Learning To Pray: 3. Growth In Prayer

So, like all growth, there is a long time of stuff going on underground before any fruit can be seen, but God is always able to work His good purposes in us and I believe He wants nothing better than to see our increasing maturity. Like a father with a little child, He is ecstatic when we show Him what we can do.

Like my early forays into the world of intercession – most of my fervent prayer times had a lot of crying in them. The more you get to know Jesus – the more you realise how full of love He is. And the more you feel love – the more awful the sadness and lack of love around us all becomes. No wonder Jesus’ heart broke – and only His breaking keeps our heads above water – otherwise I think we can become so sensitive we can stop functioning. The way of prayer has many stories of emotional burnout – even great revivalists. So there is no place of great personal strength in the place of prayer. Often it makes you feel weak and desperate – as all we can do is ask. But what a Father we ask of!!!!

So my on going prayer journey held many times of feeling overwhelmed – especially as I was still struggling with an unrealistic appraisal of my own value – either feeling completely ego-inflated or going to the opposite extreme - pretty yuck about myself. God began to speak about His authority into this. He wasn’t about to let the place of prayer get abused by me into some garment of self worth. Hey look at me I’m an intercessor! I can rattle off important sounding prayers – (the more you pray out loud the easier it is to string words together that make some sort of sense). It is quite incredible how my own ego could high jack even good stuff and seek to put it to my own uses. So just as the prayer stuff was becoming popular and everyone was looking to pray, God conveniently sidelined me in bed with chronic morning sickness – yes another child bearing experience! I felt too ill in the evening to go to ANY meetings or do anything at all that brought me out of my home. I spent days staring at my bedroom ceiling, too sick to move, realising some home truths about how God would not tolerate ANY idols before Him – not even “prayer”. Its only relationship with Him that can satisfy our need for significance, and that is down in the hidden place, not on any form of platform before men. More tears from me as He brought His gift of repentance.

So that’s more or less the foundation the Lord has laid in me to begin to teach me about prayer. Lots of years of mining my own depths, rooting out idolatry in me. Lots of times of just yearning for Him, lovesick I guess. And lots of daily mundane life to ground me in being a giver of good things to those around me, to learn to love first and not wait to be loved only.

If we let Him build good foundations in us, He’ll build some great stuff using us as living stones.

Karen Pilkington

2007-05-08