Last week, I went up to the upper part of Michigan (The U.P.) where I went to a Christian camp for a week. Now I’m not a big fan of camps and the woods but I had to go for my job. Anyway, on Sunday morning, we had something called a Retreat of Silence. Basically, we had everyone in the camp keep silent for 3 hours where nobody talked to each other. I’ve done this 3 other times before and it’s always powerful. But this one was very powerful because I realized how much I needed this.
A common testimony I heard from a lot
of people was that they felt dry. Dry
as not feeling connected with God. And
I can tell you from own experience that it’s a horrible feeling. I think the problem with most of our prayer
lives is that we put to many time constraints on it. For example, I know people who give God an hour till their
favorite TV shows come on. Prayers like
that ain’t gonna work. Why?? Because you’re going to be thinking about time
that whole time. Your mind is going to
worrying “Man, how much time I got left??”
Pressure is going to building up in your mind and thoughts will be constantly
swirling. Yall know I don’t believe in
this 5 minute prayer mess. You must
schedule prayer in a way that there is no pressure worrying about the next
thing. If that means that you have to
get up 5AM in the morning then do what you gotta do. Or go to a local park (if it’s safe of course). Christians can’t keep living w/ this dry,
empty feeling. We need that “living
water” to live.
Another
thing I heard from a brother this week was that prayer has to come first. You shouldn’t think “Ok, I gotta go to work,
so let me pray.” It should be I gotta
pray, then I’ll go to work. Or I gotta pray
than I’ll go to school. If you watch TV
before you pray, then TV comes first.
If you read the newspaper before prayer, then the newspaper comes first. Same with the internet. And when we put these temporary
satisfactions before spending time with our God, then it’s no wonder we feel
like we do.
So
to recap, prayer has to be without pressure.
You can’t get into honest communication with God if you got other things
on your mind. Other task you gotta
do. And it’s simple why we don’t do
this. Once you get into communion w/
God all your priorities changes. All
the things you think are important in the world, become 2nd place. But we don’t want to change.