Knee Mail over email

12/14/2011

Weather Report From Heaven: Sunny and bright, with an abundance of light and lots of singing and rejoicing.

Bible Verse of the Day: Ephesians 6:18 " And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints."

We live in a highly distracted world. Busyness seems to be an important element of feeling good about ourselves in this technology driven world. We feel justified that life is going good when we are busy. We don't have time to worry about all the things that are wrong in our lives when we are busy. Email is a constant reminder of how much we have to do and how "busy" we are. It is also a great cause of so much stress, as we never seem to have enough time to do it all and still leave time for ourselves and the pleasure we deserve. I believe that busyness is the devil's way of distracting us from God's power and purpose in our lives. When we are distracted, we are not engaged in the things that God most desires for us, and that is a blossoming relationship with Him. Instead of Email, we should be focusing on Knee Mail! Time spent in prayer with our Lord is the key to being renewed, refreshed and reinvigorated. Our souls are in need of rest,and that can only come through the source of the unremitting water found in the living God, Jesus Christ, tapped into through prayer. We can toil around under our own efforts, trying to act busy, but in the end that will only lead to weariness and futility. This was clearly illustrated in the Psalm 127:1-2, when it states " Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stand guard in vain. In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat- for He grants sleep to those he loves." We can be so much more productive when we are in tune with the Lord through prayer rather than when we are trying to look busy for the accolades of man. Praying is key for many different reasons, but mostly because when we are close to the wisdom of God, we get thoughts that we wouldn't necessarily get on our own. Good thoughts are possible on our own, but God thoughts come only through prayer. Prayer helps us to catch the opportunities that God throws our way. Living in prayer mode is the difference between seeing coincidences and Providences in our lives. When we pray, Providences happen. When we don't pray, they don't happen. It is really that simple. One of the amazing gifts of the Holy Spirit through prayer is that we don't have to manufacture opportunities. He just helps to bring them our way. It is a great part of God's portfolio. He prepares God ordained opportunities that are awaiting us when we tap into them through prayer. God opportunities is His gift to us. What we do with them is our gift to Him. Our job is to seize those opportunities that He presents to us. I believe there are some keys to an effective prayer life and most of them are quite obvious. We must take time out of our day to spend time alone with God. If we need to get up early or stay up late, than that is what we should do. It is in quiet time with God that we learn to hear his still, small voice that leads us. We don't need to prepare a whole list of agenda items, but we need to just be still with him and let Him lead us. Sometimes, we should just come to Him and say, Lord I don't know what to say to you to you right now, but trust that You know what I need to hear. Please let me seek your wisdom and have you reveal it to me. We must trust in the Lord's answers when we pray to Him. Sometimes the answers we get may not be what we want to hear, but they will always be the best way for us. He sometimes will tell us no, but when He does we must trust that it is for our protection and out of His love. That is one of the hardest things to get our arms around. We always want things in our time and with our plans, but many times that would lead to a less than optimal outcome. We need to completely put our trust and faith in Him. C.S Lewis once said that " I am sure that someday I will be more grateful for my prayers that didn't get answered rather than the ones that did." That is simply because some of our prayers are misguided and would be damaging to us if answered. Sometimes are prayers are simply out of alignment with God's will. We pray for comfort instead of character. We pray for the easy way out of a situation, instead of the strength to make it through. We pray for no pain, when the result would be no gain, and maybe rob us of the opportunity to glorify Him in the end. Maybe we should stop asking God to get us out of difficult circumstances and start asking Him what He wants us to get out of the difficult circumstances we are in. There are many practical aspects of the benefits of prayer. When we are praying, we take our attention of off of us, and put it onto God. This instantly helps relieve stress in our lives because it changes our perceptions from what is wrong with us, to what is right with God. We find that most of our problems are not circumstantial, but perceptual. We re-frame our problems and it is like hitting the refresh key on our computers. When we pray for others and their needs, we align ourselves with the humility of Christ. We put others first in our thoughts and that selflessness is a sign of humility that God appreciates. Prayer helps us to be less self conscious and more God conscious. As Paul states in the Bible verse above, we should learn to pray on all occasions as this brings glory to God, who seeks a continual, interactive relationship with us through Christ Jesus. When we are happy, we should praise God. When we are going through difficult moments, we should seek God. When we are in quiet moments, we should worship God. When we are going through painful times, we should trust God and in every moment of our days and our life, we should thank God, for who He and how much He has revealed His love for us in Jesus Christ. What keeps us from an effective prayer life? What inhibits us from time alone with God? I believe the biggest one is our feelings of guilt and unworthiness. We just don't think that God would care about us because of all of the sin in our lives. But if that were the case, than there would be no one praying on earth, because we are all sinners. However, for our prayers to be effective, we must come before God cleansed from our sins. We must simply ask for Him to reveal those areas of our lives where we have fallen short and ask Him to clean us from those sins, and then we can stand before Him cleansed and He can hear our prayers free from the inhibition of our sins. Isaiah warns us that our sins can keep Him from hearing us and our prayers from being effective in 59: 1-2 when he says " Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear to dull to hear, but your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that He will not hear." I believe we also must concentrate on our praying. We must put down our mobile devices and our busyness, and learn to grasp God's power, love, omniscience and holiness. We must stay focused on Him and give Him room for His glory in our lives. We also are inhibited by our fears of praying wrong. Our over-analysis leads to paralysis in our prayer life. It is ok that we don't know how to pray or what to pray for at certain times as Romans 8:26 promises that the Spirit will intercede on our behalf, " We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express." the Lord understood our weaknesses and provided us with the Holy Spirit to allow us access to directly communicate with our Heavenly Father. Most people lack anticipation and faith in their prayer life, which leads to a lack of passion around it. I have certainly been struggling with this for many years, as I want instant gratification for my prayers, like the Lord is some type of cosmic vending machine, where my prayers go in His his slot, and my answer comes out of the other slot. It takes endurance and hope and faithfulness to have a meaningful prayer life. That is how God teaches us and tests us through our endurance. Impatience is a prayer killer. Endurance and faith leads to our prayers being answered in His perfect timing and in His perfect, loving way. May we all learn to make more time for Knee Mail, at the expense of time on email. May our busyness make way for the rest of our souls that we so need and desire. May we find true wisdom in God's ideas from time humbly spent on our knees in awe of Him. May His abundance bring a harvest of blessings in the areas of our lives where we are perfectly aligned with His will for our lives and for His way to accomplish it. Amen!