Eat, Pray, Love – Part 2 — Morning Devotions

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Transcript

I’m talking again today about the movie called Eat, Pray, Love, and this was based on the bestselling story by Elizabeth Gilbert, and this was made a movie in 2010. And I’m interested in that word pray, because she suddenly discovered in, in the depths of her own terrible experience of life that she was able to pray and that God spoke to her.

Eat, Pray, Love – Part 1 — Morning Devotions

How do you pray? You can actually do it in conversational style, just by talking like I’m talking, formal prayers, silent prayers, you can even sing your prayers. It’s true that God actually hears.

I think the number one reason that people who are active in church or give of themselves all the time, they say, I can’t pray, I’m too busy, we’re so busy doing things for God that we don’t have time to talk with God.

So when we start thinking, we don’t have time to pray, so what about slowing down? And we can just stop and understand that God is our friend. We might feel isolated, and yet God is able to speak with us.

So let’s make prayer the first thing that we can do in our day.

In other words, what I’m suggesting is consider it an appointment with God, that the first thing that’s in fact as important as anything, an appointment with your boss or your best friend.

And don’t worry about the time it takes. If you think you’re too busy to pray, then you are too busy, too busy not to pray. God is the alpha and the Omega. He’s the maker of time. Surely you can squeeze some moments in each day to spend talking to Him.

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So some of us will live our lives with so much activity that we do it intentionally, I think because we don’t really want God to get in and we might be frightened about what he’s going to say to us. And so we prefer to leave it like that, maybe we’re afraid – afraid of the stillness or afraid of God.

Do you remember the TV show Ally McBeal and Portia de Rossi? Was the star and she has written her memoirs, and she spoke there very honestly about fame and self-acceptance and anorexia.

And so she said in this book here, when it’s quiet in my head like this, that’s when the voice doesn’t need to tell me how pathetic I really am. I know that I know that’s true in the deepest part of me. When it’s quiet like this, that’s when I hate myself. And that’s really quite candid what she said from her book that was called Unbearable Lightness.

And so, I think that Portia is probably not the only person there in Hollywood dealing with the deep self-doubt and even self-loathing, despite this outward show of confidence and all the things that the glitter and glamour of Hollywood.

I suspect there are many of us who can relate to that, that we don’t like ourselves, but more importantly, that we are afraid of the voices inside our heads.

Why? Because we think that we might hear the voice of worry or anxiety, or of our own insecurity, or we could hear the voice of judgement, or like audio tapes, we hear things from the past and that’s where knowing some formal prayers is a very good thing, even if it is, as I said yesterday, the Lord’s Prayer.

The words of others can help us. Well, we know that there are some statements in God’s word, for example, Isaiah 43:4 is something we should think about:

It says:

You are precious in my sight, and you are honoured, and I love you. That’s God speaking to us. You are my beloved child is another verse, and this delightful statement in Deuteronomy 32:10. You are the apple of my eye. I know the plans I have for you, plans to give you hope and a future.

So when Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of that book, lay on the bathroom floor crying to God, she felt God say, go back to bed, Liz, and, and that’s what she did, and her life started to change, in fact, this took her on a journey, if you see the movie, to Italy, India and Indonesia.

So this was a conversation.

I’m not saying that everything will turn out perfectly, of course, and no one knows but God exactly where prayer will take us, but we know that it will always bring us closer to Him.

Let’s Pray

Well, dear Lord, I thank you for the encouragers in life, those people who cheer us up and or give us hope. Bless them, Lord, with your love and your special touch, and just provide all that they need. Amen.

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