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Prayer is not one-sided!
By admin | February 19, 2009
In this week’s post l’ll share a personal experience and talk a little bit about myself. This post is in a sense, a continuation of the last two posts.
Many people who know me will say that I am a strong Christian and I have certainly been in the faith for a while. I do basically like ‘staying behind the scenes’ and love writing and sharing God’s word through writing. God is really my passion but there is one thing I always felt guilty about – my prayer life. I admire people that can pray for hours (though I am now realising that when you enjoy God’s presence, you won’t know when you have spent hours in His presence). There is of course nothing wrong in admiring people, but it also made me feel a bit ‘inadequate’.
The irony of the situation is that most of the time, I do have an unbroken relationship with God and I would say that God is my friend in the true sense of the word. I love to worship God and one of the things I have been blessed with is the ability to hear God’s voice on a continual basis.
So, back to my ‘inadequate’ prayer life. I was ‘thinking’ about this, when I heard God speak the title of this post to my heart. Suddenly, the eyes of my understanding opened and I realised that it’s not the amount of time I spend with God – though I must stress that it’s important to spend valuable time with God, but whether God is speaking to you.
Regarding prayer as communication between two people, I realised that yes, I do pray. Prayer in its simplest term means talking to God. During prayer, we speak to God and He speaks back. Prayer is when we focus our minds on God and to build a relationship with Him.
Yes, I know that there are various types of prayer e.g. warfare prayer, intercessory prayer but the question to ask ourselves is whether we are regularly hearing from God.
Regardless of the type of prayer, intercessory prayer calls for us to know the will of God in a particular situation, so we can pray it back to him, in warfare prayer, we need to know the word of faith (rhema) that we need to take hold of, so we can quench the darts of the enemy. You get the point. We need to hear from God in all situations. Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule, like the time when we feel that God is ‘silent’, but even in these times, I believe that as we draw near to Him, He will make His presence real to us.
Now to our business or workplace, sometimes we can be mistaken that this is such a trivial part of our lives. I believe that God can give us insights into business deals and situations. Solomon encourages us to acknowledge God in all our ways and He shall direct our path.
The question I’d like to ask is whether you are standing in the council of God where you receive His counsel. Remember that Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that comes out of His mouth (Matthew 4:4). This sentence implies that God is continually speaking. As we need ‘bread’ to survive on a daily basis, so we need God’s word on a daily basis. The question is, are we listening?
I guess there will be different categories of people reading this post. Some will have the opportunity to develop and appreciate those moments when our hearts are tuned into Him, some are those who pray and spend time with God (which is to be greatly desired) and the challenge is whether you are hearing His voice and I guess another category are those who are constantly hearing His voice, and whose challenge should be /More Lord’.
My prayer is that whether we fit into any of these categories or not, we will hear God’s voice on a daily basis.
Look out for my next post titled ‘You also need the favour of Man’. Thanks for the privilege of sharing God’s word with you. Until I appear again in your inbox, stay blessed
Ola
