Being here at debrief before heading into month 3, I was thinking on one of the biggest things I learned this month which was how to sit with the Lord. I am definitely not perfect at it. I still get very distracted. I still have a lot of questions. But I learned what can happen when you do and it is beautiful.
This month we spent quite a bit of time at PenHOP (Penang House of Prayer) doing fasting, praying, and worshipping (37 hours to be exact). On Tuesday’s we would do 7 hours straight from 3pm-10pm, and on Friday nights we would do 4 hours from 8pm-midnight every week. I have never spent that much time in the Word and praying in a month before. Which is sad because statistics say we spend on average 120 hours a month just watching tv/media if not more.
My daily routine before I went on the race was doing a 30 minute devotional time in the Word over a nice cup of coffee and a good ol breakfast burrito in the morning before heading to work. I loved it. It was my time to learn more about God. I was going through the Old Testament during that time so I got to start every day reading about God’s story with man. If I did my math correctly, that would have been about 15 hours a month. So jumping from doing 30 minutes to 7 hours in one sitting, and from 15 hours to 37 hours in a month was a bit out of my comfort zone. This was the progression of how my time went:
First time doing the 7 hours: I was very distracted. I brought so many things with me in my backpack because I didn’t want to get bored. I brought my journal, both my travel and study Bible because they are different translations, I brought coloring pens, I brought my laptop to blog, I brought my e-reader with all my books on it, and many more items that I didn’t need. Not that any of those are bad to bring into a prayer room! Everyone does their prayer time differently and that’s a big part of what makes the Body of Christ so beautiful. But after doing a self check for me, I found I didn’t trust God enough to spend that much time with Him. I didn’t think He and His Word and was enough to fill that time. So I would draw, take a nap, read from a book on my e-reader and eventually the time ended and I was frustrated. I would ask myself questions like, “Why didn’t I get anything out of this? Why isn’t God speaking to me?” (You can laugh, it’s okay! It’s obvious to me now, but in the moment I didn’t understand. Humans can be dramatic sometimes.)
Second time doing the 7 hours: I decided to read just my Bible for the majority of the time. A lot of it was wrestling with God and questioning Him about a lot of things. Sometimes they were good questions that I wrote down so I can come back to them later. Other times they were questions that didn’t really matter and they kept me stuck and not moving forward. Once again, I got frustrated. More with myself this time of why can’t I just read the Word without questioning everything and just letting God speak through it. The unanswered questions were keeping me from just being with God and not having an agenda. I was trying to make sense of everything and searching to find a logical answer to things I may never understand. It was all a very confusing place to be in.
Third time doing the 7 hours: I was tired. I was sick of being frustrated and being in a mindset of doubting and questioning. A part of me didn’t want to go, but it was our last week and I thought it would be a good time to reflect over the last month and do some journaling. BUT! Right before we went into the 7 hours, (slight back story) we had team time a few days prior where we had the activity of praying over a number associated to each person on our team but not knowing what number belonged to who. We would pray for a prophetic word for each number and then we would hand them out when we revealed what our numbers were. So walking into this last time of 7 hours I walked in with these words people wrote to me and didn’t even know it was for me. This is where God is crazy. When I sat down to read them, several of the notes were EXACTLY what I desired so badly to hear from God. It brought me to tears because it hit me that God loved me enough to sit with me through hours and hours of questioning Him and being frustrated with Him for this moment. This beautiful moment where I felt Him speak into my heart words of love and affirmation. And if that wasn’t beautiful enough, one of my coaches sent be an email a couple days prior of verses God put on her heart to share with me of what He thinks about me. I hadn’t read the email yet so I thought in that moment would be a perfect time to read them. It wrecked me in all the best ways. I felt so understood and affirmed in that moment and that is continuing to today even as I am writing this. I pray this place I am at with God will not go backward, but forward.
I may not have gotten all my questions answered, but I received something more important than any answer I could have found: His love and acceptance of me. He knows me better than I ever knew.
P.S. I want to challenge YOU to try this too! It might be weird and you might not think you can do it, but you can! I promise! It may take a few times to get the hang of it like it did with me, but it’s so worth it. It could, and very likely will change your life. It has definitely changed mine and I hope to continue this kind of practice as I continue my walk with Christ.
