Prayer Clinic Online

Archive for September, 2009

This is the ultimate goal in life: intimacy with God. We were made for this! We hunger and thirst, we search and experiment… This is what we need. We need our Creator. We need to know Him. Knowing Him is what life is all about.

And can only certain kinds of people find intimacy with God? Are some of us just so dense or so unspiritual that we can never ever come into any kind of give-and-take relationship with the only One who truly, deeply satisfies?

No! We were all specially designed to be in intimate relationship with our Creator from the beginning. That’s why we ache, we hunger, we thirst, we are not content with what we have. We still need, deeply need… Him. And because He is good, He reaches out to us, He calls to us, He desires with an incredible longing to draw us into the centre of His Heart. He truly does. And every single one of us is specially designed with the most awesome capacity to know our Creator. And every single one of us CAN know Him.

Do you hear Him calling? Even if you do not, if you hunger and thirst and desire to be satisfied, say “Yes!” Say to Him,

“Father, you are calling me, although I cannot hear you, and I say ‘Yes!’ I am blind and deaf, Father, and I do not know how to find you! Father, if you truly love me, reach out your hand and take mine, and lead me into the centre of your heart!”

He cannot resist your heart’s cry.

When my son was a newborn, he was amazingly sleepy. He would sleep for three hour stints; I would have to wake him up to feed him, and he would immediately fall back asleep again. Although I’d read about sleep-training from Gary Ezzo’s book (“Babywise”), it really didn’t seem to be needed.

When my son hit the advanced age of one month, he became able to stay awake for a short time after feeding; he also started to wake up only 20 minutes after I’d put him down for a nap. I realized then that I really was going to have to sleep-train him. So I followed the Ezzo technique, and we soon settled into a comfortable routine of three hour naps. He started sleeping through the night by age 10 weeks, which was an incredibly wonderful blessing for his exhausted parents!

As he grew, he became more wakeful once again, and I would have to re-train him to sleep at this new level. Back to square one. Since I had already trained him once, I knew what to do. This happened over and over as he was growing: Every few weeks or month, he’d jump up a new developmental level and start waking after a very short nap. Then I’d re-train him to sleep, and we’d be good for the next little while.

The spiritual realm is very similar: as we jump up new spiritual levels, we find it more difficult and challenging, and must learn once again to rest in Him.

Todd Bentley once said: “New levels, new devils!” and I find it is true. This morning I asked God why I was struggling with feelings of inadequacy, anxiety and frustration, and He reminded me once again to rest in Him. It isn’t as easy now, but it is just as desperately needed, and I trust that very soon my beloved Papa God will have “rest-trained” me for this new spiritual level — at least, until we move up to the next one!