A Conversation with Margaret Feinberg
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By Jim and Sheri Mueller
An Interview with author Margaret Feinberg
about her book,
The Sacred Echo.
Margaret, you described yourself as
“yo-yo prayer.” What does that
mean?
You
know the book
The Sacred Echo,
in
addition to being about how to hear from God, is really a book about
prayer.
Prayer
is one part speaking, one part listening, and one part waiting. So
often I
wrestle with those and I wrestle in the persistence of it. The term
“yo-yo
dieting” is what we talk about we’re on a diet. We’re off the diet.
We’re on
the diet. We’re off the diet.
On
my spiritual journey there are times when I wrestle and struggle with
prayer.
I prayed this morning.
Oops, I forgot to
pray this morning. I’m praying this morning. Oh, I forgot.
Or,
I remembered
throughout the day. I didn’t
pray at all.
Just
as God used the earthquake, the wind and the fire to get Elisha’s attention,
he’s often using the repetitive nature of events in our own lives to get our
attention.
I
find myself in this on-again, off-again prayer life and hungering and
wanting
some consistency. For me, as I describe this, one of the things that's
helped
me in this journey is in the back of my Bible. I created a prayer list
on one
of the extra sheets tucked into the back—those plain white ones. I
started
writing down my prayer list and now when I get done reading Scripture
each day,
I can flip to the back and right there in a very practical way are
things I
pray for. Sometimes I breeze through that list and other times, as I go
through
it, I find myself slowing down and spending extended time praying for
different
people and different situations.
That
one page has helped me become less of a yo-yo prayer and more
consistent.
I hear Christians saying,
I didn’t have a quality quiet time; I
didn’t
have a quiet time; It’s hard to do a quiet time. What
would you say about
consistency? And is there a right or wrong way to do
that?
God
wires us all differently.
One
of the things I encourage people to do is, if they find something that
works,
by all means do it and keep on doing
it.
Sometimes
people develop new programs or new techniques or different things that
work. For most of us, we need to go
back to that thing that works. Some people are going to connect with
God best
in the morning, others throughout the day, others in the evening.
Some
are going to find they need extended times of prayer on weekends or
during the
week. Others will prefer spending time in Scripture — whether it’s the
audio
Bible or the printed Word. I think it’s figuring out individually what
works
for you and being disciplined in
that.
I’m wondering if this concept of
echoes has had any application in your
marriage...
It’s
been interesting. When Leif and I were first married, we really
struggled to
continue spirituality. I remember during our first year of marriage we
bought
the popular Oswald Chambers
My
Utmost for
His Highest and, boy, we started January 1st and we were
so committed to
reading that throughout the
year.
I
think we lost the book by January 12th. As much
as we wanted to do
that and read that together, it just didn’t connect.
One
of the things Leif brought into our marriage is something that his own
father
had done for him as a little child. Every night before bed his father
would
come into his room and he would pray a prayer over him — it’s out of
Numbers — saying,
May the Lord
bless you and keep you. May He make his face shine upon
you and be gracious unto you. May He lift up His countenance upon you
and give
you peace.
From
the very beginning of our marriage, this has been something that Leif
and I do
for each other every single night and sometimes honestly it’s hard to
do. If we
had conflict during the day, or we’ve been in a huge disagreement or
kind of
mad, to turn toward your spouse and have to face them and pray over
them; there
is something about that. The things we
might have gone to sleep with, they have to be faced. It has been so
good for
us.
As
we form that basis of just one simple but steady prayer in our own
marriage,
we've found that it’s become a foundation for prayer throughout the
day.
There
are times throughout the day that we say,
Hey,
can we pray about this? Hey, you want to pray now? You want to pray
about the
situation? It becomes more natural
and almost more organic, and it also seems more authentic.
For
Leif and I, we have to be intentional about prayer, and yet at the same
time,
allow the freedom of spontaneous expression when it feels like it’s
something
that we should do.
One
of the most exciting things about prayer is that that when God speaks
so
persistently to us, it's not necessarily for information — he wants
transformation. He wants the reality of who He is alive in our hearts,
minds
and spirits. It should shape our attitudes, actions and behavior so at
the end
of the day we look a little more like
Jesus.
In
our own marriage relationship, as Leif and I have sought to hear from
God,
we've kept our ears and our eyes open together. As we begin to hear the
sacred
echoes, we find that God is not just leading and directing us, but He
is
transforming us, both as individuals and as a couple, to be more like
Jesus.
It’s one of the most exciting
adventures.
Copyright
© 2008 Growthtrac. All rights reserved
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