Episode #261 The Prayer Journey That Meets You Here – Unforced Rhythms of Grace

Hey friend. Have you ever been intimidated by someone else's prayer life? Like they seem to just have some special access to God that you never got? I wanna offer you that the key isn't about doing more or performing and achieving better, but is simply starting where you are.

And I know this from personal experience because I used to struggle with this a lot. If you've been around Good God Talks for a little bit, you've heard parts of my testimony. I grew up in a Christian home and I received salvation at a young age, which was genuine, but I didn't know that that meant I could have relationship with God. And so as I heard other people talk about how they were talking with God, I felt really intimidated. And I also felt angry because I was doing so much work trying to prove myself to him, trying to prove my love and my loyalty and God. And I thought I was missing something that only special people had access to.

Well, the reality is that's not the case. As God's children, as sheep to our good shepherd, we all get to hear and recognize his voice. And God always meets us exactly where we are, not where we think we should be. Which I think a lot of us know that at least mentally, but sometimes there are sneaky lies that we can hold to that discourage us from engaging with God when he actually meets us right where we are.

One of those lies is that God meets you right where you are, but he's not happy about it. Maybe you've believed that he really wishes you were further along, that he's disappointed in you, that he's discouraged or frustrated because of your lack of progress. None of those things are true. God delights to meet us and he is not in a rush.
God knows that our discipleship journeys are long journeys. He is there for the whole thing. In James 4:6-8, it says, “But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’ Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.”

I read this in lovely tones, but the way I used to hear this was fairly harsh and critical. It was nice that I could submit myself to the Lord and that he does give grace to us when we're humble. It was wonderful to think about how if we draw near to God, he also is drawing near to us. That we aren't alone in this desire to connect with him. He also longs to connect with us.

But I would get to the end of verse eight, and my internal voice would change, that self critic would rise up and I would put that negative filter on God in something like this: cleanse your hands, sinner, purify your heart. You double-minded. Like it was this accusation against me, like God was displeased and he needed to make sure that I knew it. That's not the character of God. Even in his correction, he calls us to think again and choose differently in loving kindness.

I'm gonna read a little bit from the book, Celebration of Discipline, and Richard Foster says, "To pray is to change. Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us. If we are unwilling to change, we will abandon prayer as a noticeable characteristic of our lives. The closer we come to the heartbeat of God the more we see our need and the more we desire to be conformed to Christ."

The more we connect with God and are transformed by him as we pray, the more we'll want to pray, and the closer we get to him, the more we see our need for him. The closer we get as we draw near and as God draws near to us, we see, oh, that was sin God, I need you to clean that God. Oh, this area of my heart, it needs you to purify it. I don't want to have diverted interests. I don't want to be double-minded in my approach. Help me conform more into your likeness, Jesus.

And so as we wrap up today's episode, we're not so much focusing on more things for us to do. God will guide us on our journey of transformation. He is about our spiritual development. But we wanna take a minute as we're taking this time to draw near to God and ask him to loop us in a little bit more about the transforming work he's already been doing in our hearts.

Prayer is transformative because we're connecting with God in this way. And so here's a question that you can take to him:

God, how have you been changing me through our conversations lately?

Have a good talk.

And if you've been encouraged by this content, please share it with a friend and help them grow in their conversational relationship with God too!

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