Forgive me Father, for I have sinned...
Recently, God has been teaching me a lot about prayer. As bad as it may sound, I have never really been the hard core prayer that I wish I was. A couple years ago I really started to try and put the “Pray without Ceasing” verse into practice and it has become a pretty good habit. I do, unfortunately, cease at times but for the most part I have become pretty aware about praying little one liners throughout my day and it has been a great blessing.
However, I was recently convicted about not setting aside time to pray each day. I mean I pray every night before bed but I rarely pray “spirit led” prayer. Meaning, I don’t take time to listen and see what I need to pray. I also don’t repent as much as I should and the more I think about it, the more I realize that I don’t care about people as much as I think I do. This can be pretty hard to admit and is even a little embarrassing to be posting on the internet, but I do so, because I don’t think that I am the minority in this situation. I think that it would be fair to say that this is the majority of Christians. I don’t think that many people do set aside time to have meaningful conversation with God and I think that we suffer as a result.
I often find myself thinking why am I not closer with God right now? Why doesn’t God use me more? Why don’t I have opportunities to share my faith? Why don’t I see more people coming to faith? And when I honestly think about it, I know the answer, it’s because I don’t pray enough. I don’t consistently ask to be close to God, or ask Him to use me or to give me opportunities to share my faith nor do I ask on the regular basis for lost people I know to be saved. And because of that, I have sinned.
I have begun to try and pray more often with more purpose and it has dramatically affected my life. I eagerly wait to see the mighty things that my God will do if only I will ask. While I am a long way from being where I would like to be, God continues to teach me and bless me as I pray.
One of my favorite times this semester has been the BCM prayer times on Tuesday. Although we don’t have very many students that come, it has been a very refreshing time for me. I feel more energized after spending time in prayer and I love it. One thing however has greatly discouraged and troubled me and that is the lack of people at the prayer time. I don’t think that I would be as troubled by this if it were at any other time, but it’s Tuesdays from 11:30 to 12:30. This was formerly our Noonday time and we would have as many as 120 students for lunch and never less than 50 with an average attendance around 70. Students would come in and pay their dollar for lunch. And now that we have added, what I feel is a much more beneficial, a prayer time, we have a max attendance of 5 students and a minimum of 0 with an average of 2. I only wish that more Christians showed an interest in prayer and I ask the Lord that He would burden each of our hearts to know Him more and to spend more time in prayer.
I have thoroughly enjoyed the time of corporate prayer and feel that we as Christians willingly and even purposefully miss out on these times out of pure selfishness. I admit that I have been guilty of this before as well and have even caught myself thinking about all of the other things that I would rather do or that I think I “need” to do. I now realize that doing so would be like selling my blessing for a bowl of soup, I would be giving up something far greater for instantaneous pleasure, which in my case often ends up as nothing more than wasted time.