https://vimeo.com/64177158

I'm Wayne Jacobson, and this is Engage. I hope you had a chance over the last couple of weeks to begin to listen to God, to see how he puts thoughts in your heart and puts impressions in your mind and how it is that he wants to make himself known to you. It's not an exact science. In fact, learning to follow him is more of an art. You're never going to be sure, not a hundred percent sure, not ever. But there are inclinations, there's that feeling of warmth and being drawn into something by him, and there's the feeling of restlessness and learning to back away. I don't want to talk about our part in that conversation. I was asked an interesting question last week by someone who said, since I've started on this journey, my prayer life has flatlined. And I said, really, what do you mean? And it turns out they used to pray every morning a certain quiet time, a big prayer list, trying to go through all their items, trying to get God to do those things. And in the course of this journey, that just felt so artificial to them they stopped doing it. And so they told me, I think my prayer life was over. And I said, really? Well, are you talking to God? And they said, well, yes, all the time. I said, when you're driving around, doing housework, working in the yard, I said, yeah, I've got things before God all the time. Is he speaking to you? Is he making some things now? Yeah, I feel like I'm beginning to make some discoveries. But you feel like your prayer life has flatlined? And it was interesting for them because they defined prayer in this little icon of I pray during this time, I pray through lists. And what they were learning instead on the other side is what I think prayer really is. It's an ongoing conversation with God, where I've got things before Him. I'm listening for Him as I go through my day. And we're learning to find our way into a rhythm of conversation and life together. My prayer life changed drastically in this journey for me. Before, I became confident in the Father's affection for me. I prayed a lot, but I prayed my fears, I prayed my anxieties, I prayed because of things I wanted, and if I prayed hard, God would give them to me. And when God began to set me at ease in His love, I wasn't as anxious anymore. I wasn't as needy for the things I wanted God to do in my life. I didn't need a big ministry. I didn't need big book sales anymore. And so those things that I'd been praying for went away. And there was no anxiety to drive my prayer life anymore. And I really felt like I was losing something valuable to me. But as time went on, I learned I was losing something that never worked. And I asked the same thing of this lady, for all the prayer lists she had, how much of that did God actually do for you? And she said, well, very little. Occasionally something would happen. I don't think God meant us to live by prayer lists. As we said last week, it's by the things God wants to give. It's not by the things we're demanding of Him. So now we've fallen into a conversation with Him. I find myself asking these kinds of things. I just pray, God, what are you giving me today? Who are you putting in my life that I get to love? What are you wanting to show me about yourself? How do I live in your life and grace today? I find those as much more part of my prayer time. And thanksgiving, not as a discipline. I should worship God. I should suck up to the big man by telling him I like him. But I'm actually overwhelmed so often by the things God's doing around me, by the things he's put into my life, that gratefulness just becomes a course of the conversation. And then I explore my day with him. If I've got things coming up, I'm letting him know those things, what I think of those things. Does he already know? Of course he knows. But I think he likes hearing it from our perspective. He likes looking at it through our eyes. So I do talk about circumstances coming up. I talk about people that are difficult in my life. My neighbor's one of those at the moment. We're having a lot of conversation about my neighbor and how I'd like to ring his neck and I know God wants me to love him in a way that I don't know how to do yet. In times of anxiety now, instead of praying all my worries to God, which isn't a bad thing to do if you're worried. But in my times of anxiety now, I'm just saying, God, what is it about you I don't know? That if I knew it, I could trust you in this. Now he doesn't answer right away. Sometimes it takes weeks, sometimes months before the answers to things I'm holding before him begin to sink into my heart. But you know what? When he's with you as a companion on this journey, you less need the answers you thought you needed. You're more content to just let things be in his heart and mind. And knowing this, that when he needs me to know something, when he needs me to do something, he's able to make that known to me. It's that rest that I treasure now. So prayers become a conversation, not a faked one, not, I give this, he gives that and we just sit down and have a conversation. It's a conversation that's melted into the whole of my life. Wherever I'm going, whatever I'm doing, I'm letting him know it's on my heart. I'm listening for what's his and my prayer life has been transformed.