Prayer: The Lifeblood of the Soul

Part I

“My soul, wait silently for God alone, for my expectation is from Him.” (Psalm 62:5)

Dearest Daughters,

You will not have the nourishment that you need for your children and for your family if you don’t feed yourself with the spiritual bread of prayer and fellowship with God. Communication with God is vital to our own thriving and to our repentance.

The apostle John tells us, “If we walk in the light as He is in the light… the blood of Jesus will cleanse us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).

When I look at that scripture, I see many layers of meaning. But what speaks to me most is that somehow, in walking in the light of His presence, the lifeblood of Christ flows to me.

Everyone knows that if you cut off circulation to a finger or a limb, death comes quickly to that body part. In the same way, we must have the blood of Jesus flowing to us—not only for the cleansing of sin, but even for survival. The blood is a feeder. It nourishes the body. It fights infection and bacteria. It cleanses and restores.

And somehow, this blood comes to us when we walk in the light of His countenance. In that place, the blood flows to us—nourishing, cleansing, fighting off infection, depression, and every evil thing.

So let’s talk about this communication with God. First, how should we pray?

Jesus gave us the structure of our prayers. It begins with hallowing His name, lifting Him up in honor and gratitude. Prayer should always begin by entering His gates and presence with thanksgiving and praise.

Don’t start your prayers with your own failures, or the failures of others, or the needs of your children. Begin with gratitude. If you start at any other gate, you haven’t entered the gate into His presence, which can only be entered with thanksgiving.

Once you’ve fully invited the presence of God and been embraced by His love—once you know that He surrounds you and fills you—then you’ll know which needs to bring before Him.

As a mother, I’ve often found it challenging to find undistracted places and times in which to pray. But I’ve realized that, while there are many ways to pray, only a few ingredients are absolutely necessary: thanksgiving and humility.

If those two ingredients are present, prayer can take various forms in different seasons. Sometimes prayers are loud. Sometimes they’re joyful. Sometimes prayers are tears. And sometimes prayers are silence in the presence of God.

I really discovered this when your dad and I went to Brazil. We shared two walls of our home with neighbors who were not believers. There were times when we didn’t feel it was right, whether they were believers or not, to impose loud cries to God upon their sleep or their family time, so I learned to seek God in more ways than one.

Certainly when I had time to go down to the church and cry out to the Lord at the top of my voice with hands raised, I did that, and what a liberating feeling it was!

But I also learned that sometimes just stilling my soul in thanksgiving and gratitude could bring me into the presence of God and give me an ear to hear Him.

All the elements of Biblical prayer—whether loud cries, kneeling, raising hands—are meant to get us outside of ourselves, to humble us, and to move our own thoughts, pride, and images out of the way when they stand between us and God. It is not God who needs these expressions. We need them.

If we can bring ourselves into a place of love, humility, and thanksgiving with God, sometimes a prayer can be as simple as stepping out under the stars, lifting your eyes to the heavens, and threading the magnitude of all your problems and needs through that tiny pinpoint of light, allowing its power to infuse you with strength, with the knowledge of eternity, and with the presence of God.

I remember a time when I was in a very difficult battle, and I learned something about prayer and the presence of God.

I had been in the agony of a kidney stone for many days and was in terrible turmoil about how to deal with it. Should I go through with a surgery? Should I take narcotics for the pain? I had a three-month-old baby whom I was breastfeeding and didn’t know what to do or how to handle the situation in a way that would not harm my baby, and all the while the acute pain was mind-numbing.

Your dad said he would support and confirm whatever decision I made, but he felt I needed to initiate the direction in a matter that so seriously affected my own body. I was in such turmoil trying to decide—take the medication or not take it? Go in for the surgery or not? Then suddenly your granddaddy, my father, showed up at the door. He laid his hands on me and began to weep and pray for my strength, for my peace, and for my healing. The pain didn’t go away, but I felt the presence of God all around me.

After that prayer, he told me something that became a compass for me. He said, “Your first priority is not to decide whether you should take the medicine or not. You just need to find that place where you feel the presence of God and focus on staying there. Do whatever it takes to remain in that space, and there you will know the will of God.”

I realized then that I was not supposed to be looking for an answer about medications or surgery. I was supposed to be looking for God. And that revelation simplified everything.

When he left the room, I reached over to the CD player and pushed the play button, not even knowing what was in it. The song came on:

I can see clearly now that the rain is gone.

I can see all obstacles in my way.

Gone are the dark clouds that had me down.

It’s gonna be a bright, sunshiny day.

As I listened, I dropped my head back against the couch and closed my eyes. Tears rolled into my ears—not tears of pain or sorrow, but tears of gratitude that God was with me. I could see the obstacles in my way, and strangely that was a joyful thing. I wasn’t going to stumble over what I could see!

I focused on only one thing: to stay in that place, like balancing on one toe, shifting slightly this way and that to keep that awareness of His presence. And the remarkable thing was that the pain began to recede! It was almost like I was observing the pain from a distance.

I stopped worrying about the medicine or the surgery. I simply focused on the feeling of God’s love and His hands wrapped around me. And to tell you the truth, I never thought about it again. Five days later the stone passed. But those were five incredible days of learning the ways of God—learning the wisdom of the Spirit, the Almighty Comforter and Healer. It was such a victory in my life that I began to try it more often. If I could just live there.

And as a mother, this is the answer. There will be days when you need to cry out with all your voice. There will be days when you may need to dance before the Lord and lift your hands in surrender. There will be days when you need to kneel quietly with your head resting on the bed. There will be days when you need to take a walk beneath the stars and gaze at the heavens and feel the awesome greatness of God. But all you truly need is to be in His presence, and your gratitude and humility will bring you there. So let that be your focus.

If you need to cry to be in His presence, then cry. If you need to rejoice, then sing, clap, and dance. If you need to humble yourself, then fall on your face. If you need to quiet your soul, then be still and listen. But learning to cultivate that awareness, that fully certain knowledge that you are in His presence, in His arms, with His breath breathing upon you, is absolutely imperative. And when you have done that, you will know the power of prayer.

But as a mother, there’s something else you must remember. You will need to find times when you can be alone with the Lord—whether early in the morning or late at night when the house is quiet and your heart can turn fully toward Him. But you must also pray in the presence of your children. They learn to pray by seeing you pray.

I often made my prayers with you twofold. One kind of prayer was very clear and spoken for your benefit so that you could hear what it sounds like to bring the ordinary details of life before God.

“Lord, order our steps today. Help us honor You in the way we eat, in the way we clean, in the way we speak to each other. Bless Granddaddy and strengthen him in his illness.”

These were simple, specific prayers you could hear and understand—prayers you could join in with nothing more than an amen in your heart.

But there’s another part you needed to see as well. You needed to see me humble myself before God. You needed to see me grateful. You needed to see me weep. To pray with my heart and not just with my mind. You needed to see me rejoice in the Lord.

Children learn prayer not only by instruction, but by witness. They watch their parents turn their hearts toward God, and slowly they begin to understand that they can do the same.

And so remember this: remain in that place of communion with Him. When you live there—continually returning to His presence—the life of Christ will flow to you like blood through a living body—cleansing, nourishing, strengthening, and sustaining you.

Remain in that flow, and you’ll always have the life you need to give to others.

With all my love,

Mom