When You Pray

If you ever sleep off in the middle of a conversation with God, you'll wake up to find Him hovering over head and waiting with a smile, as He watched you sleep, to continue the conversation where you left off the night before.

This has happened to me over and again. I'm laying back on my bed, thinking silently about all my worries and all the while saying, "Holy Spirit, what about this one? What do I do now? Holy Spirit, help me". And I'm there, thinking and calling on the Helper and one by one, He is bringing scriptures to my mind, reminding me of what I have read or heard or even discussed with a friend, whispering way outs like a lullaby until I sleep off. Then when I awake, a smile stretches my lips because there's a fragrance of sweet leftover conversation hanging in the air, my entire body is tingling with the feel of quiet pleasure and it seems as if I can reach out and touch the imaginative picture, that my mind has created, of the Man in shining garments seated beside my head and smiling down at me. I feel like I slept in the arms of someone who is completely taken with me and hold me precious because nothing else can better explain the delight coursing through my body.

You may be able to relate to this experience. I don't even have to be rousing from sleep to feel that way. I feel enveloped in the full attention of the Father everytime I gather myself to pray. My senses have become heightened, smelling and feeling God's presence even without seeing Him. I have gotten used to an overwhelming sense of deep emotions when I pray such that, I either burst out laughing or crying.

When we pray, God comes to us. God comes to us when we pray. Beyond the words we speak or the things we ask, God reaches out and wraps us with His Presence. I believe prayer transcends beyond the words we speak.

Prayer is such as engineered by the Spirit and hence, only the Spirit can truly explain what happens when we begin to communicate with God in the place of prayer. The place of prayer is the place of fellowship and intimacy. The place of prayer goes beyond our normal fixed daily devotion. It is an attitude, an attitude of talking with God.

I listened to a message some years back which I still go back to sometimes. The Preacher talked about coming into a consciousness of the Holy Spirit inside of us, a revelational knowledge of the person of the Holy Spirit. He said, if we begin to see the Holy Spirit as a person, we will talk to and with Him more. 2 Cor 13:14 says that "the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all" (NKJV). The word "Communion" as used here is among other words, fellowship and communication. The Holy Spirit is the one that takes us by the hand and leads us into fellowship with the Father.

A lot of things begin to happen, change, break and unfold as we pray. But even more is that we come to know God. We begin to build a relationship with God, we can start to sense His leading more accurately and the end result is that we, ourselves, are changed into the likeness of Jesus, little by little, the Spirit works through and in us, until we conform to His image.

Dear believer, the idea is not to accuse you of a failing or an altogether absent prayer life but to show you how much God would love to have you talk to Him. I want you to see that you can fellowship with God until He brings you to the place where your trust in Him is solid and strong, firmly rooted in all the rhema (revelational knowledge of God's word) you garner in your prayer place.

There's a fellowship to be birthed in the prayer place. The Spirit is ready and waiting for you to begin to talk to Him. There's nothing more that would make God happier than for you to share your life with Him. Every tiny detail.

So, start praying. You are angry with someone right now? Tell Him. You feel frustrated? Gist Him. Things didn't go as planned? Ask for His side of the story. Share your life with God.