– 2 Chronicles 6: 19
Pray Hard!
When you go to God in prayer, how do you go? Are you a silent and reverent thinker prayer? A whisper prayer? A mumbler? Maybe a cryer or a pacer or a rock in placer? Or are you a jumper and a shouter – a dance around the room one minute / flat on your face the next / crying out at the top of your lungs prayer warrior? I believe there are appropriate times for each of these and I also believe that God expects us to know when and how to use them.
For me, most of my daily prayer is the silent, in my minds-eye-to-God's-ear kind of converse and reflect prayer. I have an hour-long commute into the city every morning so it's a perfect opportunity to cover my family, my friends, and my church and our civic and government leaders in prayer and blessings. It would be totally inappropriate for me to start shouting out in tongues and pacing up and down the train aisle waving my arms and asking God to do this and that ( I would be on the 6 o'clock news if I did that).
But there are times for just such prayer. Bold, passionate, I need a touch from you God, and I'm not leaving until I get it, kind of prayer. I believe God loves when we free ourselves to openly and honestly pour our hearts out on the Throne room floor, with all the tears and snot and sweat that comes from a good warrior's fighting prayer. He delights when we lose the inhibitions and quit worrying about how we look, or how we sound, and we let go in reverent and devout storm-chasing, get the devil on the run, change the hearts of man, interceding.
"Oh my . . . I could never pray like that." you say? Well consider this: Suppose someone came in the middle of the night and took your child, or your spouse . . . how would you react? Would your response and your cry to God be softly whispered pleas of "Oh, if you find it in your heart, please return my loved ones." Really? I don't know about you but I would be shouting, and pacing, and pulling my hair, and going out-of-my-mind with questions, and anger, and worry, and hurt, and I would be pleading passionately for God to bring my loved ones back to me. I wouldn't care what I looked like. I wouldn't care who could see or hear me. I wouldn't care about anything but what my immediate need is.
Well every day, in every corner of the world, the enemy is setting out to destroy our children, families, our communities, our churches, and our countries – he wants it all for himself. So every once in a while (maybe even more often that that) . . . it's OK to go a little "Pentecostal" in your prayer life. It's OK to wrestle with God and to let Him know that we are passionate about our needs. It's OK to let everyone think what they want to think, because I'll tell you what . . . God receives these prayers just as much as He does the silent reflection ones. And I'm convinced that when we show our true, God-given passion to Him, it rallies the Angel Armies and all of Heaven is moved, and the Warrior Spirit in our Triune God jumps, and shouts, and rages right alongside us, sending the enemy running straight back to hell . . . with that nasty, little, poor-excuse of a tail tucked firmly between his scrawny little legs.
So I challenge you . . . pray hard sometime this week. Get by yourself somewhere and let God know what you're passionate about. Let it ALL hang out – every praise, every hurt, all your questions and your concerns – and see if the Holy Spirit doesn't just take over and show you what a true Prayer Warrior you really are . . . when you pray hard!
Prayer
Father I thank You for allowing us to come to You passionately. Thank You that You have built that in us. Teach us how and when to scream, and shout, and cry, and laugh with total abandon in energetic and devout prayer to-and-with You! Help us to let go of our pride and our inhibitions and to come to You freely, and to let You know exactly how we are feeling.
Have a Blessed day everyone!
– Richard
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