[1]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\nNow far be it for me to let you believe I have not been in a prayer meeting where we have done some shouting and busy prophesying. As I told you, I was brought up in the Pentecostal tradition. I\u2019m not against loud and enthusiastic per say. It is more that I recognise when I was younger that I would use certain tones, actions and words\u2014praise the Lord, Hallelujah\u2014in the mistaken belief that this would get God moving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hallelujah is a good word, but it\u2019s not a magic word. I\u2019ve marched up and down during a prayer meeting. I like marching while I pray. I don\u2019t know why. But it\u2019s not the marching that God is after. He is after a heart that is yielded to him in the quiet and private places. A heart that trusts him. As I wrote earlier, God won\u2019t hear you any more or any less than if you knelt at an altar and lit a candle, or took a deep breath in mediation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The key is that your heart is inclined to Him, and that you have your listening ears on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So when it comes to family crisis and need, bring it to him, but listen to Him. Trust Him. Obey Him when he speaks to you. Sometimes what he asks you to do is not in the script you have written.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I remember a number of years ago, my husband (the pastor) and our assistant pastors were stressing over the need to find a building to house our rapidly growing congregation. We had been thrown out of two schools and had outgrown the one premises that were prepared to have us. A building became available for lease but there were complications involved. It was a perfect size, and had a heap of extra office space, much more than we required. My husband felt God say we should go around the outside of the building and pray. I said we\u2019d best be careful\u2014remember what happened with Jericho. Anyway, in obedience to this crazy notion, the four of us went around the premises praying. And guess what? We didn\u2019t get the building. We got another building (but that\u2019s another story). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, fast-forward eight years. We were now pastoring another growing church who were bursting at the seams of their small building, and who should join us after so many years being away in Queensland, but those same two assistant pastors. The hunt for buildings was on again, and lo and behold, that same building we didn\u2019t get eight years previous came up for lease. This time, it didn\u2019t have the superfluous office space that would cost us too much, and another church had renovated it ready to use for church purposes in the ensuing years. We all laughed about how we\u2019d claimed this building for God\u2019s purposes eight years before, but it needed renovation, and it needed to be cheaper. And now it was. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sometimes God does tell you to do something that doesn\u2019t make sense, and sometimes you don\u2019t see the answer as you would expect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, I am not saying we shouldn\u2019t come to prayer meetings, but I am saying we must incline our heart towards God in our private meditations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We shouldn\u2019t spend a whole heap of time telling Him what he needs to do, but should listen to Him so he can tell us what we need to do. What He might tell you is, wait. He might tell you to shout aloud with a voice of triumph. He might tell you to speak in tongues for half an hour. Or He might just tell you to stop, be quiet and trust Him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When we don\u2019t know what to pray, there is always the bottom line stuff\u2014Jesus\u2019 heart for people to be saved; healed; restored; reconciled; delivered from life controlling situations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Psalm 106:13 (NIV) \u2018But they soon forgot what he had done and did not wait for his plan to unfold.\u2019<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nOrganising Jesus is not a great plan, but waiting for His plan to unfold is.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n[1]<\/a> Got Questions Ministries \u2013 www.gotquestions.org<\/p>\n\n\n\n[2] Photo by No Revisions<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Let me tell you how it was that I came to start writing novels (you know those stories that aren\u2019t true). Back when I was newly married, my husband and I worked in youth ministry. In the 1980s, church leaders were encouraged to phone up their parishioners and try to help them out of any […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[22,21],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meredithresce.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meredithresce.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meredithresce.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meredithresce.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meredithresce.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/meredithresce.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":548,"href":"https:\/\/meredithresce.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536\/revisions\/548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meredithresce.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meredithresce.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meredithresce.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}