Inhale

Last night I spoke to the students of South Georgia College about prayer. We are going through a series on Christian basics. There are few topics I feel less qualified to speak on than prayer. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for prayer. I affirm its neccessity in the Christian life and even practice it myself. Even though I am fairly consistent with my daily prayer time, I still feel woefully inadequate at it. I once heard someone say that you could tell the spiritual temperature of a church or Christian group by how many would show up for a prayer meeting, especially if all you were going to do at that meeting was pray. I think they are dead on. Most of us believe in it, but we are horrible at practicing it.

When you think of a "prayer warrior", who comes to mind? Is it one of the little old ladies at your church? The greatest person of prayer that I have ever had the opportunity to meet and talk with was T.W. Hunt. I heard he was going to be passing through our town and I invited him to speak with my students at a lunch meeting. To my surprise, he showed up early that morning so that he could spend time encouraging me, a campus minister he had never met. He was one of those people that when he walked into the room, the presence of God was so thick with him, yet he so humble and gracious. I have longed for that in my own life, and have fallen so very short.

Prayer is to our spiritual life what breathing is to our physical life. Without it, we spritually suffocate and begin to die and become ineffective. Breathing requires two things, Inhaling and Exhaling. Do this, begin to exhale. Keep going. Don't stop. Keep exhaling. Keep going. Keep going. Don't stop. Keep going. Kind of hard to breathe with only exhales. When we bring our christmas list of requests to God, it is like spiritual exhaling. We need to bring our requests and needs before the Lord, infact we are commanded to. But how often to we inhale Him? If your prayer life is like mine, I spend too much time talking to God (exhaling), and not enough time listening to and receiving from Him (inhaling). My prayer time tends to be too short with little inhaling. Now is the time to breathe in deeply. A former president claimed to have never inhaled, that may have been true both physically and spiritually. However, now is the time to inhale. This time, I hope we all will be accused and stand guilty of inhaling. Inhale deeply!