Wind Whipped Waves
I had the opportunity to attend a Women’s conference recently, The Empowered Conference at Valley Family church in Kalamazoo, and I was blown away! The conference really lit a flame in me and reawakened my Faith. There were so many "take-aways" and I see many blog posts coming of it in the future. For now though, I want to focus on Prayer.
One of the speakers, Lisa Bevere, really pulled me in. She was hilarious, relevant, mouthy, energetic, and so obviously led by God that I was just mesmerized. One of the topics that she spoke on really stuck out to me.
As Christians, we all know the importance of prayer. But we don’t often stop to think about what kind of prayers we should be praying. Of course constant prayer and constant communication with God is, I think, crucial to a successful day. To a successful Life for that matter! But Lisa touched, especially, on the importance of praying prayers that scare you. Rather than praying "worry prayers", pray prayers that scare you, because if they do not scare you they do not scare the enemy. I had never looked at it that way and I felt the importance of this for myself, as I am beginning to focus on where exactly it is that I am being led. We all, at some point or another, struggle with trying to determine what our calling is. What is our greater purpose? What are we being led to do? And if we do feel a tug in one direction or the other, is that tug the hand of God, our own desires, or the enemy?
Praying constant prayers of worry, turn us into wind whipped waves. We are caught in a rut. We forget to pray prayers of joy, prayers of excitement, prayers of thanks. And then we may hold back from praying prayers that we do not what the answer to. We become afraid of what the answer will be, or where that may lead us. So we avoid the prayer. I know I do this personally. In every circumstance if I am afraid of what the answer will be, why ask the question? I have been hurt before when I have asked, so why would I make that same mistake with God?
Answer: because I am going to end up there anyways. Why not have guidance along the way, and peace of mind when I embark on the journey? The answer may not always be what we want to hear, but it will always lead to where we will eventually want to be. The attacks on our lives now, are attacks not on the person that we are now, but on the person that we will become. And if we face these attacks with purpose, and a strong hand guiding us, we will overcome and be stronger because of it. You must bear weight to build muscle. You must ask the difficult questions to grow. You must be willing to accept the answer to flourish. "It is difficult to be in a place in life where we are seeking purpose. What we don't realize is that this struggle is often a gift that leads us to a new place". -Rebekah Lyons (Freefall to Fly) So lets pray the prayers that guide us towards that purpose, and open our hearts to what that calling may be. Even if it frightens the living daylights out of us! Let's pray the prayers that turn us from being wind whipped waves, into the wind that whips the clouds away, so that we may let light into our lives.
