Nothing short of total transformation

So I guess I had the flu. What I thought was a looooong cold took a sharp downturn and landed me flat on my back for days and I’m just finally coming up for air and headed to speak tonight (pray for no more crazy coughing fits!), so it’s been quiet here on the online front. But, my laundry’s done and everyone’s fed. Glory!

The upside of the flu (!) is that it forced me to the couch, and while my children played happily in this week’s glorious sunshine, I had time to read, pray, and pound out a few chapters on the book. Hooray! As I was revising the chapter on prayer, I flipped back through A Praying Life and was blessed all over again by the simplicity and power of this book. In the current journey we’re on, I’m once again floored by the Father’s relentless love, that He stops at nothing short of total transformation in our lives. It reminded me of this from last year …

~

I wish I could send a copy of A Praying Life to every single one of you.

This book is resonating with the deepest part of my Spirit. You know the feeling, right? That internal Yes! that makes all those loose fragments come into focus and your heart “gets it.” I don’t mean we understand prayer in the sense that we dissect how it works, but we “get it” in the sense that it’s made accessible. There is still profound mystery (and, inevitably at times, profound frustration!) but we’ve waded into the waters of effective prayer and we’re learning to dive down deeper and deeper into its glorious depths. That’s what this book has been for me.

What’s struck me again and again is the fresh awareness that through prayer, God is seeking nothing short of total transformation.[bctt tweet=”Through prayer, God is seeking nothing short of total transformation.”]

While we may be tempted to believe that we’re asking God for “too big,” the truth is that God is always doing something so much bigger than I can even imagine. He’s changing me in the process. So the last few weeks I’ve been considering: What are the characteristics of prayers that I’m most often seeing answered, in the Scriptures and in my life? So far I’d say …

1. Faith. Scripture is crystal clear on this—if we ask with doubt, we cannot assume we will receive anything. Faith is the key that unlocks miraculous and astounding “results” in prayer. There is just no getting around this. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. The more than we drench our lives in the truth and promises of God’s Word, the more we will believe He is who He says He is, we will know His heart and His will, and we will ask in accordance with it, for His glory. Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief!

2. Repentance. Probably the most significant answer to prayer I have seen recently is in direct response to repentance. God showed me a clear area of sin in which He wanted to me to practice repentance—daily bringing this area to God, acknowledging my “bent” toward it, and asking Him to forgive me and deliver me from evil. To my everlasting amazement, He has! He is, and even did some other awesome things like removing the behavior in another person (i.e. a child of mine!) that was triggering that sin issue. A huge praise, and it all started with repentance.

3. Requests firmly rooted in Scripture. As we saw in Jesus’ radical promises regarding prayer, if we are Christ’s Ambassadors, performing His work for His sake, we need to know clearly what He wants us to do. I’m finding that unless I’m convinced this is the kind of thing my Master would want, my prayers are weak because I lack confidence of His will. Studying the Scriptures helps clarify the Stuff Jesus Does, and gives us greater confidence for praying prayers of faith.

4. Honesty. God sees what I really want, not just what I say I want, so it does no good to doll up my requests with Scriptur-y language if I don’t really mean what I say. We don’t let God work in the real part of us until the real part of us is exposed and laid bare to God during prayer. Whenever we are hiding the “real us” behind churchy language, we forfeit the real transformation that God can work through our honest pleas.

5. Heart. I do not mean mere emotionalism; we don’t have to muster up tears or put on a show. But Jesus was moved with compassion during His days walking this earth, healing people and performing miracles. Again, we can’t fake this or conjure it up on our own, but we can humbly ask God to break our hearts for the things that break His. The more we seek His kingdom during our day, with our time and energy and money, the more our hearts will be turned toward the things of Him.

 {Ready to dive deeper? Whether you’ve been praying for five minutes or 50 years, let’s continue to grow in our pursuit of prayer. Thanks so much for reading.}