PRAYER

 Prayer is an infinite topic.  The more you know the more there is to know.  The more you pray, the more thrilling it is to pray.  Seeking to understand prayer delves into the wonders of God’s great heart of love, the freedom He assures and the incredible interest He has in each life, His immeasurable concern, respect and desire for you and me.

Prayer over all is more about putting us in touch with ourselves and with God, then putting Him in touch with us.  It is more about discovering His will and molding us to receive His answers and to follow, then helping Him discover ours.  He knows our need and our desires.  Prayer is fellowship with God.  It is a warm, loving, heartfelt, trusting communion with the Almighty.

To better understand prayer, it is necessary to understand there is a controversy between evil and good.  When the angel Lucifer rebelled against God and His loving, self-sacrificing governing of heaven, self-centeredness thus evil (anything that or is meant to harm) were introduced into the universe for the very first time.  Later Eve then Adam listened to the voice of the self-centered one and the battle between evil and good on earth began.  This planet, now in rebellion became a war zone riddled with loss, relationally hurtful words and acts, irritation, deterioration with sickness, anger, suffering, sorrow and death.  It was never God’s intent that our world be plunged into such disaster.  God’s original purpose was for His created humans to be happy and healthy, selflessly living n other-centered harmonious faithful loving relationships with Him, each other and all creation forever.

So how does God relate to prayer?  Remember God is a loving God, our Divine Parent who wants only the best for His children.  He does exceedingly much to fill our lives and hearts with joy, whether we pray or not – sunshine, rain, food grows, birds sing and flowers bloom.  God tries but does not always succeed in stopping us or others from wrong choices, but God, unlike evil, respects us too much to violate our freedom of choice, yet often in love He softens and delays the results of our less than stellar choices.  Sometimes the consequences of poor choices are immediately disastrous, though again often delayed. Yet always these results dramatically affect our lives. But God is always attempting to influence the heart, thus choices that will bring to us beneficial results. 

Here is how prayer fits into this great controversy of evil with good, of grasping with giving.  As we daily thank and praise our great Creator God, we commit ourselves to Him, asking Him for forgiveness, for our daily needs, for His character traits to fill our hearts, for greater sensitivity to His influence in our choices and actions as well as protection from evil and spiritual growth for others.  We then, as we walk with and listen to Him, accept whatever He may then bring or allow to come onto our life’s path.  We recognize that He is not the originator of nor desirous of evil, and always wanting only the best for us.  Yet always He respects ours, and other’s choices and sometimes allows evil to goad us into the right or to test what is really in our hearts.  We must realize that if He allowed no evil to touch us, even as believing sinner/saints, He would further be strongly accused as he was in Job 1,2 for over caring for those not home yet.  But we can safely trust Him to attempt His best to communicate with and to care for His created beings.  Whether or not we respond, He will still be working through whatever circumstances that then exist for our best good.

When we know Him in prayer, as it is our privilege to know Him,  we will sense anew that He is daily working to meet the innermost needs of our heart, even more than to influence external events.  He is always there to provide strength, encouragement, hope, meaning and joy in every circumstance of our lives.

We might ask then, why pray then for ourselves or for others?  In the great controversy between evil and good, God is constantly doing for and influencing for the good – your son, your daughter, husband, wife, friend, mother, father, your neighbor, an unbelieving friend yet to be whether you pray or not, yes, risking Satan’s accusation that He’s done too much in the great conflict.  However, when we through prayer intercede, it allows Him, in His self imposed restraints, to open up new, more prolonged, more powerful torrents of divine influence and action on this rebellious planet to those for whom we pray.  He responds then to the devil’s accusations of over-caring with “I am my brothers keeper and my children have asked” see Gen 4:9, Mt 7:7; 1 Jn 5:14.  

Prayer makes a difference.  It draws us closer to His heart of incredible love. It enables Him to work in ways we could not even imagine.  It open up channels for His power to flow earthward to ourselves, to our families, our friends and souls searching for truth around this globe.  The full influence of our prayers will be known only in eternity.  There we will be learning firsthand the full results of our earnest prayers.

Keep this communication channel  between earth and heaven open and active in your life.  Take full advantage of this freely offered friendship, help and opportunity to expand your sphere of co-desired influence and action from the great heart of love. 

2021

A prayer rhymed to the tune of ‘Maitland’: “Take my heart; free from sin; make me pure; You within; holy, noble, loving and true; take my hands they are Yours; make my words, grace restored; take my life, precious Lord; and make it new.”

Praying to your Creator with a sincere heart like speaking the truth, are to evil considered war calls.  You will be opposed.

Lord in me I see:  shame when there ought to be innocence, defilement where there ought to be purity, grasping where there ought to be giving, hostility where there ought to be love.  So Lord give me:  Strength in the midst of my weakness, Courage in the sea of my cowardice, Calmness in the face of my anger, Kindness to those who hate, Direction in this culture of confusion, Honesty in the slough of lies, Self-control in the crowd of dissipation, Joy in the midst of pain, Peace in the maw of the storm, Rest in this time of panic, Accomplishment in a culture of apathy, Other centeredness in the crowd of the self-centered, Eyes to see the need and the heart and willingness and wisdom and energy to fulfill, To encourage those who need hope, To calm those who fear, To bring healing in place of fracture, To be consistent in a world of inconsistency, To know and to speak Your encouraging, inclusive truth to all, in Your loving kindness.

If your life has or had in it:  proud, brash, self-focused, foolish Nabals 1 Samuel 25; or devious, immoral power abuser Ammons 2 Samuel 13:1-22; or self-inflated manipulators, violently grasping for vengeance and power Absaloms 2 Samuel 14:25-19:8; or maybe there’s been King Manassehs treacherously leading you and others astray 2 Chronicles 33:1-20 – have nothing more to do with them Titus 3:10.  Yet pray to mature from outright violent reactions, cursing, vindictive or victimizing ruminations or even feelings of powerlessness — too praying for their souls, leaving the judging and judgements to God who is rich in both mercy and justice.  Pray until you like David, can mourn ( if they remain irrevocably harmful in God’s judgement ) the loss of his enemy and son Absalom (2 Samuel 18:33), or Saul (2 Sam 1:11-27).  Pray until you, like Jesus, could weep over the loss of rebellious, unrepentant, violent Jerusalem, who, as He foresaw would even further cooperate with Satan violating His personhood in an high evil attempt to violate Divinity, lamenting: “How, O how can I give you up…How ,O how can I let you go…my heart is charged within me” Hosea 11:8.   On His donkey He wept Luke 19:41, and later told the daughters of Jerusalem not to weep for Him but for those who were choosing to be His enemies Luke 23:28.  Not rejoicing over the death of an enemy Proverbs 24:17 but mourning over their loss (determined by their free choice).  The loss of a unique child of God from an eternity of relational love.  Giving up our felt rights that come from our supposed righteousness and stepping past personal feelings of victimization, hurt and vindictiveness to personal forgiveness –  allowing and trusting God to judge, to protect from harm, and if necessary to bring true judgement and judgements in His attitude of deep loss.  Praying for the ideal – a truely lost soul fully broken at the foot of the cross, broken on the Rock Jesus Christ.  Manasseh who beheaded the prophet Isaiah did return to God, as did Nebuchadnezzar who tossed three good men of God into the fire .  Pray until you, like Uriah, knowing fully as a recipient of David’s immoral and deadly devious behavior, can meet him in heaven and trusting God’s justice mixed with mercy, rejoice with David, a man humbled and with a new heart.