Walking the path

(3-minute read)

There was a time when I felt that my prayers were less effective than they used to be. I wasn’t sure what had changed or how I had possibly gotten off. I decided to return to the beginning, and one day I asked the Lord, “Lord, teach me to pray.”

The first instruction I felt the Lord gave me was to recognize that he was in the room. Prayers before meals took on a special place where the Lord wanted me to practice. I was to pay less attention to the words I used and more attention to the fact that he was right there listening to what I said. Prayer before meals went fine; only the Lord and I could tell the difference.

Public prayer was another story. I was visiting a church and was asked to pray about something. At first, it was fine, and then, so that people would understand the context, I did one of those “Lord, you know” or a “Lord, I know,” and I suddenly felt the displeasure of the Lord. Within me, I felt, “Don’t pray to the crowd. They don’t have the answer.” That sense of the presence of the Lord faded, and all I had left were the hollow words that felt appropriate for the situation. Privately, I prayed, “Lord, teach me to lead in prayer.”

In a few weeks, I went to a missionary conference. One of the speakers was an American missionary who had spent many years of his life in China. He brought his family back to the States for a few months so his children could learn English. One night, a prayer meeting was held in a huge, carpeted room with no chairs. The church pastor where the conference was held asked the missionary from China, standing next to me, to lead us in prayer.

The missionary went to his knees and began to pray in English. Either his second or third sentence sounded like he had switched to Chinese. In a short time, he switched to a different language, which I didn’t recognize. Everyone in the room was praying simultaneously out loud. There were people in the room I knew well and had never heard them pray publicly, but that night, I heard them boldly speak to the Lord as tears ran down their faces. Although no one was singing, the corporate sound of the room was like a melody. The presence of the Lord was so strong it seemed tangible. People kept coming into the room, and eventually, the newcomers had difficulty finding a place to kneel. I had never seen prayer leadership like this before.

There are so many things to learn concerning prayer; my training seems like it will never end. At the moment, the Lord seems to want, when I am bringing him my request, that I be aware of what he wants and what he’s doing. There is a place for me in what he’s doing, and because of that, my requests often need to change so that I might flow with his plans. I like it; I want to flow with what he’s doing.

It is the most astonishing thing; God, the creator of the universe, has a place for me in what he is doing now. Prayer is the most prominent place to discover what that is. When this life is finished for me, he has a place for me in what he will be doing in the life to come.