You bold enough?

If you don’t know what you’re doing, pray to the Father. He loves to help. You’ll get his help, and won’t be condescended to when you ask for it. Ask boldly, believingly, without a second thought. People who “worry their prayers” are like wind-whipped waves. Don’t think you’re going to get anything from the Master that way, adrift at sea, keeping all your options open. (James 1:5 MSG)

We have been looking a little at what it means to pray - the posture we should take is one of boldness, not timidity. The purpose of prayer is relationship - to strengthen our heart's connection with the one who already loves us so very much. The pathway to prayer is submission - in laying ourselves down, even for just a little while, we "make room" to take in a little of the presence of God and to bask it in a little while, listening and absorbing. The productivity of prayer is found in what we leave and what we receive - it is in "bringing" and "leaving" that we have room to now "receive".

The process of prayer begins a lot of times simply in us not knowing what we are going to do about something that is troubling us, or that we need another perspective on in order to see things in a new light. When I am struggling with a solution to a particular problem, I spend endless hours just thinking on the solution. I wanted to have a workshop - a dream of about a two years in the making. That is a reality now, but not without a whole lot of pondering, reconsidering, planning and purposeful preparation. 

We all deal with problems a different way. Maybe we face them head on, in a rush of emotion and quick response - but I have to ask - how's that been working for you? We could be planners - taking such a long time to act on anything that the problem is now magnified because we needed the "perfect plan". The issue isn't that we have problems - it is in how we deal with the problems we have! We rob ourselves of great resources and tremendous insight when we are too proud, passionate, or pessimistic to bring them to the Lord first!

Just a couple of thoughts on prayer:

1) WE often don't have the solution. WE need a different perspective in order to see the solution. If we don't ask, we might not ever find that "additional" or "different" perspective that brings the right solution WE need.

2) We aren't admitting defeat every time we come to God for his perspective on a matter - we are deferring to his wisdom - to his awareness of what exactly we NEED at that very moment. To defer is not to take action - it is to yield to the direction that supersedes our present knowledge.

3) We are bold about some things that aren't as important as prayer - so why aren't we as bold, or bolder in prayer? Just askin!