PRAYING

Praying October 14, 2023

So much has been happening lately and I have been drawn even more into prayer. As I pray, I have become aware of what the Holy Spirit has been showing me. I can’t imagine my life without being able to pray to God , and to that end hopefully this will help someone who struggles with praying.

Too often when we pray we get in a hurry and pray “our list “ like we’re telling our parents what we want for Christmas as a child. However, this is not a good way to pray.

God is my Father and although I can pour my heart out to Him, it’s not good to stop there. Prayer is a two way conversation.

As a parent, anyone who has had a child come to them with their problems, knows that they come seeking your advice and help. Sure sometimes they want to just crawl up in your lap and have you hug them and kiss their boo-boos, and that’s ok; but as in the natural that is generally the rule when the child is younger; not older.

But, as the child grows, they will still come to you, not just for a hug but to hear your advice; then after they have poured out their heart they listen to what you have to say because they value your advice.

So it is as when we grow up in the Lord, this too is what we do. We TAKE THE TIME and WE LISTEN TO WHAT OUR HEAVENLY FATHER TELLS US.

Don’t just rush through your prayers but meditate on the Lord and praise and thank Him for the answers, and as you LINGER in His presence with Him, you will listen and hear His Holy Spirit, that still small voice speaking to you.

It’s been my experience when I pray , that if I am going through something that is a particularly difficult emotional situation, that my emotions, (or another way of saying it is my flesh man) gets in the way of me hearing from GOD. Has this ever happened to you?

I find that when this happens, it’s usually because I am praying from my head, (from my mind), rather than from my heart. This is not good. Faith is of the heart, not of the mind. You do not connect with God in your mind but with your heart. (Romans 12:1-2 our minds need renewal)

We see in Romans 10:9 (“that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”) that we must believe in our Heart. When you get your heart involved, that is where you connect with God.

In the tough times, I pour out my HEART to God, and in doing this I usually end up praying a very emotional prayer as I pour out my tears.

We can find this example of prayer in the Psalms in many chapters where David pours out his heart to God in emotional prayers, and when we read these chapters he’ll begin by saying something like, how long O God will my enemies triumph over me? But then before the chapter is through he will begin praising God.

Why is this?
Because when you pray from the heart, you release your emotions to God and give them to Him, and then you invite His very Presence into the midst of your struggles and a wonderful transformation then takes place through that process.

Emotions are of the flesh. The Holy Spirit speaks to us in our heart, not our minds. Our emotions, which are part of our heart (soul) can act like a barrier between us and God which makes it more difficult for us to hear from God.

When you release these emotions to Him, He can then remove these fleshly blocks that are in your heart and You can then hear His Voice clearer.

Don’t be afraid of saying the wrong thing to Him, (that’s your mind talking), but rather pour out your heart and release what is bottled up inside you. He already knows all your thoughts and what you are going through anyways. You won’t surprise Him but you Will be fellowshipping with Him.

I knew a counselor once that gave me a perfect description of emotions, to which any parent can relate. She said, “Emotions are like unruly children who need to be set straight by the truth!”

Anyways, don’t allow your emotions to block you hearing from God. When you cry out your emotion, pray a scripture that speaks to that emotion.

Example: it’s hard for you to forgive someone who has wronged you, so ask God to help you forgive, see Matthew 6:14-15 “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

So, the next time you pray and you feel like your prayers are bouncing off the ceiling back at you, remember it’s not that God is not wanting to talk to you, but rather you have not put your heart in a position that you can hear from Him.

Remember: this will take time. You can’t pray from your mind but from your heart! We were created with emotions but emotions need to be set straight with the truth, just like an unruly child needs to be disciplined so do our emotions.

Once you have allowed, or given permission to God to meet you in your emotions, then He can remove this fleshly barrier that is hindering you from hearing from God.

I say this to encourage you in your prayer life. Too often people pray from their mind and not their heart, and then they walk away without hearing an answer saying,”well that didn’t work!” Don’t let that happen to you!

Once your emotions are disciplined and tempered by the Word of God, then your spirit man will grow in zeal for the things of the Lord.

Remember, GOD LOVES YOU! He is not mad at you or wanting to punish you, but He created you so you could talk to Him and fellowship with Him.

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”
‭‭Genesis‬ ‭1‬:‭27‬
“And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.”Genesis‬ ‭3‬:‭8‬ ‭

I just love that last verse. God came to talk with them in the cool of the day; i.e. after dinner when the dishes are done and you sit on the porch to enjoy the last bit of evening visiting together.

Yes God created us for fellowship and it’s through prayer and His Word that He still does fellowship with us. So take some time and spend with Him. If you have to, make it an appointment on your daily schedule until you get in the habit of talking to Him and spending time with Him. Soon you will find that it will be automatic and you will not want to miss your time. Then You will be continually aware of His Presence in your day and you will talk to Him through out the day.

Years ago when I first started being more intentional about my prayer life, as I would begin praying, the enemy of my soul, the devil, did not want me to pray and get close to God; so as I sat there trying to pray from my list, all kinds of distracting thoughts would come bombarding my mind, like oh no I forgot to take something out of the freezer to defrost for dinner or I got to put the clothes from the washer into the dryer if I’m going to have something to wear to work tomorrow. All kinds of thoughts that would try to get me distracted by doing something else.

It got so bad that I finally said ok God, whatever distracting thought that comes in my head I will just bring to you, like ok Lord I know You will help me figure out what to have for dinner and then I could just keep on praying. Hey listen, some people might have called me foolish for doing that but I don’t care because my heart was right as I desired to talk to God. I believe God may have had a heartwarming chuckle over that by knowing His girl wasn’t going to let the enemy distract her from talking to Him.
Some may even say don’t waste God’s time by praying such foolishness, but my God is not only big enough to handle all the big stuff but also all the little things, like knowing whenever a sparrow falls out of the sky, and knowing how many hairs are on our head!

Yes God knows it all and He’s concerned about what concerns me. He sees my tears and yours too! Psalm 56:8 says “Thou tellest my wanderings: Put thou my tears into thy bottle: Are they not in thy book?”
‭if He saves my tears in a bottle, is He not concerned about what’s making me cry?
So that’s how to pray through emotions and be able to hear from God. I hope it was helpful.

Thanks for listening and if you read this far, I was also thinking today about just one reason of why it’s good to pray in the Spirit. There are many reasons but here’s one:

When I say pray in the Spirit, I’m talking about praying in tongues. With all this evil in the world it’s very easy to pray things from my own point of view; after all I’m me! Lol But our view needs to be God’s view.

If we pray our view it is very easy to pray for the wrong thing just like James and John ,Jesus’ disciples did in Luke 9:54 “And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did?”
The one good thing is they just didn’t command that to happen but they asked Jesus for His point of view . AND they quickly found out their point of view wasn’t God’s point of view :

“But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them. And they went to another village.” Luke‬ ‭9‬:‭55‬-‭56‬

So here’s my point: there are many voices in the world today. How do you correctly interpret them? You need to know the mind of Christ. How can you be sure you’re praying the mind of Christ and not just what you think should happen?

You pray in the Spirit: in tongues, your HEAVENLY language that God gave you . Romans 8:26-28 tells us:
“Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”
‭‭Romans‬ ‭26-28
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So what do we do then? We begin praying for something in English, our native language, and we bring the need before the throne of the Father , and then we switch into praying in tongues after we have prayed in the English, and as we pray in tongues the Holy Spirit will speak in His still small voice to our spirit man and give us further insight on the situation and how to pray for the Father’s will on the matter.

We never pray IF it be Your will because He reveals His will to us! Jeremiah 33:3 says:
“Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.”

‭So, the Holy Spirit is our Helper, but we are the doer, the one who does the effective praying for God’s will to be manifested on earth as it is in heaven.

So prayer is like a wonderful symphony playing a classical piece of music: the first movement of prayer is in our native language which flows into the second movement of praying in tongues, our heavenly language. And so it goes, flowing back and forth, intertwining our lives more and more with the Holy Spirit making us to look and be more like our Father in heaven and declaring His will on earth.

Thank you Father for the gift of the Holy Spirit and for my heavenly language that reveals Your heart to mine, this enabling me to know and be more like you, my Dad. (James 1:17, 1 John 3:2, Matt 22:19-21).

“Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.”
‭‭3 John‬ ‭1‬:‭2‬ ‭
Have a blessed evening.

‭‭ “For if I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful. What is it then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also: I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also.”
‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭14‬:‭14‬-‭15‬ ‭