“[Confidence and Compassion in Prayer] Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.” 1 John 5:14-15 NKJV
James Ryle writes about this {CLICK HERE} referencing Jesus in the temple (at the age of twelve!) explaining to his parents that we was doing “His Father’s business.”
A snippet:
“John Wesley wrote, “The Possessor of heaven and earth placed you here, not as a proprietor, but as a steward.” My friends, the King has entrusted you with His goods, and now He trusts you to use them to do His business. The question we must answer is, What is the King’s business?
In a sentence it is this — “Jesus went about doing good, healing all who oppressed by the devil; for God was with Him” (Acts 10:38).”
Clarifying!
Read the whole post here: http://truthworks.org/?p=4732
Wayne Jacobsen thinks we have missed the point in our Sunday School story. He suggests that we have called it The Story of the Prodigal Son and maybe missed really seeing what an incredibly loving father, representing the Father, is actually so central.
I won’t retell the story here, but you know it. You know about the son who saw his father as the money-man, Give me what I want so I can do what I want to do, and the older son who saw his father as the task-master, I have to do all the work to earn what I need…
This father wanted an intimate relationship with both of his children. He wanted them to know how deeply they were loved and to experience their love in return. He didn’t want his sons’ obedience, but their hearts. Knowing this would happen only when the son truly understood who his father was, he risked it all by letting the son have what he wanted. Only by coming to the end by himself would the son recognize what had been important to the father all along.
“As a parent of adult children I understand that. There’s nothing I prize more with my children than those moments when we share the honesty and intimacy of friendship. When they know I love them, and they respond the same way to me, there’s nothing better.
“That’s the point of Jesus’ story. The father was not manipulating the son by anything he did. He was only loving the son at the deepest possible level. That love explains why the father let him go in the first place and why he rushed so hard to embrace him. He knew his son’s sins had been punishment enough. He ran because he didn’t want his son to hurt one second longer than was absolutely necessary. His pain had brought him home. Nothing else mattered.
“God feels the same way about you. He’s not interested in your service or sacrifice. He only wants you to know how much you are loved, hoping you will choose to love him in return. Understand that, and everything else in your life will fall into place; miss that, and nothing else will make any difference.” Wayne Jacobsen, He Loves Me, Learning to Live in the Father’s Affection
Later in the chapter the author says that everything in our lives {everything?!?!} hinges on this one simple question:
He loves me, He loves me lots…He love me, He loves me lots…
Me: On a quest to understand the Father’s love, His heart towards even me…made me remember this old song (1981) by Benny Hester, “When God Ran”
And now, my prayer for my own battered-performance-driven heart and for all the people I love and for 40,000 who will come to Heaven Fest 2012 where we are building a platform to communicate the Father heart of God to this generation…
“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge —that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” EPH 3.17-19 NIV
I like lists.
Simple and honest. Un-entangled.
This is the word of the LORD to [anyone called to a task, appointed by God to do something bigger than they could possibly accomplish, really; to a person who stands before an immovable mountain with so much at stake they tremble – insert your name here]:
“Not by chayil/MIGHT/strength/power or agility, not by by military force, nor valor; not by substance/wealth/position/degree/IQ or title; not by experience/authority/capability/vigor/potency or qualifications; not by efficiency/marketable skills or competence; not by cleverness or craftiness or even your obvious qualifications…
Not. by. might. Your stuff cannot even begin to handle what needs done. Period.
“Who are you, O great mountain/obstacle/impossible accomplishment? Who are you, difficulty/hindrance/obstruction, who are you interference/gridlock/circumvention? I mean, really: who are you, trouble/lack/roadblock/anything that sets itself up against the word of the Lord?
Before [insert your name here: a called and anointed one, the one appointed for the Kingdom task], you shall become a plain/level playing ground/a path for easy navigation and [insert your name here] will bring forth the capstone/culmination/highest point, the whipped cream with the cherry on top/the final flourish of ta-da!! With shouts of ‘Grace, grace to it! Grace – The empowering Presence of the Holy Spirit to be and do all He has called us to be and do: GRACE!”
Additionally the word of the LORD said of [insert your name here]:
“The hands of [insert your name here, o mighty and maybe a little weary, warrior] have laid this foundation, and [you, again] shall finish FINISH finish it. Then you will know that the LORD of hosts has sent me to you.
“For who has despised the day of small things/less-than-grand-beginnings/insignificant groundwork? Who dares to dismiss the humble way things started out? Who has the nerve to devalue the tiny seed in the ground?”
It is not by your ability or name or lineage or power or strength or talent or giftedness. It will be by the power of the Holy Spirit. His power doesn’t always come by force. Sometimes it comes by the ways He uses just regular people with all the brokenness and failure of their lives. And somehow His purposes are revealed, anyway.
Zerubbabel had laid a foundation: blood, sweat and tears. He’d worked hard and zealously. But he was about to succumb to discouragement, about to throw in the towel.
The Word of the LORD come along and makes it clear – your hands began this thing and your hands will place the crowning capstone on it. It is not what you have left in you to accomplish it (for o, we do grow tired), but it is what God is able to do through the weakest, most insignificant, most powerless among us (a baby born in Bethlehem, a Moses with a stutter, a Gideon threshing wheat, in hiding from oppressors, those crazy disciples who struggled to follow Jesus even though they could see Him, David with sheep, and me, for sure).
The weakest of the weak, the biggest bumbling failure of them all, the one who seems least likely….graced by the power of the Holy Spirit can complete the work they were born to complete.
Busy. No stop-and-smell-the-roses time. Activity swirling. Good things. Fun things. Flurries of excitement. Outbursts of thankfulness. But, battles, too. Violence against my heart by the enemy of my soul. Picking up what got shattered, fully aware I possess nothing that can fix it. Guarding the heart, o, guarding the heart. Lord, cover me, here, when so much is at stake, when despair comes near. Cover me.
One quick trip to the garden after a night rain. I pull a weed that has dared to become a squatter, surely believing I won’t be around anytime soon.
Breaking the surface releases instant joy. I smell earth. I inhale the black, rich scent of the slightly moist soil and recklessly plunge my hand into that from whence I came. I breathe it deeply for a second and linger for one more, my eyes closed with the sun warming the top of my very being. I have to leave. I have a meeting. The urgency that is propelling me, it suddenly becomes clear, will fade away. The time I spend with my Life in the garden must increase. I have found my place. Deep breath.
I am merely dust. I know my kind. It is where I belong.
google image But it looks a lot like what happened yesterday.
Note to self: The garden. Again. Where He always meets me. How could I forget?
1: a small rotating windstorm of limited extent; any of several relatively small masses of air rotating rapidly around a more or less vertical axis and advancing simultaneously over land or sea, as a dust devil, tornado, or waterspout.
2 a: a confused rush : anything resembling a whirlwind, as in violent action or destructive force. b: a violent or destructive force or agency; any circling rush or violent onward course.
google image
“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
Your perfect love is casting out fear
And even when I’m caught in the middle of the storms of this life
I won’t turn back, I know you are near
And I will fear no evil, For my God is with me
And if my God is with me, Whom then shall I fear?
Oh no, You never let go
Through the calm and through the storm
Oh no, You never let go
In every high and every low
Oh no, You never let go
Lord, You never let go of me…
I can see a light that is coming for the heart that holds on.
There will be an end to these troubles, but until that day comes,
Still I will praise Him, still I will praise Him…” (Matt Redman, “You Never Let Go”)
Just as I finished writing this, the tornado sirens went off and a storm passed violently through. Rain came down hard. Minutes later, the birds are chirping and the sun is shining and it. is. still.
It was the mid 1980s. There was a spiritual housecleaning going on in the church that made the nightly news, almost every night. Televangelist after televangelist going down, one by one, each grabbing their brothers along the way with an I’m-not-taking-the-blame-by-myself flurry. It was embarrassing to be a Christian. The magazines had pictures and the stories got worse by the second. It was a circus of riidiculousness, immorality, cover-ups, finger-pointing, ministry-stealing and accusation. The Body turned on itself like an auto-immune disease. Instead of protecting itself against the enemy, it started cutting and lashing out and over-medicating, using the Holy Word of God to beat itself.
I have old videotape of the top TV (perfect) preacher of the day saying to Ted Koppel, “[this other TV preacher] is a cancer that needs to be excised from the Body of Christ.” In less than 3 months, perfect-preacher had been exposed, too, for his own sexual sin.
His prescription for the other preacher: Excise him from the Body of Christ. Cut him out. He is gone. Get rid of the sin.
His prescription for himself, you ask? Excision? No. Hardly. He asked for forgiveness. Just forgive me and let me keep my church and ministry.
My sister-in-law, Robin, who is an amazing wife, mother and Word-loving writer and teacher, wrote about Easter on her blog last week, but the lense through which she wrote is a strong word to the Household of Faith. Her family has been through the hailstorm of disintegration this past year (my people, I love them deeply), and they have had to walk it mostly alone, for exposed sin caused their local spiritual family to shut doors, pull in tighter, excise the sin. This isn’t a rant against that local gathering, for they are no different than local bodies the world over who don’t understand what they have unleashed when they handle what seems too hard to handle.
I am judgemental, too. I am black and white. I am right or wrong. I don’t judge this local church in this particular story because I know they are trying to do what is right (though o-my-goodness it is all only by the blood, people). But I challenge them to walk out Galatians 6. Because? I have seen what I have seen. I have experienced what I have experienced. When the “perfect preacher” lashed out against the imperfect, it did him no good. Old enough now to have seen it time and time again.
1 Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted. 2 Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. GALATIANS 6.1-2 NIV
Robin wrote three amazingly insightful and revealing blog posts. Please read them all. If you have ever judged some one else harshly, read them. If you have ever been “shut out” by the “offcials” in the family of God, read them. If you have ever turned your back on some one whose sin seemed too much to handle, read them. If you have ever cried alone, divorced from the family by accusation or because you truly had let them down in sin, read them. Because we have. to. grow. up.
Auto-immune diseases are an inappropriate attack by your immune system against your very own body, against the very cells and tissues needed to live. The enemy cackles to watch us destroy ourselves.
I love you, Robin.
When you throw a million dollar event but give away A L L the ticket money
for the poor, the hungry and thirsty
for the exploited (sex-traded) children of the world
for the orphan (and fatherless), for the widow (and the single-parents in our area),
and
when the Family of God gathers to worship and pray
to sing along, to cheer and worship
and
when you rent out hundreds of acres so Father can call His children together for a little reunion
when you have a day where almost a third of those gathering are people who don’t know Jesus yet, but some one in the fam brought them, prayed over them, is beliving God for their salvation and they got a free admission just so we could introduce them to Jesus…
when 2000 volunteers sweat and work for the glory
and Jesus is the headliner and you see all the races and all the denominations and every age represented and they just forget their dividing lines and join in one song for one God, and one reason
and when 40,000 people encounter the father heart of God and through the gift they GIVE when they walk through the front gate, nations are impacted and
wells are dug and the hungry are fed and
children are adopted
and the suicidal find hope and life and
lives are transformed
and the Name of Jesus is made glorious
Then the money spent was well worth it. Every dollar, multiplied in its’ impact. On real people. Real lives. Changed.
It is not about the concert. It is not about the bands. It is about the love of a Father, expressed to those He loves. On earth as it is in heaven.
“Then some one explained to me that the highest form of worship [to God], higher than music or anything else, really, is intercession. And it was like – of course!” Followed by a hand gesture that said I-am-called-to-THE-most-important-thing + a way huge smile.
I hate that. I hate that I cannot just hear stuff like that and be ok with it and go on my merry Christian way. Or just think “She is where she is,” and not want to tell her how arrogant that seems. But dang, I find our Western Christian culture of so wanting, just like the conniving-striving-jealousy-position-guarding disciples, to be in the most powerful, important “ministry” irritating. And I know-I know, that is probably because of my own pride and sin and it-takes-one-to-know-one realization. That really IS what aggravates me: it is my own crap glaring harshly in some one else that causes me to want to strangle…them!!! Haha.
So, btw, don’t worry if you have ever aggravated me to your knowledge. I am really just seeing my own unholy reflection. It’s not you – it’s me.
So, I knew when I heard Miss-intercessor triumphing in her role as highest-ever-worshiper and I felt ticked, that I shouldn’t leave it there, my attitude, I mean. I shouldn’t categorically now dismiss all intercessors, even though I have known some doozies. Because there are people called and they literally stand in the gap between God and man. I have a couple of amazing (and very humble) intercessor friends who haul my junk out and make a case for me, plead for God’s mercy over my life. When they are standing in the fray – they absolutely are giving God the highest praise, living their most glorious moment – because they are being all He created them to be. And that pleasure, that glory that God receives when my friends pray, it is complete and it is full and it is true.
For a rose, it is when it has opened fully, released every drop of its’ perfume and is reaching far and wide in total splendor that it reveals the very glory of God.
For the singer, it is a note {the one} or a run echoing to heaven and back again.
For a woman giving birth, that moment when bebe passes, bloody and gasping, from the hiding place (where God has been knitting the child together) into air and bright light – is not that moment one of great triumph, the very glory of God revealed, somehow perhaps even symbolizing death passing to life? Glorious!
For a father in these days, to deliver his daughter to her intended at the wedding altar, pure, whole and holy – it is a moment of glory to our God.
When I am with my grandbebes and I am hearing them and seeing them beyond what the physical senses can pick up, when I am present in their lives and making inroads into their hearts where I deposit a seed of the sweet song of salvation into their tiny hearts and minds because I know I will reap what I sow, oh believe me, it is glory. It is why I was born. When I am long gone, that kind of glory remains.
It is amusing, though, isn’t it? That even with our 7.4 Bibles per American person, though we have heard of those disciples jostling for position, though Paul writes extensively about the many parts of the one body and how each part must do its’ work so that then we’ll be healthy and growing and truly grow more and more to be like Christ – we are still trying to determine what role we have and how important we can make it seem.
The intercessors think they have the inside track, but if they’d talk to the prophets, they’d know better. The youth pastor is cooler than the children’s pastor and the evangelist can’t figure out why everyone is wasting time at church and won’t get out into the highways and byways this minute!? Pastors pretty much dread the charismatic “revivalist” who can come in and stir the pot but leaves before the mess is cleaned up. There are performance-driven “worship leaders,” who haven’t been in the secret place since they got to be the “leader,” and exhorts who are mad that no one receives their gift.
How is it possible that the same God who called me also called all of those…weird, prideful, title-seeking people? What on earth? {you know I’m kidding, right?}
Though I am the least deserving of all God’s people, he graciously gave me the privilege of telling the Gentiles about the endless treasures available to them in Christ. I was chosen to explain to everyone this mysterious plan that God, the Creator of all things, had kept secret from the beginning.
GOD’S PURPOSE IN ALL THIS WAS TO USE THE CHURCH TO DISPLAY HIS WISDOM in its rich variety to all the unseen rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was his eternal plan, which he carried out through Christ Jesus our Lord.” Ephesians 3
It is all for His glory. Your gift. Mine. The weird, prideful people. He knows. He knows that when those people and you and me become all He created us to be, when we are doing the things He planned for us before we were even one day old, when we are being who we are, an evangelist, a pastor or teacher or bread baker or car detailer – in the moment we are who he says we are – we are at our most glorious and we are, in fact {and in richest variety}, giving Him the highest praise.