At a recent family camp I gained a new perspective on the act of praying by watching it develop morning by morning during the eight days we were there.
There was a lady's prayer time from seven to eight every morning. Getting to hear a group of women pray (and do so day in and day out all those days), I could see into other women's ways of praying (unabashed beggarliness on every conceivable topic/issue, both large and small), to gain a more global look at why God invented it to work the way it does. I began to see prayer as sessions of “alignment” with the Divine, via our own mouths.
It seems as if, surprisingly, the Lord requires prayer in order to see what comes out of our own spoken assertions. First, it manifests in where we even go with our anxieties (to His throne--not our own chasing of our own tails) and then how eager we might be to align ourselves with God regarding them. By having us pray to an infinitely patient and ever present Listener (“He hears the prayer of the righteous” Proverbs 15:29) God uses that to help us work our way through our specific and ever-changing jungles, by our own mouths. Such speech, initially bowed down under His holiness and then taken up by Him (“You will be given what to say” Matthew 10:19) as the prayer time progresses and deepens, rightly aligns our entire being with His being and help. Renewing that alignment unlocks new light on our circumstances and pathways.
How like God to seemingly require us to do the work and chart our path, when once postured to do so, and then He directs our speech behind the scenes--thus succeeding in talking to us. What a magnificent ploy! Only God could have dreamed it up.
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