Recently…after the flood…I was volunteering with Samaritan’s Purse. It was actually last Saturday when I gave a devotional for the volunteers. After hanging around and visiting with people, a chaplain’s wife, Kathy, came over and asked me if she could pray with me. She could tell I was a little under the weather and coughing. We talked briefly as she asked me how she could pray. I mentioned several requests and then we sat and bowed to pray.
“A warm rush” came over me as she began to pray. It was not a prayer filled with eloquent words but with simple conversation. A “familiarity” and “comfort” of who she was talking to. I literally could have sat there for a while and listened to her pray. Shortly into her prayer….my heart was immersed in her prayers. It blessed me so to hear her pray and hear the simpleness of her praise, gratitude and requests.
Scripture teaches many things about prayer…like personal time with God….. when you pray. Matthew 6:6-8, “Go into a room, close the door and pray to your father, who is unseen. Then your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”
I so know that having a place where you go and pray, a.k.a, the “war room,” is significant for your walk with Jesus…but I also know….our prayers do not have to be fancy or sophisticated…or many words to be heard. Sometimes we don’t have any words but the Holy Spirit knows. “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans,” (Romans 8:26).
Also, in scripture we see many times where people gathered to pray and the Holy Spirit filled the room. I absolutely love the scripture that teaches us to gather and pray. Matthew 18:20, “For where there are two or three gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them.”
Last Saturday as Kathy prayed with me, I felt Jesus in the “midst” of us. His warm presence. So today I encourage you with this…
First….your prayer doesn’t have to be fancy.
Isn’t it cool to KNOW our Heavenly Father knows what we need before we pray. Prayer is for US to draw close to HIM.
Second…..pray with others. HE shows up. We can feel His presence. If you haven’t gathered to pray with someone lately, I encourage you to do just that….even if you are at home and can call a friend to pray with you. It is powerful if you make time to gather and pray, even outside of church on Sunday.
There is a POWER to Prayer than can only be experienced by DOING IT. The more often you do it, the more you will experience the POWER. But remember, the words don’t have to be fancy. They just need to be from a child to Abba Father.
“In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart.” ~John Bunyan
“We tend to use prayer as a last resort, but God wants it to be our first line of defense. We pray when there’s nothing else we can do, but God wants us to pray before we do anything at all. Most of us would prefer, however, to spend our time doing something that will get immediate results. We don’t want to wait for God to resolve matters in His good time because His idea of ‘good time’ is seldom in sync with ours.” ~Oswald Chambers