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God's School of Prayer
By Margaret Therkelsen

My mind's eye continues to reveal my mother's face glowing with God's love as she talked about being enrolled in the first grade of God's School of Prayer. She loved to share about going into God's classroom each morning and sitting down at her little desk to learn that day. As she looked up at her dear teacher, God smiled at her, welcoming her into his presence. She told me she always opened her whole heart to him to receive whatever he needed to teach her.

In a similar way, I want to share something of what it means to me to be a first grader in God's School of Prayer. Of all the meaningful journeys we can make on this beautiful planet, no journey can compare to coming into the presence of the Godhead day by day. It is crucial to open up our schedule to make time for this relationship. We cannot let busyness rule our lives. Additionally, we must lay aside our feelings of self-importance and humble ourselves so that we might actually allow our great Heavenly Father, our loving Savior, and indwelling Holy Spirit to reveal their lives to us. What I am describing is so awesome that we must actually experience it to believe it.

This relationship is our home, and we are orphans without it.

Through the Holy Spirit, we progress into another realm altogether. We are lifted out of our own understanding (Proverbs 3:5) of doing what seems right in our own eyes (Proverbs 14:12) and learn to focus our attention on our radiant victorious Lord, rather than on ourselves all the time (II Corinthians 4:6). Allowing God, over time, to bring down emotional barriers and walls that prevent his ministry to us and through us (Psalm 51:1-13), we learn to bring all of our concerns and burdens to him, instead of trudging on alone under crushing problems (Psalm 34:15-22). We learn the power of pouring out our hearts in intercession for others and ourselves (I Timothy 2:1-6). 

Ephesians 2:6 says, "He has raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." How can it be that we are to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus? The Godhead is so divine, and I am so human! One of their most winsome qualities is their free-wielding generosity, and mercy in delighting to sit with us, to talk with us, to enjoy us, to commune with us! This is an amazing and empowering supernatural gift of heaven itself while we are still on earth.

The invitation is wide open to anyone who will open his or her heart, give God time, learn to lean heavily on the Holy Spirit, and allow him to take the lead. God does not have pets or favorites since he loves each one the same.  It is the act of "showing up" or being available to him that matters. It is in asking the Holy Spirit to teach us, and then learning to let him do it! This is what it means to come to our desk in God's School and see him smile at us.

It was my special privilege to be reared in a parsonage home where my father and mother modeled for us children the importance of morning prayers. I can remember my dad going out the back door of the parsonage to his office in the church each morning at five o'clock to pray and study the Scriptures. Sometimes the door closing would awaken me and I would snuggle down in my bed thinking, "Daddy's going to the church to talk with God; everything is all right." That thought so comforted me, I would soon be back to sleep. Daily, we were prayed for and prayed with. I thank God for my precious heritage.

My mother was my spiritual mentor and shared her prayer life with me-her failures and her answers to prayer. I could never thank her enough for all she taught me from her own experiences with God.

Each season of my life has been a growing and learning relationship in prayer. Now in my 70's, the dear Lord continues to open fresh new doors into the reality of his life.

For me, one of the most helpful, though often painful, aspects of daily prayer is that the Holy Spirit frequently confronts me in loving correction-helping me to see myself honestly and bringing me to repentance. He always comes with great tenderness, but with total authority. I am often totally unaware of what is truly going on, but the precious Holy Spirit goes to the heart of the matter. He can be trusted to speak the truth and give us understanding and wisdom in any situation. He continues to teach me all things I need to know (John 14:26). This is so thrilling because it brings him close to me, and reveals his faithfulness.

It is an unspeakable reality that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit care enough for each one of us that they will sit with us, being totally present to us, and listen with unconditional love and grace to our heart's longing. The Godhead cares about our inner struggles, failures, sins, and mistakes as well as our outer lives and all their complexities.

Nothing in all the world can compare to being in the presence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The world has nothing to offer that is so healing, so satisfying, so fulfilling, and so redeeming.

As we come daily in prayer, we begin to stumble more and more into the Holy Spirit. He is our teacher in the prayer life (Romans 8:26-27). We see over and over the truth of what Jesus says in John 14:7, "I have been with you, but I will be in you." He is in us to aid us in every possible way. When we do not know how to pray, which is often, we can cry out to him to pray God's will through us. The Holy Spirit reveals Jesus to us and always points us to Jesus, and a closer life of oneness in Jesus' character, will, and obedience to the Father (John 16:12-14).

These deepening changes in our character and will come about only as we spend much time with God and allow the Holy Spirit to be the helper he is. This takes time-ever increasing time, actually. But the returns are above and beyond what we can ask or think (Ephesians 3:16-21). If we have no time set apart for God, we need to stop and ask the Holy Spirit, "Why am I too busy?" The ongoing friendship with God cannot ever be evaluated by earthly things. "In him was life, and the life was the light of men" (John 1:4). Are you living in his life and light? (II Corinthians 4:16).

One of the tragedies today is that many people, both in church life and home life, have not cultivated an inner life of prayer. If they spend any time at all alone with God it is quickly executed, with little or no time for listening prayerfully to hear his word, and the Holy Spirit's counsel.

Forsaking a private, daily time or abbreviated time of only a few minutes robs the person of encountering the Godhead in meaningful and powerful interactions. One of the most crucial exchanges is allowing the Holy Spirit to shed abroad in our hearts the love of God for us-to know God loves me and that he knows my name and where I live. It is essential that I comprehend that he loves me with all my neediness, sin, failures, and emotional hang-ups (Romans 5:5).

If I miss the Holy Spirit's ministry of bringing God's love to me daily, I miss everything that is recreative and transforming.

I have come to the place of prayer hundreds of times in enormous need to know he does indeed love me. I arrive tired, discouraged, confused, battle weary, and lonely for Jesus in my spirit, but as I wait on him, I begin to comprehend the love of God. It is healing when the Holy Spirit stirs up God's love for me. What joy, what peace, what perfect rest. We are set back on the victory road with our hearts flooded with his love.

II Corinthians 4:16 says we are renewed in the inward man day by day. As God comes to me in one life-changing encounter after another, I learn to experience these renewing and revitalizing interactions with him. These experiences are not just for my benefit, but that His life may flow out of me to others.

The combination of pouring out my heart (Psalm 62:8) and learning to wait and listen to God's response to what I have said (Psalm 27:14), opens up a tremendous potential for more obedience. As I meditate on his word, and open my heart to his voice, I find my life being changed.

Father God has so many things to teach us in his Prayer School. He shows us how full of self-love and self-will we are, and how much we are determined to get our own way. He reveals my anger and insecurity. All my fleshly, carnal ways need to die and I must say yes to His call for taking the humble, lowly place. He longs to free us from ourselves so we can reach out and appropriate his life, grace, and mercy.

Colossians 1:27 states that "Christ [is] in you, the hope of glory." The saints say, "Jesus is everything"-and he is! We desperately need his penetrating ministry in our will, our imagination, our emotional life, and our heart life. As we draw near to him and he draws near to us (James 4:8), we can begin to trust him in a new, more vital way. Faith is allowed to grow because he is impacting our lives through our time with him. We begin to see his presence much more concretely because we know him in a more personal way. We are quickened more and more to obey him. We are empowered to follow him more closely as our soul and spirit become still and quiet so he can take more dominion in us and over us (Isaiah 30:15).

What a job God has! Only he can alter who and what we are in our profound helplessness. He brings the power of the Cross and the Resurrection to bear on our fragile and tormented lives.

The further we go with God, through the years, the more real he is to us, the more we adore him with all our hearts, and the more we trust him and begin to see how great his eternal love is for us. He longs to pour himself out on his people. To anyone who will receive him and his words, he will manifest his presence (John 14:21).

I know many people reading these words are praying daily and seeking to deepen their lives with God. If you have allowed your daily time of being in his word, humbly waiting on him, and praying for others to be squeezed too short, it is time to return to your heart's home and once again to linger in his beloved presence. There is nowhere else to go.

God alone is the answer to every need we have. If you are not allowing him to be your dearest, truest friend in this broken, sinful world, you have missed life itself! None of us knows what the future holds, but if we are seeking God, he will reveal himself in amazing ways in every trial we face.

Margaret Therkelsen is a teacher, counselor, intercessor, and member of First United Methodist Church in Lexington, Kentucky. She is the author of the Love Exchange and Realizing the Presence of the Spirit.



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