The Hour and the Experience of God

Yesterday, I felt deeply the deficit of prayer in my life and committed to praying an hour today.  I want to share with you the experience and the goodness of God I found in it.  Pardon the slightly lengthier, but I have a story to tell and it merits the additional space.  I need though first to set the stage a bit.

Last night I slept perhaps two and half fitful hours.  My spiritually anemic state left me prone to stressing unnecessarily over much that was nothing.  As I mentioned in a prior post my wife, two children and I are leaving one church and beginning a new call in another.  The call officially begins on October 1st, but until today we have been uncertain when we would have a home to move into.  We will be able to occupy our new home October 17th.  Within fifteen minutes of finding out that bit of news our telephone rang and we got the blessed news that a couple in the church is graciously loaning our family of four the use of their spacious pool house for the gap in between beginning and housing.  
I had written in my journal and mentioned to friends praying for us, that I didn’t know what was going to work out, but I knew that something would.  I just had an assured sense that it would, but because I was staggering about far from God, lost in busy-ness, I did not feel the assurance I was acknowledging with my mouth. 
Knowing I had publicly committed through my blog to praying for an hour and feeling a tug in my heart to do so, I found myself much more God conscious all day.  I knew the hour was coming, yet I kept pushing it to the fringe.  This simultaneous yearning and pushing is sadly not a unique phenomena for me, particularly when spiritual disciplines are lacking.
Finely at the end of the day, at 10:20 p.m., after running all day on a couple of hours of sleep and an hour or so nap, I resigned myself to the couch in our den to prayer.  It felt like such a homecoming.  I began with simply praising God for who God is.  I sung to Him Psalm 95, making up my own melody of sorts.  I used the top line as a refrain that I interspersd.  
I then moved into a time of confession.  I started by using old and familiar words to me saying to God, “Forgive me God for I have sinned, in thought, word, and deed.  In what I have done and what I have left undone.”  I sung to God Psalm 52, once again making up my own tune.  I got specific about my own sins afterwards and then conclude by reading the good news of God’s forgiveness and freedom found in Christ as expressed by Paul in Romans chapter 8.
At that point it was time to just listen.  I sat completely on my couch, hands open in my lap, just listening.  When my mind began to crawl away from listening or try to bound away, I drew my intention back to being with God by simply saying Jesus name in my mind.  I struggled at first, but soon settled into the stillness, quiet, and solitude of just being with God.  God restored my soul in that quietness.  
After about twenty minutes of listening, I returned to voicing my prayers using the Lord’s prayer.  I find that to be a comforting transition out of the stillness of silence.  Lastly, I wrote prayers in my journal acknowledging the goodness of God here and asking God’s blessing in our new call.  Not coincidentally, this entry penned on my last day completed the last page of my journal.  So figuratively and literally I end one chapter and begin a new one.  Tomorrow I will start in a clean new journal literally
All in all my hour became more like an hour and twenty minutes or so.  I intersperse intercessions along the way.  I found myself feeling as if my soul had received a shower.  Despite mental, physical, and emotional fatigue, I feel refreshed and restored for my spiritual yearning is satiated.  No sleepless night tonight.  I am eager to prayer tomorrow and look forward to more of the goodness of God in that new day.  I hope as you read my story you will be encouraged or inspired to commit regardless of your circumstances to set all other things aside and stare into the face of God until your feel your heart touch with God’s heart.  Despite what should be physical weariness for me now some two hours later, I feel restored, refreshed and rejuvenated.  I wish the same blessing for you.  In Christ’s Peace, The Practical Disciple.
p.s. I want to thank Stushie for his wonderful comment on my prior post.  It felt like a tap on the shoulder from God at the end of my prayer time because I felt the fullness of it’s words experientially.  Once again, thank you.

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