1 Kings 19:11-15 (The Message)
Then Elijah was told, "Go, stand on the mountain at attention before God.
God will pass by."
I had grand plans for my blog this week. It was going to be all about music and prayer, how David used the Psalms to pray, and most were meant to be sung. It was a sort of "happy-fun-week-of-prayer."
However, my week has been less than happy and fun, and the prayer times have been less deliberate and more desperate. In other words, I was really too sad at times to pray formally. Most of my prayer times this week have been just sitting in silence.
Sounds weird, praying without really saying anything, waiting on God to speak to me. Needing the Holy Spirit to say something for me to God, since I didn't really have anything to offer. There are days and weeks when I have prayed by listening to the silence and received comfort, answers, revelations and opportunities to serve.
I did not always realize that God spoke in silences. There was a time in my life when I filled every waking moment with noise. My husband, Robert, loves the news..he tends to listen to it very loud. I was constantly either listening to music in the car, on my headphones, when working out or playing guitar. My feelings on silence and prayer changed one night after Robert and I went to dinner with 2 other couples.
One of the men remarked how he had led a group of people in prayer by waiting on God, then when one person had received an indication on someone to serve, they went as a group to serve that person. (I was thinking..woh dude, you are out there!) We all agreed to go to our church and sit at the foot of a very large cross...and wait on the Spirit. I was incredibly uncomfortable at first. It was SO quiet. No one said a word. After a bit, one of the ladies said the Spirit revealed there was a lady who needed prayers- at a coffee shop across town. During the prayer/silence my mind was just wandering with random thoughts about a song I needed to write. It still seemed pretty crazy. We got in our cars and went across town.
The lady that needed prayers was the owner of the coffee shop. Her father had Alzheimer's and they were about to put him into a nursing home. He was sitting with her in the coffee shop. We put our hands on them and prayed.
Robert and I went home. I woke up at 3 a.m. and wrote down the song.
It began like this...
Storms are blowin on the wind
Filling us with fear....
but a still small voice is calling to us
If only we will hear
Breathe, sigh, moan and cry..
call on me Spirit of God
The Spirit is singing, breathing and bringing,
peace at the foot of the cross.
I think if I had not sat in silence, the Spirit would never have revealed those powerful words of prayer to me.
Maybe you don't know what to pray today. Maybe you even doubt God's presence. He seems perhaps far far away. Maybe you are sad or tongue tied. The Spirit is the middle man, and He is saying the words you cannot form. There is value to sitting and listening to the silence. It is a time when we realize that prayer doesn't have to fit a mold, or be just one way-street. Silence just requires patience and time. It is simple. God set it up so perfectly. He knew sometimes we would be unable to express ourselves in the way we want to. So He provided a Spirit to help.
Romans 8:26-27
Meanwhile the moment we get tired in the waiting, God's Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don't know how or what to pray, it doesn't matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves.
God is not going to knock us down with a hurricane or remove our headphones from our ipod touch with a fire...He is going to be in the quiet whisper, and we might miss it if our life's volume is turned up too high.
I am going to sit in the silence again today. Who knows, maybe I will get my happy-fun song after all.
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