My prayer life contains so many off-ramps.
Dip into distraction. Settle into self-centeredness. Tread into the to-do list. Slip back to sleep.
Maybe you have them, too.
Over the last month, I’ve been posting a lot about prayer, lectio divina, abandoning prayer, and even prayer planners.
This reflects the deeper questions, the deeper longings in my life to connect with God through prayer. To shift from living for God to with God. To rediscover God as my every inhale and tender exhale.
In spending more time in prayer, in simply being with God, I’m rediscovering the power of lingering.
In The Sacred Echo: Hearing God’s Voice in Every Area of Your Life, I described God as one-part asking and one part-waiting and one part-listening.
Perhaps I should have added a fourth-part: Lingering.
Lingering is a lost art in a rushed, deadline-driven, always-running-behind world. People who linger long after an event is over are sometimes seen as awkward or even annoying, but they never look that way to God.
God always welcomes those who linger.
Those who linger stay in a place longer than necessary.
They wait.
They stay.
They remain.
They endure.
They last.
They keep on.
They persist.
They continue.
They are not rushed.
They are not hurried.
They are not scrambling.
Read these short statements again. Do you recognize them?
Many of them are the embodiment of faith, hope and love (1 Corinthians 13).
Those who linger with God radiate the character of Christ.
In the lingering…
God waits for you.
God meets you.
God surprises you.
In the lingering…
Your spiritual receptivity is heightened.
Your spiritual questions are given space to go deeper.
Your spiritual eyes are opened to experience God in new ways.
In the lingering…
You can shift from working for God to being with God.
You can invite God to reveal and heal.
You can talk with God instead of about God.
Those who linger with God find that God lingers with them.
The lingering mindset shifts the way we re-emerge in the day. We are no longer leaving a prayer or study time—prayer and study come with us. The presence, the stillness, the grace follows us and transforms us…and those we encounter.
My hope and prayer is that today you’ll take time to linger with God…to embrace Him as He embraces you.
Recommended Reading: The Sacred Slow by Alicia Chole. This book is one of the most powerful, challenging reads I’ve encountered in a long time. I can’t recommend it enough. To learn more about her spiritual mentoring and directing, visit aliciachole.com
Margaret, you might like the book The Lost art of Lingering, by Roland Foreman. He’s a pastor and friend from New Zeeland. We met when you were at Chase Oaks our church in Dallas.
Check out Ro’s concept of Lingering with the people you are mentoring
Wonderful recommendation! Thank you, Earl!
What a word, lingering LOVE it! And “to shift from living for God to with God”, is profound. I will commit myself to do more lingering and living with God! Thank you for sharing my friend! I have passed this one to my friends as well! God bless!
May you find that He refreshes & restores your soul as you linger! Hugs!
To shift from living for God to with God. Exact expression of how I have been feeling. I have been living for God for so long that I forgot how to live with Him. I feel so disconnected. Prayer, which I have always viewed as the greatest mode of communication with my Savior is now a chore. There are days when I feel like why should I pray but I am so desperate to regain this connection that I force myself to kneel hoping that the right words would come and that I would somehow hear Him the way that I used to.
May He meet you in unexpected ways as you linger. Prayers & hugs!
This is what I needed to hear. In my aged and worn body I fight every day to try and make myself better and often fail. I feel that if I was healed I would be of more use to God than I am right now as it is painful for me to even walk down stairs most of the time. Then I read this post and realized maybe I am not required to do anything other than to be WITH Him. Maybe I can stop spinning my wheels in the sand and find out more of who He really is. (while still trying to fix this wretched body. Good health is important, too.) But I no longer have to tie it in with being of use to God. I can be free of that chain. And maybe this is why I keep seeing the words “Be Still…and know that I am God.”
Yes! Enjoy being with God and soaking in His presence!
Loved this post, Margaret. It’s a great description for maturity. As we live the “with God” life it becomes more second nature to linger. Beautiful description and invitation.
Thank you!
Absolutely! Hugs!
Hello Margaret, I am wondering about the book you have open, pictured on your post about lingering…maybe you say so somewhere, but which book is that?