Living Centered in Prayer between Rigidity and Complacency: Grace and Movement

I have two small children. Let me tell you that there have been many prayers prayed in the middle hours of the night. Albeit those prayers were more like “Please let this baby stop crying,” “please make my baby go back to sleep,” and “please don’t let the rest of the family get this nasty stomach bug.” To make matters worse, I am SO. NOT. A morning person. So you can imagine that when someone begins talking about rising early (and the definition of early is 3 or 4 am!!!) I am likely to have a conniption fit. EM Bounds, and his chapter titled “Much Time Should Be Given To Prayer,” may very well be the source of this future outburst.

Now, I realize there is quite the culture shift from his time of writing (late 1800s-early 1900s). So in a small part of my mind, I feel like I can explain away his account of men who have put a priority on prayer and have risen early and given many hours to prayer due to the difference in era. But I think what gets under my skin most is: he’s right. “Much time spent with God is the secret of all successful praying.” He accounts many men (Charles Simeon, Joseph Alleine, Robert McCheyne, Paul, Daniel, David and Christ) who spent innumerable hours spending time with God in prayer as a lifestyle and as the highest priority (and sometimes the only item) on their To-Do lists. Many of these men woke up at 3 or 4 am to spend a few hours in prayer at the start of their day. Which, as a mom, I can attest that if I wake up at 3 or 4, my children will be waking up at 3 or 4. I swear they have the most selective hearing ever! Back to the point, though…

In the last few years, since I’ve become a mom, I have grown very fond of looking at experiences through a new lens. This lens is called “Phase of Life.” Realizing what phase of life you are in and how that can affect certain areas of your life has been very freeing for me. I’ve been able to find some grace for myself. It may sound bad to some, but I’ve lowered my expectations; not in a way of settling, but in a way of setting realistic definitions of success and reachable goals for this season of life that I’m in. For the most part, I’m able to keep my head strong about this, and surrounding myself with people who encourage me towards this level of grace as a mom, a woman, and as a person is super helpful.

But then there’s EM Bounds who isn’t as helpful and who doesn’t seem so supportive of my new lens. However, I do want to point out that I appreciate his tone and view that is centered on spending time with God as a part of a RELATIONSHIP. His writing didn’t come across as a set of rules where you check off each hour and that’s what makes you a good Christian or gets you into eternal life with Jesus. He’s very clear when he says “The men who have most fully illustrated Christ in their character, and have most powerfully affected the world for him, have been men who spent so much time with God as to make it a notable feature of their lives.” What makes me feel guilty or less than enough is when EM Bounds quotes Luther: “If I fail to spend two hours in prayer each morning, the devil gets victory through the day.” As I start to better identify my feelings about the point I think he’s trying to make, I realize that my feeling is not guilt, but conviction. Oh how often has my day been dictated by impatience, selfishness, pride, guilt and shame, and other feelings that make it seem that “the devil gets victory through the day.”

I think I’m also feeling convicted because I realized that in some part of my mind and heart, I thought “Well since I can’t spend multiple hours in prayer with this phase of life, I suppose I just won’t even try.” The flip side of looking at life through a lens of my season, is that I have let the pendulum swing from a healthy medium. On one side there’s complacency, on the other there’s rigidity; in the middle, there’s grace! I’ve climbed the side to complacency. The line between grace and complacency has gotten thin for me. I’ve gotten caught up and become ok with not spending time with God in prayer because “I’m busy” – which let’s be real…sometimes being “busy” means I just spent all of the kids’ 2 hour nap time scrolling through Facebook and watching home makeover shows. I can tell you that I have not come away from those instances refreshed or renewed. But give me 15 minutes reading Scripture, praying and listening to some worship music, and I feel like I could conquer the day with the Lord by myside, guiding me and renewing me.

So now the trick is to hold all these ideas in a healthy tension. I can have grace for myself and create realistic expectations, but also respond to the nudging in my Spirit to spend more time in God’s presence. I can spend more time in prayer, but not feel like that amount of time has to be 4 hours beginning at 4 am. Allowing myself to be moved by the Holy Spirit, and not others’ expectations, to define my time in prayer is a point of learning for me. That would require me to begin somewhere, though. It would require even spending a short amount of time each day in God’s presence. So I’ll be starting there.

Cart or Horse? Am I getting ahead of myself?

When I originally thought about embarking on the “EM Bounds Journey,” I was excited to learn about prayer. I wanted to know the x, y, and z of how I should be praying. I was feeling like my prayers were bouncing off the ceiling. It sometimes felt like I was talking to an imaginary friend or possibly even just talking to myself. I was feeling lost at how to know that I really was connecting with the Lord. I had questions about what prayer really is. How should I pray? Does God answer my prayers just because I pray them or would they get answered even if I didn’t pray? What am I “allowed” to pray for? What does it feel like to be in REAL prayer? Why do some seem to be answered and some don’t? I know that prayer is talking and listening to God, but I felt like there were still some unanswered questions about how to have a life built on prayer and to pray prayers that were transformational for myself, for others and the world around me.

Until I read this chapter (Chapter 6-A Praying Ministry Successful), I was feeling like the cart was coming before the horse. I enjoyed Bounds’ writing and have been inspired by what he’s writing, but I wanted to know specifics and mechanics of prayer. Give me a formula and I’ll pray exactly how I’m supposed to. However, I thought about Bounds’ approach, and ultimately thought about what God is calling me to in prayer, I realized there’s so much more to it than praying with a bounded, formula, rules-based plan.

I’m a pretty big fan of the tv show Friends. There’s an episode where Phoebe (the eclectic, kind of strange, hippie-ish character who plays guitar and sings) is teaching Joey (the goofy, absent-minded bachelor, actor) how to play the guitar. Joey automatically assumes that he’ll start learning by playing an actual guitar, but Phoebe is quick to tell him that until he masters the chord positions with his hands by practicing on an “air guitar,” he doesn’t get to touch the real thing. While comical in the show, this parallels how I feel the Lord leading me with prayer. I need to examine the position of my heart, the mentality in which I approach prayer, and then I can dive deeper into the more specifics of who, what, where, when and how to pray.

Bounds knew better which was the cart and which was the horse. He knew that we first had to realize that prayer is the ESSENTIAL piece to preaching, ministry and at the bottom line, life. He knew that it wasn’t about praying specific words in a specific order in a specific place, but that prayer was how we abided with God. He knew that prayer was a position the heart had to be in and that that position had to be fully connected to God. As he says, “He [a prayerful minister] is deeply stored with and deeply schooled in the things of God. His long, deep communings with God about his people and the agony of his wrestling spirit have crowned him as a prince in the things of God. The iciness of the mere professional has long since melted under the intensity of his praying.” Bounds points out that the essence of prayer and the essential piece of having a truly successful ministry is that we are SO caught up with God, that we know so much about Him, and the we are so focused on Jesus. He reminds us that once prayer is the center of who we are and what we do, then our ministry will be successful; not on a professional level, where numbers of people or how flashy our preaching is are the only things that matter, but successful for the Kingdom of God and the work He is doing in and through us.

Later in the chapter, I did start to feel like I was scratching the surface of more specific guiding on how to pray and what prayer looks and feels like. But even in these descriptions, he didn’t lay out a yearly praying plan or a 10 step program to have your prayers answered. He still put things in a relational and centered-on-Jesus kind of light. Bounds writes, “God to them [God’s true preachers] was the center of attraction, and prayer was the path that led to God….they so prayed that their prayers entered into and shaped their characters; they so prayed as to affect their own lives and the lives of others; they so prayed as to make the history of the Church and influence the current of the times.” My heart is stirred. My heart is refreshed at reading this. I am reminded how big prayer is. I’m reminded that prayer is a lot about learning who God is by following “the path that led to God.” I’m reminded that it’s partially about my life, but a lot about the lives of people around me and the world around me. I’m reminded that I should be praying in a way that forms who I am. And through the examples of men of the Bible who prayed well “Paul, a striving with earnest effort of soul; what it was to Jacob, a wrestling and prevailing; what it was to Christ, “strong crying and tears,” Bounds begins to lay out for me a “plan” for praying. “They ‘prayed always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance.”

So how then how am I going to go forward with prayer?: centered, character-shaping, fervent, striving, earnest, wrestling, prevailing, and often I will be praying with strong crying and tears.

Not all my questions are answered in this one little chapter, but I can feel the Lord moving in new ways in my heart and life of prayer. He’s moving me to see prayer not as a formula to get an answer that I want or even an answer at all, but instead seeking Him to change me, move me, to get to know Him and to help change the lives of people and the world around me. 

What are you?! Two?!

Being a mom of toddlers, I am fully familiar with tantrums. Full on “kicking, flailing, sticking-your-tongue-out, hitting the air” tantrums.

Let me tell you, this week….Oh boy….  I want to throw a tantrum. Yep. Me. And maybe even a tantrum that would put my kids’ episodes to shame.

But it’s not even my kids' tantrums that are making me feel like this. It’s…my own flesh.

Do you ever feel like you know what needs to be done, or how you should act in situations, but inside there is a full-out 2 or 3 year old child screaming “But I don’t want to!!!!”?

In the last couple weeks, I don’t want to be the first one to be nice, I want someone to love me while I’m yelling…. I don’t want to be thankful for what I have, I want more…. I don’t want to give more of myself, I just want to sail away on a 15 day cruise….I don’t want to forgive the wrong, I want them to know how much they hurt me…

Now, I realize, especially now that it’s written for all to see (or at the very least for my Dad to see) that this is quite ugly. And yet the toddler in me still yells “I don’t care. I’m tired. I’m having feelings. And I don’t want to!”

So – how appropriate that, among other things the Lord has been using to call out my toddler-like behavior, EM Bounds would write in this chapter:

“Praying is spiritual work; and human nature does not like taxing, spiritual work. Human nature wants to sail to heaven under a favoring breeze, a full, smooth sea. Prayer is humbling work. It abases intellect and pride, crucifies vainglory, and signs our spiritual bankruptcy, and all these are hard for flesh and blood to bear. It is easier not to pray than to bear them.”

I know I need to pray. But boy is my flesh and my pride in the way. Part of me thinks that I can get by without prayer. Part of me knows what the Lord might call me to or put His finger on if I truly pray in a REAL way. A way “which is born of vital oneness with Christ and the fullness of the Holy Ghost.” Not just a habitual way, but praying in a manner that shows I don’t take it lightly. Thus, for me lately, it has been easier not to pray.

And maybe even worse, as EM Bounds suggests, I’ve come to a point of praying a little. You know, the prayers at dinner. The prayers before bed. The quick prayers for people to feel better. “Little praying is a kind of make-believe, a salvo for the conscience, a farce and a delusion.” Oof.

I suppose this summary is more of a confession. Hi, my name is Sarah and I’m a habitual, little prayer. It’s a reality check. A litmus test of where I’m at with prayer. I don’t have much of a solution at the moment. Everything I want to write as a conclusion to this write-up, and what I wish could be a solution permanently to this issue in my prayer life, doesn’t seem to really give any direction or answer to my dilemma. But I do hold onto hope, while daily taking “up my cross and following,” through this verse: Galatians 2:20 “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”

Spending the time in oneness prayer and living from that place will allow me to focus on my new and true identity.  It is Christ who lives in me. Christ who loved me. Christ who GAVE Himself UP for ME. And if He gave Himself for me in such a way, I can love Him back by dying to my flesh.

This true identity of who I am since Christ lives in me just might keep my own toddler tantrums at bay.

Living in the (PRAYER) Closet

Dear Person Who Is Ministering:

You who may be a woman or a man. You who may be working as a professional in ministry work or you who earn a living in some other form and simple strive to show Jesus to those around you in your everyday life:

Are you praying? No, seriously. (Don’t you scoff at me) I know…we are Jesus-followers; Christians. It feels like a given. But, are you prayerfully praying? Are you praying only for your dinner, saying cute things like “Rub a dub dub, thanks for the grub”? Simply typing “Praying” after a social media status update, and possible forgetting later to actually pray for them? Spending a few minutes with your kids before bed praying? Praying that the people with the “Need Gas” sign on the side of the road would find help…from someone else?

I am.

Are you tired? If you’re anything like me, “I’m tired” is among the top responses I hear when I ask others how they are doing. We’re busy people. If you find yourself employed into a place of ministry, like I do, church can become work. Things to do. Lessons or sermons to plan. Crafts to create or worship services to coordinate.  Books to study and sermons to write. Curriculum to organize and volunteers to locate. Trying hard to meet expectations for events, sermons, or programs. And even if you aren’t a professional person of ministry, in our daily lives, as we try to live like Jesus, we could get caught up in the details, the mundane that has to be done. Possibly even losing our fire and forgetting to fix our eyes on Jesus. Are you tired?

Because I am.

I can tell you, despite being four chapters into a book that challenges me in how to pray and warns about the lack of prayer, I’m not prayerfully praying and I am tired. “Even sermon-making, incessant and taxing as an art, as a duty, as a work, or as a pleasure, will engross and harden, will estrange the heart, by neglect of prayer, from God.” EM Bounds warns that we can get so caught up in the work of everything, whether it be a sermon, another church program, or our day-to-day happenings, that without prayer, we can become isolated and hardened without prayer.

I LOVE the following paragraph: “Prayer freshens the heart of the preacher, keeps it in tune with God and in sympathy with the people, lifts his ministry out of the chilly air of profession, fructifies routine and moves every wheel with the facility and power of a divine unction.” *DEEP BREATH AND SIGH*!!!

Prayer refreshes. Prayer ignites. Prayer moves. Prayer helps us stay connected to God to bear His fruit AND (let’s be real here) helps us deal with people like Jesus would have us to!

I used to teach a classroom of kids on Sunday mornings. They were adorable (usually) and so fun (usually). The lesson was provided for me, the supplies were all there each Sunday, and I pretty much had to show up, love on kids, put to use some teaching skills I’d learned along the way in my teacher’s education program, and have fun. And I did. I LOVED working with the kids and seeing them come closer to Jesus. I loved praying with them and for them. I loved playing games to help them memorize verses and apply the lessons key points. However, after a while, I felt empty. I felt tired. I felt “engrossed and hardened,” “estranged,” like I was fulfilling a duty or working. I felt this way because I was not connected to God. I was neglecting myself from Him by only showing up to teach. I wasn’t even staying for a service so I could hear from Him in a sermon. Much less was I abiding with Him through prayer; the prayer that could refresh and ignite me.

Let’s consider this: “The praying which makes a prayerful ministry is not a little praying put in as we put flavor to give it a pleasant smack, but the praying must be in the body, and form the blood and bones.” (EM Bounds p 15) Bounds puts it clearly in this chapter that prayer must come first. Work, duty and activity come second. Prayer is the “blood and bones,” the foundation; nothing good can come of our ministry if we don’t pray first. He says “prayer is not petty duty; put into a corner; no piecemeal performance made out of fragments of time which have been snatched from business and other engagements of life; but it means that the best of our time, the heart of our time and strength must be given.” I hear God calling me and saying that He doesn’t just want my few minutes of “Please help this person” or “Thank you for this food.” Sure, these prayers have their place. But if that is the ONLY pieces of my life that I am giving Him, I am missing out. Seeking Jesus in prayer mainly, deeply and firstly is a must.

May you be spurred on by this, as I was: “Prayer is not a little habit pinned on to us while we were tied to our mother’s apron strings; neither is it a little decent quarter of a minute’s grace said over an hour’s dinner, but it is a most serious work of our most serious years. It engages more of time and appetite than our longest dinings or richest feasts…” “The character of our praying will determine the character of our preaching.” The way we live this out to others, in a sermon or at work, in a kids’ lesson or at the grocery store, is highly correlated to the time we spend in prayer.

Dear, person who is ministering, may we be refreshed and ignited because we did the work from a place of prayerful living. May we not be caught up in the work and duty of it all. May we not be tired any more. May we spend our LIVES in prayer; connected fully to the God who loves us and wants to be with us. May we, then and only then, minister to those around us out of that prayerful life.

Sincerely,

A Person Who Is Ministering 

"In the Hands of the Potter" -- How Not to Preach to Kill

Over the last couple of months, the story of Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-42) keeps showing up in my day to day life. A lesson I was preparing at my job. In an exercise at an Abiding Life workshop. Even a daily verse on the radio while driving. I’ve come to realize that when things keep coming to attention like that, it’s God’s way of saying “Listen up, daughter.” For me, what resonates in this story is the idea that Martha is working and Mary is sitting with Jesus.  Martha is upset. May I say, reasonably so. I mean, who likes getting stuck with all the dishes??? Who likes being the only one who seems to see that the carpet needs to be vacuumed??? Who wants to feel like they are the only one taking notice or care of the things that need to get done. (Can you tell I may have a little bit of the “Martha heart”) I know I’ve had a few weeks, where I just wish I could clone myself so that all the things I’m “in charge of” get taken care of. However, Jesus says “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.”  I think Jesus realized the reality that there REALLY WAS work to get done, but first and foremost, Mary chose to sit with Jesus and fix her eyes on Him. It’s about the fixing our eyes on Jesus. It’s about HIM being the core and center of what we do. Not fixing our eyes on the work. Colossians 3:23-24 says something similar. “And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ.” The work we do, the lives we lead, the sermons you might preach are not for men or for “works sake”, but for JESUS’ sake. 

So then, God brought this chapter of Power Through Prayer as a reminder yet again. Bounds writes “He [the preacher] has never been in the hands of God like clay in the hands of the potter. He has been busy about the sermon, its thought and finish, its drawing and impressive forces; but the deep things of God have never been sought, studied, fathomed, experienced by him.” How often I have “been busy”! We should be changed, moved, and formed at the feet of Jesus like Mary. Shaped in the Potter's hands.Our eyes have been so focused (whether on ourselves or on another) on “the thought and finish” and the “impressive forces” on how wonderful the sermon was for us, or whether we made a cool enough craft project for the kids. But Bounds says that this type of preaching, whether it be preaching with our lives, preaching with our jobs, or whether that is your job on a Sunday morning, this type of preaching kills. If we are preaching without praying first, we are preaching something that “has no deep insight into, no strong grasp of, the hidden life of God’s Word. It is true to the outside, but the outside is the hull which must be broken and penetrated for the kernel. The letter [the sermon] may be dressed so as to attract and be fashionable, but the attraction is not toward God nor is the fashion for heaven.” The work I do may have flashy lights and sounds, it may have a smooth flow to it, I may be happy the whole day without yelling at my kids once, I may help a homeless person – or maybe it’s like Bounds later describes that the preaching could be “without scholarship, unmarked by any freshness of thought or feeling, clothed in tasteless generalities.” For example, it’s a bad day and words like impatient, exasperated, worn out, unfocused, unmotivated describe my day. In either of these cases, what is at the center matters. No matter how my life, my work, my preaching looks from the outside, if my eyes are set on Jesus, if I’m focused on the “good part” which is Jesus then THAT won’t be taken away. Any of the “busy” work I do will someday pass, but the “one thing that is needed (Luke 10:42)” won’t.

So then what is “the kernel” that I should break through to? How do I not be “busy”? How do I make sure that Jesus is the center of the good or the bad days? Reluctantly and honestly, I almost don’t like how simple the answer is. I feel like there should be a step-by-step program I can follow, or a “10 ways to a more ‘less-busy’ day” Pinterest post that I can read. But the answer IS simple: PRAY. Not fluffy, drawn out, “long, discursive, dry and inane” prayer. But “direct, specific, ardent, simple, unctuous” prayer. “Short praying, live praying, real heart praying, praying by the Holy Spirit”! Full honesty: I’m guilty of praying word-filled prayers, both in private and out loud. Prayers that seem “right” at the time or only praying because I thought I “should”; sometimes what I’d say were eloquent prayers, and sometimes not, but either way, I’ve had many prayers that were only orthodoxy or “letter”-type prayers. They were outside works meant to give a certain persona. I’ve been convicted of this lately though, and the Holy Spirit is working in me to pray meaningful, although often simple and short prayers. What EM Bounds seems to shout out resonates so well with me: “How real we must be!” We are praying to our “great God, the Maker of all worlds, the Judge of all men!” And yet, Oh, how He loves us. Oh, how He WANTS us to call on Him in REAL, FULL, LIVE prayers. It is only with this type of living that “prayerful praying, life-creating preaching, bring the mightiest force to bear on heaven and earth and draw on God’s exhaustless and open treasure for the need and beggary of man!” (Bounds – Power Through Prayer – p 12-13)

I’ve heard from a friend, that when she traveled to Cambodia, people in groups often prayed all at the same time. My experience is always praying out loud, one after another. Their outlook is that the prayers are only for God and not for other people. While I think there is definitely a place for praying with and for someone and encouraging them by praying with them for a need, I have to say I’m extremely drawn to the Cambodian way of praying. For me, it removes the expectations that I’ve placed on myself and I can fully pray to God alone.

Let us be REAL. Let us allow ourselves to be known by the Creator, the King, our Friend.  Let us seek Jesus and fix our eyes on Him and Him alone as the center of all we do.

Let. Us. Pray.

Who Sits On Your Throne?

Sometimes when I’m singing worship in church, my mind starts to drift a little. I may get caught up in the meaning of the words, or get analytical, or maybe my mind wanders to the tasks I have still to finish that day. Maybe I even worry a little about those around me…(I’ll just be real.) But when my mind starts to wander, I often bring myself back into worshiping God by picturing my life and my heart as a throne-songs with word-pictures of the King of Kings and the Holy One especially bring this imagery to mind. The throne is big, over sized, and comfy looking. It’s in a huge open room. And it’s navy blue (but that’s beside the point though). What’s more important is that when I picture the throne of my heart, the “holy of holiest” (as EM Bounds says it), I often see myself sitting there. Or money. Or my pride. Or other people. Very rarely, at first, is God sitting there.

So, here’s what I do.

I PUSH them off.

Money, stop ruling my priorities. Self, stop acting like you can call all the shots. Pride, you are not as important and essential and “all that and a bag of chips” as you think you are. And people, I know I’m the one who put you there, but you really aren’t the one who should be ruling and occupying the throne.

These things should NOT be on the throne of my heart. When these things occupy the seat that should be filled by Someone else, my ministry, my authenticity, and the way I “preach” with my life suffers.

As I’m reading through Power Through Prayer by EM Bounds, this all comes to mind because he puts this into perspective. “Somehow self and not God rules in the holy of holiest. Somewhere, all unconscious to himself [the preacher], some spiritual nonconductor has touched his inner being, and the divine current has been arrested.” When something else is placed on the throne, God is no longer able to sit there. The ability for God’s power to flow through has been interrupted.

My life isn’t technically interrupted if other things replace the King of Kings. I can still “be” a Children’s Director, a mom, a wife, a daughter, a friend. I can still go through the actions of my life, but really, through this chapter, I’m being convicted that that’s all I’m doing; Going through the motions. Bounds says earlier in this chapter that “The life-giving preacher is a man of God, whose heart is ever athirst for God, whose soul is ever following hard after God, whose eye is single to God, and in whom by the power of God’s Spirit the flesh and the world have been crucified and his ministry is like the generous flood of a life-giving river.” While Bounds is referring mostly to Preachers who have an actual title as their job, I feel like it applies to us all. As people who preach Jesus with our lives, we have to subscribe to these thoughts too. Not just preachers from the pulpit, but we also must fix our eyes on Him and allow Him to sit on the throne. We have to thirst, focus and center on Jesus. Jesus must be the one sitting on the throne, ruling. He must be the one who breathes life into us. However, if the river is dammed up with other priorities or other focuses, the life-giving flood cannot flow through.

I love the picture painted for me as he also writes “The preaching that kills is the letter; shapely and orderly it may be, but it is the letter still, the dry, husky letter, the empty, bald shell. The letter may have the germ of life in it, but it has no breath of spring to evoke it; winter seeds they are, as hard as the winter’s soil, as icy as the winter’s air, no thawing nor germinating by them.” I can go through my life, the shell of it – actions, to-do lists, words, but never really have a breath of spring that really, truly brings what I do to life. I can even say that I’m doing something in the name of Jesus, but when the Spirit isn’t backing it, and the Lord isn’t the one sitting on the throne, then it won’t mean anything. If I’m still placing other things as the ruler in my life, I act as though I have the power to change things through my words and actions, and that is “the preaching that kills.”

I cringe a little when people say that you only have to do “good things” to have a good life or to “get to Heaven.” To me, those are the letters that Bounds describes as “dry, husky…empty, bald shell(s).” If I want it to truly have impact for God’s Kingdom, if I really want the Spirit to breathe through me into the lives of those around me, then I have to be so deeply rooted in prayer, so focused on Jesus, that I am dead to myself. I have to give up “my” spot on the throne, and clear it out for the one, true Ruler so that He is the One fulfilling my life and breathing life into every little thing I do.

How do you make sure that Jesus is the only one enthroned in your "holy of holiest" places?

In Word and Deed

Sometimes, truth hits me like a punch to the gut. The culprit this time? A quote from the first chapter in EM Bounds book Power Through Prayer (I can just imagine what punches are sure to come since this is just chapter 1!). “Every preacher who does not make prayer a mighty factor in his own life and ministry is weak as a factor in God’s work and is powerless to project God’s cause in this world.” Umph!

As someone who muddles through learning about Jesus and trying to follow Him, I’d like to think that prayer is one of the things that comes to mind first if I were to share about my spiritual disciplines. “OF COURSE I pray.” But to be completely honest with myself, it’s not something I’m really that consistent with. Sure, I pray for my friends who have things happening in their lives, and I pray out loud (awkwardly) at group functions sometimes, but I know there’s so much more that God has for me and my relationship with Him that comes through praying and talking with Him. Especially in the times that I hear God’s gentle voice calling, “Come close, let’s talk about you now.” Often I shy away or distract myself from that kind of deeper prayer life. It’s that guarded and hidden part of my heart that the Lord is after, and it’s really hard to let Him at it, even though I know in my head that He’s such a good, loving Father and a gentle King. If I don’t allow Him access to those places in my heart, and don’t allow Him to move and change me; if I don’t listen closely to what He shares with me; if I busy myself with all the THINGS that need to be done; then I am destined to become a rusty tool on the shelf – one that is of no use and one that does no GOOD work.

This first chapter, “Men of Prayer Needed” (I just add in WOMEN of Prayer Needed Too), strongly reaffirmed my realization that without prayer, our lives, our work and our words will mean nothing. Like in 1 Corinthians 13:1, without love (and I think Bounds would say prayer too-and I’d agree), I am a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. Prayer is talking with and hearing from God. Prayer is the basis for hearing what God would say, to me personally or through me for someone else. Like a game of “Telephone” – If I don’t hear well from the person giving me the message, or I don’t even attempt to listen to them at all, I’m left with a very changed message or possibly one that I felt I needed to make up all together. Just like in ministry, whether you’re a Pastor (as a job title) or someone ministering like Jesus has called all His disciples to, if I’m not connected to Him and hearing from Him, then I’m simply sharing my own thoughts and not truly sharing His infallible message.

I recently attended a day-long workshop at our church where we opened by hearing and sharing about what it meant to be a branch that is truly connected to The Vine (John 15:1-8).  This picture of the vine and branches parallels what Bounds says: “He [the preacher] makes or mars the message from God to man. The preacher is the golden pipe through which the divine oil flows.” If we aren’t connected, there will be no fruit; if we aren’t “open and flawless” vessels that can be used to transport God’s true words to others, then we are tarnishing and possibly even completely misrepresenting what God would want to say to people.

Misrepresentation can happen through the way we, as ministering people, live out our lives. I think this is especially true as we work to represent Christ to people who don’t know Him yet, but also to other Christ-followers who are listening and watching. As the saying goes “Actions speak louder than words.” As Bounds puts it, “The preaching is but a voice. The voice in silence dies, the text is forgotten, the sermon fades from memory; the preacher lives.” I want to be the kind of “pastor” that truly lives it out, the kind of person that people truly see Jesus through. “His [the preacher’s] most difficult, delicate, laborious and thorough work must be with himself.” I want to be the kind of minister (as in a person who ministers to others) that works on myself first, works on my own self in the most difficult ways, and shapes myself to be more and more a likeness of Christ. But I can only do that through prayer. I can only do that as I open my heart and let the Holy Spirit move in me, change me and THEN work through me. Prayer cannot just be a quick phrase to use on social media in response to someone’s troubles or a passing remark to replace “See you later.” It has to be the most intimate place where I bring myself and the troubles of this life to the Lord and a place where I hear from HIM. It should be a place where I work out what He is sharing with me as I allow His message to flow through my words and my life.