24/7 Prayer

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John 4:23-24 

"Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is Spirit, and His worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth."

Kimberly over at Mining for Diamonds asked me "how you manage your prayer times. Do you pray for everyone on your list all at once? Do you pray as the Lord lays them on your heart? Do you remain in an attitude of prayer all day? I've found myself praying in my sleep before!!! There are so many different "styles" of prayer...quiet reflective prayer, loud travailing prayers...would love your thoughts and testimonies!"

Thanks for these questions Kimberly. This is something I have been meaning to post on so here we go!!

One of dictionary.com descriptions for the word pray is ...to enter into spiritual communion with God or an object of worship through prayer. Another word for communion is relationship. Christianity is built on Jesus Christ as the foundation and cornerstone and this is a relationship not a religion. There is no other belief that calls for an ongoing relationship like Christianity does.

How does my prayer life look like with the Creator of the world? Kind of like a typical conversation with your very best friend. Give and take. Talk and listen. God wants to have a friendship with us. He doesn't want us to come to Him once or twice a day and throw all these needs at Him and then leave without even waiting for Him to respond. You wouldn't do that to your best friend so it isn't right for us to do this with God either. Jesus wants to have fellowship with us, an ongoing relationship where we talk back and forth, or just sit in each other's presence. He really like us and wants to hang out with us in everything we do and He really does talk to us, we just need to learn how to listen.

Ok, so how do I talk with someone I do not see? By dedicating everything I do to Him and trust that He will lead where He wants me to go. If God has promised us that He will never leave or abandon us and we know that the Holy Spirit lives inside of us then it is only right to include Him in our thought process with the goal of handing over our complete self and thinking patterns to His control and way. This is an ongoing process and I have to keep reminding myself that He is always listening therefore I should always include Him in all of my conversations. Sometimes I do tend to forget to include Him but He gently reminds me, usually with an impression, that He is there.

My 24/7 prayer life is really an active relationship with the Holy Spirit who lives inside me and He will prompt me to pray. Names will pop into my mind or I will receive a very strong impression or series of pictures of someone or something and then I will just start praying. I converse with God instead of talking or thinking to myself, after all He is always listening and it is just me that loses focus on Him for He doesn't move away it is I who walks away from Him. This does take time and practice and my mind tends to wander. This, I find, is where fasting really helps as it turns my thoughts off of myself and onto God. When I am hungry I remember God and feed my spirit with the Word of God or worship and focus on Him. It is a discipline that needs to be trained like learning another language or musical instrument. You have to practice it and if you leave it for a bit you tend to get rusty or maybe even forget some things.

My conversations with God change from day to day with the different circumstances in my life. Sometimes I have a very quiet reflective prayer time or robust! There are times when I just sit in His presence or cry to Him. My prayers can be very emotional and loud and I can be overcome with laughter. The best way that I love to pray is in dance but I am not free to dance all the time so I will dance before my King in my mind. Sometimes He dances with me but most often I dance in His presence with angels. I love to worship God in tongues but I only do this when I feel prompted and usually it is for a very desperate cry out to the Lord or for a release in the Spiritual world. I guess you would say that I pray as the Spirit leads.

The pleasure and wholeness of living as one with the Holy Spirit far surpasses any worldly bliss we could imagine. It doesn't matter if you are poor, beaten or in prison for the joy of the Holy Spirit transforms you into understanding the pureness and delight of the heavenly kingdom in which one day the children of God will all be living together in. This was the joy that Stephen, the first martyr, had on his face while he was being stoned to death.  

So, when I say I pray 24/7 I am really just in a relationship with Jesus, walking beside Him, loving Him, complaining and crying my heart out to Him and just enjoying His wonderful company in all circumstances that come my way. By no means do I have this perfected, I fail a ton of times but I pick myself up, brush off the dirt and keep on keeping on as the Spirit leads.

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 2 Corinthians 13:11-14 NIV

Finally, brothers and sister, rejoice! Strive for full restoration, encourage one another, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you. Great one another with a holy kiss. All God's people here send their greetings. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.