Today, as I was loading the dishwasher, cleaning up the lunch mess, and trying to restore some kind of order to my kitchen, I was enjoying the Ipod and the music from camp.
Lately, I’ve just felt all disheveled, just inner struggle, and I am looking for some kind of order for it. I sit at night and the early mornings and I read my Bible, more and more of it, like I’m starving, but it’s just not filling the entire need I have.
Today, it came to me: I need to overhaul my prayer time. I’ve overhauled my time spent in His Word, I need to overhaul my prayer time. I don’t know if it’s not enough, if it’s ineffective, rehearsed…I’m not sure.
So, I’m beginning a prayer journal. My existing one consists of scraps of paper with random names or needs strewn all over, mostly wherever I wrote them down…pictures in my Bible of people I want to remember and pray over…and miscelaneous pieces of memory that I’m trying to hold onto in my own head.
I am to make more of a concerted effort to set time aside for prayer specifically. I am to be more organized with it and set a time and a place for it rather than just wherever I happen to be.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand that I am to prayer wherever I am, for whatever I want to, but this is different. The instructions I’m getting are different, I’m not getting the answers because I’m not wholehearted with it, I’m random and disheveled in my prayers, that’s the feeling of inner struggle I’m getting. I don’t want random answers to my random prayers, I want purposeful answers to my purposeful prayers.
These are just thoughts…..of course I have to blog them. They are not meant to apply to anyone else, just myself.
These are things laid on my heart today. That’s all.
I have a book. Well, I probably have about 500 books, but there’s this ONE book, given to me by my Moms In Touch prayer partner a few months ago. I need to dig it out and (read it again and then) send it to you. It’s old.. written in the 70s, with some dated references, but it is GOOD. It opened my eyes to some of what we have to do to prepare ourselves for prayer; one of the main things is to confess our sins and cleanse ourselves first. I used to just plunge in… oh, I’d do the praise thing, but actually opening myself up and really searching for what needed to be forgiven? Not so much. You’re probably a ton better at that than I was, but I can say that, once I really opened my heart and asked HIM to search me, I began to understand the necessity of approaching Him CLEAN. It makes a huge difference, and it is humbling. very. (and darn it, there are times when I don’t get too far past all of the cleansing and confessing part, because it hasn’t been a good day… but at least I’m ready to hit it and get it the NEXT day… better than letting it clutter me up!). Anyway…let me dig out that book… and if you’ll email me your address, I will send it to you. Deal?