#19 Devoted to Prayer

“Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.”  Colossians 4:2

What does it mean to be devoted to prayer?

Paul gives us a clue by clarifying the command: “being watchful and thankful.”  Be watchful of what the Lord is doing in every circumstance and eager to thank Him for what you find, no matter if it is to your immediate advantage or not.

When I think of people devoting themselves to something, my mind goes to a woman devoting her life to be a nun.  There’s nothing passive about that decision.  She decides to leave the family she already has and any hopes for a future family to live apart in a vow of poverty, worship and serving the poor.  There’s no way that she’d ever drift into being a nun on her own.  Maybe it’s the same with devoting ourselves to prayer.  We have to map out a game plan and then decide to move forward. 

On game days, each baseball player at my school had to carry around a ball all day during classes to help them mentally prepare.  That helped to devote their minds to the game that day.  I’d like to do the same with my mind.  For the next 24 hours, I’d like to carry around a wood carved cross with me to keep my ever-straying mind devoted to seeking out what God is doing in each moment, and then thanking Him for it. 

God > Gifts

In Luke 11, Jesus does a lesser to greater than argument. He talks about if we who are evil know how to give good gifts to our children -- how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him... 

In the context, He addresses the fear that He will give us something bad or not useful-- think snakes/scorpions/rocks -- But if even the people in our lives can be trusted to do good to us, how much more will the perfectly loving God bless us with the best for us. 

I used to be kind of disappointed by this version of that verse because Jesus promises the Holy Spirit to those that ask - verses the good gifts reference over in Matthew. Sometimes I want good gifts more than more of God.  

Humble pie. 

But I started thinking about it...

The people that I am most in awe of in life, that are extraordinary, are not just owners of possessions or safely protected or hugely talented... I am in awe of people with distinct relationship with God. There is something supernatural about them. Something heavenly. It flows into every other area of their lives like a well-spring of life, animating their personalities and obedience and occupations.... and I want that.  

I mean, what does it look like when the Holy Spirit is very evidently in a life? 

-fruit of the spirit {love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control}

-spiritual gifts {edification by prophecy, administration, leadership, teaching, interpretation, giving, serving, healing}

-power of the resurrection {experiencing miracles while living in Christ}

-walking in the Spirit {there is a Presence that is striking in the person}

-conviction over sin {sensitivity to and weeping over what sin does}

-comfort in trials {encouragement in the darkest of days, eyes on heaven}

These are the things that shake the world. How can I not want that for those I love? and for myself?

So I’ve started praying for the Holy Spirit for myself and all my loved ones and you, little lady love. 

May He mark your days with Himself. 

He is the Ultimate GIFT.

#18 Nearness in the Impossibility

The Sovereign Lord is my strength; He makes my feet like the feet of a deer, He enables me to tread on the heights.  Habakkuk 3:19

Today I finished week 4 of a 20 week marathon training program.  It is dead obvious to me that I can’t run a marathon.  After 3 miles, I’m done.  I can’t will myself to run farther and faster.  But this morning I ran 10 miles, which is father than I’ve ever gone before. 

The Habakkuk verse has been a constant friend to me on each of these runs.  I didn’t have the strength in me today.  But in the dozens and dozens of times when I felt like stopping, I asked the Lord to give me His strength to keep going.  He did just that!  He gave me the strength to finish.  What an honor to feel on a physical level what happens when we trust the Lord.

How incredible that the Lord gives us His strength!  His strength never runs out.

On that run, all the thoughts I can remember were directed to the Lord.  Because I was asking so often for strength, He never really left my mind.  It’s easy to trust the Lord when I’m doing something impossible.  It’s not as easy to keep Him in my mind when I’m having a typical day and doing things I can do without asking for His help.

Don’t get me wrong.  Technically without the Lord, we can do nothing.  He is still working in me and through me even when I am not consciously asking for His help, but I miss out in a huge way when I am doing all these things without conversing with Him. 

It’s almost like this:  Imagine the man of your dreams asked you out on a date.  He had a whole day planned out to the minute, full of all kinds of fun things for you two to do together to get to know each other.  He had it all set for you both, and then the day finally arrived.  You were both there.  He showed you what to do step by step and you did the activities, but you never responded back to him.  You experienced his whole plan for the day, but you never said a word to him.  What a loss!  You missed the opportunity to get to know him more, which was the whole point of the activities in the first place.

I don’t want to do that anymore.  I want to be speaking and getting to know the Lord more everyday as we do what He has set out for us to do.  No more ignorance. 

And for you sweet Eden, I pray for many impossible things.  I pray that He would lead you to do things that are completely beyond what you can do, and then that He’d show you how together with Him, you can do anything. 

#17 Planning & Plodding

There’s an art to knowing when to scheme big picture stuff and when to enable tunnel vision to focus only on the very next step. 

Mastering how to balance both will make you a mean problem solver in 1000 different contexts.  If you focus too much on the big picture, you’ll be bogged down by the bigness of the goal and your productivity will shut down.  If you’re only looking at the next step and forgetting the big picture, you’ll likely get off course and keep productively taking small steps to nowhere.  It’s always both, and each problem requires different levels of each ingredient at distinct times.

O the impossibilities!

“Nothing is impossible with God” Luke 1:26-38

Mary was asked by an angel in the context of this verse to believe an absolutely impossible work of God, that the very Son of the Most High would live in her miraculously. She then goes and stays with her cousin Elizabeth, her fellow receiver of impossibilities, one with a miracle baby in her belly too. 

There’s this principle in the Bible over and over again:

God does impossible things.

In the darkness He spoke light.

He provided drinking water from the dry hard rock.

Bread came from the sky to feed 3 million in the desert.

He created relational love where there was competition and betrayal and annoyance.

To the dead, He brought life. 

He brings the total opposite of the need. 

He speaks it out of nothing. 

He can do it. 

We can’t.

The catch is, God gets to decide what impossibilities He does. 

We don’t get to boss Him to fulfilling our own way. 

But if He says it, you can be absolutely-to-the-bottom-confident that He will do it. 

He says some different things to each one of us, but many things He says are the same for all His children in His family. Here are a few statements of impossibility (there are many many more) that He holds out to us in all our moments of joy and pain and apathy and everything in between.

-I am glorifying/will glorify Myself.

-I am winning/I will win.

-I am not leaving/will not leave you like orphans (I am/will be a good Dad).

-I am taking care of you/I will take care of you. 

-I am/will be a Rock of Refuge in your trials.

-I am offering/will offer you My love. 

-I am working/will work the hard for the good.

-I am/will be in control so there is nothing to fear.

-I am waiting/will always wait to bless you if you follow Me.

-I am living/will always live inside of you.

Can you take each one of these as a foundation on which to tie down your fickle heart?

Will you believe against the impossible for your situation? 

That God can and will do something in you according to His Word?

Luke continues to talk of Mary and her faith for God’s ability to work:

“Blessed is she who believes that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.” Luke 1:39-45

There is apparently a blessing to be had, to take God at His Word. Blessed are you. Imagine the Joy, Peace, Rest, Miracles, Stories, Strength, Love, Security, and Confidence you shall embody as you, against the world’s hopeless backdrop, are overcome with the love of the Father, joyously giving you the Kingdom. You are saved from the heavy-burden life: the choking hand of panic, the paralysis of fear, the ulcers of anxiety, the bruises of condemnation. 

Our prayers must be made to this end. We must look at the raw, bleeding mess or the dead and long gone or the barren places in our lives and speak life to it, as Ezekiel did with those dried out bones (Ezekiel 37:1-14) believing that our God can do it. “Can these bones live again?” YES THEY CAN. 

I remember taping up the names of Daddy’s friends and family in my room to pray for them when the two of us were dating. I had met all the people in his life by that point and many of them were not Christians. Over the 7 years your dad and I have been together, we have seen them one by one come to know the Lord. I cannot express how impossible these stories of darkness were. On the brink of divorce and suicide and destruction, God spoke the Light that brings light to all men. Even ones in Virginia. 

Blessed be Him who is able!

Believe, my daughter. Believe.