Prayer conversation about loneliness for God

Last night You gave me the privilege of being on the edge of heaven and hell and healing for the women of our Journey group designed by Terry Wardle at church. As I made a quick run through Wal-Mart at 9 last night after group, I was shaking my head in amazement at Your powerful intervention. I approach each Tuesday night with fear and trembling and You always show up. These women are drawing near to You and You never pull away. You never disappoint. We leaders intercede and watch the Holy Spirit tunnel his way into their newly opened doors. We watch them begin to believe that You love them and redeem their memories that had lied to them that that they were alone and always would be.



So I got home last night exhausted from the ministry and with a bit of an ache of loneliness. Andrew, after putting the kids to sleep, was asleep on the couch and I joined him after putting the groceries in the fridge. I rubbed his back while watching a tv show, his snoring competing for vocal power with the singing contest. I helped him get to bed during a commercial.


After the show was over, still not tired after the adrenaline rush of that night’s ministry time, I surfed the channels. Eventually I found myself hovering over the religious channel which I rarely find satisfying and then it struck me. I realized what I was looking for and turned off the set. I wanted You, pure and unadulterated. No other counterfeit would do. I got my computer out which is how I often journal and simultaneously search scriptures these days and just as I was opening a new document, I heard a huge bang in the nursery upstairs. Then all three started crying. At this moment, I have a choice to make: Frustration or acceptance, anger or love. Sometimes it seems like spiritual warfare when there is immediate interruption of long awaited time with You. I chose love which is easy to do after a night away.


Madeline had fallen off her bed and I found her huddled in that sleep-waking state confused and moaning. I helped her back up on her pink sheets and she quickly cuddled with her blanket. I opened the window and enjoyed the breeze for a moment while whispering to her and running my fingers over her back. The eldest, up on the top bunk, situated himself with his bean-stuffed duck and went back to sleep.


But it was Baby in the adjoining room who kept yelling out for attention. I pushed Madeline’s legs aside, with a ”Good night my little Pearl” in order to care for the littlest one. As I walk through the room, I see Xavi standing up in his bed crying. “Do you need a little mommy time?” “Ya,” he says, with his head down and his eyes still closed. I pick him up in his jammies and blanket and bring him downstairs settling on the couch with this little one cuddled into my body. And then what happened next? The gift of the day. The full Presence of You, came powerfully into my loneliness and filled me with exactly what I had been looking for but was unable in myself to pursue. Waves of love and companionship, joy and rest covered me and I basked like a cat in Your powerful light. The gift that I found in that moment was that I was not able to read, to search the Scriptures or to learn anything which is often an avenue to You though sometimes becomes the idol as well. All I was able to do in that moment of cuddling that precious one who quickly fell asleep next to me, was to enjoy You. I was stuck in the gorgeousness of silence. I couldn’t ruin it by trying like Peter at the Transformation to figure out the “perfect” thing to say, even if I had wanted to, Your presence was too heavy, all-consuming. I had wanted all day to be with You but was unable in myself to accomplish it. I was helpless but came to the God for whom nothing is impossible.


This seems to be one of the answers to the Struggle for that daily, hourly companionship. The truth that I have a hard time living and believing is that You are here. You have promised that You will never leave me or forsake me. LeAnne Payne rightly says that we need to say that to ourselves over and over whether any type of feeling accompanies the truth or not. She wisely taught people that they needed to identify the truth that “You are here” all day long throughout all their ordinary activities.


In fact, I think I hinder You when I feel as if all the stars need to align in order to create the perfect welcome for Your Presence. It seems like all You want to hear is the call of desire, the acknowledgement of hunger and the pursuit. When I acknowledge that I am not enough, that I hunger and thirst for You, that alone seems to open me up to You. The New Living Translation says it this way: “God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.” I need to create a void in order to be filled, to open my ears to listen in order to hear, to open my empty hands in order to receive a gift. One of the secrets of daily companionship is the need to create open spaces which are open only to You. While we are so busy trying to fill ourselves with You, You desire to come as gift, not at our demanding, but at our openness, at our need.

John Wesley's Radical Daily Prayer

John Wesley's Covenant Daily Prayer:

 I am no longer my own, but yours.


Put me to what you will, rank me with whom you will;


put me to doing, put me to suffering.


Let me be employed by you or laid aside by you,


enabled for you or brought low by you.


Let me be full, let me be empty.


Let me have all things, let me have nothing.


I freely and heartily yield all things


to your pleasure and disposal.


And now, O glorious and blessed God,


Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,


you are mine, and I am yours. So be it.


And the covenant which I have made on earth,


let it be ratified in heaven.


Amen.

Why being poor in spirit is essential for the trip

What does it mean to hold out my hands empty, poor in spirit? For this reformed follower of the American way, radical conversion. Poverty of spirit means clarity. I am poor, small, and easily lose my footing following the wrong path…any other belief in my own orientation skills is just a lie. But, and here’s the difference to why poverty of spirit is so utterly freeing in comparison with my usual self-reliance, the God of the Universe strides beside me. The inheritance of the saints, the power of the Universe, the joyful, eternal Gift-Giver is located within the Person always present. Here’s the working image: I am Lucy from CS Lewis Narnia Chronicles with her hands intertwined in the mane of Aslan, walking confidently, purposefully into the world. Never alone. Not ever alone.



Life, Way, Truth, Bread, Light, Peace, Creator and Re-Creator, …solid, unchanging, wave-calmer. He is here.

Take a moment to breathe in that game-changer. He is here. My healthy poverty is knowing that any other form of Life not coming from abiding in Him is counterfeit, any other bread moldy, any other water, polluted, any other truth, just embarrassing elvis-imitator mimicry.

My Father encouraged me to put a for-sale sign outside of my current self-reliant life, move down the street to a big welcome and curl up to dwell in the God of the Universe.


This is what this book is about: the for-sale sign, the moving and the path, sometimes rocky… of discovering that finding this new home was worth everything.