In the church world or realm there is a lot of talk about prayer, prayers and prayerlessness. There are days of prayer that turn into protests, prayer breakfasts attended by luminaries and the media. There are president’s that pray and people of every faith walk that pray. I am a person that prays, I believe in it, it is a discipline of mine, but the bible talks about earth shaking, fire bringing down, God connected prayer.
I want that kind of prayer, not just the high volume, shout at God and tell Him how to run the universe kind of prayer. Nor, do I want the kind of fluffy, floppy and mushy kind of prayer that seems to go to a god that sits on a cloud stroking his beard looking for the best orators out of the people on this planet, so He can grant their request like some kind of cosmic butler. I want prayer that connects to real and living Almighty God and knows it connected. I don’t want the “I did my duty” kind of prayer, so God can check my name off on some heavenly list, like a grade school teacher checking my homework.
I believe it takes an adjustment in my life, a rearranging of the furniture if you would, to enable a deeper relationship leading to deeper prayer. I think it starts with desire, past the “it would be nice” kind of desire, and into the desire that is willing to go to any lengths to get it. Remember the desire (holy or otherwise) that you had for your first girlfriend, boyfriend or car, you would go to any lengths, spend all your time, go into debt up to your eyeballs, or as Percy Sledge said, “stand out in the rain” to get it or maintain it. I will be the first to admit, that I don’t always feel like that towards the things of God or prayer, and that admission disturbs me. It disturbs me when I read the passion of the writers of the Law, Prophets and the Gospels, and then don’t experience that or even see examples of that to follow in our day and age. I believe that if we were determined not merely in actions but in motives. Oswald Chambers mentioned “ The motive of my motives, the spring of my dreams, must be so right that right deeds will follow naturally.”
This is a “splinter in my mind” driving me on. Call me crazy, but I believe that this kind of transformation, prayer and holiness is possible. Not only possible but attainable, why would the Prophets, Jesus and the Gospel writers pen that if it were not within our reach? They would be madmen, hucksters and, at the very least, hypocrites of the highest order, if we could not actually pray without ceasing, be holy in all our thoughts, intents and motives and have a depth of relationship with God that would take us outside the merely human realm.
Why is it something like holiness and prayer are so shortchanged that all they get is our spare change attention?
No matter how many books are written I do not believe there will ever be three sure steps to the prayer that shakes the earth, or a holiness for spiritual idiots manual. It is something we must search and grope for on a gut level, not knowing how or where. As Paul the apostle spoke so brilliantly to the Athenians on Mars Hill of the altar to the “To an unknown God”. “His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps “feel their way toward Him” and find him—though he is not far from any one of us. Acts 17:27 (NLT)
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