“You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you…”
(Isaiah 26:3) ESV

If you’re like most people, every time you try to pray for any length of time, your mind wanders.

In case you hadn’t noticed, this probably doesn’t do a whole lot for your relationship with God. What if somebody started talking to you, only to have their eyes glaze over in mid-sentence and say nothing for a couple of minutes? What if this happened again and again every time they tried to talk to you?

Would you look forward to your little chats together? Would you regard such a person as your dearest friend…or would you sooner or later draw the conclusion that you were far less important to them than the least little thing that happened to pop into their minds?

Right.

Are you ready to do something about it? If you are, you’re about to experience the cure:

LazaView
a stunning scene
captured by one of the world’s most gifted photographers
into which you dare to pour out your most private, innermost thoughts to God

Tools required:
a computer with Internet access
a heart desperate to experience nothing less than pure, 1on1 relationship with Jesus

Does praying on your computer sound too high-tech, too unspiritual? Maybe it is. On the other hand, it may turn out to be the most intimate, deeply spiritual thing you’ve done in your entire life.

If your mind frequently wanders while you’re trying to talk to God, just five minutes of computer prayer may equal as much as a half-hour of what you’ve been used to.

How is that possible?

My confession

I used to be the all-time champion when it came to a wandering mind during prayer. I’d set out to pray for, say, five minutes, or maybe a half-hour — but I’d no sooner get started, than my ADD mind would take off like a jackrabbit.

For example, I’d start to pray, “God, I really need Your help as I conduct this meeting coming up at 10:00 a.m…” And that would be it. Without realizing it, I would automatically stop praying and start picturing how I might respond to various scenarios that could arise during the course of the meeting.

Five to ten minutes later, I’d come to my senses with the sudden realization of what I had done. “God, I’m sorry,” I’d say. Then, trying to get back on track, I might plunge ahead by mentioning someone’s name in prayer. “Lord, please heal Terry’s marriage…” I’d begin.

But you guessed it. Same thing. For the next minute or two, my mind would be flooded with memories of when I had first met Terry and Ellen, what I perceived their relationship problems to be, what a devastating impact their impending breakup would have on their middle school son Kerry, and on and on.

How defeating this was! Out of a half-hour I had set aside to pray, I might get only five or ten minutes of pure praying done. It was emotionally unsatisfying and guilt-producing, not to mention spiritually ineffective.

Breakthrough #1

And then one day while sitting at my computer, it occurred to me that I hadn’t devoted any serious time to God in prayer for quite a while. That made me feel guilty. But the trouble was, I was emotionally set to go to work on a writing project – not pray.

Fingers on my keyboard, caught between duty and desire, I suddenly typed something like this:

God, I’m in the mood to write — but I know You and I really need to talk. Would You mind if I prayed to You like this, today?

To begin with, I want to apologize for not talking with You lately. I’ve been busy serving You, sure. But I know You want more than my labor. You want me. And the truth is, I want You! O God! I really do. I want You!

You’ve been so good to me! You’ve…

Line after line after line I typed. About two pages into my prayer, it dawned on me. My mind hadn’t wandered once! Somehow, the physical activity of my fingers flying across the keyboard coupled with watching the words of my prayer as they instantly appeared on the screen kept me intensely focused.

I checked my watch. A half-hour had gone by! I couldn’t believe it. Where had the time gone? All too often, lately, just the reverse had been happening — thinking I had surely prayed a half-hour, I would look down to discover only five minutes had gone by.

But there was something else, too. This time, prayer had not seemed like an odious burden. It had been pure pleasure. It was not a “thing” I was doing to please God. I had actually been lost in intimate conversation with Him.

Prayer concentrate

Since then, I’ve discovered that computer prayer is a kind of “prayer concentrate.” I get at least as much real praying done in fifteen minutes as I used to get done in an hour. And if I pray an hour on the computer, it’s like four hours devoted to prayer used to be.

For me, it’s the perfect focusing-agent. My mind doesn’t stray. There’s something about the experience of feeling my heart’s cry to God move down from my mind, travel through my fingers, and materialize on the monitor before my eyes that creates a channel, a flow, a kind of stream of consciousness between me and my Creator.

Breakthrough #2

I did that for years…and then came the second breakthrough. One day in prayer, while cooped up in my office, I felt a yearning to pray outside. I don’t mean to take a walk in the parking lot or to pull a chair up under a tree in my backyard – though I’ve done both of those before. What I wanted to do was cry out to my God overlooking the vastness of an ocean…from the top of mammoth mountain…in the privacy of a secluded lagoon. I’ve tasted those sweet moments alone with Him before, on vacation – but I wasn’t on vacation.

Suddenly, I thought, “What if I brought those out-of-doors experiences into my computer? Hey…I could use one of my favorite landscape pictures to create a background for my prayer!”

So I did.

It was awesome.

As I communed with the One who created the majestic scene in which I was praying, I could almost feel the rays of the sun warming the back of my neck, the wind blowing through my hair. What there was of it.

Over time, I added more scenes to my growing stockpile of prayer backgrounds. I started picking the scene based on my emotions that day, the need I felt bubbling within me. During a season of immense challenge, I might select a fierce storm at sea, battering a stubborn, tiny boat. During a different period of high stress, I might choose a peaceful lake at sunset or an old farmhouse situated in the middle of a newly-mown field.

I was no longer a prisoner of the four walls of my home or workspace. I was free to travel the world…in the company of my God. I can’t tell you how eager that made me to return for more of that unshackled prayer…every time I possibly could.

Can’t keep this to myself!

Before long, I knew it wasn’t right for me to keep this incredible experience to myself. I had to share it with you. So I presented the LazaView vision to my dear friend and IT expert Jeff Heck and we set to work.

However, I immediately ran into a brick wall. I had collected from the web many of the images I was using. It was one thing for me to enjoy them privately…quite another for me to make them available without permission to the world.

I was talking this through with the LORD one day when it struck me: Why not approach some of the world’s great photographers, share my vision with them and challenge them to share their artistic gifts? I was offering the LazaView concept without charge to anyone who wanted to use it…would they be willing to do the same?

I had a lot of rejections. One gifted atheist photographer (unaware of the one from whom he had received his gifts – the same one who created the beautiful scenes he had captured with his camera) refused, on grounds that LazaView was incompatible with his world view. I graciously thanked him for getting back to me, then invited him to explore Lazaroo for Atheists.

Breakthrough #3

Then came the day when the first photographer said yes! – Gareth Wray, whose hauntingly beautiful photographs of his native Ireland have so deeply moved me and countless others. Then another amazing photographer said yes. And another. And another.

Wow.

Inspired, Jeff employed his significant coding skills and created a LazaView experience that far exceeded anything I had ever been able to achieve in my computer’s word processing program.

What do you think?

Want to try?

Start here.

You won’t regret it.

In Him,

Steve

Stephen Schwambach
Pastor, 1on1 Church

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/1on1church
www.1on1church.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/steve1on1
Twitter: @steve1on1

________

To put your mind at ease…

Your LazaView is yours alone. No one but you and God can see it. No one but you and God will ever see it. The moment you click out of your LazaView – poof. It’s gone. Neither you nor anyone else will ever be able to retrieve it.

Why do we go to all that trouble to insure your complete privacy? For the same reason want that privacy for my own 1on1 time with Jesus. When I launch a LazaView, I talk to God about everything. I mean everything. I bare my soul to Him, no holds barred. I wrestle through with Him the innermost secrets of my heart. I ask Him to rip away the facade and let me see my motives for what they really are. I confess my weaknesses, my lusts, my terrors, my anger with others, my dreams, hopes and most fervent desires.

When I pray, I’m naked and defenseless before my Creator. If there was the slightest possibility that someone could break into one of my LazaViews, I wouldn’t dare allow myself to be that real. As a result, my prayer time would become a charade, a farce, a mockery.

So would yours. So rest assured.

You’re safe.

What is Lazaroo?

Take Me Deeper