I haven't posted in a while. I have spent the past few months just thinking over everything that has happened in the past year. Most of which was awful, and some of it was wonderful. I haven't been able to bring myself to post some of the blogs that I have written because they just never felt complete. Eventually I realized that I've just grown tired. Tired of putting on a smile and pretending that everything is okay. Sometimes it is and other times its not. I stopped posting Facebook statuses because I realized I had nothing to say anymore. So I shared pictures because pictures say a thousand words. Its been lonely and I've learned a lot.
I've watched all around me as my friends have gotten married and had children, or gradated college and had jobs in their desired field right away, or have the opportunity to afford Grad school. But here I am, stuck in a rut. Everyone has an opinion on what I should be doing, or how I should be living. They also say that they "all went through this as well", or my favorite is, "Hang in there, it doesn't happen overnight". So I stopped talking. Stopped giving them honest answers from my heart and smiled and agreed. All the while feeling worse and worse about where I am. I couldn't put into words how I was truly feeling until I spoke with a close friend. She told me that I was feeling left behind. As soon as she said that I had the words to describe what these past few months have felt like.
So finally I knew how to pray. I realized that I wasn't really alone these past few months because I have spent so much time building my relationship with the Lord because He is the only one who knows what I'm going through and He knows what my future will be just as He knows what everyone else's futures will be. I stopped caring about what everyone wanted me to do, and what I wanted me to do because it's not in anyone else's hands and it's not in mine. God has a plan for me and I know that He has something good in my future.
Spiritually, I haven't been set on fire like I have been in the past. And then yesterday my Mom took me to see a movie called the "War Room". I was excited to see it, but I knew it was just a movie. However, I can tell you now that, that movie changed my life. This older woman was selling her house but inside her house she had this little room and she called it her war room. During the movie she spent time with a woman who was spiritually cold and struggling with her life. The war room was where she did her praying. It was empty from all distractions except her prayers that she wrote out and posted on the wall. So often we find ourselves so distracted by so many things and this room was a way to shut out the physical distractions.
One assignment that the main character gave to the woman she was witnessing to, was to write down all of the things that she believed her husband has done wrong. The woman doing the writing said that it would take a very long list. Eventually she got three pages down and the main character looked at the list and said that despite everything on that list that her husband had done wrong, God still loved him. I had to pause and think about the lists that I have created of people's wrong doings and how they have hurt me. Its a completely new way of thinking. That despite what a person has done wrong in our eyes, God still loves them, and despite the list someone could make about each of us, God still loves us.
It was a hard concept to grasp, but I realized that although I pray each day, my prayer life was no where near where it needed to be. I hold on to my struggles and pray for things. I pray selfishly for God to take wrath on my "enemies" and those that hurt me. Something also said in the movie, was that people are not the enemy. There is a much greater enemy that is waging war. That enemy is Satan and when we sit down and let our prayer lives get cold, we are inviting him into our homes and into our lives. We let in the lies, and the deceptions and the pain.
I urge you to go see that movie. It may seem like just another movie but its so much more than that. We know that God can speak to us in many different ways. He knew this movie would be created and He knew that I would be going to watch it at this time in my life when I needed this reminder. So from this moment on, I am not going to let my prayer life get any colder. I am going to kneel in my own prayer room and wage a spiritual war, banishing Satan from my home and from my life.
This sounds like a bunch of crazy talk but after being stuck in this rut for so long, there is a new light reminding me that I am not alone and that I can't just sit back and watch. I have to participate and grow my prayer life and my time with God. I will pray for people I never wanted to pray for, and it will be a difficult thing to do but God watched as His son was tortured on the cross to save us from our sins. If He could do that, then I can learn to pray for my "enemies" (who aren't really enemies). God isn't leaving us alone in this battle but we must have a plan and we must call on the name of the Lord to execute that plan because its His plan that matters the most.
So no more being left behind and no more sitting down waiting for things to get better. I am a prayer warrior and a child of the one true King. I pray that one day you will feel the same burn that has set my heart on fire again!
