The Power of Three: Intention, Desire, and Prayer

I am currently in the business of exploring and nurturing my thought life. Being able to delineate between the power of my INTENTIONS, my DESIRES, and my PRAYERS  has been particularly helpful in matching my work with my faith. Intention is to desire what a cell is to the body. Intention is primal; it’s your want in its purest form in the quiet recesses of your heart and mind. Desire is then the active flow towards manifestation. Whether or not you speak your intentions aloud does not stop its influence over your desire and its impact on your decisions and actions. If my intentions were coming out of a place of lack, even if the action was good, I had difficulty accepting its benefits and truly being at peace with my desires. If my intentions were unclear, my work ethic may have kept the energy flowing, but there was confusion in my desire to finish the task. While action and the physical manifestation of my work is important, so, too, is the business of my heart and mind. I started learning that my intentions were flowing from my heart. So, how in fact was my heart? And what was I doing to take care of it? 

Truth is, I was not taking care of my heart, and those shadow parts were ruling everything around me. It may have looked like I was being a kindhearted person or being thoughtful and present, but inside, I felt like a fraud. I was eternally asking myself, “Why do I seem so good when I feel so horrible?”At every step, my heart, which was the garden of my intentions, felt condemned and was ultimately affecting my desires and actions. THIS was where prayer triumphed in. Through seeking more clarity on my heart and its work, I was led to one of John’s letters where he is schooling believers on the sacrifice and application of love. In reading 1 John 3, John helped to clear the air on some steps I could use to clear my heart.

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1 John 3: 18 – 23 
“Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.”

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Belonging to that truth and improving my prayer life started with being more authentic in my relationship with God I was to truly rest in his presence. It came (and comes because I’m still in this thing) with really seeking bold transformation in my prayers and opening my truth up to the energy that’s been with me all along. There is power in speaking those anxious thoughts aloud to a God who already knows them. There is power in naming the events and feelings that you may have forgiven others for (MAYBE) but that are still holding you hostage. It takes over and over again to acknowledge your pain by saying, “God, I am weak. God, this is still hurting me. I believe you for healing. I believe you for power. I believe you for sending a shifting energy in my life because I know that this victory is already mine,” even if you have to say it every day for awhile.

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Once I started spending authentic time with God and my heart, I started to feel that shift, that confidence.
When I went to devotion, those words from my prayers were showing up right in the text.
When the journaling would end, meditation would fall into place, calling forth quiet intention and revolution in the center of my energy.
Where the meditation brought forth more shadows, prayer picked up.
My intentions got healthier, more specific, and more hopeful because I began to know what I was worth and what I needed, to be who I wanted to be.
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It went around and around like that (for weeks to be quite honest, intentionally setting aside time for meditation, devotion, journaling, and worship) until I looked in the mirror, said I was brilliant, and believed it. I would say I was beautiful and powerful and believed it. I would say I’d like to connect with someone, and it would happen. I would say I would get this job and that position and that publication, and I did. I would set a boundary, hold it, and still feel good about both myself and my relationship with that person. So, the intersections between my intentions, my desires, and my prayer  life as well as understanding their relationship, is where the POWER lives. Seeking my most authentic heart posture within that truth IS me “living my best life”.

So, if you want to see better in your life, I ask you, how is the posture of your heart? And then, what are YOU going to do about it?