Prayer

An Unexpected Twist

At least five women in a room and usually a couple more on zoom meet together every week for prayer.  We spend the first half hour listening to worship songs and then we pray.  We praise God and then we pray.  But this week something else happened.  Something unexpected.  Something so very profound.  

After the music ends, I usually lead us out in prayer, but not this time.  I didn’t have anything to say and apparently nobody else did either.  Silence.  After a couple of minutes of silence, I finally mustered something to say and someone else mustered something to say and then silence.  

In the silence I heard God say, “it’s time to rest in me, be still.”  Then he gave me an analogy of sunbathing.  If you know me, you know that I LOVE to lay in the sun.  He showed me that when we lay in the sun, we can’t see the rays hitting our body.  We can’t see our body manufacturing vitamin D.  We can’t see what’s happening in our skin and how our pigments change.  We can’t see our endorphins or our mood change.  There’s a lot going on when we sunbathe that is hidden from the naked eye.  And so is the same for sitting (bathing) in God’s presence.

We ended up sitting together in a room (and zoom) and in God’s presence for almost an hour-in complete silence.  In the (almost) four years that we’ve been praying together, this has NEVER happened.  As the leader of the group, my flesh was worried what everyone was thinking and was wondering if I had really heard God say to be quiet and be still, but I went with it because I had no unction to talk.

After I relaxed and resigned to the fact that we were just going to be silent, God struck up a conversation with me (in my head).  He told me EVERYTHING that I had been worrying about…and believe me it was quite a list.  He told me that He was taking care of each worry on my list and that all I needed to do was to trust Him.  I can do that!  So much peace came over me.

When our time was up, I was pleasantly surprised by everyone’s response to our silent prayer time.  God had spoken to each one of us individually and we were all filled with so much peace!  It was absolutely amazing.

When we sit in God’s presence, He is doing something!  We may never know all that He is doing, but just like sunbathing, we aren’t the same person coming out as we are going in.  In His presence, He speaks to us, He gives us peace, He changes the way we think, He helps us, He gives us a new perspective, He speaks to us like a friend.  God is the best friend we could ever have and His ways of communicating with us is so profound.

I encourage you to set aside an extended period of time to sit (or lay) in His presence without talking and see what He might have to say to you!  You may have to fight through the first ten minutes or so, but stick with it…He’s got something to say to you!  Let me know how it goes.  Bless you!