As some of you have been following, I have been writing blogs concerning Listening Prayer (Listening Prayer#1: co-worker Listening Prayer#2: at church 9/18). I have shared this idea with the worship pastor at my church (as I am a member of the worship team) and he got super fired up about it.
So last Thursday, at worship practice instead of the continuing the Romans study we had been doing, the pastor asked me to explain listening prayer to the team and that we would spend 15-20 minutes practicing it.
So, we started to pray. I opened our time with “God, we are your children here to listen to you. So, please, will you quiet my voice. Shut out satan’s voice. And let us hear you clearly.”
Ba-da-boom, ba-da-bing. That’s it. Silence.
One thing I should have mentioned to the group before we started was that we were pretty much just going to sit still and listen. I only mention this because it was not long after we started that one of the guys on the team, who happened to be wearing swishy pants (hopefully my high school friends and I aren’t the only one who call those running pants that swish when you walk swishy pants), started to get uncomfortable as he was perched on the stairs.
“Okay God,” I prayed, “will you quiet my” *swish* “voice and protect me from satan’s voice” *swishy swish* “so that I can hear” *swiiiiiish* “…you clearly.”
I will admit I was trying not to laugh or rebuke the poor guy’s swishy pants but it did add to the reality that we will not always have perfect silence to listen to God’s voice. (just a little anecdote)
None-the-less, an image later flashed upon my closed eyes. It was of one of the guys on the team who has a chronic lung problem and tends to have other stuff always going on with him too. He is one of the most uniquely faith-filled and enthralling people I’ve met, but it’s like he has a little black cloud following him around raining on the parade he’s in, though that doesn’t stop him from marching on.
The image was of him and God in a meadow and he was strolling with a perfection to his posture and a breeze carrying his feet down the path they were on. The air was a warm butter-yellow and the grass seemed to glitter with wild flowers. One word described him: unhindered.
After we were done praying we talked about what it was like for everyone; most people said they had a hard time down-shifting from the day is easy to understand if you’ve ever tried this excercise.
I waited a while before sharing what I’d seen (it’s kinda’ scary to go out on a limb with something like that because the possibility of being lost in left field is always there) but, I decided to tell him what I saw. I began describing it to him and about the word unhindered being so prevalent and how God was desiring him to come that way to Him and found myself crying. I guess I was more overwhelmed than I thought.
When I was done, though, he told me that when we had started his mind was simply whirring but that half-way through he had just started letting things fall away and had really felt God’s peace. “Unhindered” was exactly the word he had heard.
And isn’t it just the truth for all of us? To really just let the junk fall away and hang out with God. And not only that, but oh the freedom of letting God take our burdens (like he says he will, duh!) and granting us his peace.
I have really been learning to FINALLY accept Jesus’ death on the cross by letting him take my junk. I don’t think I ever really meant to do this, but by not letting Jesus help me walk unhindered, in a way, I am not accepting his death on the cross. I am telling him I’d rather just hang on to that stuff when he is there with his arms open wide saying, “cast all your cares upon me.”
(see 1 Peter 5:6&7)
Thank you, Lord, for sending your son to die for me. Thank you, Jesus, for all your life has taught so many of us. And thank you Holy Spirit, for prompting my heart to come to Lord as I am and letting Him be my source of freedom. God, I pray for everyone who reads this that they will seek your freedom this day, right now, at their desk or wherever they may be. Will you humble us to come before you as we are and finally release our “stuff” into your hands? You love us so perfectly and patiently. May we each know what it means to be UNHINDERED before you. Thank you, thank you Lord. Amen.
