I am a closet florist. Not in a literal sense of course. That would be plain foolish. Bending flowers against their will is hard enough in broad daylight!
But I love flower-arranging, albeit in an extremely amateur way. I own a few books on the subject and even, somewhere, some instructive (and hilariously patronising) videos.

But before you mentally ‘change channel’, bear with me…Any florist knows that you can’t wet oasis any-old-how. (For the flower- arranging virgin, oasis is the green sponge-like material used to feed and hold stems whilst in display.)

You can’t fill oasis using a tap. That creates brown patches inside it, breaks it up and causes flowers to wilt. No, it needs to be soaked in a large bowl of water in order to take in the maximum amount. It must then be topped up regularly to keep it wet.

This is a little like soaking prayer. You can’t ‘soak’ quickly and expect to gain anything. Nor can you do it once a year and expect to be nourished by it. Soaking has to be given regular room in order for God to speak. Of course, you can get quicker at tuning into Him and dialing out the noise and activity of the day…. But you still need time.

The discipline of prayer is a challenge for most of us isn’t it? Everything else vies for our attention, (and usually wins it.)

I’m no less busy than the next mother of four little children, but I make it a top priority in my life to pray. This is not because I’m holier than you, (or thou) but because I absolutely could not survive without spending time with Father… and nor could my family. They know that a mummy who hasn’t prayed is often a grumpy, selfish and unfocussed woman! It’s the truth. (See? Told you I wasn’t that holy.)

I have the huge luxury of a prayer room which has everything in it that I use. But all you need is a space within a room and a bit of music! My three older children all know that the prayer room is special. They often join me in it to sing, pray or just sit with me and have a cuddle. I do as many feeds for my baby in there as I can, so that I can be praying at the same time. She had a lot of soaking as part of my pregnancy, so her little spirit is in tune and knows how to ‘soak’ too.

We go in and put the CD on and just wait. Then a common sensation comes over me. It’s a gentle but deliberate switch in my soul from ‘standby’ to ‘on’…. A beautiful unfurling of the petals of my heart as it pursues God and finds itself similarly pursued begins. It’s utterly mesmeric and certainly akin to romance. My baby breathes more deeply and settles into her feed. We are both at peace, but alert to God’s presence and His wonderful voice.
I’ve found some beautiful resources that have helped me make the most of these times and capture the moment with Father. My current favourite is an album called ‘Healer’ (available from worshipwithintegrity.com) which is a compilation of various artists. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful.

I suspect, having read this quote the other day, that AW Tozer shared a similar prayer experience to the one I am describing to you:

“For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself, and unless and until the hearers find God in personal experience, they are not the better for having heard the truth. The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His Presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and centre of their hearts.” (The Pursuit of God)

David speaks in Psalm 23 of God’s goodness and mercy ‘following’ or chasing after him. I guess when I make time for soaking prayer, it gives God the opportunity not to have to run quite so hard.