Pondering the joy of a Prayer.

I love to pray. I have discovered that while it is not uncommon to meet people who pray, it is a rare pleasure to encounter another who truly loves to pray; whose heart rejoices at the idea and delights in the privilege of speaking with the Lord. I once had someone say to me, “I wonder what the rest of us are missing?” And I thought I would attempt to write a little bit about what prayer has looked like in my life...not that I know the answer to the question, but maybe I could give a glimpse into my oddity.

Growing up, I remember two things about prayer being emphasized:
1) The Lord’s prayer was sufficient and it was prideful to think I needed to pray anything above or beyond those words, and
2) Matthew 6:6 was taught repeatedly when the topic of prayer arose, “But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.” In other words, you talk to God alone and quietly.
Don’t get me wrong, I was told TO pray. But my experience with prayer growing up was limited to the prewritten prayers in the back of our hymnal that were read every Sunday.

The main reason I left my childhood church was because I knew there was more than what I was being taught (not just surrounding prayer). I found that as I sought the Lord alone, reading my Bible and seeking His face, I was overwhelmed with a joy and hunger that left me thinking, “What am I doing wrong? A Christian walk is a sobering and serious thing, what is this joy and life I feel?” But I knew it was real, I wasn’t the one creating it in me; and when I met a person whose eyes and life resonated with the joy and hope I felt, my heart leapt that the Lord had opened the door into the “more” I knew existed...and I ran through it.

My first encounter with prayer when I entered into this new and exciting chapter of my walk with the Lord came when I joined a small group of women for a bible study. On my very first visit, they went around the circle and asked for prayer requests. This surprised me, and I remember marveling that these women who didn’t even know me wanted to pray for me. And then God sort of just tossed me into the deep end; the women split up in pairs to pray together. I had never prayed out loud before and I had never prayed WITH anyone before...and yet, I didn’t run away. The Spirit tugged at my heart and I knew that while I didn’t know HOW to pray, I just wanted to do it. I wanted to be a part of this marvelous thing called prayer, and so with both feet, I leapt into the waters of prayer and never looked back.

I see the invitation to pray as possibly the sweetest extension of love in the bible (second only to salvation in Christ). God Himself, perfect and holy and mighty and majestic, has asked us to sit with Him and commune with Him; He has extended His ear and the pleasure of being heard by the Creator God; He has invited us to approach Him with boldness and in an unceasing fashion...how can we resist such a marvelous hand reaching out to us?

To me, prayer is as close to the relationship between God and man as we see in the Garden of Eden that we can experience this side of eternity; where God and man walked and talked side-by-side, and where humanity was “naked and unashamed” in the presence of the Lord. Let me try to explain this: To me there is great freedom in prayer. Psalm 139 states just how thoroughly God knows me as it speaks of God knowing all of my days before i even existed, how He knit me together in my mother’s womb, how He is with me no matter where I go, how He knows my thoughts and words even before I speak. To me this reality of being so fully known brings about great freedom in my prayer life. It was only after the fall into sin that man and woman hid themselves...we were not made to be hidden from the eyes of the Lord; and for me, prayer is me simply walking and talking with God...raw and unhidden and utterly free. He knows everything about me--my failures, my triumphs, the deepest longings of my heart--and He wants to be with me anyway. For a girl who grew up feeling as though I was always on the outside of relationships looking in, this knowledge that God has invited me into a relationship with Him--not out of convenience, pity or obligation, but out of love and desire for me--is almost too overwhelmingly sweet. I get to be with Him...and in prayer, I get to talk with Him and hear from Him.

Earlier this year i had the urge to write down a few of my favorite verses on prayer; verses that fuel, encourage and uplift my spirit right into the throne room of God. I shared a few with my life group and they probably thought I was a little loopy as I giggled my way through the loveliness of God’s invitation and promises. But the appearance of loopiness is not enough to stop me from sharing several of these life-changing verses with you:

Lamentations 2:19: “Pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord”
Unfiltered, raw, real...God knows the reality of my heart (with it doubts, fears or faith); and brother and sisters, I truly believe that it is honoring to God to trust Him with our mess. Poured out in His presence, could there be a sweeter way to live?

Hebrews 4:16: “Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
What I love about this verse is the boldness that should accompany our need. I often hear people talk about “God helping those who help themselves” (which totally removes God from the picture, by the way) and think of this verse. No, God knows our every need and tells us to boldly approach His throne and find in Him all we need to help us. Boldly seeking grace and mercy. Yes, let us, a desperately needy people, boldly seek grace and mercy at the foot of His throne.

Daniel 9:18: “O my God, incline your ear and hear. Open your eyes and see our desolations, and the city that is called by your name. For we do not present our pleas before you because of our righteousness, but because of your great mercy.”
The book of Daniel bowls me over, it will teach you so much about a correctly positioned prayer and what true confidence in the character of God looks like. It is totally worth your time if ever you will stop to wring it out. These words melt me as Daniel pleads with God for vividly undeserved mercy for a rebellious people, not one ounce of his prayer banks of the merit of man but instead on the great measure of the mercy of God and the faithfulness of His character. You must read Daniel’s prayer in chapter 9. Knowing the character of God makes all the difference in a prayer life, the Bible is where God tells you who He is, what He is like and His promises to you. I cannot tell you enough how utterly important it is to read and know the revealed word of God.

1 Samuel 12:23a: “Moreover, as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the LORD by ceasing to pray for you.”
God wants me to pray for others, and He desires it to such an extent that it is as sin to me to neglect such a call. Prayer is a way to intentionally seek the good of another, and the fact that God calls us to bring others before His throne should bring us to our knees to lift them up.

Jeremiah 33:3: “Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know.”
Oh, such lovely words. He will answer my call and He will show me great and wonderful things; sometimes He directs me through His word or reveals His truths in visions or comforts my heart through a song or speaks a word into my heart or lays out His purposes through my pen...But whatever way He chooses to reveal Himself, He never fails to share with me depths of the greatness and the wonder of Him that I have not known. Prayer brings about revelation of the heart of God that we would be hard-pressed to discover any other way. I desperately desire to know His heart, and so, I pray.

There are more verses, if you want to hear them, ask. I realize that words and time are far too limited to adequately describe my thoughts on prayer, but if this would encourage your voice to be heard in heaven or your ears to open to the voice of God, I am grateful to have taken the opportunity to share even this small amount.

The bottom line is this: God has extended to you and to me an invitation to enter His presence, to be heard by Him and to hear from Him...and there is deep joy (and yes, deep sorrow...my forehead wrinkles are actually prayer lines) that awaits you in stepping into His Almighty presence and resting at His feet.

Mediations from Daniel: Great Mercy

Great Mercy [Daniel 9:18]

Another meditation from Chapter 9 of the book of Daniel. At the end of his heart-moving prayer to the Lord, upon hearing that the Israelites would remain in captivity in Babylon for 70 years, you will find a verse you should put in your memory and use often as you position yourself in prayer.

Daniel 9:18 “O my God, incline Your ear and hear. Open Your eyes and see our desolations, and the city that is called by Your name. For we do not present our pleas before You because of our righteousness, but because of Your great mercy.”

I am so struck by this verse. So struck. The first 15 verse of this chapter are filled with confession and a spirit of repentance. Daniel lays out the sins committed against the Lord by His people, “we have sinned....we have acted wickedly...we have not listened...to us belongs shame...we turned aside....refused to obey...” He weeps in sackcloth and ashes, and devotes himself to fasting and prayer. He acknowledges the righteousness of God, the unrighteousness of His people, and the justice in their suffering.

And yet, as he is on his face before the Lord, aware that Israel deserves the situation they are in, he pleads for mercy. He says to the Lord, “We are Your people, called by Your glorious name...and we are a disgrace in the eyes of those who look on and rule over us. In the midst of our just desolation, I am pleading with You because You are merciful and we are desperately in need.” He didn’t shy away from the Lord, even in the Lord’s just anger. He didn’t barter with the Lord and say, “We did this and this in the past, or what if we do this and this now or later.” He didn’t credit one ounce of worth to himself or the rest of the Israelites, even though Daniel himself was walking uprightly before the Lord in Babylon. Instead, he fell on his face and said, “The depth of Your mercy is greater than the depth of our sin. We need Your mercy for our sin is great!”

Heavenly Father, may I walk humbly before You. Honest with myself and with You about who and what I am, while clinging to the reality of who and what You are: The One I cling to as Savior and bow to as Lord.

Meditations from Daniel: The Desolate Sanctuary

I’m studying the book of Daniel, and to start, I would just like to preface this meditation with one word: Whoa.

The book of Daniel is incredibly rich. On my first time through, I simply wrote down the verses and things that struck my heart, and as I continue my exploration of this piece of the Word, I have decided to write out some my meditations that seem too meaty to keep to myself.

The Desolate Sanctuary [Daniel 9:17]

In chapter 9, you will find what I would consider to be one of the most heart moving prayers recorded in the Bible. The position of Daniel’s heart is so correct that as he speaks to the Lord, it brings about a crescendo of emotions that draw you into his prayer and into worship. The verse I am considering today hit me like a ton of bricks as the weight of its reality fell on me.

Daniel 9:17 “Now therefore, O our God, listen to the prayer of Your servant and to his pleas for mercy, and for Your own sake, O Lord, make Your face to shine upon Your sanctuary, for it is desolate.”

The word desolate is one of the most heart wrenching words I can think of. It encompasses the following descriptions: barren (fruitless, unable to produce), devastated (laid to waste), abandoned (deserted), lonely (without companionship), destitute (lacking what is required to sustain) and sorrowful (gloom).

A sanctuary is a holy place, anointed for worship. It is a place for God and man to draw near to each other. A place that should ring with prayer and praise. A place where people should gather to be filled and to bring to the Lord all they have to offer Him. A place where hearts should resonate with the presence and beauty of the Lord. The scene surrounding and filling God’s sanctuary should look something like this:

Psalm 68:24–27 “Your procession is seen, O God, the procession of my God, my King, into the sanctuary--the singers in front, the musicians last, between them virgins playing tambourines: ‘Bless God in the great congregation, the Lord, o you who are of Israel’s fountain!’ There is Benjamin, the least of them, in the lead, the princes of Judah in their throng, the princes of Zebulun, the princes of Naphtali.”

Music and praise and crowds of people filing in to worship the Lord; what a lovely, deserving, heart-moving visual.

Daniel knows what should be; he knows that they are stuck in a foreign land and that God’s people are being pulled in various directions of idolatry. He has just been told by God that the length of Israel’s captivity in Babylon would be 70 years, and his heart is torn by the knowledge of a discouraged and wayward people who, to quote Psalm 137:1-4, lamented the loss of their joy and hope, “By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our lyres. For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors, mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” These are things Daniel knew, and the grief that was manifested in his prayer was a multi-positional grief. Not only was the pain in his words pleading for mercy for God’s people, but a pain for the silence that rang out where worship was deserved and for the eyes that would grow to believe that the God who is truly great was not, because the sanctuary on which He had placed His holy name was in a state of devastation.

And so Daniel cries out to the Lord, “Shine Your face up on Your sanctuary.” Throughout the bible, this phrase is used repeatedly resulting in favor, peace, blessing, salvation and a bestowing of grace. For the Lord to receive the worship He alone is worthy of, Daniel knew that He must have mercy and act, and that the worth of His people was far too small a rock to stand on to appeal for restoration. Instead, his appeal was for the worth and fame of the majestic name of the one true and living God. In essence, he cried out to the Lord that even the disobedience and wickedness of God’s people would not be able to take from Him the worship, praise and glory due His name in this world; in his prayer he basically says, “We deserve this desolation, but Your sanctuary does not.”

Lord, make my heart zealous for You. May I not choose sin or allow circumstances to rob You of the worship You deserve. May my life reflect the reality of Your worth.