( I type this as my niece and nephew from Reno are swimming in the pool. I can hear them singing......and I really want to go join them! Usually I read over for grammar errors before posting it....but this time.....you get to give me grace!!!!)....
Years ago at a Mops meeting , our speaker spoke about the prayer lives of moms of little ones. Although at the time I was in a Bible Study and was finding time to get that done (sometimes staying up the night before it was due!) ............................my life had lacked a "prayer time". The speaker encouraged each of us to think of something we did every day, and align that to a moment of prayer. (.....finding a place and time...and staying.... accountable to it!) I remember that morning well, and how I really wanted to make a commitment to a prayer time. I knew that each morning I awoke , I headed straight to the bathroom . So, I figured that I could kneel on the floor at our porcelain bathtub and take a minute or two to pray every morning. While I grew in my prayer life I struggled with the consistency. The years we lived in that house, I had some very sweet times of prayer on my knees in that tiny little bathroom.
Through the years, I have waxed and wained in this morning prayer practice , but my heart has always desired to make that prayer time in the mornings a priority.
Several years ago I had a man at our church make Mark a kneeling bench. We kept it in our walk in closet. Sometimes it had clothes hanging on it. Sometimes it had knees on it. Not too long ago He decided to take that kneeling bench to his office at work. Once again.....I had to find a new place. Start over again. This summer our walk in closet got a good summer cleaning and I had created a special place for a morning prayer time. Again, some sweet times in the "closet", sometimes it was for just a few minutes and sometimes it was longer.
Enter the week we started back to school and homeschool. ( We are just finishing up our second week back to school!) How can just a few minutes in a "prayer closet" get pushed out of the schedule so easily? Ugg!
So I come back to it again. A "start-over". Life is full of them for us as women isn't it?
I love the fact that God doesn't get tired of me coming back to a "practice".....over and over. It's just important that I come back to it. Here's my awesome verse for this month.
" Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead., I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." Philippians 3:13-14 ( NIV)
I don't have it all together in the prayer arena. But I keep striving. As it says in the message version...." By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I've got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward---to Jesus. I'm off and running, and I'm not turning back! " Same goal of prayer. Just a new beginning. Pressing on. As you leave your verse in the comment section maybe you can share what you need to "press on".....in your life. Love and prayers to you my friends as you "Press On", with your 8th verse!!
