For those doing Prayer Summer with me:
It's Saturday morning and Linda and I are in Illinois at her sister's house. We had a delightful day yesterday with Lora and her husband Grady. We began by going to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and spent an hour and a half on a boat before the storms rolled in. Then we had an excellent lunch together.
No one else is awake yet so I'm sending this off and going apart to meet with God. To pray is to meet with the Maker of heaven and earth, about what He and I are doing together. This is a today-thing. God is doing stuff this day, and I get to be part of it.
I'm so thankful you are doing PS with me. My heart is to encourage and challenge Jesus-followers like you to have a life of prayer, which means: to be actually praying.
Why pray? Well, all the Old Testament God-leaders prayed. The early church gathered and prayed. Paul had a deep, constant prayer life. But even more important than this: Jesus prayed. Often. Who, then, am I to say I don't have time to pray?
When we see praying as foundational to our relationship with God and abiding in Christ, we will understand how important it is. A prayerless church will be an out-of-touch-with-God church. Prayerlessness renders the people of God irrelevant, impotent, and inauthentic.
I want to be part of reconnecting people to God, via praying. Or, to strengthen an already-existing prayefulness, since we all have room to grow.
Three weeks of PS have passed. How are you doing? Remember this is not to be some "striving" or "trying harder" thing. The reason it doesn't have to be like that is because this is about a relationship. If I have to strive to take time communicating with Linda, then my marriage is in trouble. Real relationships don't need to be pressured or guilt-manipulated.
God has called his people to pray. That's what we're doing, together. The 30-60 minutes a day, 5 days a week idea is one I believe God gave me. I pass this on to you. My prayer is that this will ignite your conferencing with your Lord.
I bless you now with a deep, abiding prayer-relationship with the One who knows and calls you by name.
