I don’t know how many out there prayer journal, but I find it’s a great thing to maintain. The composition of my entries never quite stays the same, but they all have one thing in common: They are a way of more clearly seeing how an interaction with the Lord takes place. I was saying in my last post that I came to some revelations about other areas of my life in prayer not too long ago, but that would not have been acccomplished without that journal of mine. What I need to work on is taking it or simply some paper with me wherever I go, that I might write down things as they come to me. See, I think it’s extremely important…even necessary…to live a life of continuous prayer, that you might be made humbly aware of your total reliance on relationship with the Lord. I’ve had several things brought to mind in the middle of work and during other occasions, and I never take the time to withdraw and pray about it at that moment. That’s the best thing to do, but one step at a time, after all.
I had a few thoughts about prayer some years ago that still come back to mind on odd occasions, and I thought I’d share them. The first is, as all good revelations are, both simple and profound. It goes something like this:
Prayer is ‘us’ in our relationship with the Lord. You hear couples refer to ‘us’ and ‘we’ all the time, signifying the conjoined life that they share. In this life, both male and female bring things to relationship that bring each other to knowledge and grace in one another. In the relationship we share with the great Bridegroom, prayer becomes an ‘us’ in that it serves as a conversation, a ‘knowing’ rather than a ‘determining’. Prayer does not so much change things as makes them known to us. The Father has a plan that we cannot conceive of but can grow in an understanding of.
Now, this first statement has since really expanded in my life. I conceived of it when I was still in a state of prayer-fear and rationalization of povidence, but it does reflect a beginning point for where I’ve gotten to. The second was a slightly different understanding, the circumstances of which I don’t remember. But it’s a bit of a different feel.
Prayer for any result is a selfish desire. I do not mean that we are entirely self-seeking in prayer, but rather that we are praying for a revelation of God’s power in the world in which we live. This revelation will affect the life through which we move and from which we derive our identification in the world but do not exist as ‘of it’ We cannot know what prayer will do, or if it will do anything, but the simple knowledge that it may is part of its power.
The life of continuous prayer, then, leads one into a more real relationship with Jesus, and is necessary to keep each of us – by us I mean Christians – aware of the sovereign grace that allows us to exist and work in the world.
