Prayer Shouldn't Be Serving

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God showed me tonight that even my prayer time had become "serving" to me. Rather than resting in His love, I'd become focused on what I needed to do: repent, praise, and intercede. Everything was like a checklist. But God reminds us to choose that "good part" everyday..He would rather us just be there resting and basking in His love..than serving, serving even in the place of prayer. There's always plenty of people and things to pray for, but intercession shouldn't take priority in our time with the Lord. It's recognizing God for Who He is, and taking time to rest and be in awe of Him. God didn't intend prayer to be a burden or something on a checklist of necessary spiritual activities. He meant it to be a time of restoration and refreshing for us. A time we could sit with the One who fills our every need and replaces beauty for ashes. I think I'm gonna take more days to just rest from "using" prayer, and just let the Spirit lead...whether it's into intercession, or just into a time of intimate dialogue with God, I have a feeling it'll be mostly the latter in this season. That's how it should be. After all, we can't contrive anything in our own hearts, but compassion comes only from God. When even your time with God consists of striving, that loads onto the burden of serving instead of releasing it..

And then I see this "serving in prayer" stems from a false view of God. From a book by Kris Valloton: "We forget sometimes that the love the Bible is talking about here (love..'does not seek its own'..'takes no thought for itself', 1 Cor 13:5) describes the nature of God before it ever applies to us. God is not selfish. He isn't just hanging around with us so He can get His way. He practices what He preaches!" As much as we, with our cold hearts, feel God's reach for those on our prayer list, multiply that by volumes and that's how much God wants us to just rest and delight in Him as well.

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