Prayer

Throughout the month of November, Royalwood Church is focusing on prayer with our 30/30 Challenge: Pray 30 minutes a day for 30 days.  Prayer, along with the Word of God, is one of the absolute necessities for living a Christian life.  It is as necessary to our spiritual well being as food and water are to our physical health. Simply put, your relationship with Jesus is defined not by your church attendance, church involvement or ministry, but by prayer.  By the consistency of your communication with Him.  It's important that we know Him and it is especially important that He knows us! (see Judgement Day)

Communication.  This is a word that is oft misunderstood or worse misrepresented in our world of posts, tweets and vines.  True communication cannot take place without at least two parties. And those parties must be qualified as a speaker and a listener. And at some point in the conversation, they must swap roles; the speaker must become the listener and the listener the speaker.  This communication, when practiced frequently, will soon transform into a relationship.  It's easy to confuse prayer with speaking to God, petitioning God or even worshipping God.  Big news break here: The most important element of prayer is listening.  In sales, we have a saying "I never made a dime talking."  Despite a salesperson's natural tendency to speak, it's listening to our customer that helps us understand what they need and how we can best help.  Let's face it, if God and I are in the same room...who really needs to be speaking anyway?  It would probably benefit me to hear what my Father, aka King of the Universe, has to say about my life.

Let's be clear...I am not saying that we cannot make our petition known to The Lord.  How awesome is God that He has made Himself available to us and we'd be crazy not  take advantage of that.  We all pray for health, direction, deliverance from trouble and more.  But there is a dimension of prayer that we often forget that simply focuses on striving to know God more, to be more like Him.

What comes out of our mouth is the least important part of prayer.  With praise, worship and collective prayer at church, crying out or verbalized prayer is absolutely necessary.  So many times I have been lifted up and encouraged by my Pastor's or another saints prayers.  However, in personal, relational prayer it's not what we say that God really pays attention to.  It's the lips of our heart that He really hears.  When we pray out loud  we can almost become fascinated with our voice. (You've all heard that person in the prayer room!)  We can lead ourselves to emotional heights and depths simply by listening to ourselves, our plight and our needs. When Solomon prayed to God for wisdom and knowledge to lead the people of Israel, God's reply was "...Because this was in thine heart...Wisdom and knowledge is granted unto thee; and I will give thee riches, and wealth, and honour, such as none of the kings have had that have been before thee."  God looked beyond the actual words that Solomon prayed, saw the intentions of his heart and that is why He answered his prayer.

Such a topic as prayer could not be completely understood or explored by a single person or blog. However, being raised by praying parents and in a praying church, prayer has always been a part of my life.  Until a few years ago, I never truly appreciated the impact that personal and reflective prayer could have on my walk with Jesus.  Several years ago I began to pray about a very serious situation.  I was disturbed in my spirit to a level that I have never experienced. I prayed earnestly and desperately every day for several weeks.  I was going early in the morning to the church and praying for at least an hour, sometimes much longer, and could find no relief in how I saw and felt about this situation.  I found myself struggling to sleep and even eat.  God HAD to intervene in what I saw happening.  

One Monday morning I got to the church around 5:30 in the morning to continue my spiritual warfare.  I knelt in the prayer room and began to petition God again.  The Lord immediately spoke to me in the clearest fashion, "Why don't you just pray about PJ?"  A very cool and "closed in" feeling overcame me and I recognized that I was in a secret and special place with God.  I was right at His feet.  Over the course of about two hours I saw clearly my humanity and how lost I was without His grace.  I began to see images of Calvary and The cruxifiction.  I could not help but repent again of all my sins.  I literally became undone.  Through tears and shaking all over I thanked The Lord for dying for me, for saving me.  He began to show me the many times I had lost my way and how He had lovingly and patiently steered me back onto His path.  I prayed as earnestly that morning as I did the night I received the Holy Ghost at 8 years old.  I cried like I had never cried before and thanked Him like I had never thanked Him.  This went on for an hour or so and I left and went to work. I returned Tuesday morning, again to pray about "the situation" and the same presence was there and I again was thrust into a place of repentance, reflection and humility.  I don't have to try very hard to be moved to tears, a good old fashioned baby dedication will get me going.  But that morning I literally cried my eyes out.  Co-workers thought that I was becoming sick because of the condition of my eyes!  This continued on for 5 days straight.  I didn't have to work it up or build momentum, God just ambushed me as soon as I walked in the door....every day just as fresh and overwhelming as the first.  

Friday morning I began to wrap up my "humility" session with Jesus so I could head to work and I realized that I had not thought of "the situation" for a few days, not once.  Walking to my vehicle my mind hesitantly began to mull over this predicament again.  I literally stopped in my tracks.  The most amazing thing had happened.  I could barely recognized this crisis that had worried me sick.  Circumstances and people that had caused me so much concern I now viewed with complete peace.  What I saw as so cloudy, dark and ominous I now saw clearly and with faith.  Here is the awesome part, the situation had not changed one bit, I had!  In fact, I realized that I had wrongly judged the situation. God spoke to me at that moment that I was now seeing through His eyes.  I had been diligently carrying this situation to Him in prayer, holding it tightly in my arms, wanting His intervention, wanting an answer.  All the while, the Lord had been meeting me at the same place of prayer desiring to touch me and to change me but He couldn't get past the thing clutched in my arms. Even in a posture of prayer, He was unable to do anything with me.  By bringing me back to Calvary and the foundation of His grace in my life, God helped me to lay down my concerns and remember what was most important.  Me and Him and Him and me. 

Contrary to popular belief, a large part of your personal prayer should be about you and your life.  Relationship with God manifests itself in many ways in a Christian's life but the greatest is change.  Not of doctrine or beliefs, but change in ourselves.  We can't truly stand in His presence and remain the same.  We cannot sincerely pray for His touch and not expect a transformation.  My favorite prayer in God's word was prayed by Jesus in the Garden "let this cup pass, but nevertheless not My will but yours."  He loved us so much, despite His fear and discomfort of what was to come, that He submitted to divine will.  What a great example for us to follow in our prayer!  Too often we want the situation to change, never once considering that it is we who might need to be changed.  Romans 12:2 is a reminder "..but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God."

My intentions with this blog is not to teach anyone how or what to pray but simply to challenge you to consider your prayers.  To think about the intentions of your heart or what you want to accomplish in prayer and most importantly what does God want to accomplish in you through prayer?

Here are a few pre-prayer conversations that I have with God that help prepare my mind for prayer.

"How do You see me?"
"Are you pleased with my life?"
"Am I becoming what you intended me to be when you saved me?"
"Am I looking at this situation as You would?"

As I am writing this at 20,000 ft headed to Missouri for work, I am moved again to find that special place in prayer that God can speak into my life and change me.  I hope you feel it too!

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PJ Dial is a husband, father and servant of Christ. He grew up in Royalwood and is involved in several aspects of ministry including Praise & Worship, Anthem Student Ministries and currently serves on Royalwood's Board.