Prayer

For a few weeks now I've been thinking about something I realized during a conversation with God. Sunday I shared that prayer is the most important part of our relationship with God. Prayer is how we communicate with God. Above everything else, Satan wants to keep us from prayer. I blogged a few weeks ago, Satan will fill your prayer time with Bible reading if that is what he has to do to keep you from praying, because it doesn't matter that we know a lot about God through reading His word. What matters is that we know God through conversing with Him.

I know prayer is crucial, and I know Satan will do whatever he can to keep me from prayer. And I know it is my job to pray. Acts 6.4, "But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word." See the order, prayer is first, they will devote themselves to prayer before they focus on the Bible. I must be the same way.

I've been thinking about this so much since Sunday, and I know that I need to spend more time in prayer. I need to fight for that time. I remember back in college, when life was simple, how easy it was to pray. We would meet every Sunday night as a group. We had a prayer room set up on campus and we did sessions of 24 hour prayer. There was the Chapel on campus, an absolutely beautiful room where I could escape and be alone before God. It was so easy then.

For almost two years now I've been involved in professional ministry. And for those two years I've spent a lot of time on my own. In Michigan I spent a majority of time by myself. There weren't many people I felt safe enough around to share my heart with. Those I did know I could trust were involved in their own ministries and we had little time to pray together. Now, once again I'm alone a lot. I'm at the church by myself and then I go home to an empty house. It sounds like the perfect situation for someone longing for more prayer, but honestly I find it harder than ever, and now I need prayer more than ever.

I find the need to fill the silence more and more. It never used to be like that. I never needed noise in the background, I loved and longed for the silence. But I think having so much time alone leaves you needing to hear something besides your own voice and your thoughts. I've been longing for the prayer life I had back in college for over a year now, and I haven't been able to get it back.

I really had no idea that this post would go in this direction, I was simply planning on sharing the verse from Acts to help us all be aware that we must fight for our prayer time, and that we must not replace the best option with a good option. I am in no way saying to stop reading the Bible, it tells us about God and through studying it we learn about His heart and are able to pray better. What I am saying is that we must guard our communication with God as we would guard our communication with a spouse.

That was my intention, but instead I've shared part of my heart.

Peace be with you