Prayer:  is it talking, listening or both?

Here we are at the first of the year in January 2013.  2012 has come and gone and I barely know what happened to the days and hours that made up the year.  I know I have a desire to write this blog, but there are so many other demands on my time, I hardly know how that will possibly happen outside of the intervention of the Lord.  Today I commit my works and my way into the hands of the Lord, and ask Him to establish the thoughts of my heart in line with His will for me.

Psalm 37:5 “Commit your way to the Lord, Trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass!”   And, Proverbs 16:3 “Commit your works to the Lord and your thoughts will be established.”  Our way and our works!  Isn’t that all there is to our lives?  The way we choose to go is the most important decision we will ever make.  I choose to go in the way of the Lord.  Then I believe that my works and thoughts will be established.

I remember once studying out the word established.  It has so much rich meaning.  For instance, it means to be established on a firm foundation from which one cannot be shaken.  If my first choice is to live in His way and to have Him be Lord of my life, how can I miss?  He and His word will be my firm foundation and then all else will flow from there.  The Amplified Version of Proverbs 16:3 says “Roll your works upon the Lord, commit and trust them wholly to Him.  He will cause your thoughts to become agreeable to His will and so your plans will be established and succeed.”  WOW!

So my word for this year is “Commit”.  I choose for my life and time to be committed to His will and plans and purposes and I will trust that if I will just daily do such committing I can trust Him to guide my thoughts into the place He would have me to be for that day.  It may be a day of prayer and Bible study leading to an inspirational blog.  Or, it may be a day of being present to the ones God has given me to love and to cover in prayer.

Of this I am certain, there are two very important things in this life of mine.  One is my love relationship with Him including listening to Him and talking to Him in an exercise that most of us call prayer.  The second is like it, it is to love my neighbor as myself and that is those persons to whom I am connected in my world. (Matthew 22:36-40) Scripture indicates that if I am doing these two, I will stand a good chance of fulfilling everything else important.

To my blogger friends, I apologize for my absence for the past month.  First, of course, there were the holidays during which we are all so busy we don’t know if we are coming or going.   Ours culminated in a celebration of the birth of Jesus with our family now known as the “second annual Biltmore Family Christmas”.  It was delightful and worth every effort spent to bring us together in such a way.  Soon after that, I succumbed to one of the bugs that have been flying around and I have been under the weather up til now.  Still not completely out of the woods so I would covet your prayers for complete healing, please.

Let me just state that I do truly believe it is the will of my Lord for me to write and now that I have the direction to “commit” each day and all of my way and my works to Him, we will see what comes forth from this computer.  I have come to the conclusion that both listening and talking are very important to the exercise of effective prayer and so I pray for a way to communicate that in an intelligible fashion that might aid those who would be looking for direction in those areas.

I received words of encouragement from many of you who agreed with me that prayer is the most important thing we can do and that it is one of the most opposed efforts we will ever try to accomplish.  I think the conclusion I came to is that it must issue from a living and vital relationship with Him, the One who answers those prayers because that is what He has been after since the dawn of creation.  It is relationship with us that He desires!  Difficult as that is for us to believe sometimes, it is really true.  He created us for relationship to Him!  There, with Him,  is where we will find our place of rest and fulfillment, meaning and purpose.

I pray the Son of God is shining brightly into your world today and that you will be challenged to commit your way and your works unto the Lord today and every day forthcoming.  Many blessings to you all,