Anne Graham Lotz - The Light of His Presence: Prayers to Draw You Near to the Heart of God

P RAYER HAS BEEN ONE OF the greatest challenges of my Christian life. While I know Im commanded to pray, encouraged to pray, invited to pray, and often compelled to pray, I have still struggled with prayer. My struggle has centered primarily on three areas.

First, I have struggled with concentrationwhy is it that as soon as I bow my head to pray, my thoughts start to scatter? Instead of truly communicating with God, I think about what I need to fix for supper or what Im going to wear to a special event or when I can schedule coffee with a friend. Or Im so tired that I simply doze in the quietness of the hour.

The second area I have struggled with is consistencymaking time daily to meet with the Lord in prayer. How often I have been distracted by my chirping phone or interrupted by my dog needing to go out or so busy I jump out of bed at the last minute and into my day without any real prayer at all.

And I have struggled with contentjust knowing what to say and how to say it.

As I have sought victory in these three areas, I have asked God to give me solutions. And He has! Setting my alarm for an earlier timeallowing me to meet with the Lord before I begin my dayhas helped with consistency. And writing down my prayers has helped not only with content but also with concentration.

In this volume youll find some of the prayers I have written. These prayers do not cover every crisis or cry, desire or delight, longing or lack, struggle or success, or a myriad of other issues I have taken to the Lord in prayer over the years. But I hope youll find these prayers a helpful resource to refresh your own conversations with God. Especially if you, too, have struggled with prayer.

While I cant help you set your alarm, I wonder whether reading some of the prayers I have written will help you with your own concentration and content in prayer. As you read them, you may want to make note of the four elements I try to include in my prayers: worship, confession, thanksgiving, and intercession.

I have made a habit of beginning my prayers by worshipping God for who He is, because as I focus on Him, its amazing how my own needs and problems are reduced in size compared with who He is. Then I look at myself and confess the sin that now seems obvious, revealed by the light of His holiness and glory. God has used a list of sins to effectively guide me deeper into confession. I have included this list as a resource for you in Appendix B. I do not beat myself up over my sin, but instead, once I have named it for what it is, I move into thanksgiving to the One who has forgiven and cleansed me. At this point, I am ready to present my requests and intercede for others. While not every prayer includes each of these four elements, you will recognize the pattern. I have left some of the pages in this volume blank so you can write down your own prayers, using this pattern if its helpful.

And remember, the purpose of prayer is not just to get answers. The purpose is to develop an intimate, personal relationship with the One who loves you, gave Himself for you, and longs for you to live in the light of His presence.

My prayer for you as you read this volume is that God will use my struggle with prayer to help you overcome yours. And that, as a result, you will be drawn nearer to the heart of God.

The apostle Paul prayed for the Ephesian followers of Jesus, and I have prayed these words for you:

For this reason

I kneel before the Father,

from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name.

I pray that out of his glorious riches

he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being,

so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.

And I pray that you,

being rooted and established in love,

may have power,

together with all the saints,

to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,

and to know this love that surpasses knowledge

that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Ephesians 3:1419

G REAT, P ERFECT H IGH P RIEST,

I worship You, the One who understands the feeling of my infirmities.

I confess that sometimes I do feel weary. Breakable. Lonely as I stand for You and speak out for You when so few others do. You dont blame me for my weariness and weakness. Instead, You sympathize with me. Yet I remember that You have said You set the lonely in families. So I thank You for Your family, for my Christian brothers and sisters who stand beside me shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart, as together we continue to live for You in this increasingly dark, dangerous, and hostile world.