How is your prayer life? How do you pray? Since I was a little girl hiding, nursing bruises and a broken spirit among the flowers in our garden, I've talked with God like a friend, my best friend. Sometimes I ramble. I have a feeling sometimes I get on His last nerve because I'll get started and just go on and on, one thing leading to another. But when I was a little girl sitting in the flower bed feeling the velvety petals and knowing that God was in the flowers, I would just talk to Him. I had no friends, no one else I could talk to, so God got to hear it all. I have gone through periods in my life where I haven't really prayed, not daily prayer, just occasional things like "Oh my God, Bee isn't breathing please don't let her die." Things like that. But then there have been periods when I've prayed a lot. In the last couple of years I pray daily, rambling. I usually fall asleep talking with God. I bet He is usually pretty thrilled when I drift off, too, cause I can go on and on.
Tonight, I watched War Room. Now, normally I'm not into Christian movies. They are usually very poorly done, the writing is bad, the acting worse. I had high hopes for God's Not Dead but was terribly disappointed. I will say that The Encounter with Bruce Marchiano was really very good. He plays a very convincing Jesus. Me, Again was cute and Christmas Angel . . . well, it was excellent and we love Della Reese ( especially Bee, she loves hearing her sing ) but the movie makes me feel lonely so I don't like to watch it so we skipped it this past Christmas season. Anyway, my point is that most Christian movie are not very good. I wasn't sure what to expect from War Room. What I got was excited, encouraged, and inspired.
Every single night I pray the same things, the same way. Since I went a little crazy I'm a tiny bit OCD so there are some things that are just going to stay the same because my brain - even with my magic pills - is telling me bad things will happen if they don't. That's fine, God understands. I have a very small life, I know, personally, exactly 32 people and I pray for each of them every night, plus some people that Noah knows and has mentioned. I even pray for my ex-husband and his now ex-wife because I'm hoping one day my prayers for them to be blessed will be sincere. But, in the end, my prayers are always the same: God bless this person, this person, and so on, occasionally adding a specific thing like heal them or help them with a particular issue, then I get to my kids, myself and then, well, I ramble. I ramble about things that bother me in the world, my worries, lots of what if's and existential blah blah blah (for the record and this has nothing to do with my recent crazy, I believe in aliens or the possibility and it doesn't challenge my faith in God or belief in the bible at all), then I read my daily devotion and the accompanying scripture, my usual comforting bible passages, look at the news quickly to see if anything jumps out that needs a little prayer and then I'm done. Same thing, for two years. And it's fine, I think, But it isn't enough. It's more like when my father would call his parents on Sunday afternoons to catch up and check in. Nothing exciting, nothing new but changes in the weather, same conversation every week.
But this movie, it made me think.. Not that I haven't been thinking about it, my prayer life, but I've been kind of stymied. Without the chance to get to church, I'm kind of on my own in this. I'm in the middle of the sea with no land in sight, just swimming in whatever direction is easiest.
Prayer shouldn't be like that, though. Prayer should be so much more than just the usual everyday stuff. I mean, sure, you can have that. That's great, gabbing with your bestie God. But it needs to be more.
As a rather . . . reserved . . . person, I'm not going to jump around and scream "Hallelujah!" or anything like that. In fact, I consider my relationship with God to be the most intimate, private relationship I have. But there is certainly room for more passion, more enthusiasm, more time and commitment, more listening, more focus.
My kids are both finally asleep so I'm going to head that way myself. But a thought to drift off on - how do I create a revolution in my prayer life?
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