The Part I Missed (01/13/2024)

I’ve been a prayer warrior since I was very young. As a middle child, often feeling unheard, I liked the assurance that the LORD hears our every prayer and knows our every thought. I would take everything I had to prayer; I’d pour out my hurts and my hopes. I felt that I was doing a great job communicating with the LORD. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I learned that I’d left a huge part out of my prayers – listening.

I was taught that prayer is talking to the LORD. And it is; at least it is in the beginning. However, as an adult I learned that prayer ends by listening to the LORD. That latter part was news to me. But it changed everything. Growing my prayer from a “dump session” where I take everything I need and dump it at the LORD’s feet to real communication, a dialogue, that was a challenge. I had to learn to “be still and know that I am LORD.” Truth is, I’m still working on getting that right. But I am trying.

How about you? Do you struggle with listening to the LORD as I do?

It isn’t easy, sitting quietly, patiently, opening myself to the LORD’s Spirit. I’ve found that it isn’t in words, it’s in new thoughts I hadn’t entertained before such as when I was praying about a difficult person I was suddenly filled with an awareness of the LORD’s love for that person, and I was moved to look closer and see the one the LORD loved. I found in time a realization of the pain that person carried, her personal cross she bore. Prayer didn’t change her; prayer changed me.

Listening to the LORD in prayer leads me to possibilities I’d never considered, to what I can do to participate in the LORD’s divine design for me and for the other. And I’ve found some common threads woven through my “listening” times – love and unity. The LORD wants me to apply love to the situation, even to the point of asking what I’d hope the other would do for me if the roles were reversed. And the LORD wants me to work for unity – for wholeness and peace between myself and others.

Prayer takes longer when I’m not the only one with a speaking part. But I have learned, thankfully, that it is worth every minute.

Until tomorrow, let us all love well.