I have never spend so much of a day in prayer as I have today. And that has been a very good thing.
One thing I have come to realize that the more seriously you take your life in ministry the more prayer is needed. And not just that you need more people praying for you, but you have more things to pray about. Reliance on God grows, or it needs to grow with every step of spiritual maturity you take. This is because with every step you take in spiritual maturity, the weight of responsibility grows and the greater will be the accounting for what you have done, or not done. I think of Jesus’ story about the stewards, and the ones who were faithful were given more, but the ones who were not as faithful, even what they had was taken from them (Luke 19:11-27).
We have been working on developing a more consistent time to pray together, Cheryl and I. It seems there is always something that gets in the way. This morning, it was our 2 year old, Dannan, with the runs, tramping it all over the house. We did manage to get through a bit of prayer time, but that sure was cause to be interrupted!
Then, once I got to work, I just felt the weight of that reality land on me. We need protection from distractions to be consistent coming to God in prayer. I need to be praying about praying! How strange is that? I determined to take time this morning and get on my knees. My flesh was telling me I was wasting precious office time that I could use for my class I am teaching or a myriad of other things, but God is trustworthy and he wants more of me. I prayed for my wife, and our unity; I prayed for my kids; I prayed for the core team we are trusting God for (that is beginning to form, by the way! Keep praying!); I prayed for diligence in what I need to do; to be a better father; to be a better husband; it went on and on and in some cases seemed circular. But it was healthy.
Then, today being Wednesday, Pastor Philip, Jason and I headed over to Cedar Grove for the Surrey Pastor’s Network prayer meeting. The worship time was very special, I think in large part because when you spend good amounts of time in prayer, God can’t help but bring you onto his wavelength, as it were. And when you are in alignment with God, worship becomes a truly awe-inspiring experience. I just became overwhelmed with His majesty, to the point that as worship was ending, all I could do was repent of my own sinfulness, echoing the words of the prophet Isaiah,
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”
At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.
“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.”
I was just made aware of how much of what pained me was my own doing in one way or another. I knew it but I didn’t… own it if you know what I mean. And as we entered into prayer for each other, I found myself praying for things that I had forgotten in the morning, which nonetheless desperately needed prayer.
I cannot complain. It has been good for my soul. But I just thought I would share about another phase of God working on the project called Oliver Shane Edwards.
Tags: Cedar Grove, confessions, family, marriage, prayer, Surrey Pastor's Network
