God's partners

God is calling us to be his partners in his great work - his plans to bring history to a dramatic, triumphant climax to his glory.

He has given us prayer as the means to carry out his plans.  Will we be silent?  Or, will we throw ourselves into the mission he has given us?

It has taken me decades to realize that the most important thing about prayer is that we seek what God wants, not what we want.  I am still dipping my toes - very tentatively - into this wonderful truth.

Watchman Nee, a great Chinese Christian who died in a Communist prison camp, wrote in his little book Let Us Pray that the one who prays "must allow his will to enter into God's will, his thought must be allowed to enter into God's thought". 

"Since he habitually lives in the Lord's presence, such a person is given to know His will and thoughts.  And these divine wills and thoughts quite naturally become his own desires, which he then expresses in prayer."

This is important for God chooses to work through us and the world around us as we pray. 

"How many things the Lord indeed desires to do, yet he does not perform them because his people do not pray," says Nee. "He will wait until men agree with Him, and then He will work."

In Matthew 6, Jesus gives a model prayer which includes the line: "Your (God's) will be done on earth as it is in heaven."  We are to pray that what God wants accomplished on earth will be carried out - just as his command is obeyed in heaven.

The great prayers of the Bible reflect this truth.  Nehemiah and Daniel pleaded with God on behalf of his chosen people, prayers that God graciously answered.

And when the early church was under attack in Acts 4, the believers called on God to help them speak boldly about Jesus - not for their own protection.  God responded by bringing many new believers into the fold.

Nee refers to a great passage in Isaiah 62 which is a call to me and to you today:

"O Jerusalem, I have posted watchmen on your walls; they will pray day and night, continually.  Take no rest, you who pray to the Lord."



 

The power of praying parents

My wife and two other women spoke of the power of prayer in family life in a video shown at our church this morning.

My wife mentioned how we prayed for our children - and still pray for them.  And now we pray for our grandchildren, too.  We rejoice with what God is doing with them and through them.

Another woman said her mother used to arrange pictures of her family on a table and pray for them daily - for an hour.  Now she does the same with her family.

Still another woman talked about her mother and father's faithful praying for her over the years, even when she was wandering away from the faith for a while.  Now, she is praying for her children in the same way.

Throughout history, we read of the importance of praying for our families.

Augustine, one of the greatest Christians in the early centuries of the church, was prayed into the kingdom of God by his mother, even though he rejected Christ for years.  John Wesley, one of the greatest Christian leaders in more recent times, had a faithful, praying mother.

We are children of God and he loves it when we pray for our children.

Jesus had a special place in his heart for children.  In Matthew 19, the disciples tried to shoo away parents who were bringing children to Jesus.  And he said: "Let the children come to me.  Don't stop them!  For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children."

Young children have a trusting faith that is the envy of many older people.  It is nurtured by faithful praying parents.

Joyce Huggett, author of Listening to God,  says that her introduction to prayer came early on as she watched her father sitting by the fireside, reading his Bible and then closing his eyes to pray.

"Children are great imitators of people they love," she writes.  "Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that I cannot remember a time when prayer did not feature in my life."

I remember reading somewhere that one woman learned the importance of praying from her mother who had a large brood of children.  The mother had hardly a moment to herself.  So she would sit in a chair and throw her apron over her face, a signal to her children that she was praying and was not to be disturbed.

God works with us as we pray.  He wants to meet our deep needs and our children's needs.

Some day, we will learn how important our prayers were when we stand before God and he shows us the fruit of our prayers.

When God seems silent

Pete Greig, a world leader in the 24/7 prayer movement, has written a compelling book called God on Mute about his struggles with God as his wife Samie was ravaged by a life-threatening illness.

Grieg was shocked to the core of his being when his 29-year-old wife, mother of two small boys, was suddenly struck with seizures.  Doctors discovered the cause - an orange-sized tumour in her brain.

The tumour was removed but Samie was unable to shake the seizures which were often frightening.  Over time, the illness hovered over the Greigs, ready to strike at any moment.

Very honestly, Greig writes about how his prayer life suffered as he watched his wife suffer.  He began a long process of trying to understand why God did not heal his wife the way others had been healed.

I appreciate this deeply personal book because it voices the questions we "prayer warriors" are reluctant to raise.  We prefer to talk about the many times God says "Yes" to our prayers.  Yet we are all aware that often our prayers are not answered the way we wish they were.

Over the centuries, people have offered various reasons for God not giving us the answers we want.  Among these suggestions:

• We don't have enough faith;
• A "yes" answer would be bad for us; and
• God cannot give us what we want because there is sin in our lives.

But suppose none of these reasons explains the situation?  For example, Job was a fine, upright man with no discernible flaws.  God was pleased with him.  Yet he lost all his children and his wealth and was stricken with disease.  Through it all, he remained loyal to God, although he eventually asked questions of the Lord.

In Job's case, God essentially told him that he - God - knows what is right and good and man cannot put himself in the Lord's shoes.

Grieg talked to a lot of people about prayer and Samie's illness and he shares their answers and their experiences in his book.

He navigated this trial with his faith intact.

Towards the end of the book, he says: "The greatest miracle in the world - greater than any healing or any revelation - is the grace unleashed by a life refined through suffering."

As he notes, it is the grace unleashed by Jesus on the cross so that others might live.

Dare to be a Daniel

One of our grandsons loves superheroes like Superman who is powered by a fictional substance called kryptonite.

One of my superheroes is the prophet Daniel who saw God work wonders in his life.  He connected with God through prayer and obedience - a greater power than kryptonite.

I have been re-reading Daniel in the Old Testament again recently and marvelling at the kind of man he was.  He was not a strong warrior like David, but he faced just as threatening situations as the great Hebrew king.

He was taken captive in Judah and marched to Babylon as a slave.  But God had blessed him with great intelligence and a humble spirit - a rare combination.

What stands out for me is Daniel's wonderful prayer life.  He determined from the outset to remain true to God, no matter what.  He sought God in prayer in all circumstances and God gave him insights through visions, dreams and revelations.

Amazingly, he became a noted wise man and high official in the courts of several Babylonian and Persian kings even though he was an alien from a conquered nation.

The book of Daniel is filled with great stories of God's hand upon Daniel from the moment he was recruited to serve King Nebuchadnezzar.

But the one that sticks in my mind is Daniel being thrown into the lion's den.  He was the victim of a plot by jealous rivals high in King Darius' court who resented the king's trust in him.

They succeeded in getting Darius to issue a decree that people were to pray only to Darius for the next 30 days and anyone found to have broken this law would be thrown to the lions.

Daniel could tell this was a trap and he went immediately to his room, opened the windows facing Jerusalem and continued praying to God for wisdom three times daily as he always did.  The conspiring officials found him praying and succeeded in getting the king to throw him to the lions.

The king was clearly impressed with Daniel's faith and Daniel's god and did not want to have him killed.  But he had already signed the decree and the Jewish exile was cast into the lion's den.

After a night of tossing and turning, the king ran out the next morning to see if Daniel had survived - and he had.  He said that "my God sent his angel to shut the lions' mouths so that they would not hurt me."

Darius responded by having the conspirators thrown to the lions.  And he sent out a statement to his people declaring that Daniel's God "is the living God and he will endure forever."

Daniel lived his life so close to God that an angel told him "you are very precious to God" when the prophet sought an explanation of a vision he had received.

In my view, Daniel's power came partly from his habit of praying three times a day to the Lord.  He sought God himself and the wisdom that only God can give.

But the second element of his power was obedience.  When he determined what God wanted, he carried out God's wishes.  And he always turned the spotlight on God, not himself.

Obedience to the Hebrew God in ancient Babylon and Persia was tricky to say the least.

The result was an immense influence on an alien society and great glory to God.

The same path of prayer and obedience is open to me.






A new post on my prayer blog - "Dare to be a Daniel"

Pray-reading God's words

How can you have a good conversation with God?

One of the best ways is to start with what he wants to say to you.  That's the way you speak to good friends - you touch on the topics that are close to their hearts.

You can find out quickly what God wants to talk about by going to the Bible.  Let the Holy Spirit bring light to what you are reading - let him take the words and move your heart.

I talked about this before in an earlier blog post.  You can find it at: http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3617534320094379788#editor/target=post;postID=3608998795564093691;onPublishedMenu=overviewstats;onClosedMenu=overviewstats;postNum=50;src=postname

This week I came across added insights into this way of praying in a teaching segment by Mike Bickle, head of the International House of Prayer in Kansas City.  Bickle founded the House of Prayer years ago to pray 24 hours a day, seven days a week for God's work around the world.

A couple of years ago, he talked about his own journey in prayer from the time he became a young believer as a teenager.  It's filled with practical advice but the thing that struck me most was his insights into praying the Word of God.

Bickle urges us to "[engage] in active conversation with God as we read His Word".

He points to Jesus' comments to the Pharisees in John 5:39-40 who read and memorized the scriptures and yet refused to believe in the Messiah even though these same scriptures were pointing to him.  They refused to come to him for life.

So, we must come to God for his enlightenment as we read.

Here are some of his suggestions on meditating on and praying back God's words:

• We thank God for a particular truth that he is impressing on our hearts;
• We ask God to reveal more to us of a particular truth that the Spirit highlights in our reading;
• If God is calling us to obey something, we commit ourselves to obedience in that area; and
• We ask him to give us the power to obey.

He also suggests jotting down in short phrases in a journal our love for God and our requests.

As we read, we ask the Spirit to let us see how he sees and feels about our lives.

Simple steps.  And enriching.

Here is a link to Mike Bickle's talk on prayer: http://mikebickle.org/resources/resource/2969?return_url=http%3A%2F%2Fmikebickle.org%2Fresources%2Fcategory%2Fprayer-fasting%2Fprayer-lists%2F

Friends with God

God spoke to Moses as he would to a friend.

That's what the Bible says in Exodus 33:11.  So, what kind of relationship did Moses have with God?  And, can I have that relationship, too?

It certainly wasn't a surface relationship.  God knew Moses intimately - all his weaknesses as well as his strengths.  He could be tough on Moses.

It was a friendship built on trust.  Moses never gave up on God despite defeats and disappointments in his life leading the Israelites.  And God never gave up on Moses.

It survived major tests.  At one point, God threatened to exterminate Moses' people because they had turned away from him even though he had given them so much.  But Moses intervened on behalf of the people.  I believe God wanted to hear that from Moses - it showed him Moses' heart.

What God saw in Moses was a man who wanted to know the Lord more than anything else.  He was brave enough to ask to see God even though it was a life-threatening request.  I believe God loved that request.  He granted Moses' wish in part, showing part of himself but not his face because Moses would have died from the power of his countenance.

The relationship grew and developed through conversation - through prayer.  Moses spent many hours before God in the Tent of Meeting.

It was a partnership where one partner was all-powerful and the other was a loyal follower.  God spoke to Moses and Moses obeyed.  God exercised his supernatural power through his friend Moses.

It was a friendship where both benefitted.  God's plan for mankind unfolded as Moses listened and acted.  And Moses came to know God intimately, so intimately he didn't want anything else in the world.

Can I have that?  Yes.  Many believers over the years have had a relationship with God like Moses' - although they are not as well known.

Moses' friendship with God began in the desert at a burning bush.  He was afraid and he didn't want to do what God asked him to do.  But he did.

Time spent with God in prayer, obedience,  trust, and a growing thirst for more of God - these were hallmarks of Moses' life.

They can mark the life of any believer.  We can speak to God like a friend, too.

Silence is golden

God speaks in silence.

It's hard to hear God when we're talking or our minds are drowning in a flood of thoughts about everyday life.

As I have mentioned in other posts, I have long had an interest in listening prayer or contemplative prayer.  It makes sense that the best way to know what God wants is to spend time listening to him.

This week, I had the pleasure of hearing Pastor Jim Cymbala of Brooklyn Tabernacle Church in Brooklyn, N.Y., speak about the importance of listening prayer in his own ministry.  His church is a model of a praying church with thousands attending the weekly prayer gathering.

Listening prayer has become so important in Jim Cymbala's ministry that it guides his preaching and counselling.

He says that he no longer preaches with notes, preferring to immerse himself in the scriptures and to listen to what God wants him to say.  He will open his mind to what the Holy Spirit is telling him as he preaches.

It is the same with his approach to counselling.  He says the Holy Spirit indicates to him when he should be quiet and when he should speak.

I am growing in listening prayer.  I am not at Jim Cymbala's level.  But, as I have said before in this blog, I have for some years been using a journal to ask questions of God and receive what I believe are his answers - always in line with scripture.

But there are other ways, too.

In her book Listening to God, Joyce Huggett writes about an old man in her church in Nottingham, England who described his own experience to her.  He and his wife would get up at 6 a.m., read the Bible together, pray and then spend time listening to God in silence.  They would jot down the God-thoughts that popped into their minds - instructions, challenges and directions.

"They determined to obey to the best of their ability," she writes.  "Because of this rekindling of spiritual awareness, life opened up for them in a new way."

Spiritual creativity flourished in their lives and words came for deep conversations with friends who did not know God.

For many of us, silence seems threatening.  We feel we should be doing or saying something.

But, for Christ's followers, it can be golden if we have listening ears.