While roaming around a bookstore looking for a book for my Bible Study group I picked up a book on prayer. Every year I ask my gals what they want to study and prayer is a topic they always mention. It never gets old. It never seems exhausted in our discussion and it never is something we spend too much time doing.
I like to search for the unknown (in celebrity status) authors who explore the heart of God. So, I hunted and hunted! My hand suddenly picked up a book on prayer that referred to “Prayer as Praising God”, and I knew right away I had landed on a great option. The second clue I had that the content was a goldmine was in the sub title of the book, “Live with Passion.” Yes, I said to myself, that’s what I want, no that’s what I long for, passion. I crave passion, I seek passion in others and I need passion in my prayer life! Passion generates hope, and it creates a stirring in me to pass it along to others in my daily life.
So 7 years ago, I opened up the book by Debbie Williams, Pray with Purpose/Live with Passion, and I discovered a method of prayer that I have clung to daily. It has been the most sustaining strategy for memorizing the attributes of God and for praying scripture back to God. Praying has become more powerful every time I pray and God loves to reveal Himself through Himself! I have experienced the Spirit hovering over me when I focus on Him rather than me. When I stopped asking the “why” question and dwelled on the “Who,” my life was and continues to be transformed radically.
My life circumstances have been dominated by turmoil and heartache for years. I can say without reservation that my view of God has exploded since I have chosen to allow Him to grow out of the box I had stuffed Him into. There is no containing Him and His magnificence. He is now larger than the life that overwhelms me and that remedy has saved me from despair.
This book, used as a tool to unlock my knowledge of God’s Names, has shown me that even though my circumstances haven’t changed, I have. I have developed a prayer life that has grown well beyond the pages of this book and become apart of my DNA. I have used this simple ABC method for memorizing and it has renewed my mind from dark to light, anxiety to peace, and fear to faith!
I have settled my minds focus on the truth of Jeremiah 32:27, “I am the Lord, the God of all, is there anything too hard for me?” In that verse I can have hope, my heart can be at peace and I can live trusting His power to help me live above my circumstances.
This Christmas season I want to be thinking of Jesus and not the stuff of this world. I don’t know about you, but I need to have a tool to help me not get swallowed up by the retail flurry and the demands of obligatory holiday traditions. I want to have Jesus fall afresh on me. I want to gaze in wonder at Him in the manger. I want to sing lullabies to Him as I worship His crown. I want to know Him as a person and be amazed by the mystery that He traveled through the birth canal from Heaven so I could relate to Him in life. He is my Savior. He is my King. He is my Everything.
Let’s journey together for 25 days and consider the many NAMES of Jesus. Memorize them and pray through them as we approach Christmas. Expand your understanding of what His NAME means so that when you think of His NAME, His attributes overflow in you and worship wells up in you in Praise.
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