Moving past "should"

An interesting thing happened to me last Sunday.

Let me give you some background. I've mentioned my mentor Joe in previous entries. Back in mid-January, we had our first "official" mentoring meeting. As we talked about various things, we got around to my personal, daily time with God, which, at the time, was pretty much non-existant. I shared with him my struggles at spending even 15-20 minutes with God on a daily basis, and he, of course, wondering if I had ever tried an hour. I looked at him rather cross-eyed and gave him a "Didn't you hear what I just said?", but he persisted and I agreed to try. More on the implications and results of that in a future entry.

The larger issue he addressed in that time, however, was the fact that with this, as with anything, if I was only doing something because I "should" or "ought" to do it, and didn't see the benefit or worth of it, that would only last so long. So, until I spent consistent time in God's presence and saw the difference that it made, it was always going to be a struggle. His suggestion was that I start by signing up for an hour in our church's prayer room on a weekly basis, and build from there, which I agreed to do. However, I also decided I would just dive right in outside of that, because, well, I had the time and there was no reason not to. I had just gotten possession of the back room in my basement back from my roommate who had moved upstairs, so I christened it as my prayer room (among its other uses) and began setting aside time to go back there, shut the door, and just spend time in God's presence, praying, reading, reflecting, and just listening. It wasn't, and still isn't, a daily thing, but it definitely became a more regular part of my life.

I'll be honest, however, that, while I felt God speaking and using these times, I still felt like I was dealing mostly from "should" - until last Sunday. I had spent my time in the church prayer room on Monday, personal time at home on Tuesday, and then had just let it go the rest of the week. And I had a bad week in a couple of areas. As I came to Sunday, I was really feeling it, and something went through my head that, to be honest, I'm not sure ever had, at least when talking about personal prayer - "I NEED to spend time with God today". It wasn't because that was what I was supposed to do, or because I thought Joe would scold me when he found out how much I was "slacking", it was because I really felt like there was something missing because I hadn't talked to God in a while. So, I took care of it - and God spoke to me so much in that time, and was just so faithful throughout Sunday night at CrossWalk.

I've picked back up some reading lately, and the book I'm reading right now is Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire, by Jim Cymbala. One of the key points in the early chapters of the book is that same one that Joe made to me back in January - prayer can't really truely be effective when it comes from a place of what I "should" or "ought" to do. Now, that's not to say that there's no place for making spending time with God a discipline (quite the opposite in fact), but if that's ALL it ever is, than we've missed something.

Our church office administrator wound up at Hershey Med this week after waking up with seizures early Tuesday morning. Examination revealed a mass on her brain. Obviously this news made it around the church very quickly, and on Tuesday night there was a gathering of 15-20 people in the church's prayer room to pray for her (among other gatherings elsewhere). It was a very sweet time of prayer, and our associate pastor, who organized the time, mentioned how much she craves for these sweet times of corporate prayer, and how unfortunate it is that it often takes a crisis to bring us to such a place. It's very true, and I think that the reason for that is we often don't truly understand our need for God in our daily lives - it takes something we recognize as bigger than us to bring us to the point of crying out to Him. I see the same thing at work with those connected to my friend Lynn who has ALS. If nothing else (and I still wholeheartedly believe that something else WILL happen), God has used this crisis to get His people to seek Him like never before, and in ways that even go beyond just asking for Lynn's healing. It took me having something in my life that I realized I couldn't deal with on my own before I really began to press in. By the way, the woman with the mass on her brain was released 2 days (they said it would take 5) after surgery to remove the mass, and is now awaiting the results of tests to determine whether the mass was cancerous or not.

In my own life, and around me, I see God using circumstances to cause His people to cry out to Him like never before. And none of this is to say that I've "arrived" in this. I find myself this morning in a situation that bears some resemblance to last week, which is probably why I felt compelled to finally write about it. My prayer is that He would continue to move me past "should" and "ought" and to a deep, abiding need to spend time with Him and cry out to Him, and that the same would happen for others. It's what has to happen if we're to see the promise of II Chronicles 7:14, which was give to Israel but I certainly believe applies to us today, realized: "if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land."