I know I haven’t posted much about my devotions, but it doesn’t mean I haven’t been doing them.  I do them every single day.  I may have only completely missed doing a devotion possibly 3 times since I (re)started this task back in March or so.  I read a piece of insightful literature, I read the Word, I pray, and I listen every single morning.  Some mornings I manage to devote half an hour, others I manage to only get in 15 minutes, and very rarely (which I should do more often) I pray and contemplate for an hour.

I do this because I know I’m not where I should be—physically, mentally, and spiritually.  I don’t know what I want to do career-wise (makes it worst since current job hardly gives me any work as of late).  I still struggle with the same temptations and addictions first discovered years ago.  And I know I’ve forgotten what God’s subtle voice sounds like.

With that said, my prayers haven’t only been for myself and my search to discover His Will for me.  I had to be aware of where I currently am and pray for the people around me.  It wasn’t until during a Sunday evening service in the middle of summer that he told me whom I should be praying for.  It was a reminder we should always be practicing intercession.

Daily, I prayed for this one person.  I prayed that I would be the person that God would use to intervene and tell the story of His Word.  But not once was I ever put in an opportune situation to do so.  But without fail, I keep praying every day for her.  And as every day goes by when I get to that part of the prayer, I keep asking Him, “Why should I keep this prayer if I’m never given the opportunity to her about You?”  And today, I ran into this tidbit in my devotions…

The Undetected Sacredness of Circumstances¹

The circumstances of a saint’s life are ordained of God.  In the life of a saint there is no such thing as chance.  God by His providence brings you into circumstances that you can’t understand at all, but the Spirit of God understands.  God brings you to places, among people, and into certain conditions to accomplish a definite purpose through the intercession of the Spirit in you.  Never put yourself in front of your circumstances and say, “I’m going to be my own providence here; I will watch this closely, or protect myself from that.”  All your circumstances are in the hand of God, and therefore you don’t ever have to think they are unnatural or unique.  Your part in intercessory prayer is not to agonize over how to intercede, but to use the everyday circumstances and people God puts around you by His providence to bring them before His throne, and to allow the Spirit in you the opportunity to intercede for them.  In this way God is going to touch the whole world with His saints.

Am I making the Holy Spirit’s work difficult by being vague and unsure, or by trying to do His work for Him?  I must do the human side of intercession—utilizing the circumstances in which I find myself and the people who surround me.  I must keep my conscious life as a sacred place for the Holy Spirit.  Then as I lift different ones to God through prayer, the Holy Spirit intercedes for them.

Your intercessions can never be mind, and my intercessions can never be yours, “…but the Spirit Himself makes the intercession” in each of our lives (Romans 8:26).  And without that intercession, the lives of others would be left in poverty and in ruin.

And so, I will continue to pray.  I pray so that the Holy Spirit will intercede others around her and that they will gain the confidence to share His story.  I also pray that no matter what circumstance I find myself in—no matter how mundane or insignificant it may appear to be—that I listen to the Holy Spirit and do God’s Will to affect those who are around me.

1. My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers, November 7th [↩]

As I mentioned in another post, I remember missing out on my daily devotion once in the past four months.  I think that’s a pretty good streak.  I have been “blessed” with a good amount of time on my hands.  I’ve been out of work for most of the year—”in between projects”.  That means I’ve had a lot to think about in my free time (too much free time, in my opinion).

My prayers have been mostly about myself: struggles, lack of focus, financial trouble, etc.  It’s been about me.  I’m asking God to help me out anyway possible to get myself out of this rut.  I’ve been looking for affirmation for what decisions (which I believe are mostly mine) I should take that will determine my future.

Yup, my prayers have been pretty selfish.

I’m not a big fan of taking entire versus out of context, but if you’re familiar with the story of Job, check the last chapter in his book.  The Lord accepted Job’s prayer for his friends (Job 42:10).  Praying for one’s behalf is intercession.  I’ve never even realized this word is directly associated to praying to God in one’s behalf.

“Worship and intercession must go together; one is impossible without the other.  Intercession means raising ourselves up to the point of getting the mind of Christ regarding the person whom we are praying (see Philippians 2:5)” -Oswald Chambers

So I’m trying something different (for the better) in my daily devotions.  No longer will I pray to God only for myself.  As a matter of fact, I’m going to try to pray to God for others only.  He knows in my heart what I truly desire, but I feel I should refocus my prayers for those around me.

I must not forget that ten-plus years ago someone did pray for me to come to Jesus.  Who knows how completely lost I would have been if that one Christian who knew me did not intercede.

A buddy of mine and I started doing daily devotions a couple of months ago.  We have a pretty good system to hold each other accountable: if you fail to do your daily devotion, you buy the other guy dinner for that day.  I believe we probably failed a total of 3 to 4 times in the past two and a half months or so.  For myself, I believe that’s a pretty good devotion streak since I have never attempted anything like this as a Christian for 10 years.

There’s really only two things I try to get done first thing in the morning:

1. Get in the Word (The Bible)
2. Listen and speak in solitude (Prayer)

As a Christian, getting into the Word should be easy.  The Bible is supposed to be our go-to documentation on life.  It is divine Scripture passed to man from God.  It is the living Word of God. It not only teaches lessons from the past, but I strongly believe its teachings have complete validity in the present and future.  But as I mentioned above, I’ve considered myself a Christian for over 10 years and I haven’t really read the Bible.  Sure, I’ll jump around between books and chapters to get some kind of insightful verse to shoehorn why things are happening to me now, but I haven’t been using the Scripture to aid what I’m really struggling with: prayer.

Up until a few months ago, I mostly treated prayer as a one way communication to God.  Sure, I tried to listen… I really tried.  I believed after a few years of being content on Christianity, I forgot what God’s voice sounded like.  And now, I struggle to recognize His voice.  That’s a problem.  I chose to follow Jesus Christ, and now I fail to recognize Him.  Has He abandoned me?  Never!  But I feel there are times it feels like I’ve given up on Him—my lack of devotion.

This is how my motivation for my daily devotions come from.  I’m living in stagnation.  I know there’s more to life than this.   Instead of living daily through drudgery, it’s time to discover how I will remove this life of discontentment.  And I will do it through these two things: absorbing the Word and prayer.