Making My Prayer List
I remember the last time I was waiting to pray. I was walking along making a mental list of all the things I had to talk to God about when I had my nightly prayer time.
Feeling a sense of urgency because I thought, I have to get home and write these down before I forget.
I said a quick prayer: “Lord help me to remember all the things that I have to tell you tonight”.
Then I stopped in my tracks.
“Wait,” I said to myself, “are you nuts?”
I have just talked to God and asked him to help me remember all the things I have to talk to him about tonight. How does that make any sense?
At this point I could just hear Him giggling away to Himself: “Richard finally gets it”.
All those years I spent thinking that I had to wait till my set prayer times to say anything to God when he is my constant companion. He is always with me. He never leaves me. I am always made aware of His presents. Yet I was somehow convinced that I could only talk to Him at set times.
To this day I have never again tried to remember anything that I had to say to God.
No Need To be Waiting To Pray
If I need something, I ask for it. Someone asks for prayer, and I pray. I see something that makes me just jump for joy I praise Him. Am I receiving a blessing, I thank Him. Right then and right there. I don’t do it out loud. I am not that extroverted and I have no need to be. In fact, nobody need ever know that I have ever said anything to God. But He knows.
A funny thing happened; I found myself just having quiet intimate conversations with the Lord of the universe, sometimes about the most trivial of things, and thinking nothing of it.
Am I being irreverent? I don’t think so.
If God is with me all the time, then anywhere I am, He is. There is a very real sense in which there is nowhere that you could be that is not Holy ground, just because of His presence. That is not to say that there aren’t place that are specially consecrated for prayer and that we should not seek those out and use them appropriately. It does mean that there is nothing and no place that I can be, that can be a barrier between The Creator and Master of everything and me.
I was reminded of all this when I read Colin Stott’s Finding Time To Pray.
Thanks, Colin.
Richard
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