Setting the table of our hearts.

Setting the table of our hearts.

Healing happens . . . I know - I saw it up close and personal this summer in direct correlation to a bold, specific prayer I had been regularly circling.

At the end of June, I officiated at a wedding in Sonoma, California, and someone said to me, “I read what you write.  I was really grateful when you sent out information about how to specifically pray.”  Truly, I find that most people would like to pray, they are just unsure about the ‘how’.  And believe it or not, folks don’t want to feel like all they do is ask God for things—they get sick of it all being about them.

So here goes - In my lined Moleskine journal in which I write my prayers, I date the corner of each page, and write out my thoughts to God on the perfectly-spaced lines.  Typically, I order my thoughts something like this:

Praise

Repent

Ask

Yield

miracle |ˈmirikəl|  noun ~ a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency

• a highly improbable or extraordinary event, development, or accomplishment that brings very welcome consequences

• an amazing product or achievement, or an outstanding example of something: a machine which was a miracle of design | [ as modifier ] : a miracle drug.¹

Miracles are rendered in each area of my prayer as God sharpens and changes me, brings joy into my heart and gratitude into my existence through my communication with him.  Miracles for others come in response to prayers from the Ask section.  But first Praise and Repent.

Praise – With pen in hand, I think of the reasons God is worthy of my praise, adoration and worship.  Sometimes, I capture words of Scripture or even from hymn or song to express to my God how I think of him.  For instance,

“You are worthy, O Lord our God,
to receive glory and honor and power.
For you created all things,
and they exist because you created what you pleased.”²  (The psalms are full of David’s magnanimous thoughts toward God—scan them, underline them, apprehend them and make them part of your personal expressions to God.)

Repent – Looking inward, I take a few minutes to reflect and ask God if there is anything I need to confess to him.  Then ask him to forgive and cleanse me—and one more thing, to fill me anew with the Holy Spirit.  “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.³  (Also look up Psalm 139.23,24)

Ask – Remember what I said in last briefing about my mindset as I start each day?  God loves me, God’s heart is good, God has a plan for my life.  All of these things he has told me in his Word.  Because I know it is ‘in his wheelhouse’ to effect change—because he is able—he can do it … and his heart toward me is good, well then I know he wants to hear and answer my heart’s cry … for myself and for others.  Jesus said to ‘Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.’⁴  And his half brother James wrote, You do not have because you do not ask.⁵

After reading The Circlemaker, I oft draw a circle, (about an inch in circumference so you can visualize), and I write initials of loved ones and accompanying requests … salvation, job, marriage, breakthrough, healing, etc.  And the key to Circle praying is not to give up, just keep circling and presenting the requests to God to come and do what only he can do.

Yield – Starting my time with God with Scripture, and having prayed through a lot of life, living and loving, I am then quiet and try to sense if God is prompting me to take any action, in obedience to him.

This is what sets the table of my heart for God to come and move, as only he can do.  Oh, how I love him!  How good he is!  Tomorrow, I shall tell you just how creative he is as well in working miracles.  Until then …

Christine

1 – Wikipedia dictionary

2 – Revelation 4.11, NLT

3 – 1 John 1.9, ESV

4 – Matthew 7.7, ESV

5 – James 4.2b, NIV