Daughters of promise

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness.  For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.  Romans 8:26

It is not a sin to be weak.  Weakness is a human condition.  Frailty plagues the most righteous man or woman, especially when in the midst of suffering.  Quickly, every one of us loses our spiritual perspective.  Our prayers reflect this vacuum.

Job was righteous.  God said so.  Yet he couldn’t understand why he was suffering and his prayers proved his confusion.  His friends thought they knew the mind of God and probably prayed for him, but wrongly.

The disciples, as much as they loved Jesus, proved to be weak prayer partners.  In the garden, when Jesus needed them most, they feel asleep during Jesus’ hours of anguish.

Elijah, a prophet of courageous proportions, succumbed to a weakened state after a great spiritual victory.  Exhausted and emotionally drained, he prayed that the Lord would take his life.  The flesh and the spirit are so integrally connected.  When the body fails, the spirit is confused.

If I don’t know how to pray for myself, how can I be sure anyone else will be able to pray for me correctly?  The answer lies in my ‘best friend’ in intercession.  The Holy Spirit.  He is aware and fully engaged with my story.  He knows my limited ability to understand God’s sovereign plan for my life.  When I cry out to God and I am wordless, much like a baby in distress, He hears my weeping and interprets it to the Father.  He perceives my faltering words, my frustrating silences and interprets those too.  He tells my story better than I can and He tells it with omniscience.  He prays about everything with perfect perspective.

So many days, I pray…. “Oh holy Spirit, rise up in me and teach me how to pray.  Form my words.  Pray when my language fails.”  When I despair that no one might be praying for me, I have been led to remember that Jesus, Himself, is praying for me.  The Holy Spirit is praying for me.  Could the friendship of God be more perfectly proven than in this?

I rest in Your words, Your groanings, and even Your tears for the places in my life which have left me speechless and wanting. Thank you for being such a friend. Amen

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; And through the rivers, they will not overflow you.  Isaiah 43:2

The power of this promise makes little sense if I fail to understand the sinister nature of water in scripture.  It’s hard to see the sea as something negative if I love the beach and the sound of waves lapping up on shore.  But to the ancient Jew, the sea meant something else entirely.  It was a symbol of something ominous and life-threatening. In Semitic mythology, a sea monster was synonymous with chaos and evil.  These verses provide a more complete picture.

• Isaiah said that the wicked were like a tossing sea. Isaiah 57:20
• A psalmist said that God divided the sea by His might and broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters. Psalm 74:13-14
• David said that God’s vicious waves had swept over him like an angry ocean. Psalm 42:7
• And in John’s revelation, it’s most interesting that the Beast rises from the sea. (Revelation 13)

When God promises to accompany me through the waters, it is clear that He goes with me into the deepest chaos, evil, turbulence, and even death.  God doesn’t promise to take me around the sea, to keep me on dry land.  Just like the days we are living now; we find ourselves in deep waters.  The darkness is thick, life-threatening, and it’s comforting to be assured that we’re not alone.

Think about it.  How very fitting that Jesus walked on water!  The symbol of that is not lost on me.  He was not overcome by evil, not knocked around by the chaos of the waves, not swallowed up by the deep.  In the worst of storms, he walked on the waves.  Calmly, with no need to yell, He spoke to His disciples.  His voice penetrated the roar of the storm.

It makes me think of Ephesians 1 and I Corinthians 15.  “And He put all things under His feet.”   There is no evil He has not conquered.  There is no virus He cannot heal.  There is no chaos He can not order.  There is no life, for a saint, that will not triumph in life – and in death.  Everything, no matter how ominous, is subject to His authority.

You are Lord over all the elements, and I am never out of Your care.  Amen

Every day he (Mordecai) walked back and forth near the courtyard of the harem to find out how Esther was and what was happening to her. Esther 2:11

Esther had gone to the palace along with many other young virgins. She had been uprooted from the safety of her home and separated from the faces she knew. Can you imagine Mordecai’s anxiety? How was she being treated? Was the king an honorable man with women? Were the people who worked for him trustworthy with impressionable young girls? Such were the fears of an adoptive father who paced back and forth near the courtyard of the palace, hoping to hear any word at all on the girl he raised and loved like his own.

This picture gives us a snapshot of an invisible God. Mordecai was consumed with the welfare of the child he had raised. So is God. Mordecai gave up his life to adopt an orphan. So did God. Mordecai invested himself fully to teach Esther that which would allow her soul to prosper. So does God. Mordecai positioned himself in her vicinity, just in case she might need anything of him. So does God. He knocks at the door of my heart. The sound is soft, but discernible if I’m listening for it.

“How are you?” he asks. “I never stop thinking about you. Do you need anything?”

Often, His arrival can seem more like a disruption. “I don’t have time to talk”, I’ve been guilty of answering. But still He lingers, waits a while, and then knocks again.

By the time I hear his voice the second time, life has begun to unravel. “Things aren’t going as I’d hoped. I’m getting tired.”

He’s not surprised. How could he be! ”I’m here. I am rest for your soul and wisdom for your decisions.” Now, I’m aware of my need and stop to include Him in my day.

If only I’d stopped the first time I sensed Him knocking to spend time with Him. I’d have been prepared for my day ahead, before the circumstances unfolded. Now, I’m in crisis mode. Undone. Disquieted. Dull of hearing. However, despite my earlier disinterest, He didn’t leave me. He didn’t even scold me for waiting so long. He knows I’ll put those thoughts together. When I do, I’m humbled. Mordecai is a picture of God’s steadfastness and enduring patience.

I simply cannot say today that nobody in the world cares about me. Your care has no limits. What a Father You are! In Jesus’ name, Amen.

These all died in faith without having received the promises, but they saw them from a distance, greeted them, and confessed that they were foreigners and temporary residents on the earth.  Hebrews 11:13

Have you noticed that things here become less appealing as you’ve aged?  Have you gotten to the place where you feel like a misfit, a stranger, and an alien?  If your answer is yes, you’re in the company of those in the family of God who have refused to dig their foundation into shifting sand.

The steep walk of faith is a lonely journey.  There are fewer and fewer, even among God’s children, who stay on the narrow path. The numbers who hunger and thirst after righteousness diminish as faith walks get steeper.  Jesus loses appeal when held up against the opiates of our age.

Ah, but for everyone who perseveres, our eyes search for other pilgrims who also talk longingly of home. Everything we’re praying for hasn’t happened yet.  Everything we’re hoping for is deferred.  That’s okay.   Like Abraham, we can see it from a distance.

Ron’s father, a well-known evangelist, would say to a crowd of people before giving an invitation, “I’m as sure of heaven as though I’d already been there for 1,000 years.”  Who talks like that?  Only one who has made his home in Christ.  The Psalmist said, Hear my prayer, O LORD, and give ear unto my cry; hold not thy peace at my tears: for I am a stranger, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were. Psalm 39:12  A longing can be heard as he perpetually scans the horizon for the lights of Jerusalem.  As for Jack Wyrtzen, he saw it in 1996 as Jesus welcomed him home.

My cure for worry, Lord?  Being consumed with what awaits me. Amen

He [Jesus] said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.” Matthew 13:52

Every child of God is compelled to share their faith.  Some have come to Jesus with no history of Christianity whatsoever.  They have had no teaching and must get to know their new Father without the benefit of previous foundational teaching. This has its benefits.  Their heart is a clean slate upon which God can write.  

Others have come to Jesus with years of Christian history under their belt.  They have been saturated in church culture.  They know a lot of scripture and can espouse many of the doctrines.  If all of this was learned, however, under the heavy hand of legalism, it is tempting to start fresh with Jesus.  But should we?

In this short parable, Jesus made it clear that the most effective teacher uses the new and the old.  He reaches into the archives of the teaching he was given and realizes that even though the teachers were flawed, the doctrines just might have been sound.  And if sound, they are treasures.  Part of maturity is to be able to value the Truth apart from the messengers who delivered it.  God will help us discard what has been unprofitable.  

If there is more of the old I need to embrace, reveal it.  If there is more I am to discard, I am willing.  Be the sifter, Lord Jesus. Amen

‘Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake at your presence ‘“ As fire kindles the brushwood, as fire causes water to boil ‘“ To make your name known to your adversaries, that the nations may tremble at your presence!’  Isaiah 64:1-2 

Everything has been on the line for us. The time God’s people need to take critical action is now. If He intends to deliver us, the plan will be accomplished through prayer and fasting. However, we must also be realistic about it.  Prayer is not a magical act to deliver us from trouble. Even with prayer, we may get sick, we may lose our life and the life of a loved one.  Our death, however, does not negate the power of prayer. Prayer equips us to rest in the sovereign will of God.

It is easy to use prayer as a means of expressing our wish list for personal comfort and safety. Whenever stresses press in upon me and those I love, I go to prayer and beg for deliverance. If a trial continues, I shouldn’t erroneously conclude that prayer doesn’t work. I might be tempted to think that that God doesn’t care and this so-called perfect Father fails His children in critical times. Not true.

Prayer mobilizes God to act according to His sovereign plan for my life. Satan is always on the loose, driven to inflict death and destruction. If his war against us is ill-timed, prayer cripples the best of his strategies and renders him impotent, just as it did when the death sentence of the Jews in Susa was lifted. However, I must not be childish in my expectations. I am told that I will also share in the sufferings of Jesus. Most of the prophets and Jesus’ disciples were murdered and I need only read the first chapter of the Fox’s Book of Martyrs to clear up unrealistic expectations. If you and I perish, as Esther believed she might, and as Peter knew he would because of Jesus’ prophetic words over him, we need prayer to give us grace and peace.  But if you and I are to be delivered, we need prayer to bring about the miracle.

My prayer life is characterized by two requests. “Deliver me if that is in your plan, Lord. Or, give me grace in the fire.” 

You are not my fairy god-father. No matter what I experience at Your hand, Your plan for me and for Your people, at this time in history, was conceived in love and wisdom. In Jesus’ name, Amen.