the comfortable life.  I realized that I was way off.  If I ever have a bad day, I think about what Paul had to endure (2 Corinthians 11:16-25), it was a nightmare!  If God allowed that to happen to Paul, then it could happen to me.  But God was shaping him into the man that he needed him to be, and I understand that God is interested in my character as well.  In the past I was asking God  for a comfortable life instead of asking for his comforter, the Holy Spirit.  This is why I now ask for the Holy Spirit and I ask for wisdom, patience, and understanding for God allowing my circumstance to happen.  I may not like it, but I am willing to be conformed to his will.
5.     Sometimes an answer is on the way, but I am just not patient enough:  Often times God answers as yes, no, or not yet.  The problem is that sometimes answers take years to come about, and we as American’s want it right away.  God does answer prayer, but he has the scope of eternity in mind so it may take longer than expected.  Instead of trying get mad and give up on God, I will keep asking for that answer and I will keep praying for others and myself knowing that he will answer.  For those who have been praying for physical or spiritual healing, know that healing is a process, not an event.  That is one thing that I had to learn because otherwise my expectations would not be met.  In most cases, prayer is a continual need and is a process that usually has small improvements over time.
6.     When I refuse to communicate with him, I cut myself off from him: During one period of my life I decided that I was done with God.  Instead, I should have tried to refuse to communicate with the negative people in my life and work on forgiving those that hurt me in the church.  I know that it grieved God that I was not talking with him, but he also grieved the wounds in my heart and the fact that I misunderstood cold and distant Christians as him being cold and distant.  In return, I became cold and distant as well.  It wasn’t until I had Godly Christian people in my life who modeled Godly love that I realized that I wanted to communicate with him and know him better.
7.     My choices can often interfere with God answering my prayers:  During another rough part of my life, I was trying to seek God but unwilling to change certain aspects of my life.  I found that I was like David looking at Bathsheba.  I was supposed to be out to war with my men, but instead I was in the wrong place and I was staring at something that could set me back for years if I was not careful.   Friendships soured, the job situation was bad because I didn’t feel at peace and it gnawed at me, the ministry I was in became dysfunctional and harmful, and I was not liking the man I was becoming.  Worst of all, I was feeling cut off and lost.   So what did I do?  I got rid of the job because it was holding me back from God answering a prayer for something greater and it wasn’t providing for me anyway.  I tuned out the negative voices so I could try and hear Godly voices better.  I quit the ministry and just worked on getting myself right.  I read books from a variety of authors with a variety of perspectives that helped me reconstruct my life.  The bottom line was that what I was doing was not working and interfering with the work of God, so I continually made changes until he had room to work.   
8.     “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” What am I asking for?:  When you look at what Jesus taught his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount, here is how it looks:
           
            Revering God
            Asking for his kingdom to come and his will to be done
            Provisions for the day, be it spiritual or physical
            Forgive us and help us forgive others
            Keep us safe from temptation
            Keep us safe from evil
            Recognizing that he is sovereign and holy
           
            After reading that, I feel guilty at times because I do not always ask for those            things.  I have made it a point to pray with these points in mind in my alone time.  That being said, I have a long way to go but I hope to make changes.  

9.     I need to put myself in a position to see prayer answered:  Whether it is a job, a spouse, healing, change in character, or whatever, I always cringe when people say, “Well God will bring this along for me.” I like their faith, but it is not inappropriate for me to turn in my resume, seek counsel, read books, etc. while waiting for the prayer to be answered.  The truth is that God works through many avenues, not just miracles.  As I like to say, if the Israelites never left Egypt, they would have never seen the miracle of a parting sea.  Therefore I have to remember to try to be active so that I can create opportunities for God to move on my prayers.
10.   God really does care.  He already knows, and my doubts, frustrations, or anger does not shock him.  I admit, sometimes I get angry at life and I talk with him about it.  For the longest time I was afraid to talk to him a certain way because I did not want to offend him.  But here’s the thing: HE ALREADY KNOWS!  One of the most real moments of my life came by me yelling in prayer with tears streaming down my face.  I was so upset at my life falling apart and I felt abandoned by God, and then the next day he answered me time and time again through other people.  I can personally attest to this idea, and I want you to never be afraid to go before him in prayer.  He loves you deeply, he wants to free you from bondage, help you find your way, and he even wants to hear about your day.  He wants our friendship, and he wants to talk with us.  Never forget that.

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Meditating on the Right Stuff


So my question to you is, “What do you meditate on?”  And no… I am not talking about the rather large man with the big belly.  Not that type of meditation. Christian meditation is about filling up your mind, not emptying it.

Filling up my mind?  Yes.  Filling up.  So what that means is that we are taking the time to reflect on what God is saying to us and obeying it.  How can this be done?  A few different ways:

Meditating  on Scripture:  Reading a passage or passages and taking the time to focus on those passages and allowing them to become applicable to us.  I do this a lot on days that I can not focus long enough for bigger passages and I will find a smaller one and let it take root in my soul.

Meditating to re-center your life:  This is taking the time to reflect on your life and to ask God to take those sins, anxieties, and other toxic thoughts away from you and to love on you.  I have always found this to be helpful because it allows God to de-clutter my mind and replace the toxins with his love.

Meditating on God’s Creation:  Have you ever stopped to think about the idiosyncrasies of everything that God has created around us?  It is absolutely amazing!  Spending time appreciating what God has done and soaking ourselves in that beauty can be rejuvenating and he wants to meet us there and enjoy it with us. 

Meditating on events:  Sometimes events in our world or events in our personal life seem to be confusing.  Spending time to ask God for clarification for these events can give us peace, understanding, and perspective in ways that we could never do on our own.  I admit, when dealing with my own life, re-entering the wound can be irritating and painful, but any form of healing has a cleansing pain.

So these are a few examples that I have read about and have done.  The key is that God is filling you as you are creating a spiritual and emotional space for him to operate in.  Whether he is filling you with his knowledge, wisdom, beauty, or love, we are seeking a closer bond with him.

That being explained, I will return to my question: what do you meditate on?  The truth is that most of my life I have struggled have with locking onto God.  I know that I am susceptible to negative thoughts due to what I have been through and Satan likes to grab hold of that, so that is why I try to keep this scripture in the back of my mind:

Philippians 4:8:
Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.

I find that when I stray from meditating on the right things, that’s when my thought life becomes damaged.  Sometimes, even my relationship with God is damaged because of it.  This is because I dwell on a perceived offense, I misinterpret something that I should not have and meditate on it, or that I entertain and welcome into my life any other myriad of negative thoughts come to mind.  That’s why I try to focus on the things of God, because his thoughts do not exhaust my soul… they give it life.

I would like to challenge you to do that this week.  Consider one of the forms of meditation mentioned above and do it.  My hope is that in the shortest time possible that you will feel a deepened sense of intimacy and friendship with God.