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My Conversation With God This Morning Actually Started This Whole Blog!
“Call to me and I will answer you. I’ll tell you marvelous and wondrous things that you could never figure out on your own.” Jeremiah 33:3 MSG
Background
Today, my prayer time started at 5:20 a.m. But first I should probably give you some background on my prayer time. You see, I have been praying for 38 days straight as of today! Now I have always prayed, but not THIS kind of praying. I would do those hard prayers when things were crazy in my life or when I really really really wanted something from God, you know…Lord, please please please, let me get the job with more money. Or please Lord, let me get an A in this class (that I half studied in), or please Lord let this house I can’t afford be my house. Or please Lord bless me with more money (that was my prayer a lot) because I figured more money would solve everything, right? Wrong.
Okay back to the background on my prayer time. So at the end of the year, God had been chasing me to spend more time with Him, and when I say chasing, I mean He was ON ME. I felt his presence saying, I want more time. You spending time with this person and that person, and Netflix and Amazon Prime Videos binge-watching all these shows, I want you to binge on ME. I just kept feeling this pull. So at the end of the year, I cut some stuff, sorta. Like I snipped it. I didn’t really cut it cut it. And I felt God saying…Ok, that was cool, but I want more. So one Sunday, our church had a guest speak, Terri Savelle Foy (she is so awesome by the way) and she talked about 5 Things Successful People Do Before 8 a.m. and one of them was spend time with the Lord. So I was like, okay, this is how I will do it. I will follow Terri’s plan. So I bought her kit and started reading the book. I was so excited. It was about to be ME AND YOU Lord, is what I was thinking as I read HOW I was supposed to create this daily habit. So I wrote my goal out, spend more time with the Lord. Simple enough, right? So I started praying, like i had been doing before. It wasn’t much different, other than I had written it down that I would do it. So it was some accountability, but it was just me holding myself accountable. And how many of you know, you really can’t hold yourself accountable like someone else can.
Fast Forward this story (clearly I love writing), but I know you want me to get to the point of this post. So fast forward to my church, Word of Life Church in Flowood, MS (woot woot) having its Connect Night. It’s a night where all the life groups are on display for members to decide what group they want to CONNECT with this semester. So that night, I saw all kinds of groups, and I just kind of browsed around like I was in the store. I knew I would look online at the groups later because I needed more time. A few days after CONNECT night, I checked out all the life groups online and one group stood out. It was the 1-Hour Prayer Challenge Life Group. I was like…1-Hour Prayer Challenge? Now I love love love a good challenge. I am often pretty competitive when others are involved, but this one intrigued me not from a competitive stance, but more of a, what in the world could I possible pray about for an hour? I find myself saying the same thing over and over NOW in my few minutes of nightly prayers. How in the world could I pray for A WHOLE HOUR???
Welpt, like I said, I am on Day 38 of the Challenge. We started out praying for 15 minutes per day, each day, and now we are up to 40 minutes!! YES, FORTY WHOLE MINUTES! Each week, we are challenged to extend our prayer time by 5 minute. So when we started the challenge, we were praying for 15 minutes, and then the next week, we went up to 20 minutes, then 30 minutes and now 40 minutes, and the goal to successfully complete the challenge is praying for a full 60 minutes. Let me tell you something, MY LIFE HAS CHANGED COMPLETELY!! That goal of spending time with the Lord has become more than a habit, it has become a non-negotiable time that I MUST DO! Our group leader is sooo awesome. She sends us an alarm group text every morning with praise and worship music. At the beginning of the challenge, she armed us with scriptures and knowledge on how to pray. But the best part is, that question I had on what I would I pray about has been answered…whatever The Holy Spirit wants me to pray about. Yes, I was baptized with the Holy Spirit, which shows up as speaking in unknown languages or speaking in tongues. See, I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Savior as a pre-teen. I have always been a believer and always attended church and got involved in ministry. But this Holy Spirit baptism was something different. When I got water baptized, the Holy Spirit came to live IN me. But getting baptized IN the Holy Spirit was different. The Holy Spirit was now ON me and it has changed my entire life.
Now I pray with the power of The Holy Spirit ON me each day and it is a level of prayer that I never knew existed, but I am so thankful that I get to be used by The Holy Spirit every day.
“Be a DOER! When God Gives You An Assignment, complete it.”
WHAT DID GOD SAY TODAY?
NOTE: Please note, all future posts will be formatted like this, where I will simply share what the Holy Spirit says during my prayer time.
Write your story and allow ME to give you your message.
Stop trying to see yourself in other people’s assignment. Don’t cheat off other people’s assignment. Allow ME to give you your personal assignment.
I created you to be original as the unique fingerprint I gave you. I will download your specificities. Don’t try to be like anyone else. If you’re finding that being inspired is causing you to be a copycat, then you will know that’s not ME, that’s the deceiver trying to trick you and knock you off course and knock you off of your assignment. When you get so inspired that you duplicate someone else exactly, then you limit ME!
There are specific messages, specific people, and specific instructions that I created YOU to specifically carry out.
Your gift is writing. I want you to write our conversations in a blog everyday, except Sunday. I will use you and your writing to get MY messages out.
Your gift should flow right out of you and come easy. Now easy doesn’t mean lazy, but it does mean that it will flow easy and not be too hard or stressful. If it’s too hard and too stressful, it’s not for you to do. You should be able to do your gift with your eyes closed. That is symbolic of you praying and waiting on my instructions within your gift.
“Did you do what I asked you to do today?” asked God.