Jonathan Merritt - Conversations Create the Change

(Guest Writer - Katie Corbett, VA) It is 5:04 am, and I am sitting at my computer reliving the past hour of my life. My church is participating in a campaign called “50 Days of Unbroken Prayer.” They claimed each Wednesdays during the 50 days, and I picked the 4:00 am spot. (It is crazy, I know.) As I walked into the room to pray, I was unsure of what God was going to be teaching me, but when I left 54 minutes later I felt the message was clear: I cannot be consistent with temporal things but allow spiritual things to fall to the wayside.

Humans are a desperate people who need to spend consistent time with the true lover of our souls. I am a woman in desperate need of my holy God. As I went through the steps of the ACTS method of prayer (adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication) I was constantly being brought back to the idea of consistency. Over and over God kept whispering to me, “Why are you so consistent with this and with that, but consistency with me is an afterthought?”

Why do I allow the giver of true and awesome love to be pushed aside? Am I really that busy? I doubt the Love of my soul is filling up my day planner with everything except him. At this moment, I feel him asking me to come to him…all the time. This great big God, who is so beautiful and mighty, wants to spend time with little, insignificant me. He is so consistent with me. Don’t I owe Him the same?

So, I started thinking of all of the things I do on a daily basis. It’s not like I am unable to make a commitment or be consistent. Some areas of my life draw amazing consistency. I will almost always find time to run three miles a day even when life gets hectic. It doesn’t seem strange to me to wake up early before work and go exercise. How is it that I will exercise my physical body almost daily, and yet I sometimes fail to spend more than a few minutes with my Father?

Every morning, I spend time dressing and putting on make-up. I spend a good 30 minutes just staring at the mirror every morning focusing on my physical beauty, but I often allow the beauty of God’s redemption to go unnoticed that day. How can I refuse to leave the house with out mascara, but I rush out the door without spending time with the Father?

How much can be learned in one hour? Well, if I go by what God has taught me this morning in that empty hotel room, the answer is a heck of a lot. I wonder what will happen if I am willing to rearrange some stuff and get consistent. What will happen if I apply what he has taught me in the past hour? What amazing things will God bring forth in the hours to come? I can’t even begin to imagine, but I can’t wait to find out.