Today you’ll hear from the heart of Carol Ortiz. She is the wife of pastor Fernando Ortiz of Mile High Calvary Church in Highlands Ranch CO, and mother to three beautiful children. (Interesting tidbit, Nick and I were guests at their church when we felt confirmation to move to Phoenix!) Anyway, she is awesome, and I’m stoked to have her share her story with you.

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I have been studying prayer lately and a verse that has stuck with me is Matthew 11:28 “”Come to Me, all [you] who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

Jesus is saying that the prerequisite for coming to him is weariness. As a mom and pastors wife, I can easily admit I am physically weary and when I’m honest and humble I know my spiritual state is no different! What’s left circulating in my mind is, “if he wants the weary to come to him, why do we muster up such strange prayer methods and ideas?’ I think we have ingrained in our heads that we need to become prayer warriors that come in prayer sure-footed with long eloquent prayers that always start with adoration and end in supplication (you know the ACTS thing). Surely there is a time for that, I guess. But as I read through the Psalms, I see true heartfelt soul pouring prayers. David is really connecting with the Lord. There are Psalms where he utters beautiful praise and thanksgiving to his God, but there’s a lot that begin with questions, and pleads for help. Some are even angry. As I was observing this it hit me that while we want to honor God in our prayers and show our reverence to Him, it does not honor God when we pray what’s on our lips only and not what’s in our hearts.

If we come to him weary and more childlike, our prayers would be more “prayerful”, more like fellowship. More like connecting with the Father like Jesus did in the garden, like David did while hiding in caves and repenting as a King. Could we come to Him seeking Him instead of a successful prayer life? What would happen if we put quality over quantity? What if instead of pushing all of our thoughts about the day out of our prayers, we prayed about them? I’ll bet (because we see it in the Psalms) our prayers would start more genuine and could end in beautiful praise and thanksgiving that’s not interrupted with our thoughts.

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Love what God is showing you about communion with Him. Thanks for sharing Carol.

Feel free to leave comments for Carol here or email her at carol@milehighcalvary.com
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