A few days ago, my mom and I were listening to Francis Chan’s talk on the Desiring God conference. We are both big fans of his speaking and love his books. This time, he was speaking about prayer. He talk was on Prayer as a Way of Walking in Love, A Personal Journey. When he spoke of prayer, it hurt my heart. I longed for and greatly desired to have a relationship with God like he does.
It’s not that I don’t love God…I just feel like I’ve become numb over the past few years.
When I was little, I would jump at the chance to pray for anything. My dad called me a little “Prayer Warrior.” I loved praying to God and I thought that prayer must have been my Spiritual Gift.
Over the past few years, I’ve become awkward when I pray. I stumble and feel embarrassed when I’m done. I don’t feel eager to pray; I avoid it at all costs. The only time I don’t feel this way is when I am alone. I can pray to God then, when there’s nobody around to hear me except Him. But I’ve found that prayer for me has not been a walk of love, but a walk of requests and thanksgiving.
Mr. Chan opened my eyes to my sins—I haven’t been walking with God in love. I can’t imagine if I only went to my Dad just to ask for something or gave him brief thanks for something he’d given me. Our relationship has been built on spending time with one another.
That’s how it should be with God. I’ve found that the way love speaks to me the most is through time and gifts. In my relationship with God, that should mean giving up my time to read the Bible and speak to God, sacrifice idols in my life, offer praises sweet as incense to Him.
Mr. Chan spoke of times when God had answered his prayers. Sometimes the prayers were crazy—like the time he went golfing with his friends. They all had new drivers and he had an old, used one. On his drive home, he prayed to God, telling Him about how he felt about the drivers and how he wanted a new one, but felt selfish for doing so. The next day, Mr. Chan went to speak at a church and they told him, “We’ve heard that you don’t accept honorariums, so we wanted to give you this driver instead.” Isn’t that crazy?
In the end, he said he’d been “camping out” on this verse from Psalms 27:
“One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple.”
He said he was trying to have this as the one thing he desired for a week.
I always jump at the opportunity to do something proactive. So, I tried his challenge.
Let me warn you: it’s really hard.
But it’s brought me to realize that my God hasn’t been the God that I actively love and actively loves me. He’s been the background God—a dead God that did something that changed my life a long time ago, but isn’t important enough to be my friend.
Now let me ask you, “What is your one thing? What is the one thing that you desire, the one thing that you seek? Is there room in your life to give up asking for other things—at least for a week—and seek after this one, beautiful thing?”
