Luke 18:1 --- Now Jesus was telling the disciples a parable to make the point that at all times they ought to pray and not give up and lose heart,
For some reason, this past week I have been waking up exhausted. We rearranged our room, but I didn't think simply moving things around would throw my sleep off. Regardless of why, it has made it quite tough to get going early. Which has impacted the amount of quiet time I have with the Lord. Which, being such a worker minded person, the first thing I did was shorten my prayer time, to keep my study time, art and recap posting on track. You know, all the things that I have hands on, that I can do in my strength, which have verifiable results. Not that I care about those things really, but funny how I didn't cut back on those areas, just the area where I must be still, sit with the Lord, talk with Him, the place where we communicate, where I reflect, and many times am convicted of things or given direction for the day.
Well today in prayer the Lord really opened my eyes to see clearly how this has impacted me throughout each day. Since last Sat I have been a bit grumpy, a bit impatient and unfortunately my precious wife has had the joy of dealing with most of it. As I was talking with the Lord about it today, it hit me how many times I've had to apologize to Amanda over the past four days. We usually have a solid and wonderful unity in our marriage, but I realized, in having to apologize to her twenty times in four days, something was off with me. Holy Spirit showed me I needed to rebalance and stop limiting my prayer time. For me, the order of my quiet time, seven days a week is:
1) Prayer/Talking with the Lord.
2) Reading/Studying/Adventuring through the Word with God.
3) Recapping my morning adventure with the Lord.
4) Doing art with the Lord to go with my day.
What I didn't realize until Holy Spirit kind of bonked me on the head with it, was when it came to needing to cut time out, I already had the priority of what to cut first and it wasn't prayer time.
So, in the end it was totally okay to be tired. It was okay that my time needed to be shortened. That's just life sometimes, tired, and short on time. LOL… Okay, joking aside, it was okay, but it wasn't okay for me to cut way back on my personal time to talk with the Lord. It was like trying to sit in a chair that was missing a leg. You can do it, but you have to shift a certain way, brace with your leg muscles, constantly on edge if it'll break or not, and overall, it just doesn't work too well and leaves you tired.
Well, that's enough rambling on about my own personal thick-skulled episode. Yay, such a fun read. Give us more of your personal face plants, Phillip! LOL.. Kidding… but there it is. Being transparent with my humanness and overjoyed and grateful that God loves me.
When I went to study the Word today, I was led to the parable below out of Luke. It's an interesting parable of a widow who annoys an unjust judge so much, he finally gives a just ruling because he knew she was going to drive him insane if he didn't. LOL. Jesus, you're so awesome! Using a story like this to illustrate to us the level of persistence we're to have in praying every day. To call out us Christians to see if we'll be found this faithful upon His return.
Luke 18:1-8 --- Parable of the Persistent Widow
18 Now Jesus was telling the disciples a parable to make the point that at all times they ought to pray and not give up and lose heart, 2 saying, “In a certain city there was a judge who did not fear God and had no respect for man. 3 There was a [desperate] widow in that city and she kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice and legal protection from my adversary.’
4 For a time he would not; but later he said to himself, ‘Even though I do not fear God nor respect man, 5 yet because this widow continues to bother me, I will give her justice and legal protection; otherwise by continually coming she [will be an intolerable annoyance and she] will wear me out.’”
6 Then the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says! 7 And will not [our just] God defend and avenge His elect [His chosen ones] who cry out to Him day and night? Will He delay [in providing justice] on their behalf? 8 I tell you that He will defend and avenge them quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find [this kind of persistent] faith on the earth?”
Be the Berean and get into your bible. AFTER, spending time in prayer our course. LOL. Talk with the Lord, then dive into His Word! You'll never regret a single second you've spent with God!
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