Secret Praying

Our Lord's admonition against public praying is full-on assault against mindlessness in being with God.  He wants us thinking and not with our mind upon those around us but upon Him.  The hypocrites are engaged in "prayerishness" but not actual praying.  When Jesus pushed for closet praying, He wasn't speaking of spaces and locations but the way of being that prayer people maintain.  He gave us structure to praying in the model prayer that provides a framework for what prayer is but not a closed in box for prayer.  If we are not praying with God at the center of what we are doing, without Him as the form of thinking we are taking, then we might as well just call ourselves pagans and be done with the exercise.  But if we have our mind on God, we come into fellowship with Him and actual transformation occurs in our praying.  No individual who met with God as God stayed the same.  Whether you consider Abraham, Moses or Peter, the work of God in each was tangible.  It is interesting that in His teaching on prayer, Jesus immediately moves into forgiveness.  Why is that?  Is this just a jumble of sayings thrown together without cohesive thought given to them or is there a connection Christ makes between prayer and forgiveness?  It seems that the natural outcome of praying is that we change...sometimes in big ways and other times in nearly imperceptible increments.  If we meet with God though, we will become different and here He gives as an example of this forgiveness.  You cannot remain attached to God as a praying person and hold a grudge against someone else.  It is reflexive.  Prayer results in a change of direction in some way, whether it is in how we judge others, the generosity of our heart, the developing loss of attachment to money and possessions, an internal integrity that defies dishonesty or a genuine love for enemies.  Prayer is not an exercise in religious development, it is an astounding union between God and His people; the outcome is building holiness grounded in humility.  The beauty of prayer is that it can be done at any moment of every single day and the bridge into the mind of our Lord is open whenever we choose to meet with Him.  The room of Matthew 6: 6 is symbolic of the determination to be with God and not let our world encroach upon that relationship.  Our God is jealous for our attention and rightfully so.  He knows just what is possible when we turn our minds to Him in prayer.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name…      Matthew 6: 9b  NIV

Connecting The dots

You can easily tell the person lacking Christian faith because he can't make heads or tails of even the simplest of matters spiritually.  The Bible is not a manual of what to do and what not to do.  If that were the case, then anyone could read it and have no problem with what they find in it.  But the man without Christ is constantly confounded by it; whether it be by the miracles described or the "hard teachings".  To try to press the matter, whether it be adultery or integrity, is the most futile of endeavors when it comes to the unregenerate mind.  John the Baptist lost his head trying to convince Herod that he was wrong to marry his brother's wife.  Elijah found himself running for his life after he did his best to show  Ahab and his wife Jezebel the wickedness of religious syncretism.  The Bible is thoroughly flawed and disoriented if you take the word of anyone with "common sense".  You can get away with just common sense if you only want to try to figure out the weather or who will win the next election but it is absolutely no use if you hope to know God.  He must reveal Himself if He is to be recognized and the Lord simply isn't willing to do that for those who will not have faith in Him.  There is nothing logical about the new birth; but it is actual.  It cannot be understood without the mind of Christ making sense of it which explains the disinterest in so many quarters for holiness and righteous living.  Try to get one unredeemed soul to see the connection between sexual immorality and looking at a woman with desire or the linking of calling someone a fool and murder.  It is irrational and ultimate nonsense to anyone not "born from above".  The Holy Spirit does not come upon us to take over things for us; He does so because God has decided mercifully to give us the very nature and character of Christ.  Unless you look through God's eyes, you cannot see the Kingdom of God, try as you may.  It is like a completely color blind man straining to differentiate red versus blue.  Stare all you want at the things of God and you will not see them if Christ is not living within you.   The goal for each Christian is not to get ahold of God but to let God get ahold of us.  This comes by faith in Christ and because of that faith giving space to God to work His way through each part of us.  Obedience, as it is seen in the person born again, is faith in action.  Doing what is directed as the Holy Spirit makes a matter known.  With each faith step, with each act done in the grip of Christ, a bit more light comes and the Ways of God develop perfect clarity.

I pray that...Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith and...that you...grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ…    Ephesians 3:16-18 NIV

The Dogs of Your Winter

It is simply unheard of within scripture of someone with great faith not being tested in that faith.  Try as you may, you will not come across a God beacon who avoided being sorely tried.  Noah, Moses, Ruth, David, Daniel, Mary, Peter, Mary Magdalene, Paul; they all were sent careening off the cliff at some point and you will also come upon your own cliff.  It may not appear suddenly but could gradually arise but you will face it if your love of Christ is actual.  The most comfortable life there is right now is the one without hope, without promise.  Hope is not for the pagan or the atheist but only for the one going through the fires of faith.  If you want to look around at all the pitch dark souls wandering around without Christ and long for their settled existence, you certainly can.  But it would be like Noah's wife perched in the ark ruminating over how easy her aunt has it back in the village.  You are going to face tremendous trials that will bark at your faith but that is all they can do...bark.  The trials have no bite for they cannot get at where you are...hidden with Christ in God.  You are dead and that is what the Lord declares  you to be.  Imagine a great bear snarling at the Lord Jesus Christ glorified.  It is as ridiculous as your trial besting you.  The Lord has you and yes your faith is being tested but that is just the beginning of birth pains for you as you triumph in them and come out victoriously to your place in the pantheon of God's great hall of saints purified by trial.  Resist the urge to envy the untroubled.  Nothing can take away the joy you possess ultimately and it doesn't need to be dispossessed now.  The trial will pass but you will stand and stand with a smile gracing your face as you look back upon it as a toothless barking dog .  Be resolute in your determination to trust Christ fully at the moment the hounds come after you.

For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.    Colossians 3:3-4 NIV

Pushing Forward

Why do we think we have developed a heightened level of spirituality when we give up on praying and stifle our love of Christ in a muffling "your will be done"?  Nothing so marks the carnal mind like the indifference to praying and "keeping on" praying.  It is passive aggressive bitterness that stops at the point of impassioned interceding for all the needs that come to our mind.  The great purpose of intercessory prayer is simple; to bring each and every one of those things that disturb us to the mind of Christ and there with the Holy Spirit working in our heart  learn to love God with the type of love Mary had not many minutes after she  wondered aloud why Jesus had waited too long to save Lazarus.  The pagan determination to pray for the dead is not so far off the mark as we think.  In Christ, who is the Alpha and Omega all at once, who is to say our praying cannot reach back before us and alter even what has happened in the past.  Where is the justification for giving up on everything that seems hopeless to us if God can pull the dead from the grave on the last day?  The praying of one believing Christian can change the course of events miraculously and in stunning fashion, not because she is worthy of it but because the love of God is poured out in the interceding and that love is a healing fire.  Nothing in the spiritual realm is quite so intoxicating as the determination to quit on a matter because it seems hopeless.  It is the morphine of Satan, this resolve to let go of the thing when the Holy Spirit is pressing us forward in prayer.  Who among us has not quit on a matter just as arrogantly as the mourners who laughed when Jesus informed them that the little girl was not dead but merely sleeping?  The opportunity to pray at any given moment for each part of a day is a privilege won for us at the Cross and we should not quit on it so carelessly.  

Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. Mark 11:24 NIV