“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”
The contents of this verse always seemed like an unattainable expectation that God has for us! However, in the past eight months the Lord has been instilling in me something pretty incredible and it is changing the way that I walk through my everyday life. God revealed to me, through His word, this thing that is so simple yet so profound: that a conversation has two voices. This is how you pray without ceasing . . . whenever you’re not talking, be listening (which should be a majority of the time). Christ has so much that He wants to speak to us and teach us and if we would learn how to listen, it would change who we are. I believe the Lord has ways He wants to change us; things He wants to show us; and lessons He desires to teach us planned out for every second of the day. Unfortunately we miss so much because we don’t pray without ceasing.
Rest assured that it is not God that would profit by it, but rather us who enjoy the fruits of prayer! He doesn’t invite us to pray because He is lonely, or because He needs attention. We pray so that we can be in communion with the Father! A great many times we find ourselves asking questions about what God’s will is for our life, but how are we to know the will of the Father if we do not talk to Him? He is our lifeline, our source of joy, our hope, and our salvation. In addition, we now have this added element of listening to God and knowing what He thinks about us and what He says is true about us.
What’s more powerful than our thoughts? They are constantly playing in your head and you cannot turn them off. They often times condemn us and tear us down! Its easy for our minds to tell us that there is no way we are a true Jesus-follower based on our succession of decisions and thoughts. Thoughts are absolutely haunting to say the least, but our hope is that Gods thoughts towards us are more numerous than the sand! This is the psalmist’s way of saying that God thinks about you more than you think about you. We can allow God’s thoughts to replace ours . . . let His perfect thoughts, His holy thoughts, and His healing thoughts lay over our broken thoughts and our fractured thoughts. Now our mind begins to transform, and from there our actions begin to transform, and we become more like Christ!
Here is the catch though . . .
We have a million preconceived notions of who God is, what He’s like, what He’s about, what He looks like, etc. But if we are really wanting to listen to God, then we need to be willing to sacrifice what we think about God for the sake of knowing God. Throughout these months of traveling, God has wholly and altogether changed the way I view Him. I had the choice to either hold on tight to the things I thought were true or to think along new lines and allow God to show me who He really is. Sometimes there are things you won’t like, like the fact that hell is a real place. I can honestly say that I don’t like that and that it is an insufferable truth, but God is the master and we are the servant, thus accordingly we need to submit to His authority and design.
I labor and seek to find the Lords voice in everything I do, even when it’s quiet and still. I often find myself casting doubt on the future course of my life, but I’m always brought back to the place of letting God’s voice lead me one step at a time in the direction He wishes. As I near the end of this trip, I feel the Lord placing some things on my heart for the future that blow my mind. A friend of mine prayed and God spoke this to me through them, “I’m going to unlock doors that have been locked before. I will do things in your life that you have always doubted or never thought would happen.” I already see this coming true and I cannot wait to share with you guys what God is putting on my heart for the future when the time is right. Until then, please keep praying for me as I strive to finish well in the season of life that I am in right now!
I love you all and I thank you dearly for your prayer and support.
Yours in Christ,
-David Sands
