"Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few." (Ecclesiastes 5:2 KJV)
""When you pray, don't babble on and on as people of other religions do. They think their prayers are answered merely by repeating their words again and again. Don't be like them, for your Father in heaven knows exactly what you need before you ask him."" (Matthew 6:7-8 NLT)
Typically, I usually try to pray for an hour every morning when I first get up; generally, my prayer time is between 4:00 and 5:00 in the morning. This has been my prayer routine since the mid 80's, as I got a little inspiration from Ray, one morning as we were riding our bikes to church. He told me that he always was up by 4:00 to meet with God; yet one morning he decided to sleep in, and his bed collapsed, so he knew that it was something God wanted him to keep as a passion.
Some mornings, God wakes me up earlier than 4:00, like 3:15, for whatever reason; it comes as a knock, just two knocks, as if they are only a tenth of a second apart: "Thump, thump!" and I spring up out of my sleep, to expect there is something to talk about or to bring to the table. Maybe I stopped breathing, and He was waking me up to breath. There are quite a few people I know that have those flight-mask marks on their face: most likely because their spouse has noticed they stop breathing in their sleep; but I don't have anyone to monitor my sleep, except God.
Anywho! "Therefore let thy words be few", is part of a song, which says, "Let my words be few," as if we are asking God to make sure what we say really matters. First of all: God does not need us to explain to Him what we have going on in our lives; nor does need to know what is going on in the life of someone we are praying for. We are coming to Him in prayer to share our hearts, both to know His heart and to be willing to allow ourselves to be changed, in the process.
I forget sometimes to be ready and willing to make that the purpose for my prayer time, mostly because I have a list of people that I pray for, pretty much every morning. By the time I get done asking Him to forgive me for my sins, I am praying for this list of people, and then it is time to start praying for His will to be done! Sometimes I think I might be stuck in some sort of repeating of words, morning after morning; maybe I am, and it is all just jabbering and vain repetition.
Once I start praying for someone, I feel as though I have to keep praying for them. Something I hardly ever have time for, is to pray for myself, for what I think I need, and for those things I feel He is leading me to do. But when I do, I absolutely make my words few, "Few," meaning little, as in very small...
"If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give is to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. But when you ask him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with a divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind. Such people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything they do." (James 1:5-8 NLT)
No comments:
Post a Comment