(July 25, 2016)
The most daunting yet overlooked question in a one on one: how is your prayer time?
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One of the key messages from the Montreal SHouT was that, Everything we do is a reflection of our prayer time.
Whether it is how we worship, how we lead, how we carry ourselves in our day to day lives — all of it is tied up to our prayer life. Our lifeline with God.
Looking at it, it makes sense, if it is God that blesses us with the things of our lives then it will be through God and with God that we travel on this journey. It’s like going on long drives to a place you’ve never been to before but without a GPS, cellphone, or map. Just as you lose your way easily without these navigational devices, you will also lose your way on this journey with Christ if You do not turn to Him.
But diving into the actual praying itself, how do you pray? Do you pray with endless petitions and requests for God to do for you? Or do you allow it to be a conversation, a dialogue rather than a monologue?
For myself, it has always been about me reaching out to Christ with petition after petition. I remember as a kid, for about a year, my prayer would be “I pray for a new playstation, if You allow it Lord I will be happy. If not, then okay.” Like legit that would be the full extent of my prayers, simple or even complex arrangements of requests. What I forgot was that the Lord was also reaching out to me. I’ve always treated my prayer life as a monologue, where I was the only one to speak. And my prayer time would always be second to my daily schedule, if I had time I’d pray, if not then maybe later. Then whenever I do pray it’d be a blitz of questions, and processing of what I THINK the Lord is trying to tell me.
But lately, I’ve been challenged by the Lord to make my prayers more conversational and personal. Meaning less structured and more genuine as to how I really am. Much like how I’ve written before that there is beauty in simplicity, I’ve challenged myself to keep my prayers simple in the sense that it’s a straight up conversation with God.
One thing I am affirmed of, despite how our prayer lives are, the Lord will always try to reach out to us. So no matter where you are in your prayer lives/times, keep at it. Your day should be built around your time with God, and not the other way around.
So again I pose the question, how is your prayer time?
AMDG.