Clarity and obscurity mingle on the horizon. Oh, we need wisdom and understanding, Lord! Sometimes the words sound right, but the spirit feels wrong. Sometimes the spirit feels right but the words sound wrong. Sometimes your greatest gifts arrive in packages easily rejected, and sometimes we delight so much in the wrapping we fail to notice the gift box contains a mere peanut. Help us, Lord!
O Lord, listen to my cry; give me the discerning mind you promised. Listen to my prayer; rescue me as you promised. Let praise flow from my lips, for you have taught me your decrees.
“I can’t pray about my problems. I was taught that it is selfish to pray for myself.”
I understood my friend when she told me this. I was also taught that asking anything for yourself was self-centered and we need to be other-centered. But at the heart of the message we were taught is the fear of not having enough to go around. Self-sacrifice can also be self-centered in a way, as bizarre as that sounds, because it is based on a fear that we will have to cover for God’s short-comings.
God is not on a budget.
While praying for ourselves and our needs can be a sign of self-focus, I am reminded of the airline stewardess’ lecture about affixing your own oxygen mask before helping anyone else. If our own love tanks are running on empty, if we don’t know how much God loves us and who we are in him, we tend to either ignore or sacrifice ourselves to meet other people’s needs, and eventually we will run out, burn out, and die out.
The problem is that we view prayer as a one-way conversation asking for things. I have learned prayer is seeking a closer relationship with the Lover of my soul. We give out of the abundance of his love. As one of my friends said “Invest heavily in worshipping God and soaking up his love, then give the interest and not the capital and you won’t run dry.” When I find myself feeling resentful of other people’s neediness and their expectations of me it is usually because I am running on empty. I need, like Jesus did, to go away and spend more time with the Lord.
As I look at the immensity of the sky I am reminded of the immensity of his love. How much sky do you need? How much love do you need? Ask. He’s got more for you than you ever imagined or dared to think. Then give freely what you have freely received. There’s more where that came from.
Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:20, 21)
There’s something about seeking Jesus that changes our perspective. Often when we pray we try to explain the problem to God. When we don’t receive relief from unpleasant circumstances in the time and manner which seems logical to us we are tempted to go back to God and detail the problem again and beg for help. Perhaps we worry he is unaware of the seriousness of the situation and think that we can enlighten him.
I have been guilty of worrying at God, and then labeling it “my prayer time.” Apparently He is not all that impressed by my dramatic prognostications. “If this doesn’t happen soon, then that will happen and we’ll have an even bigger mess, so please answer right now, Lord.” I am slowly learning that as I spend time worshiping him he lifts me up to his perspective.
I read a quote by Ashley Brilliant that said, “Praise the Lord! But remember the Lord knows the difference between praise and flattery.”
I used to wonder why God needed praise. Was his ego so fragile he needed people to constantly boost him up? Was it to remind us of what lowly worms we were in comparison to Him? I’m embarrassed to admit my efforts at praise bore close resemblance to my efforts to butter my Daddy up before asking him for money when I was a kid.
One day after praying and thanking the Lord (quite genuinely this time) for miraculous ways he had intervened in my life even though I certainly didn’t deserve it, I put music on, closed my eyes and just listened. I had a vision of seeing the world from the viewpoint of an eagle. I felt like I was riding on the back of the eagle’s spread wings, soaring over incredibly rich forests, sparkling rivers and light-drenched coastlines in the warm low evening sun. I can’t describe the beauty.
Worship takes our eyes off ourselves, off our problems, and lets him take us up to a different perspective. He doesn’t need our validation to know who he is; we need his to know who we are, and worship turns our eyes toward him.
But God, with the unfathomable richness of His love and mercy focused on us, united us with the Anointed One and infused our lifeless souls with life—even though we were buried under mountains of sin—and saved us by His grace. He raised us up with Him and seated us in the heavenly realms with our beloved Jesus the Anointed, the Liberating King. He did this for a reason: so that for all eternity we will stand as a living testimony to the incredible riches of His grace and kindness that He freely gives to us by uniting us with Jesus the Anointed. For it’s by God’s grace that you have been saved. You receive it through faith. It was not our plan or our effort. It is God’s gift, pure and simple. You didn’t earn it, not one of us did, so don’t go around bragging that you must have done something amazing. For we are the product of His hand, heaven’s poetry etched on lives, created in the Anointed, Jesus, to accomplish the good works God arranged long ago. (Ephesians 2:4-10 The Voice)
When we pray we can join with his plans, his solutions, from his perspective. Our current “impossible” circumstance may very well be the character-builder that leads to rich blessings for a future generation. Or it could be a ripe opportunity to see another aspect of God’s love and goodness that we have never seen before. It’s just hard to see the bigger picture when we are smack up against a fence that is 4 inches higher than our eyeballs.
“I don’t get it!” I cry. “I can’t see any way around this problem!”
“So come back up here,” Jesus offers.
“How do I get there again?” I ask.
“Enter my gates with thanksgiving in your heart. Enter my courts with praise. I am the one who lifts you up. This is where you belong.”
“Spirit wings,
You lift me over all the earthbound things
and like a bird my heart is flying free
I’m soaring on the song Your Spirit brings
O Lord of all You let me see a vision of Your majesty.
You lift me up, you carry me on your Spirit wings.”
(Claire Coninger and Michael Foster based on a poem by Madame Guyon)
(borrowed from Danny’s Song by Kenny Loggins and inspired by a friend’s dream)
Yesterday as I was outside working on my deck my neighbour came by with a bouquet of roses. She is such a giving person. She often drops by with gluten-free goodies and words of encouragement. I love this lady. She shows me everything is gonna be all right. This post is dedicated to you, Wendy.
There must be more than this O breath of God, come breath within There must be more than this Spirit of God we wait for You Fill us anew we pray Fill us anew we pray Consuming fire Fan into flame A passion for Your name…
(from Consuming Fire by Tim Hughes)
It’s much easier to pray for God’s consuming fire to come and purify our hearts before we have experienced how intensely uncomfortable that process can be. Isaiah agonized,”Woe is me! I am undone! Everything that has come out of my mouth is filth!” when confronted with the holiness of God.
This is not a prayer for dutiful gatherings of people to sing casually without thought, or for those looking for an easy life.
This is not a prayer for those who only seek God when they want relief from suffering or think following Jesus means he will buy them a colour TV and fill their freezers with microwaveable dinners.
Jesus Christ’s pure love shines a light on our acceptance of ugly unholiness in ourselves as only-human-normality and reveals putrefied only-human-depravity. His Holiness confronts it with the intensity of a burning laser. His relentless kindness and gentleness provide the burning coal that purifies and leads us to change, but it is not a happiness-all-the-time experience. Sometimes the reality of living in the light of pure love that leads to life-changing Godly sorrow (and not merely hopeless self-pity) results in brokenness and bitter weeping before the joy of closer friendship with the Lover of our Souls.
This prayer is only for those who dare to hope that knowing Him is better than life.
There I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor [troubling]
to be for her a door of hope and expectation.
And she shall sing there and respond as in the days of her youth
and as at the time when she came up out of the land of Egypt.
(Hosea 2: 15 Amplified)
When God speaks about the metaphorical woman in the book of Hosea, the one who has been running to everyone but the one who can save her from a self-destructive lifestyle, he says there will come a time when she will sing to him as in the days of her youth.
The word translated “sing” in the New American Standard Bible is written as “respond” in others. The Amplified uses both terms. It is the Hebrew word ‘anah.
This same word is used 38 times in the Psalms alone, usually as a cry to God to save us from some sort of trouble –or even ourselves. ‘Anah Adonai! Hoshi a na! Hear and answer, Lord! Save us!
Sometimes, when it is translated answer, it describes God’s response:
I cried. He answered.
I called. He answered
I sought. He answered
I prayed. He answered
I pleaded. He answered.
Near the end of the book of Psalms (147: 7) one phrase directs the answering/responding/singing to God. Sing [‘anah] to the Lord with thanksgiving. (NASB)
I’ve been thinking about singing as our response to God –and about him singing to us. He also cries, calls, seeks, and pleads to us to answer him, not to rescue, but to recognize who he is, that he might be able to lavish his love on us. Is it possible that God’s call is like a prayer to those with ears to hear?
I have learned, the hard way, that sometimes the Lord didn’t answer my prayers and left me in a very uncomfortable place (called the Valley of Achor or Valley of Trouble in Hosea), not because he didn’t want to give me good things, but because he wanted me to be desperate enough to pursue him and find out who he really was. I needed to let go of the image I had of him and move toward deeper relationship. My image of him was made up of a compilation of authority figures I had known -and he was none of these.
He’s not a father who created us and then moved out, or a cruel task master, or even Santa Claus. God is not a lot of things we project onto him. God is holy, which means completely set apart, totally unique and different from anyone or anything we have ever known -but definitely worth getting to know.
I’m still learning as each new lesson and accompanying practical exam reveals more of his character.
A relationship with God can start with a cry for help, but it can move on to something much more mature.
After years of “saying my prayers” and giving him my daily laundry list of requests, I am learning prayer is more about finding out what he wants than telling him what I want.
When we pray and agree with his plans we see answers, but first we have to find out who is really is and what is on his heart. Prayer is about spending time with him, listening, studying His plans, examining them, being inspired by them and receiving a vision for the future that includes our participation.
What he desires to do is greater and so much better than anything we have ever imagined -but we need to respond to him and move toward him to be part of it. When we ask according to what is on his heart we see answers, but first we have to find out what is on his heart.
And that requires turning around from our own self-designed blue prints and responding to him. He delights in his beloved bride and responds to the things on her heart as well.
There is something about Armenian/Canadian soprano, Isabel Bayrakdarian’s voice in this video, recognizing who God is that carries my own heart’s song. Holy, holy, holy are you, Lord!
And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. (2 Corinthians 9:8)
Clarity and obscurity mingle on the horizon. Oh, we need wisdom and understanding, Lord! Sometimes the words sound right, but the spirit feels wrong. Sometimes the spirit feels right but the words sound wrong. Sometimes your greatest gifts arrive in packages easily rejected, and sometimes we delight so much in the wrapping we fail to notice the gift box contains a mere peanut. Help us, Lord!
Charis: Subject to Change 