Tuesday, August 4, 2020

pray heavy...as my mother-in-law would say























The other day,
when I read that the Bubonic plague was found in Mongolia
and a brain-eating bacteria has turned up in Florida,
I decided I needed a break from the headlines.
For a year. Or maybe a decade.
The news leaves me feeling distraught and powerless.
What can be done? How can I help? Why are there murder hornets?

We need some good, strong prayers in the world today, don't we?
Yes, we do. But there is a problem.

Praying has never been an easy road for me.
The commitment. The discipline. The focus.
It tends to allude me.

Don't get me wrong.
I shoot up prayers to Jesus all the time.

Please.
Help.
Thank you.
I love you.

But that deep, rich prayer life that my Grandma had, praying for each of us grandkids every day?
I have yet to master.

My husband, Scott, has a firm prayer discipline in his life.
He sets aside an hour each to pray and connect with God.

I, on the other hand, can start praying about a friend's broken marriage and
end up thinking about  avocados and how they are so versatile in a  taco dinner.

I have this cringe-y feeling that maybe Jesus, listening to my prayers,
ready to advocate on my behalf, is thinking,
"There she goes thinking about avocados again."

The thing is....I want to...want to pray.
I know it is essential. I know I am made for it.
I want to have the daily connection to the One Who loves me most of all,
Who moved heaven and earth for my salvation,
Who has a plan and purpose for my life.

He has enough love and grace for each and every person in this world
no matter what they are facing.
But how can I be like Him or learn from Him if I don't hang out with Him?

So I ordered two books on prayer.
An Inner Step Towards God by Father Alexander Men,
a Russian Orthodox priest who was martyred in 1990
and
Prayer by Tim Keller.

They are rocking my world.
I can not get through a page of Prayer without putting it down and crying.
Because it is convicting me to my core.
This statement laid me out flat for a good hour:

To fail to pray, then, is not to break some religious rule - it is a failure to treat God as God.

Take it easy, Tim Keller, you are killing me over here.

And Father Alexander Men is just as challenging.
He says,

"How happy, how stable, how brave, how free is the one who is able to feel these words
deep down inside and run them through his heart, "Thy will be done." Yet let us never forget
that, in reality, we constantly come up against the exact opposite, "My will be done.""

If only he knew how frequently that happens.
I am all about my will being done.
In fact, I often pray that Jesus would do my will instead of His.
I don't say that in so many words, but that is my motivation.
Fix the world, Jesus. Make everything go the way I want it to go. Amen.

And this is the crux of it. In this moment in time, when I want what I want,
Jesus is reminding me Who He is. All knowing. All powerful. All loving.
He's in charge. He is on the move. He is full of peace and hope.
No matter what is happening on a global scale,
if I want to be like Him, I actually need to hang out with Him.

Jesus is inviting my selfish, fearful, anxious soul to turn towards Him.
To lean into His grace and mercy and forgiveness and to be with Him.

My mother-in-law has a group of friends who pray regularly together.
Whenever I call with a request, she says, "Me and the girls are praying heavy."

I love the weight of that statement.
Those heavy prayers are anchored in the power of the Almighty.

So I am starting over.
I am learning to pray a new way.
I am recognizing the pull of my self-centered, worry-laden desires and choosing to say,
"Jesus, you are God. I want what you want. No matter what."

It is not a perfect prayer. But then Tim Keller says that is not a thing.
Prayer is a journey. A song. A reckoning. An intimate conversation.

In these times of great turmoil, I want to anchor my life in the power of the Almighty.
Care to join me?







3 comments:

Unknown said...

You are still one of my favorite authors! I was happy to share this! Thanks,Susannah!

tired supergirl said...

Thanks so much for your encouragement! God bless you tons!

Unknown said...

This was a special message, as I struggle with prayer, too. Thank you for your refreshing honesty.