House of Prayer - My life, A Prayer (Hannah Heather)

And if you find prayer hard, then take comfort in knowing that the famous Saint Teresa of Avivia, famous for her prayer life, She once was known for shaking the hourglass when she would spend an hour in prayer to try and make the sand fall through it faster. That that like, she had seasons like that. Prayer is both profoundly powerful and incredibly challenging at times to maintain. And so if we want our lives to be a prayer, if we want this my life a prayer life, it's not gonna come without challenge. It's not gonna come easy. [00:13:05] (37 seconds)  #RealPrayerJourney

Or as I offer a sandwich to a homeless person, my hands and my feet become my prayer. As I'm laughing with friends over a meal, as I pause, I break bread and remember Christ's broken body for me, and I say a prayer of gratitude. And then as I reflect back on my day doing an exam and practice at night, I remember all the ways he was with me. And that, he says, is prayer without ceasing. Praying continually is not a practice which separates and removes us from our daily lives. It's the posture which illuminates and transforms us in our daily lives. [00:12:08] (41 seconds)  #PrayerInAction

And if you find prayer hard, then take comfort in knowing that the famous Saint Teresa of Avivia, famous for her prayer life, She once was known for shaking the hourglass when she would spend an hour in prayer to try and make the sand fall through it faster. That that like, she had seasons like that. Prayer is both profoundly powerful and incredibly challenging at times to maintain. And so if we want our lives to be a prayer, if we want this my life a prayer life, it's not gonna come without challenge. It's not gonna come easy. [00:13:05] (37 seconds)  #SeasonsOfPrayer

This is God's will for your life. You know that big question that we all have, like, what is God's will for my life? What's my calling? What's God's will? This is it. When God looks at your life and he thinks about how you should fill your days and what should captivate your attention and take up space in your diary and what your thoughts should wander to and what you will do anything to keep in your day, this is God's will for your day, your diary, your week, and your five year plan. [00:08:19] (30 seconds)  #GodsWillDaily

But what if prayer is not supposed to be added in? What if prayer is supposed to be the heartbeat behind it all? What if prayer is the breathing which oxygenates the whole rest of my day? And what if, like Brendan Manning over a Hawaiian pizza, we simply need to reorientate ourselves daily to the presence of God and allow prayer to flow into all those places of our daily lives. [00:16:15] (32 seconds)  #PrayerAsBreath

Richard Foster in his book, celebration of discipline, reminds us that we have an enemy who will do anything to keep us from the life of prayer, which our souls so desperately crave. And he says this about the enemy's tactics. He says, in contemporary society, our adversary majors in three things, noise, hurry, and crowds. If he can keep us engaged in muchness and manyness, he will rest satisfied. Do you feel distracted, caught up in muchness and manyness? [00:13:42] (36 seconds)  #FightTheDistractions

Please tell mister I Campbell that he shall have to wait because I'm having an audience with the king. Now if you're really honest, when was the last time that you told someone or something that it shall have to wait because you're having an audience with the king. And what would it happen to your prayer lives if we lived that way? In Colossians four, we read this line, devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. [00:25:47] (32 seconds)  #AudienceWithTheKing

But God wakes him up to show him, surely God is here, and I almost missed it. A life of prayer starts with paying attention to the presence of God, which is already right there with us. It's easy to miss if we are sleeping our way through life on autopilot or too busy distracting ourselves with all kinds of nonsense. Distractions which numb our brains and distract our souls, those things, they make us asleep to the reality, the realm of heaven that is right there before our eyes if we would only wake up and see it. [00:19:18] (37 seconds)  #WakeToGodsPresence