#14 Before the Amen

The Lord has fed me so much wisdom and godly teaching my whole life that surely I am the most grace-given person on the planet.  Yet only God can open my heart to truly understanding Himself.  I still have a pitiful understanding of certain things of God.  Prayer is one of those.

How do you listen to the Lord?

How do you stay in step with Him?

How do you experience a God you can’t see yet?

How do you know what you’re hearing is the Lord’s voice?

These questions, though I’m sure I’ve been given logical answers masses of times, still ring in my heart almost daily. 

Last week at work, I was asked to come up with 2-3 prayer requests for the upcoming year in my area of ministry for the church.  Then when the whole staff will pray for them together in about a month. 

I sat with a blank document on my computer ready to type them out.  How can I come up with true requests not to impress the staff, but to truly engage the Lord?  I decided I should just start praying for my area, and then see what requests came.  Then something crazy happened.

I started fluttering around a couple of different default topics, but as my honesty increased, I started jumping into some requests I’d never thought about before.  I prayed for direction and inspiration for me in a new area of my job that I’ve been avoiding out of intimidation, but really needed to address.

Then out of nowhere as I was typing, the Lord started giving me just what I was asking for!  All the sudden, fresh ideas started coming into my mind about this new area.  Not only that, but I started getting really excited about them.  I’m not sure I can explain this well, but what’s craziest to me is that I wasn’t in brainstorm mode—I wasn’t looking for ideas, but they just started coming.  So I abandoned the prayer request list (I still haven’t found my way back to it yet) and filled up a big whiteboard with the different ideas flooding my mind.  Now days later, I’m still excited for what I think the Lord has in store for our church through these ideas.

Communicating with an unseen, all-knowing, recklessly loving God is full of mystery, but it’s extremely powerful.  Watch out for what you pray for.  The Lord might answer you before you even say Amen.  

"I will answer them before they even call to Me.  While they are still talking about their needs, I will go ahead and answer their prayers!"  Isaiah 65:24