War Room

I can't sleep. So instead I will write a post. I saw the movie war room recently. It was an excellent movie about the power of prayer and the importance of regular communication with God. It was one of those movies where you laugh and you cry; sometimes within a matter of a few minutes.

The premise of the movie is that there's an older woman who takes a younger woman, with lukewarm face under her wing, and teaches her to trust completely in the power and providence of God through prayer.

As I left the movie I remember thinking, "I need a woman, a prayer warrior, like that in my life". Yet, in that same moment, one of the older ladies from my church commented to me, "we need to be there for others".

So, which is it? Is it that I need a prayer warrior take me under their wing or that I need to be a prayer warrior for someone else? I think the answer is both/and. I do not have a war room with scripture verses and prayers posted on the walls but I do have a deck. It is while sitting on that deck, in the darkness, that I have the most frank and honest conversations with God that I have ever had. It is also in those moments that I turn my troubles over to God and lift up those that to mind, asking for God's grace upon them. There are also times where the words will not come. So the prayer becomes asking God to no the words of my heart that I cannot speak.

Tonight was such a night. My anxiety has been unusually high over the last several days. Similar to how it was a few years ago. There are number of factors that could serve as the precipitant for this heightened anxiety. But, as I sat reciting scripture pertaining to needing not to worry and be anxious that's when it hit me.

Trust. I've been reading a lot about how one's attachment style can influence and be influenced by the relationship with God. While I have made a lot of progress in this area; there's still work to be done. Overall, I tend to border more now on secure with elements of ambivalent attachment. That ambivalence comes out more when under stress.

In the texts that I've read, the authors indicate that in order to develop a secure attachment from an ambivalent style one must assume the best; putting trust in the positive intentions of others. As opposed to jumping in the negative assumption that the relationship is a weak or crumbling. I was listening to a podcast this morning by Andy Stanley that touches on this notion that we all go through periods in life and in our faith where we feel that God is inattentive, uncooperative, or late. I seem to have particular difficulty with these periods given my history. So, as I sat out there in my "war room", I acknowledged that shortcoming. The one that still has difficulty fully embracing God's intention--like John the Baptist who questioned whether Jesus was the One, while he sat in his jail cell.

Sent from my iPhone