In recent years, I have spent a lot of time in the Bible. I carry it to Church with me. I make notes. My copy of the God’s Word translation is a paperback, and I’ve got it highlighted in different colors and tabs marking passages all along the edges. So much that it’s hard to flip the pages. I go to Bible Study class, I listen to people talk about the Bible on the radio.
When I am looking for verses for these blogs, sometimes I just sit and read, and it very quickly becomes too much. I have to put it down. Too much to absorb, too much to think about. And passages that I just don’t understand.
The Bible is a big confusing, conflicting, complicated book. You would have to be a Bible Scholar for decades to resolve it. And there are people who are willing to do that and that’s very good for the rest of us. There is so much that can be misinterpreted, and you have to worry about which translation to use, and you have to remember to read the whole passage to get the proper context, and you have to remember where Jesus was in his ministry when He said each little thing. Was He just reforming the Church, was he saving the Gentiles too at this point, is the sacrifice in the plan, did the Pentecost change what He’s saying.
There comes a time when you have to put the Book down and bring yourself, your problems, your questions, to God. You bow your head, lift up your arms and say Fill me, Lord. Talk to me, Lord. Tell me what you want me to do.
There is nothing you can bring to the Lord, nothing you can surprise Him with, nothing you can ask Him for that He doesn’t already know you want. He knows what you need, He knows what you want and He knows what is best for you.
So you say, why should I pray. What can I say? I know sometimes my prayers become nothing but “whatever”. Not a sarcastic whatever. But a kind of devolved, there is this thing that I need, or that I think I need and that I want, and all of this You know, Lord, and You know what is best for me. You know where You want me to be. And I have put myself in Your hands so…whatever.
God knows everything that is in your mind. He also knows everything on the mind of the atheist.
What God wants is to have a conversation with you. Just a conversation.
It’s not magic. You can’t go to the Lord thinking, Now, if I say enough words of praise, and if I say enough words of thanksgiving, and if I word my request just right, then I will get what I want.
It’s easier to petition the Lord if you’re already in conversation with Him. Ideally, you are in conversation with the Lord all day, everyday.
I do little things throughout the day that help keep me mindful of the Lord. Sing the chorus of a song now and then. When I put a bridle on a horse, I always say Thank you, Lord. Maybe if you work with cow ponies, putting a bridle on is not that big a deal, but when you’re working with young race horses, sometimes it’s a ten minute fight, and sometimes after that fight, I think What am I thanking Him for, but it just kind of centers me back to that mindset.
It’s really easy to get busy and forget to send your thoughts to Him and just think I’ll do it at the end of the day. But I find that when I do that, when I go for the day without turning to Him, and then one day I realize oh my, it’s been four days since I had a conversation with the Lord.
Or even more, when I‘m getting involved with a church and there‘s been a lot of concentration on formal prayer and I‘ve neglected my daily conversation, and then when I get to it, when I sit down and open myself up to the Lord, and just say Hey, Here I am, He always tells me that He’s missed me.
The Lord talks to me. I know some people think I’m just nuts. That I’m talking to myself and saying it’s the Lord. But I know that the Lord talks to me, and I know that the reason He talks to me is simply that I am open to listening.
I was at Bible Study at Remington Park and before the Bible Study starts, they have a dinner. We didn’t have a music minister at the time, and the guy who had been filling in wasn’t there, so Chaplain Carl put on a DVD of music.
One of the songs was I Can Only Imagine by Mercy Me. And I was thinking about how cool it would be that if when we got to Heaven, we each get some alone time with the Lord. And I was getting kind of emotional, thinking about walking with Jesus and seeing the actual color of His eyes, and He said, “But Beth, I’m right here with you now.”
And remember that I am always with you until the end of time. Matthew
28:20 [God's Word]
We were all too trained in thinking that prayer was talking. After all, when someone led a group in prayer, he/she talked aloud. In our training and conceptualization, prayer is thought of as constituted by language; praying IS talking. We were not taught enough about listening, and we definitely were not taught about listening with patience. It takes a long time to get through the clutter and noise of our own minds to finally get to some kind of meaningful silence -- so we can finally hear. It takes a long time, as I say. Sometimes years.
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