Beg God to be Involved

10/8/1996

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Literally to be audible…and I asked him about that and he said that the reason why that’s an important thing isn’t because there is any special thing in speaking words out loud, but we are so prone as human beings to having our minds stray and not to be able to think clearly, that that is just a tool to be able to bring our hearts and our minds into a clear, specific thing that we are saying. When someone prays publicly or out loud it may not look like the way you would if you weren’t saying anything and you’re in your prayer closet where you drift all over the place and you stop halfway through a sentence and you don’t even remember what you were talking about a minute ago, and things like that. So, he said it’s not so much that it has to be audible, but we’re all so prone to not being able to clearly state things quietly, that it’s a tool for us. So it doesn’t have to be out loud for it to be more meaningful to God, but it helps us to bring our thoughts clearly. And obviously there has to be a place where we grow in that because if we were all talking out loud to God all the time when we were together it would be quite a confusing place.

I know God wants us to be constantly listening to Him and dialoging with Him as we walk along. If we are instructed by the scriptures by people who have gone before us to pray continually, then there is something about that fellowship with God that is an all-the-time thing. But anyway, thought I would pass that on, some of what came out of that conversation. Some of what has given me a lot of hope and it is that God really wants to change who I am on the inside. You’re talking about character traits changing in me and in other people, and that’s something that we all could really stand to change a lot in. None of those things will change outside of asking God to be present and do His work and be there and bless us with His Spirit, and for Him to really work to change our lives. There will not be any change in any of us in any area or in anybody if God isn’t actively present. If you want supernatural change, that is. There could be behavioral changes, things on the outside looking different, which we dangerously fall into when we consider as being progress in people’s lives when external things change. But for there to be real ground gained where people are actually different than they were a month ago or six months ago, for that to really change it requires that we are asking God, “Please come and pour out Your spirit, be present, do what You can to change the situation. Please be involved, bring the life of Your Son in a fuller and a more meaningful and a continuous way in this person’s life. Set them free from the things around them.” Just begging God for those things.

As Andy said to just hold up a vision, imagining and looking to see what it is that God wants in each others’ lives, asking Him very specifically to be able to see that stuff. But we have got to have God in our midst, individually and corporately, we have got to have Him and to really take Him at His Word on that and to be begging Him to be present. I know that was one of the big things he said in Malawi was the name God was just so much more to him as a result of the experiences he went through and that just absolutely nothing can happen apart from God’s presence in our lives. It motivates me very much to be a person of prayer the way Jesus was, if that’s what it’s going to take to bring about something meaningful in our lives. It encourages me to know that is a place where I can really—there’s a lot of room for me to grow and that means that God really wants to do something to change my heart and change other people’s hearts. So, don’t let it be a “to do,” but something that we can really be different about, different on the inside.