Free To Be

I sat in Starbucks with the beautiful teenage girl listening to her heart. She was telling me of how Jesus found her. I asked her what her greatest challenge in life was. I thought she might speak of her relationship with her mother, or a subject at school, or even knowing what to do with her life once high school ended. But it wasn’t so. Her greatest challenge was to pray for everyone she needed to pray for.

I felt the weight of her burden. I’ve carried the burden myself in years past. But Jesus has shown me a different way. It has breathed the breath of life into my soul. Maybe it would hers too.

Jesus is at the right hand of the father always interceding. At the same time He indwells me. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, Christ now lives in me. He’s not just someone who came to take away our sins, He now indwells each and every one of us. I don’t think we get that sometimes. But if we accepted His invitation for an exchanged life, it is our reality.

If Christ indwells us and is always interceding, then could it be that at all times prayer is going out of us while we are unaware?

I am convinced that everything is by His invitation. Where He wants me to join Him, He places a call, burden or desire on my heart. It doesn’t really require any effort. Instead it elicits a response.

There have been times when my heart has been so burdened for another that I couldn't get it off my mind. I’ve come to believe it is His invitation to join Him before the Father. It doesn’t require a discipline to pray, or even a list to remind myself. My heart is drawn to the point that I cannot NOT pray.

Which leads me to another point. What is prayer any ways? Is it sentences strung together that sound spiritual? Or could it be even an ache of the soul for another? Doesn’t He read our thoughts (Psalm 139:2)? Doesn’t He look on the heart of man? (I Samuel 16:7)

I’ve come to believe He reads our groans, tears, and thoughts; puts them into legible words and offers them to the Father. For at times, there are no words to be spoken.

There was a time when all I had was tears. The deep sobs wracked my body as I felt the intensity of life bearing down on me. There were no words to offer, only exhaustion. Yet, He came for me. Without a word spoken, Jesus came and lifted me up. It changed my paradigm. For I had been taught that we had to pray with words about everything. I hadn’t uttered a word, I didn’t have any. Yet Jesus read my tears and came.

I’ve come to believe that this is His way. Sometimes there are words to speak. They simply pour out of me. Other times I have groans and aches. And then there are times I have only tears. Each one is an invitation. Each one represents a heart’s cry. Each time He responds.

The beauty is that we are free to be in the moment. As we rest in His life lived in and through us we can just be. His Spirit indwelling us will invite us. It will be a response instead of a requirement. He will burden our hearts with those things that He desires us to join Him in.

I could see it in her eyes as I spoke. She’d never heard anything like it. I know, I hadn’t either. Complex Christianity has just been made simple. Be with God in the moments of life, knowing He will invite you into where He desires you to be. No more struggle and strain to “get ‘er done” we are now free to just be.

Also posted at the Internet Cafe:

©copyright: 2009 Julie L. Todd