Prayer. I didn't always know it's power or it's importance or the intimacy to be shared through it. Not until I began relationships with people who DO it. Not until I started to DO it. Regularly. In the morning. Just God and me. With my husband. With our children. In front of (gasp) other people. People I don't know well yet. People I don't know at all.
Praying had never been easy for me and I wondered why. Why can't I pray like others I see and hear who pour their hearts out to God? Why don't I WANT to pray in front of people in my Restore family? Why is my husband the only one to pray with our children? Why don't I pray more throughout my day? The answer came with gracious conviction. "Because you don't know Me." Wait. What? "Because this isn't about you." It's not? But I feel uncomfortable praying out loud. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." Matt. 22.37 Okay, I thought I did? "But you don't know Me. How can you love Me if you don't know Me?"
So, I began reading the Word more and actually asking for the Holy Spirit's help to pray! And guess what: the more I asked for the desire to know God, the more my desire grew. And as I asked for the Spirit to help me pray, I realized He already had.
The most recent South Church ladies' luncheon, Meet + Eat, focused on "A Praying Heart". Yvonne Welch led us through a devotional of prayer and getting to know God. Just as Christ did in Mark 1.35, Yvonne showed us the importance of rising early to spend time with our Father: reading His Word, praising Him (Ps. 3.3-4), confessing our sins (1 Jn. 1.9), giving thanks to Him (1 Thess. 5.18), interceding on behalf of others (2 Thess. 1.11), and supplicating our own needs to Him (Phil. 4.6).
If I want a praying heart, my heart must love Jesus. If I want to love Jesus, I need to know Jesus. If I want to know Jesus, I must read His Word. Daily. I must talk to Him. Constantly. Wait. But isn't talking to Him prayer? Yes. So, if I want a praying heart, I need to have a praying heart. Yes.
I was asked to write this blog about the ladies' luncheon: the good fellowship, great food, wonderful speaker. It was supposed to encourage those who were there and inspire those who weren't to try and make it next time. And prayerfully, give us all some "food for thought". I'm afraid I missed the mark. I used too many first-person pronouns and made it more about me than Jesus. I do that a lot and I don't like it. See, there I go again. Stop it. Jesus makes it plain in John 15.4: "Abide in Me, and I in you." Set up camp with Jesus. Get to know Him through His Word. Get to know Him through prayer. If we desire to know Him better, to love Him more, it is absolutely necessary that we spend time with our Father. In as few as fifteen minutes or as much time as we have any given day.