Mark Batterson | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

On the Benefits of Writing Down Our Prayers

We are listening to A Praying Life by Paul Miller, a wonderful book on prayer in the car. (I was, incidentally disciplined by the author for almost five years, as he mentions in the book).

Anyway, Miller tells us that he often prays aloud. Jesus did so in his High Priestly Prayer in John 17, and his anguished prayers at Gethsemane. (However, Jesus also encourages us to pray in the privacy of our rooms so that our prayers don’t impress people (rather than God)…and thereby lose us the secret reward God gives those who pray.)

“Praying out loud can be helpful because it keeps you from getting lost in your head. It makes your thoughts concrete,” Miller writes. “When I confess a sin aloud, it feels more real. I’m surprised by how concrete the sin feels. I’ve even thought, ‘Oh I guess that was really wrong.’ On the way to a social event, I will pray aloud in the car that I won’t fall into lust or people pleasing. My prayers become more serious.”

* * *

However, when I find it hard to focus on prayer, what helps me is not praying out loud (I live with two daughters, one husband, one Golden Retriever, and one Labradoodle, and don’t want to startle any of them) but writing out my prayers.

When I pray my thoughts meander in the natural way of thoughts. Writing out my prayers helps me redirect my thoughts to the subject I was praying about so that I can saturate that worry in prayer, make sure I have heard God on it, and am acting in accordance with his directives. (This is particularly important for unanswered prayers so one senses the story God is writing in our lives).

I like to put my worries into the petri dish of prayer, so to say, bathing them in prayer, and continuing to “pray until something happens.” Written prayers help me “worry the bone of a prayer,” until light and clarity emerges as to what God might be doing in the things I am praying about, and what he wants me to do.

(Interestingly, though, Miller says prayer should be like human conversation between friends, meandering, free-flowing, playful. So if, in the middle of praying-worrying about how I am writing less than I want to, I start praying-worrying that I am exercising a bit less than I want to, and then that the room I am praying in is a tad messier than I want it to be…Miller would suggest praying about the latest worries that have popped up their groundhog heads instead of dragging prayer back to the first worry. Confess. Ask for help. Ask for strategy. And who knows? Perhaps the solution to the first worry—disappointing productivity–lies in the next two: not enough exercise, not enough tidying up!! Yes, indeed!)

* * *

The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson is another prayer-changing, hope-refilling book on prayer. Just as Jesus does, Batterson encourages us to pray about anything. Wild dreams, wild-goose dreams, dreams we are afraid to vocalize, dreams we can only keep alive because the Creator of the Universe can do and create anything… The dreams that we are embarrassed to say aloud, we can write down. And in the process of writing them down, they feel a little bit more real. “Dreaming is a form of prayer and prayer is a form of dreaming,” as Batterson says.

I have often found that wild-goose dreams I have prayed for have uncannily come to pass. In that way, our prayers can be prophetic, and, in the areas we have saturated in prayer, the transcript of our lives resembles the transcript of our prayers, to quote Batterson again.

* * *

We often don’t know our own hearts and minds and spirits. That is why people go to therapy!! Expressive writing is a form of therapy. So too is prayer journaling.

In the process of putting it down, in stark black and white, clarity comes about what I really want—which women socialized to be nice and obliging often don’t know!!

The actions and emotions of my own heart that I am less than proud about get unveiled and gradually repented of. The hurts and slights, the slings and arrows of interpersonal relationships which could metastasize into a cancer of unforgiveness if brooded over are released and forgiven…

Write out your confusion and lack of clarity. The areas of your life where you are not sure what God is doing, or the direction in which your life is veering. I often feel I know very little about my own life, the plot God is writing in and through it, the direction in which he is bending it, and what he wants me to do… Prayer helps me to understand the story that God is writing in my life a little better, and written prayer clarifies and focuses my heart-prayer.

I’m Recommending:

The Circle Maker: Praying Circles Around Your Biggest Dreams and Greatest Fears on Amazon.co.uk and on Amazon.com.

A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World by Paul Miller on Amazon.co.uk and on Amazon.com.

On “Defining Decisions” Rather Than New Year’s Resolutions

By Anita Mathias

Image Credit

Mark Batterson, in The Circle-Maker, a fascinating book on a prayer, praises “defining decisions,” that set the course of your life, sort of like choosing whether you drive to Slovenia (which our family did last summer), or to Scotland (which we might do this summer).

I made three defining decisions in my twenties. Chronologically: I decided to become a writer. I decided to follow Jesus. And I decided to take a marriage vow to love.

Yeah, well…

I have failed in all of these, continually. There have been days, weeks, months, and years, in which I have not written at all. I sometimes think of my beloved Jesus sadly: how imperfectly I imitate him. And marriage, well.

Yet, oddly, I’ve not failed in any of these, because I am still on the road. I am writing, albeit less than I would like to. I am still following after Jesus, albeit imperfectly. I am still married, more or less happily.

* * *

Oh, it is this season again, this season of resolutions. And I will probably make some.

But what I am more interested in are defining decisions, North Stars, compass points, things I will continue to do even if I sometimes go off course. Things that I will continue doing, even if I fall. Not resolutions I make year after year like Yom Kippur sacrifices, but a once-and-for-all decision I will follow, though I may wobble, and fail some days, some weeks…

Here are a few of my defining decisions, which I return to again and again. These are to do with health

1 I will walk 10,000 steps a day.

2 I will avoid sugar

3 I will avoid white flour (using bread, pasta and noodles as a treat, rather than as food).

4 I will begin reading myself to sleep at 10 p.m.

5 I will do some yoga every day (a habit I am struggling to adopt).

These are habits which are not yet second nature. There are other habits which are second nature, though again I fail some days, some weeks, some months….

I will spend time with God

I will read or listen to my Bible.

I will read.

I will write at least a little.

I will keep the rooms in which I work and sleep tidy.

I will garden.

* * *

How about you? Instead of a resolution, different every year, why not try a defining decision which you will return to, despite falls and wobbles, as we continue trying to follow Jesus, though like Peter, we might forget him, deny him, and yearn to go on a break.

Chasing the Wild Goose of the Holy Spirit: In Praise of Retreats

By Anita Mathias

Is God more present in one place than another?Does it make sense to leave the comfort and familiarity of your daily surroundings to seek God in places—retreat centres or pilgrimage spots– “where prayer has been made valid,” in T. S. Eliot’s phrase? Where God was rumoured to have shown up in the past, or to be currently showing up?Does it make sense to go to conferences to listen to other people’s deep, life-changing experiences of God rather than stay home and experience him quietly for yourself?

For most of my life, my answer to these questions was No.

I wanted to experience God in my daily life, amid the wear and tear of marriage and parenting and housekeeping and writing and church.

I was wary of seeking mountain-top experiences which would fade once I got down to the valley simply because they often had, leaving me discouraged. Far better to experience God little by little in the valleys, and have this experience permeate my whole life.

I guess you could say I was not really hungry.

* * *

It’s the rare person who’s hungry for God while you still hope that your life can work very well, thank you, without God.

So it took a period of brokenness—of a manuscript being rejected; of having to totally lay my writing aside to found a business to pay for private school for the girls; of being purified in the crucible of marriage—for me to want to be filled to overflowing with the Holy Spirit, and his gifts of love, joy and peace more than I wanted to be a successful writer.

And this God-longing is revealing itself in my use of time.

* * *

The ancient Celtic symbol for the Holy Spirit was a wild goose.

If the wild goose did not grace your backyard, you searched for him in places where he was last rumoured to have been.

And so when I run out of energy, of love, of joy, of a steady sense of shalom and the presence of God, I am happy to take time out, to seek the wild goose of the Holy Spirit once again.

* * *

And spiritual quests, luckily, are not the quest for the Holy Grail, where you either find the Grail, or you don’t. They are not all or nothing.

They are like treasure hunts in which one might pick up one gleaming golden feather one time, or a fistful of them the next, or bits of delicate down. And each of these makes your life more beautiful.

And finally, you chance upon the shimmering wild goose itself

* * *

Healing comes layer by layer. Revelation and clarity and guidance come layer by layer.

The Holy Spirit like water floods the soul of the seeker, sometimes in a trickle, sometimes a stream, sometimes a mighty flood.

I like the way the ancient Israelites constructed a cairn of stones to remember significant spiritual encounters.

* * *

Here are some of my cairns:

Learning soaking prayer at a Catch the Fire Conference with John Arnott, and somehow catching a deep awareness of the Father’s love for me, through the week-long conference, and through the practice of soaking prayer they taught. Receiving healing from adrenal fatigue at a healing prayer session. Receiving partial healing from emotional eating at Cwmbran and Harnhill Retreat Centre. Beginning to radically change my diet after a visit to His Place, Saarland, Germany, a holistic Christian retreat centre.

* * *

If you feel stuck in your personal life, or goals, or relationships, or feel the need of physical or emotional or mental healing, or would like to experience more of the presence of God who is energy and joy and peace, I would highly recommend going away for a retreat, personal or guided, or a conference with speakers with an attested track record of fruitfulness and integrity (I find Bill Johnson, John and Carol Arnott, and Heidi Baker worth listening to.)

Why go away to experience God when God is everywhere?

1 God honours the humility it takes to inconvenience ourselves to seek him.

Namaan the Syrian has leprosy. His slave girl tells him about the prophet, Elisha in Samaria who can heal, and off he goes pompously with chariots and horses and silver and gold and clothing to be healed.

But Elisha merely send him word to bathe seven times in the Jordan.

Namaan is furious: “Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?”

His servants tell him, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!”

So Naaman bathes in the Jordan, and is cleansed.

Sometimes, God heals us in response to our own prayers, and, sometimes, in response to other people’s prayers. Both happen in Scripture— the second far more frequently. Who knows why? I think God honours the humility it takes to ask for prayer.

It also ensures that we cannot position ourselves as some sort of super-prayer-warrior who can cure all our own diseases and ailments, physical, mental and spiritual by our own prayers.

2 We hear God better when we set aside time to do so.

Mark Batterson in The Circle Maker: Praying Circles Around Your Biggest Dreams and Greatest Fears has a formula

Change of pace + change of place=Revelation.

Come on, be realistic. Home can be a talking-to-do list of duties and distractions. And there’s the phone, and mobile phones, and the internet. A good retreat centre will infuriate you by cutting wifi, thereby ensuring that you hear God rather more than you bargained for!!

If we struggle with making time and space and silence for God in our daily life—but feel the need for clarity, peace, blessing, healing, guidance—it makes sense to go away and seek these things.

3 God honours the sacrifice of money, time, convenience and career advancement that we make in seeking him.

4 Going away to seek God has been built into Judeo-Christianity from the very earliest days when the Jews went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem three times a year. A kind of holy-day, exercise, community and God all thrown in.

5 It is generally so worth it.

I was talking to a woman who had spent thousands of pounds last year on a forthnight in the Bahamas, and came back with no more peace or joy than she had before.

Then she went on a weekend retreat at Waverly Abbey, and came back glowing, couldn’t stop talking about it, felt spiritually full and somehow different.

I love travel—it energizes me. However, etymologically, the English word travel is derived from travail: trouble, sorrow, suffering, hassle. It’s not always a spiritual experience for me (though it often is).

A silent retreat however clears my mind of all my whirling thoughts and worries, gives me clarity, and fills me again with the spirit of Jesus. It’s a great investment of time.

* * *

Bird watchers are amazing. All they want to do is to see the bird—the kingfisher, the toucan, the macaw or the albatross and the penguins which I saw in New Zealand.

And I want to similarly seek the wild goose of the Holy Spirit until I have all of him, and he has all of me, and says, “Okay child, I have seen your heart. I will make you my dwelling place. I will come and fill you, and you will be my Anita, and I will be your God.”

How Circling Prayer can Convert a Vicious Circle to a Virtuous Circle

By Anita Mathias

Have you ever experienced a vicious circle?

You know: Feel sad. Eat chocolate or sugary treats. Feel hyper or aggressive. It wears off. Feel sad. And grumpy and defeated about the weight gain. Eat chocolate to help you feel better. And then…

Or: Get stressed and tired. Let things lie where they fall. House gets messy. You get too stressed and low-spirited to pick it up. Things get lost and replaced. You feel bad about the mess and the waste of money, and that it would take too much energy to invite your friends over. Tidying would barely make a dent in the mess, so you don’t, and mess grows. And …

Or: Wake late, keep looking at the time. The day is slipping away without much getting done, feel depressed and defeated. Drink coffee, get a second wind, stay up late, aimlessly surfing Facebook, blogs, twitter, newspapers. So can’t wake early the next day. And so…sense defeat through the day.

Very, very sadly, I have slipped into each of these circles for years, even decades of my life!! I do confess it. Thankfully, though, I am not in any of these vicious circles at the moment!

Drawing Prayer Circles: Ways to change a vicious circle to a virtuous one

I am reading Mark Batterson’s The Circle-Maker. Mark talks about drawing figurative circles around your Jericho, the one dream you have longed for all your life, the dream your life has always tended towards, and pray bold, fervent, consistent prayers over it. Powerful prayers need to be specific, he says, just as powerful writing does.

I recently read a fascinating book called The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg which mentions keystone habits, which set up a cascade of positive changes in one’s life. One of these is exercise, which is scientifically proven to make you feel better through the release of endorphins, so that you sleep better, work better, feel happier, and have better relationships. Other keystone habits, unsurprisingly, are waking early, and domestic order.

* * *

So one way to change a vicious circle to a virtuous one is to circle it in prayer–pray circles around it. The habit you want to change will be uppermost in your mind, and grace will be given you to make the tiny necessary changes, which will start a virtuous circle in place of the vicious one.

I have started circling many areas of my life in prayer— my husband, children, memoir, blog, writing plans, weight, home, garden, career, finances, love of travel etc.

And in each of these I am praying for a virtuous circle—where each action creates momentum and leverage, making the next virtuous action easier.

My Personal Jericho

Can you put a due date on the walls of Jericho crumbling? In Joshua 6, it was on the seventh day.

I’ve set a date for my Jericho to collapse—September 29^th, 2016. It would be the day I first arrived in England, full of dreams and hopes and ambition, which have not been fulfilled, but life is long, and sometimes, God prioritises changes in you before he lets your dreams come true.

So these are the walls of Jericho which I would like to collapse by September 29^th, 2016.

1) I would like to finish my memoir, which is now in a polished second draft (while not neglecting my blog).

2) I would like to get healthy. I am currently 84 pounds overweight, and I would like to get to a healthy weight

3) I would like to get the house decluttered, with everything in its place, and everything not beautiful or useful donated or chucked. (We’ve been tidying and decluttering weekly since summer 2008, so have made huge progress on this).

4) I would like to wake at 5 a.m.

Am I biting off more than I can chew? Who knows, but with God’s help, I believe the walls of this Jericho will crumble.

* * *

Synergy

And I hope these goals are synergistic, and will set up a virtuous circle in my life

1 Exercise will help me sleep better, be clear-headed for writing, and feel happy. It will, also, God willing, build up muscles which will boost my metabolism.

I am planning to continue losing weight through Dr. Furhman’s Eat to Live diet as a template (with some deviations), and have already lost 18 pounds on it. It is a nutritarian diet, so, God willing, I will continue to rarely be ill, and to have high levels of energy.

2) Waking early will give me more time to exercise, to tidy the house, and to write, and will give me an increased sense of well-being and shalom.

3) Keeping the house orderly and tidy will increase my shalom and mental wealth. And increase focus for writing.

4) Writing–well that’s in a category in itself! The way it could help my other goals would be through the happiness it gives me. Though Julia Cameron suggests that writing down your words daily helps you lose weight.

So that’s it. That’s the Jericho I am praying around. If you think of me, pray for me, please?

Prayers are Prophecies: The Transcript of your Prayers becomes your Life’s Script

By Anita Mathias

I am reading Mark Batterson’s The Circle Maker, a brilliant book on prayer and am already praying more, and praying better: one test of a good book on prayer.

Here’s an excerpt from the first chapter:

Bold prayers honour God and God honours bold prayers. God is offended by anything less than your biggest dreams or boldest prayers. If your prayers aren’t impossible to you, they are insulting to God. Why? Because they don’t require divine intervention. But ask God to part the Red Sea or make the sun stand still or float an iron axehead, and God is moved to omnipotent action.

There is nothing God loves more than keeping promises, answering prayers, performing miracles and fulfilling dreams. That is who he is. That is what he does. The bigger the prayer circle we draw around our dreams, the better, because God gets more glory.

The greatest moments in life are the miraculous moments when human impotence and divine omnipotence intersect—and they intersect when we draw a circle around the impossible situations in our lives and ask God to intervene.

I promise you this: God is ready and waiting. So while I have no idea what circumstances you find yourself in, I’m confident that you are only one prayer away from a dream fulfilled, a promise kept, or a miracle performed.

It is absolutely imperative that you come to terms with this simple, yet life-changing truth: God is for you. If you don’t believe it, then you’ll pray small timid prayers; if you do believe it, then you’ll pray big audacious prayers.

And one way or another, your small timid prayer, or your big audacious prayers will change the trajectory of your life and turn you into two totally different people.

Prayers are prophecies. They are the best predictors of your spiritual future. Who you become is determined by how you pray. Ultimately, the transcript of your prayers becomes the script of your life.

Zapping Negativity and Worry Through Prayer and Faith

By Anita Mathias

Dr. Barbara Fredrickson in her book Positivity ( Norman Vincent Peale with data) says that “experiencing positive emotions in a 3-to-1 ratio to negative ones leads people to a tipping point beyond which they naturally become more resilient to adversity and effortlessly achieve what they once could only imagine.”

And how do we do experience three positive emotions to one negative one?

Well, here’s one way for a Christian: We interject prayer into our lives, until it becomes as instinctive as breathing. Okay, let’s start small: As instinctive as worrying!

Some examples…

It’s University application season, and parents and children are getting nervous. None of us wants to drop the ball. My daughter Irene is applying to one of the most competitive courses in one of the most competitive Universities in Britain.

We can do this two ways…though worry and anxiety and striving, or in peace and quiet and trust and prayer from which the wisdom and strategies we need will blossom. I know which path we are going to take. So each worry, I plan to turn into prayer, so that, whatever the outcome, with God’s help this is going to be the most prayer-soaked University application ever.

* * *

I now try to add a 50 percent margin to everything I do. If I think it will take 30 minutes to get to small group, or to German class, I leave 45 minutes early, and use the extra time to practice German on Duolingo or catch up with email, and replies to Facebook comments or tweets. And this injects serenity into my day.

And what when things go wrong, as things are apt to do, and I am rushing somewhere and sense time is against me? I relax. I do my Duolingo. I listen to my book on tape. I breathe. I close my eyes and pray (Roy drives!) about the next things in my day. I do not look at the time. Half the time, we are not late after all, and when we are… well, at least I don’t know how late. Being stressed about the outcome won’t change it, but using the time to retreat into the cave of God, there’s holiness and peace and wisdom and strength in that.

* * *

I’ve blogged for over five years now, and every now and then I hit a wall.

And the wall—a temporary plateau in subject matter, style and audience–is an important thing for a blogger to hit. Otherwise, we can go on autopilot, saying the same things we’ve said before, boring ourselves and the world!!

When I used to hit a wall, I would feel I should blog up, write more mandarin posts, carefully written, long, on subjects likely to speak to or engage many people. Yeah, sounds to me like a recipe for writers’ block, insecurity, frustration, weariness and stress. For it’s best to blog your weekday self, not your Sunday best!

But now that I am tired, when I hit a wall, I blog down. Share little things which interest me, a bit like Facebook. Share my fears, failures and worries. Find my subject matter in honesty about what it’s really like to follow Christ. Find newness in honesty, the best place to find newness!

And then I pray—for ideas, for time, for energy, for readers, for deeper surrender, for the ability to abide in Christ ever more deeply, to burrow deeper into his heart, and record what I overhear as Isaiah did. Prayer thus converts the butterfly flutter of fear when stats plunge into faith and assurance, which is a sine qua none for writing well and quickly.

* * *

I have lost 24 pounds since changing my diet, but as anyone who tries to change their body knows, scales have a mind of their own. And when they tilt upwards, I have learnt that there is only one thing to do to keep focused—return to thanksgiving for all I have lost. Renew a commitment to health, to 10,000 steps a day, and more fruits and vegetables!

Ask Christ “in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” to show me the best way to get strong.

And my heart and emotions are stabilized and, indeed, hopeful.

* * *

Prayer calms me, opens my mind up to possibilities, reassures me of an infinite power beyond myself. I work in a more assured and relaxed way.

These are the benefits of prayer, if there were no God.

But, of course, there is a God and so prayer has a power whose limits we can only guess.

Many things happen in our lives, and in other people’s lives because we have prayed.

So much so, that as Mark Batterson says, the transcript of our prayers can become the transcript of our lives.