Once again it is Saturday and I would like to point to some of the prayers of the New Testament which we might use as language to pray ourselves for others. Listed below are some of the prayers we see Jesus praying and might be models for us.
INTERCESSORY PRAYERS OF JESUS FOR THE CHURCH
1. Matthew 6:9-13 - The Lord's Prayer
That God's name would be honoured, hallowed, worshipped and obeyed, that God's Kingdom would be established in great power, purity and wisdom. That God would provide for the needs of the saints and that God would victoriously lead the saints out of temptation into full obedience.
2. Matt. 9:37-38
That the Lord would release holy and anointed labourers into the harvest to minister to the flock and to win the lost.
3. Luke 11:13
That God would release the power, purity and wisdom of His Spirit upon His people.
4. Luke 22:31-32
That the faith of the saints may not fail and that God's servants would be empowered to strengthen one another.
5. John 17
Vs. 11 Keep the saints in Your name that they may be one
Vs. 13 That they may have Jesus' joy made full in themselves
Vs. 15 Keep them from the evil one
Vs. 17 Sanctify them by releasing the truth powerfully to their hearts
Vs. 21-26 That You would fully bring them into Your glory and into perfected unity and fill
them with Your love for Jesus.
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Friday, October 5, 2007
Prayer and Meditation
23 Jesus replied, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. 24 He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.
25 "All this I have spoken while still with you. 26 But the Counsellor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”
John 14:23-27
Richard Foster in his book, Prayer - Finding The Heart’s True Home, explains the process of meditative prayer:
“In Christian meditation we seek to live the experience of Scripture. As a practical aid in living the experience of scripture, Ignatius of Loyola encourages us to apply all our senses to our task. We smell the sea. We hear the lap of water along the shore. We see the crowd. We feel the sun on our heads and the hunger pangs in our stomachs. We taste the salt in the air. We touch the hem of His garment.
“Suppose you want to meditate on Jesus’ staggering statement ‘my peace I give to you.’ Our task is not so much to study the passage as to be initiated into the reality of which the passage speaks. We brood o the truth that he is now filling us with His peace. The heart, the mind, and the spirit are awakened to His flowing peace. We sense all motions of fear stilled and overcome by ‘a spirit of power and love and of self-discipline’ (2 Tim 1:7). Rather than dissecting peace, we are entering into it. We are enveloped, absorbed, gathered into His peace.”
The point of this “Centering Prayer” is to give over to God our whole beings: our minds, our emotions – our very souls. The use of Scripture as a focal point keeps us in tune with the Father’s will and helps us to hear His words more clearly with every fibre of our being. The goal of this prayer is to join with God in understanding, at the very core of our being, the meaning of His promises and His will for us now. In this we do not empty ourselves of who the God has made us, but rather, we take into ourselves more of Him and therefore we become more like Him. Joyce Hugget, in Listening To God, suggests using a seven-step process of Reading, Receiving, Reciting, Regurgitating, Responding, Resting and Realigning.
We can do this with the words of Jesus as noted above. We can do this with narrative scenes from all parts of the Bible and through a Spirit-inspired imagination see ourselves in different roles from observer to participant. We can do this with the many prayers themselves recorded in the Bible and thereby make them our own. This form of prayer is true dialogue; interaction with God and His Word directed by the indwelling Spirit. It requires giving and receiving, speaking and listening, asking and obeying.
Why not try this today. Perhaps with the promise of Jesus made to His disciples in the Upper Room before the most difficult few days of their lives: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you”.
Mike Clarkson
25 "All this I have spoken while still with you. 26 But the Counsellor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”
John 14:23-27
Richard Foster in his book, Prayer - Finding The Heart’s True Home, explains the process of meditative prayer:
“In Christian meditation we seek to live the experience of Scripture. As a practical aid in living the experience of scripture, Ignatius of Loyola encourages us to apply all our senses to our task. We smell the sea. We hear the lap of water along the shore. We see the crowd. We feel the sun on our heads and the hunger pangs in our stomachs. We taste the salt in the air. We touch the hem of His garment.
“Suppose you want to meditate on Jesus’ staggering statement ‘my peace I give to you.’ Our task is not so much to study the passage as to be initiated into the reality of which the passage speaks. We brood o the truth that he is now filling us with His peace. The heart, the mind, and the spirit are awakened to His flowing peace. We sense all motions of fear stilled and overcome by ‘a spirit of power and love and of self-discipline’ (2 Tim 1:7). Rather than dissecting peace, we are entering into it. We are enveloped, absorbed, gathered into His peace.”
The point of this “Centering Prayer” is to give over to God our whole beings: our minds, our emotions – our very souls. The use of Scripture as a focal point keeps us in tune with the Father’s will and helps us to hear His words more clearly with every fibre of our being. The goal of this prayer is to join with God in understanding, at the very core of our being, the meaning of His promises and His will for us now. In this we do not empty ourselves of who the God has made us, but rather, we take into ourselves more of Him and therefore we become more like Him. Joyce Hugget, in Listening To God, suggests using a seven-step process of Reading, Receiving, Reciting, Regurgitating, Responding, Resting and Realigning.
We can do this with the words of Jesus as noted above. We can do this with narrative scenes from all parts of the Bible and through a Spirit-inspired imagination see ourselves in different roles from observer to participant. We can do this with the many prayers themselves recorded in the Bible and thereby make them our own. This form of prayer is true dialogue; interaction with God and His Word directed by the indwelling Spirit. It requires giving and receiving, speaking and listening, asking and obeying.
Why not try this today. Perhaps with the promise of Jesus made to His disciples in the Upper Room before the most difficult few days of their lives: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you”.
Mike Clarkson
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Centering Prayer
1Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.
2But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.
3He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.
4Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away.
5Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
6For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
Psalm 1
Over the past several days we have seen how God delights to spend time with us and to talk to us as well as listen to us. One of the ways He speaks to us is through His written Word, the Bible. Scripture was inspired by God and written by people that we might better know God, His thoughts, His past work, His future promises. Through all of this we can begin to understand God and His ways.
In the early 1500’s the Spaniard, St Ignatius of Loyola, wrote a book called the Spiritual Exercises in which he set out a journey of prayer by which ordinary people could engage both their minds and their emotions in listening to God. These exercises began with silencio (quietening the mind) moved on to lectio divina (the reading of Scripture) then to meditatio (thoughtful imagining of the Scriptural text) and finally, on occasion, reaching contemplatio ad Amorem (the entering into the mind of Christ). This pathway formalized a process built into the earlier practices of many of the early Fathers and Mothers: Francis, Benedict, Clare, Dominic, etc.
Modern day authors such as Thomas Keating, Margaret Hebblethwaite and Basil Pennington have taken this path and called it Centering Prayer. Keating says: “The practice of Centering Prayer, built upon lectio divina, is based on a millennium of Christian contemplative tradition. The teaching of the Divine Indwelling is a fundamental doctrine for the spiritual journey. The Father, the Son as the Eternal Word of the Father, and the Holy Spirit are present within us. These relationships, which are never separate in their unity, are forever interacting. The Father is the potentiality for all existence; the Son is the actuality of all possibilities of existence; and the Spirit is the love that motivates both.”
But in fact, the tradition of using Scripture as a focus for our prayer life is much older than the monasteries of the middle ages. Since the first five books of the Bible, the Torah, were written, people have read the Scriptures in order to draw closer to God. It is one of the most reliable ways in which He has always spoken and through which He still speaks to us today. It is not a coincidence that the Psalter begins with encouraging us to meditate day and night on God’s word. It is in God’s word that we are to delight. It is this meditation which feeds and waters us. This is the path to prosperity it tells us. It is through this practice that we will eventually bear fruit and be sustained says the Psalmist.
There are three clear benefits to this. Firstly the words of the Bible inform us as to God’s intentions and to His character. We learn more about God and His world. Secondly, it gives God the opportunity to apply those words to us and our current situation, should He so desire. Often when reading a passage intended for a readership of several thousand years ago we find the words take on fresh meaning for our current circumstances. Finally, when we use the words of Scripture towards God – for instance David’s words of Praise, or God’s promises to His people in the past or Jesus’ prayers, we find a new vocabulary which helps us in our conversation with God when we ourselves are barren of anything helpful to say.
We will look more tomorrow at the practice of meditation as prayer. If you have been following these devotionals for the past several weeks you will already have begun to establish the pattern of spending some time each day thinking about God’s word written as well as spending time in His presence. Why not begin to connect the two now and see if God has anything to say to you today through this passage or another from the Bible.
Mike Clarkson
2But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.
3He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.
4Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away.
5Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
6For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
Psalm 1
Over the past several days we have seen how God delights to spend time with us and to talk to us as well as listen to us. One of the ways He speaks to us is through His written Word, the Bible. Scripture was inspired by God and written by people that we might better know God, His thoughts, His past work, His future promises. Through all of this we can begin to understand God and His ways.
In the early 1500’s the Spaniard, St Ignatius of Loyola, wrote a book called the Spiritual Exercises in which he set out a journey of prayer by which ordinary people could engage both their minds and their emotions in listening to God. These exercises began with silencio (quietening the mind) moved on to lectio divina (the reading of Scripture) then to meditatio (thoughtful imagining of the Scriptural text) and finally, on occasion, reaching contemplatio ad Amorem (the entering into the mind of Christ). This pathway formalized a process built into the earlier practices of many of the early Fathers and Mothers: Francis, Benedict, Clare, Dominic, etc.
Modern day authors such as Thomas Keating, Margaret Hebblethwaite and Basil Pennington have taken this path and called it Centering Prayer. Keating says: “The practice of Centering Prayer, built upon lectio divina, is based on a millennium of Christian contemplative tradition. The teaching of the Divine Indwelling is a fundamental doctrine for the spiritual journey. The Father, the Son as the Eternal Word of the Father, and the Holy Spirit are present within us. These relationships, which are never separate in their unity, are forever interacting. The Father is the potentiality for all existence; the Son is the actuality of all possibilities of existence; and the Spirit is the love that motivates both.”
But in fact, the tradition of using Scripture as a focus for our prayer life is much older than the monasteries of the middle ages. Since the first five books of the Bible, the Torah, were written, people have read the Scriptures in order to draw closer to God. It is one of the most reliable ways in which He has always spoken and through which He still speaks to us today. It is not a coincidence that the Psalter begins with encouraging us to meditate day and night on God’s word. It is in God’s word that we are to delight. It is this meditation which feeds and waters us. This is the path to prosperity it tells us. It is through this practice that we will eventually bear fruit and be sustained says the Psalmist.
There are three clear benefits to this. Firstly the words of the Bible inform us as to God’s intentions and to His character. We learn more about God and His world. Secondly, it gives God the opportunity to apply those words to us and our current situation, should He so desire. Often when reading a passage intended for a readership of several thousand years ago we find the words take on fresh meaning for our current circumstances. Finally, when we use the words of Scripture towards God – for instance David’s words of Praise, or God’s promises to His people in the past or Jesus’ prayers, we find a new vocabulary which helps us in our conversation with God when we ourselves are barren of anything helpful to say.
We will look more tomorrow at the practice of meditation as prayer. If you have been following these devotionals for the past several weeks you will already have begun to establish the pattern of spending some time each day thinking about God’s word written as well as spending time in His presence. Why not begin to connect the two now and see if God has anything to say to you today through this passage or another from the Bible.
Mike Clarkson
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Prayer as Conversation
11 The angel of the LORD came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites. 12 When the angel of the LORD appeared to Gideon, he said, "The LORD is with you, mighty warrior."
13 "But sir," Gideon replied, "if the LORD is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our fathers told us about when they said, 'Did not the LORD bring us up out of Egypt?' But now the LORD has abandoned us and put us into the hand of Midian."
14 The LORD turned to him and said, "Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian's hand. Am I not sending you?"
15 "But Lord," Gideon asked, "how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family."
16 The LORD answered, "I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites together."
17 Gideon replied, "If now I have found favour in your eyes, give me a sign that it is really you talking to me. 18 Please do not go away until I come back and bring my offering and set it before you." And the LORD said, "I will wait until you return."
19 Gideon went in, prepared a young goat, and from an ephah of flour he made bread without yeast. Putting the meat in a basket and its broth in a pot, he brought them out and offered them to him under the oak.
20 The angel of God said to him, "Take the meat and the unleavened bread, place them on this rock, and pour out the broth." And Gideon did so. 21 With the tip of the staff that was in his hand, the angel of the LORD touched the meat and the unleavened bread. Fire flared from the rock, consuming the meat and the bread. And the angel of the LORD disappeared. 22 When Gideon realised that it was the angel of the LORD, he exclaimed, "Ah, Sovereign LORD! I have seen the angel of the LORD face to face!"
23 But the LORD said to him, "Peace! Do not be afraid. You are not going to die."
Judges 6:11-23
What an extraordinary story! A young man, going about his ordinary business in a time of great danger has an encounter with God that will change the fate of the nation Israel. This single conversation and its aftermath will turn him into a great warrior/leader and release Israel from a long suffered bondage under Midian.
If listening is a part of our prayer life, so too must be its corollary – dialogue or conversation. God wants not only to speak to us, He wants to interact with us. Our partnership with Him is neither silent nor one-sided but one of give and take. The difficulty in this is the inherent inequality of status between ourselves and the Omnipotent, Omnipresent and Omniscient God who created us. How can we possibly hear effectively from a being so far beyond us in understanding? How can we add anything to such a conversation? And yet without this exchange, the feedback and checks to understanding it provides, we cannot communicate or receive communication from God – not because of His limitations but our own.
Here we see such communication between God and Gideon generating surprise and fear but also providing assurance and direction to Gideon. It is a conversation which was broken off for a while and reengaged with later. It continues throughout the story and produces the growth we see in Gideon’s character as well as the strategy for battle which defeats Israel’s foes.
Rosalind Rinker in her book, Prayer – Conversing With God, says: “Prayer is the expression of the human heart in conversation with God. The more natural the prayer, the more real He becomes. It has been simplified for me to this extent: prayer is a dialogue between two persons who love each other.” She goes on to explain that there are four aspects to this form of daily prayer:
1. “When we converse, we become aware. Aware of the other person, his rights, his privileges, his feeling, and if we converse long enough, his total personality.
2. “Good conversation implies that we must take turn about and do it gracefully. When one person does all the talking we call it (if we are polite) a monologue.
3. “Finally, it should be clear that to converse we must all pursue the same subject, and pursue it by turns. We are, in a sense, the listening and speaking members of a team. We have agreed to agree upon our subject of conversation, and to do this each one must decide what is relevant and important at the moment.
4. “ To carry on a conversation of any significance or interest, each person must use his memory to recall, his patience to wait, his alertness to jump in, his willingness to get out, and above all his capacity to hold back the disruptive. In other words, he should be in tune.”
If this is not already a natural part of your prayer repertoire, why not try it today? Try speaking to God and waiting for His response. Try asking questions and listening for the answers. Try waiting for Him to direct the path the conversation might take. He may speak in audible words, in impressions, in the “voice inside your head” in pictures or even by touching your feelings. As you become more familiar with the form of dialogue so you will you grow in understanding of your conversational partner. Jesus says that the sheep come to recognize the shepherd’s voice. So too will we grow in knowledge and love of our Lord.
Mike Clarkson
13 "But sir," Gideon replied, "if the LORD is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our fathers told us about when they said, 'Did not the LORD bring us up out of Egypt?' But now the LORD has abandoned us and put us into the hand of Midian."
14 The LORD turned to him and said, "Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian's hand. Am I not sending you?"
15 "But Lord," Gideon asked, "how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family."
16 The LORD answered, "I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites together."
17 Gideon replied, "If now I have found favour in your eyes, give me a sign that it is really you talking to me. 18 Please do not go away until I come back and bring my offering and set it before you." And the LORD said, "I will wait until you return."
19 Gideon went in, prepared a young goat, and from an ephah of flour he made bread without yeast. Putting the meat in a basket and its broth in a pot, he brought them out and offered them to him under the oak.
20 The angel of God said to him, "Take the meat and the unleavened bread, place them on this rock, and pour out the broth." And Gideon did so. 21 With the tip of the staff that was in his hand, the angel of the LORD touched the meat and the unleavened bread. Fire flared from the rock, consuming the meat and the bread. And the angel of the LORD disappeared. 22 When Gideon realised that it was the angel of the LORD, he exclaimed, "Ah, Sovereign LORD! I have seen the angel of the LORD face to face!"
23 But the LORD said to him, "Peace! Do not be afraid. You are not going to die."
Judges 6:11-23
What an extraordinary story! A young man, going about his ordinary business in a time of great danger has an encounter with God that will change the fate of the nation Israel. This single conversation and its aftermath will turn him into a great warrior/leader and release Israel from a long suffered bondage under Midian.
If listening is a part of our prayer life, so too must be its corollary – dialogue or conversation. God wants not only to speak to us, He wants to interact with us. Our partnership with Him is neither silent nor one-sided but one of give and take. The difficulty in this is the inherent inequality of status between ourselves and the Omnipotent, Omnipresent and Omniscient God who created us. How can we possibly hear effectively from a being so far beyond us in understanding? How can we add anything to such a conversation? And yet without this exchange, the feedback and checks to understanding it provides, we cannot communicate or receive communication from God – not because of His limitations but our own.
Here we see such communication between God and Gideon generating surprise and fear but also providing assurance and direction to Gideon. It is a conversation which was broken off for a while and reengaged with later. It continues throughout the story and produces the growth we see in Gideon’s character as well as the strategy for battle which defeats Israel’s foes.
Rosalind Rinker in her book, Prayer – Conversing With God, says: “Prayer is the expression of the human heart in conversation with God. The more natural the prayer, the more real He becomes. It has been simplified for me to this extent: prayer is a dialogue between two persons who love each other.” She goes on to explain that there are four aspects to this form of daily prayer:
1. “When we converse, we become aware. Aware of the other person, his rights, his privileges, his feeling, and if we converse long enough, his total personality.
2. “Good conversation implies that we must take turn about and do it gracefully. When one person does all the talking we call it (if we are polite) a monologue.
3. “Finally, it should be clear that to converse we must all pursue the same subject, and pursue it by turns. We are, in a sense, the listening and speaking members of a team. We have agreed to agree upon our subject of conversation, and to do this each one must decide what is relevant and important at the moment.
4. “ To carry on a conversation of any significance or interest, each person must use his memory to recall, his patience to wait, his alertness to jump in, his willingness to get out, and above all his capacity to hold back the disruptive. In other words, he should be in tune.”
If this is not already a natural part of your prayer repertoire, why not try it today? Try speaking to God and waiting for His response. Try asking questions and listening for the answers. Try waiting for Him to direct the path the conversation might take. He may speak in audible words, in impressions, in the “voice inside your head” in pictures or even by touching your feelings. As you become more familiar with the form of dialogue so you will you grow in understanding of your conversational partner. Jesus says that the sheep come to recognize the shepherd’s voice. So too will we grow in knowledge and love of our Lord.
Mike Clarkson
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Listening Prayer
1God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.
2Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
3though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. Selah
4There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells.
5God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day.
6Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts.
7The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah
8Come and see the works of the LORD, the desolations he has brought on the earth.
9He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear, he burns the shields with fire.
10"Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth."
11The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah
Psalm 46
Reading this Psalm we can almost hear the sound of the busyness of the earth. We can hear the clash of battle, the bustle of commerce, the arguments and the cheers of success, the groans of everyday toil and the sighs when the day is over. We hear the quaking, the roaring, the rushing and surging as the psalm so poetically puts it. Over this cacophony the Lord lifts His voice (vs 6) and invites us to see Him at work (vs 8). He bids us to “Be still, and know that I am God.”(vs10)
The Bible tells us that our God is a God who speaks! He spoke the word that created everything. He spoke to Abraham and began His chosen people Israel. He spoke to leaders, rulers, prophets, ordinary people, soldiers, women in childbirth, children and youth – people about their businesses and those carefully listening. We read His words of encouragement, warning, guidance, comfort, foretelling and consoling, directing and upbuilding.
I can remember the first time that I realized that prayer was a dialogue; not a one-way stream of requests or commentary - but a conversation in which listening was as (maybe even more) important than speaking. What a revelation! I had never imagined that God might want to speak to me. My prayer times suddenly ceased being times of grocery-list needs or striving to be heard, but rather became a time of interchange or even pure receiving. For me prayer began to achieve a new rhythm and fruitfulness.
Joyce Huggett in her well known book, Listening To God, tells of one such time for her after a service in a nearby Abbey:
“When the monks left the church, I would linger there, as I did on this occasion. And I would be aware that every part of my being – body mind and spirit – were open, attentive to the divine presence. I had done nothing to prepare myself for this eventuality. God had done it. The initiative was His. The miracle was His. By beaming his love on to me in such a way I could feel, parts of me which normally remain closed, unfolded. I suppose I was rather like the water lily which opens itself when it can bask in warm sunshine but which closes its petals when cloud or rain obliterate the sun.
“What I heard in those times of listening was more than a voice. It was a presence. Yes. I heard the Lord call my name. But I also “heard” his tenderness. I soaked up his love. And this listening was on a level which runs deeper than mere words. Sometimes it seemed as though Jesus himself stood in front of me or beside me or above me. This encounter with Him overwhelmed me.”
In our times with God we should expect to receive from Him as well as to petition Him. Although for those of us with busy lives or active families it might be difficult, practically it might be helpful to set aside particular times of the day or particular places of quiet where in uninterrupted peace we might listen for that “still small voice” which so nourishes.
Mike Clarkson
Monday, October 1, 2007
The Prayer of Rest
26In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. 27And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will. Rom 8:26-27
There are times in our lives when even the most simple of prayers seems to be beyond us. We are confused or distressed. We are ashamed or guilty. We are angry with God. Life is too full of other priorities. We are just too exhausted to be able to face God or even go through the effort. These may be the times when God is most able to bless us with His presence. It is in the eye of the storm that the silence and calm can be most appreciated and nourishing. This is the time for the prayer of rest. There is perhaps no more appealing invitation in the Bible than Jesus’ gracious words, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28
Richard Foster explains this time, “While we are full participants in the grace-filled work of prayer, the work of prayer does not depend upon us. We often pray in struggling, halting ways. Many times we have only fragmentary glimpses of the heavenly glory. We do not know what to pray. We do not know how to pray. Often our best prayers feel like inarticulate groans. The point is that we do not have to have everything perfect when we pray. The Spirit reshapes, refines and reinterprets our feeble ego-driven prayers. We can rest in this work of the Spirit on our behalf.”
Allowing God to minister to us in the imperfection of our everyday lives is an important part of our time with Him. Our prayer lives are not like exams in school or important presentations at work where we need to have it all together before we are able to perform. Our prayer time can be the time we rest with God: our “hanging out” time. It can also be our broken time when we go to him wounded and battered. These are the times, as well as the joyous ones, in which God can just hold us and let us know how much He loves us; how acceptable we are to Him anyway. This is the communication of the soul more than the mind. This is the good “Daddy” time.
Jean Vanier, the leader of the L’Arche community for handicapped people which started in France describes this process in this way: he will cup his hands lightly before him and say, “Suppose I have a wounded bird in my hands. What would happen if I closed my hands completely?” The response is immediate, “Why the bird would be crushed and die.” “Well then, what would happen if I opened my hands completely?” “Oh, no, then the bird would try to fly away and it will fall and die.” Vanier goes on to say, “The right place is like my cupped hand, neither totally open nor totally closed. It is the space where growth can take place.”
If this is a time of distress, pain or indecision for you, a time where you are not sure where to turn and what is right or wrong, perhaps even a time where the temptation may be to turn away from church or God – this must be a good time to just rest with Him. Let Him be with you and minister to you and eventually carry you in His perfect direction.
Mike Clarkson
There are times in our lives when even the most simple of prayers seems to be beyond us. We are confused or distressed. We are ashamed or guilty. We are angry with God. Life is too full of other priorities. We are just too exhausted to be able to face God or even go through the effort. These may be the times when God is most able to bless us with His presence. It is in the eye of the storm that the silence and calm can be most appreciated and nourishing. This is the time for the prayer of rest. There is perhaps no more appealing invitation in the Bible than Jesus’ gracious words, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28
Richard Foster explains this time, “While we are full participants in the grace-filled work of prayer, the work of prayer does not depend upon us. We often pray in struggling, halting ways. Many times we have only fragmentary glimpses of the heavenly glory. We do not know what to pray. We do not know how to pray. Often our best prayers feel like inarticulate groans. The point is that we do not have to have everything perfect when we pray. The Spirit reshapes, refines and reinterprets our feeble ego-driven prayers. We can rest in this work of the Spirit on our behalf.”
Allowing God to minister to us in the imperfection of our everyday lives is an important part of our time with Him. Our prayer lives are not like exams in school or important presentations at work where we need to have it all together before we are able to perform. Our prayer time can be the time we rest with God: our “hanging out” time. It can also be our broken time when we go to him wounded and battered. These are the times, as well as the joyous ones, in which God can just hold us and let us know how much He loves us; how acceptable we are to Him anyway. This is the communication of the soul more than the mind. This is the good “Daddy” time.
Jean Vanier, the leader of the L’Arche community for handicapped people which started in France describes this process in this way: he will cup his hands lightly before him and say, “Suppose I have a wounded bird in my hands. What would happen if I closed my hands completely?” The response is immediate, “Why the bird would be crushed and die.” “Well then, what would happen if I opened my hands completely?” “Oh, no, then the bird would try to fly away and it will fall and die.” Vanier goes on to say, “The right place is like my cupped hand, neither totally open nor totally closed. It is the space where growth can take place.”
If this is a time of distress, pain or indecision for you, a time where you are not sure where to turn and what is right or wrong, perhaps even a time where the temptation may be to turn away from church or God – this must be a good time to just rest with Him. Let Him be with you and minister to you and eventually carry you in His perfect direction.
Mike Clarkson
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