For years I lived not understanding prayer. At all. My prayers felt like I was tossing a paper airplane into the air only to have it flip around and hit me back in the face. I missed decades of a deeper and more honest relationship with God because I didn’t have a strategy when it came to prayer. I would write out long prayers in my journals and then lose them, or they would get buried deep in the pages of books, never to be seen again. God was probably answering my prayers, but I didn’t realize it because I didn’t have a pattern of seeking and hearing…waiting and watching my God work.
David wrote these words in Psalm 27:8, “My heart has heard you say, ‘Come and talk with me.’ And my heart responds, ‘Lord, I am coming.’” The same God who whispered to the David of the Bible will whisper to your heart too.
God says, “Come talk with Me,” through the Bible in His love letter to us and we get to choose how we respond. Are we too busy to hear? When we do feel His pull, do we look at it as an isolated incident and set it on a shelf as a time we heard from God, rather than an interaction He is seeking to have with us continually? Are we in such a rush that we say, “Yes God…tomorrow.”
Will we choose what David chose? “Lord, I am coming.”
For years I was too busy to hear Him. Finally as His whispers hit my heart they compelled me to make praying a priority. Even when I may not have wanted to, even when I didn’t know what to do completely, even when I was dragging myself there tired and exhausted…and my God showed up. My God said, “Come,” and as I did, He changed my life.
I needed a strategy, and I needed it to be basic. After watching “The War Room,” I decided to do exactly what they showed in the movie. Short prayers written on torn sheets of paper taped to the storage room walls. It wasn’t fancy and still isn’t. But as I have come to Him, I have seen Him work in my heart and in the lives of the people I love. It is as if the powers of the heavens are tapped into through our prayers. As we moved to a new home, the storage room was the last spot I packed because I didn’t want to leave that sweet place. Those torn sheets of paper have found their home in my laundry room closet. This new spot calls to my heart just the same.
My friends, go. Listen. Create the space. Find the quiet. Answer as David did. “Lord, I am coming.” Every day, little by little. It doesn’t need to be an exhaustive, unsustainable production. Instead, bring your smallest bits of thankful and your gravest worries. Open the gates of your heart and come to Him.
Our God is saying, “Come and talk with me.” Let your response be, “Lord, I am coming.”
