Tuesday, September 24, 2019

Listening to God: The Mystery of Silence and Prayers - James 4:8, Matthew 6: 5-15

    One of the most painful periods in my life was also one that yielded the most fruit in hindsight. While studying abroad my senior year of college I hit a roadblock in my prayer life. Perhaps a better way to state it is that I had just come off of wonderful mountaintop experiences as I served as an intern at my home church. Then in a new country, away from home, I yearned for those mountain top experiences to return.

   Instead, I found myself in a dry place.

   A place where I kept on praying, but just didn't feel the same spiritual connection that I had before on the mountaintop.

   The problem with our current understanding of prayer is that we think if we aren't getting the answers we want there must be something wrong. Something wrong with us. Something wrong with God. Something unconfessed in our life.

   But that wasn't the case. Instead, it was simply a season of silence. And silence led me to trust. Even if I didn't have the same feeling that I had on the mountaintop it did not mean that God was absent. Instead, God was drawing close in new ways. Ways that would lead me to a call in ministry.

   How can we re-learn what it means to pray in the dry places as well as the mountaintops during our faith journey?

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