Struggling With How To Pray While Going Through Change
Posted: Monday, April 17, 2006
by Joseph Jagde
Prayer and changing for the better
I’ve left my prayer a little. I’m leaving prayer behind because I’ve been busy trying to change. When I make the changes I want to make, I’ll get back to prayer.
I am hiding myself behind the brick wall of my businesses? The brick wall of the person I believe I should have been and what I should have had? Is everything so sacred I can’t change it? Why is there such a resistance to change at so many levels? Can I approach candidly and adjust candidly to the changes I hope to make?
I might say, “I have to do this", sigh or I might enthusiastically say “I have to do this". How I truly feel makes all the difference.
Maybe I don’t like the way things are developing, but I stay with the project no matter what out of the idea that determination will get me through, without at least questioning what I am doing in the first place. The change I might have needed was to go no further.
I might be blindfolded to what is possible for me just by picking up so many messages from so many sources that most if not all has little pertinence to me, and this just causes a heap of confusion. I didn’t grab at the first opportunity, that first sighting and now it’s all over for me.
Then I might believe that I am not going to pick up on the change I am attempting. I don’t trust my ability to pick up on things.
A personal example is the one time I did try skiing, I was unsure of how I would pick up on it. Although, I just went down the beginners slope, I was surprised that I picked on it well and really didn’t fall at all. I might have thought my pick up on this would be more difficult having never done this previously.
Much of what I want often invokes the challenges of changing. One of the difficulties in perceiving on what I actually want, which would invoke change, is my latching on to stoppages or stopping thoughts and this relates to a belief that God might only work for me within narrow confines, only if I can be this type of person in his eyes.
I might be half way convinced on what I might want to do, and that hesitation turns into a not now.
One of the inhibitors of change is a lack of trust that I can do things on the fly. This might come from being drilled into preparation for so many things for so long but then I get stuck in the preparation phase. I can meditate on how in the past I have done well in situations where I did not have a lot of time to prepare and I was using somewhat spontaneous abilities.
Another inhibitor to change is an improper mix that I am attempting maybe even inadvertently. I might for example write a science fiction short story and I want to put some self help advice in at the end, mixing an essay with a story. Other situations in my life might be less obvious but the problem is that I am trying to mix as the expression goes apples and oranges into a particular situation that I want to change and it’s got to be either one or the other.
Another inhibitor at the spiritual level might be that I don’t realize that much of what I am asking for might in part relate to something God has already given me. If I already through a baseball 90 miles an hour, I am asking God maybe for some pitching tips, but he gave me that 90 mile an hour fastball in the first place. We forget about things like good genes.
I would like to do this or try that, but I stop. Religious belief can be studded with rules and regulations that seem to form into a formula I could or might get into and if believe I can till the land between those lines, I’ll get my fruit. These limitations I am imposed might work against the idea of prayer because the truth of prayer in not about rules that limit but the vastness of God and any rules he gives are only towards properly containing that vastness, in ways best for me. Anything I am doing wrong is ultimately against that vastness. What I can do that might hurt myself and others is going against the vastness of the good things that God has for me.
The “everything is no good mentality" hinders my efforts at change or at least trying for a more objective view that might be had. Often I might inject this mentality into situations where I just don’t know. Prayer itself can be a great mystery where I just don’t know.
This couldn’t be for me. This wouldn’t be for me. If I finally by sheer luck trip of something that is good, could I recover for the fall and take hold of this for myself?.
It would be like someone going on a trip to Europe and saying, this is no good, that is no good without having ever been to Europe. There have been many places in prayer that you have never been to, never traveled too.
Often as well we are hindered from change by expecting too much too soon. I could say I’m not that great, or I’m just good, to release the pressure point. I’m not going to lose 30 pounds on a one day diet. I’m not going to hit a hole in one on the 450 yard tee off on the golf course. I am not going do cartwheels skiing down a 4000 foot mountain on my first trip to the slopes in years. I’m not going to run a 4 minute mile on my first attempt at this distance in a long time. I’m not going to give the greatest speech ever known to mankind at this lunch meeting. I am looking for all these great things for myself I begin to run up a bill for the difference if I can’t get there. I am paying for not making it there by being hard on myself and not living up to the billboard I put out there for myself and ultimately I don’t like this feeling of being hard on myself so I am less likely to change. And I’m not going to have to say the best prayer in the history of mankind in order to approach God in prayer right here and now.
I might aim for lighter goals, maybe not seeking to climb all the way to the top of Everest but going half way to the summit, and still experiencing what is feels like to climb this terrain.
Prayer is in part entering a mystery where I am communicating into a vastness where God says His thoughts about me are more numerous than every grain of sand by the sea. (Psalm 139) He referred to the vastness of space when communicating to Abraham. God is on both sides of the Atlantic. I can peruse this vastness in prayer as I begin to try to understand the mystery of a God in His vastness and how this vastness has been and is still applied to one individual.
The goodness of God in its vastness overwhelms all else including anything I can think of, including any proposed change we want to make. At the same time, because of this vastness, which is found in prayer, a lot more is possible in the here and now than we might have first believed as far as change. Ephesians chapter 1 verse 18 and 19, “I pray that your inward eyes may be illuminated, so that you may know what is the hope to which he calls you, what the wealth and glory of the share he offers you among his
people in their heritage, and how the vast resources of his power open to us who trust in him."
An example of this turning against today might be found in China with mandatory abortion, the purpose of which to limit the population and this act of killing a segment of the population, and it could be any segment if the criteria are to limit the population, is a turning against vastness of the population and ultimately the vastness of God.
The criteria for change could involve that I just surpass what I have been doing before. If I hate my job, it might be easy to surpass that with something else I can find somewhere that I might like. So I don’t have to set the world on fire this way, I just have to surpass what I have been doing previously to get into an agreement with the proposed change.
I’m always involved with change, whether I prefer it or not, if I don’t change myself, the world around me certainly will, and there is always going to be another turn of the clock, whether this clock is a day, a month or a year or more, tip will zip by, like the rush of a waterfall. If you don’t change you might see everything run by you.
I might want some changes as well or things I am attempting to do or take on are involving change. I can identify where I would want a breakthrough and this will tell me that I want some changes that will help me find this breakthrough. At the breakthrough point, where the sun is pointing, there I will find what the changes will be.
Are there really any outside rules and regulations that actually enter in the life of prayer, that inhibit change, that tow the line and keep me docked only at this shore?
Can I change with prayer and can prayer change with me? Can I pray as a changed person? Coming to God in a seemingly altered state? And if I am pinning my hopes on change and can’t get there, can I still pray without first being better than I was?
Is God holding me back from that big leap I want to make, because if I make it I’ll no longer be praying from my familiar position? Is there vitality to prayer that will allow me to change? Do I feel my prayers are hindering me towards some hoped for changes and that I’m holding myself back because of my commitment to prayer and the person I feel I have to be in order to pray?
Maybe I do feel God wants me to change for the better, but when I get there, he will suddenly lower the boom, in some fashion, for some reason. Or that measuring stick is always in front of me, and if suddenly I don’t pass the muster, it will all be taken away from me. Do I believe God will set my on the course of change and abandon me at the first point of arrival?
First and foremost when referring to change I need to realize that God’s speaks to us out of his vastness. He spoke to Abraham out of a vastness telling him that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky and the grains of sand on the seashore. When He finally spoke to Job He referred to this mysterious vastness. Psalm 139 says that God’s thoughts towards me as an individual are so numerous that they are uncountable, and there is no narrowing of His thought process.
What is inhibits are view of change within prayer in some of the verses of the New Testament where it talks of the difficulties of entering the narrow gate of the kingdom. This refers to the lure of worldly passions where there is a danger of turning away from God with free will. But in turning to God in prayer, I am not looking to enter a narrow gate per say but I am facing towards a God who has and will communicate out of a vastness referred to in his prior words to Abraham, Job, and others. God is not looking back to us through a narrow gate, as his thoughts about you or me exceed the all the grains of sand by the sea and are basically uncountable.
One thing to interject in this thought process is any movement of the Spirit right there and then while I am praying. If I physically feel a strong sense of peace while praying for something or about something, this could represent a strong current and leading of the Spirit towards this in a practical sense. God is coloring this path with his presence in a particular way. God might speak to me through the senses. Has the Spirit moved for me in some way? If prayer going to be the pacesetter for me in practical ways?
If am a really resisting the changes I really want to make, then the scapegoat for a avoiding these changes can be found in almost anything I would want to do, At this time, say for example, for now first I am praying and then I am also committed to an extensive course of study say in scientific courses, and a workout regiment at the gym. My proposed loci of change falls outside this, so I can use any of these three prior commitments as my ready made excuse not to change, Then somehow my prayer time seems to be another change stopper or is identified as such when I could really think of it as form which is free flowing and has nothing to do with advancing my own problems with getting into and accepting changes. I think, if I wasn’t praying so much, after all, and I might just be sitting in a church with my prayers in some cases and not really moving about physically. I’d be changing more and this way I feel I’m more on the move. But if God opens a window while I am praying, should I get up to close the window and go back to my prayers?
Jesus said to the rich man, leave everything and follow me, asking him to make a change. He couldn’t make that particular move. It wasn’t necessarily that he was rich per say, but that he had prior commitments that enveloped him, or just seemed so important to him that he felt he always had to be mindful of these riches or else they might go away, and this would keep him where he was. If someone has a great singing voice, if she doesn’t think about her great voice every hour of the day, is that great singing voice going to vanish on her? Paul obviously was a multitalented individual and his talents didn’t disappear on him when he followed Jesus. So he, the rich man, missed out on the vastness involved in experiencing the personal presence of Jesus throughout his life. In another case, it might be another person who is poor, who had a prior commitment to begging and wants to maintain the spot he knows for himself. . Most often, my excuse is in the form of so called prior commitments, I don’t’ want to be rich I am already committed to being relatively poor because I am guaranteed hours with this low paying position and I don’t want to take a chance on other possibly more lucrative endeavors that would involve some changes on my part. I don’t want company I am already committed to being alone. Prior commitments also include just a way of thinking including the way I think about myself. What I have becomes familiar and its hard to replace the familiar, there is a tendency to stay with what you know already. I can’t hold up my thoughts about myself or anything as paramount when I go into prayer because God thoughts about me are exceedingly more vast about me than any thoughts I could come up with even in a lifetime chronology of thoughts.
In the case of the rich man, he might have had great potential as a follower of Jesus. He might have been very talented, and might have had Paul like potential. He might with those same talents he used to garner riches and used these talents as a personal friend of the Lord and in playing a role in the furtherance of the early church. Jesus may have seen the potential in him, and called him for this potential and it didn’t have to be that he declined this invitation. Maybe it wasn’t a case of using him to make a point about rich people having difficulty with change and with holding on to riches at the expense of anything else that might be possible. It might have been more that Jesus saw what he could do, wanted him personally by his side and under his tutelage with those same talents and intelligence he used to obtain riches for the Kingdom. I know the call of Jesus and the Kingdom is the first call.
I can blame almost anything as to my reasons for holding back. Anything for some could include prayer if I believe that I am entering that relationship through a narrow gate, and therefore I have the feeling of having to get it right, and while getting through that narrow gate might be an adventurous challenge, I am not up for it right now with all my difficulties and pain.
Then I am hoping to find the right way to pray and I don’t anticipate the change happening until I find the right or better way to pray, the right words, to get me that special change, like finding the right combination of numbers to win the lottery with. Until I find that special prayer, I’ll hold off on this and any other real changes I’m thinking about, since I’m not deserving of this until I get that special prayer. I’m not searching for God’s continued presence, but the right words to speak with, to get a deal with. If I am going to do this, I should get a thesaurus and this way I can practice with other words. I can’t come knocking on God’s door until I find those words and there are no deals I believe until I find those words. If I can’t find the words, I can still find Him. What I can do though is experiment with the wording. For example, if I say, God I want to take a fantastic trip, I could change the words and say I want a wonderful trip but I could also change it to I want a wonderful excursion changing both the adjective and noun in really saying the same thing. Once I am on the river of prayer, I’m flowing with it even if my initial prayer efforts are rather rudimentary. In his vastness, I would assume God understands every language of the earth and every language of the heart of those that seek him. In the Bible, it says that God lets his vast sun shine on both the just and unjust, and He might still have some good things in the works even if you don’t have your act going well, if your heart is turned towards him and his gigantic measures. God has some deals going for those who don’t deserve them and for those who do deserve them but believe that they don’t.
As I consider changes, I can think, what if everything would go well, what would I want first? For example, if both sweeping the floor went well for me and being a movie star went well for me, then I would probably choose being a movie star first. What would you really like to see go well for yourself or others? If it is going good with choices that are more first in the line, then I might as well go in that direction. I can keep sweeping the floor after all it is going well, but I still more want the movie star position so I will spent more time doing that than sweeping the floor even though both are going well.
And sometimes we have open doors and we close them ourselves. The door for you opens and this is for you and then you close it. It’s like getting a wanted phone call for you, and saying goodbye at the first utterance. An example would be a person looking for a date gets someone’s card for a later call, but they wanted a cart blanch commitment up front, so they closed a possible open door and all the possibilities of what may have been behind this open door. I am looking at an open door or not?
In every opportunity I pass over, I have to go on and I have to go on without this. If I pass up an opportunity for a great conversation, where I could have obtained great wisdom with the exchange, I have to go on without this wisdom and fond memory. The rich man passed up the opportunity to walk with Jesus here on the earth. He went on with his life without Jesus and his personal presence to him. It was as if he saw Jesus from the back of a boat and waved goodbye to him, never to see him again on the earth. Was this a void for him and could anything else he obtained after that replace what could have been. We don’t know for sure what happened to the rich man, did he have second thoughts on his decision and did he find his was back to Jesus later on? Maybe he was like the man in the parable who said he wouldn’t come but did show up later.
God’s answer might be, even if you get those special words, your not deserving, but it is my choice to give this to you despite your not deserving this.
Daniel Chapter 9 verse 3 “Then I turned to the Lord God, to seek an answer by prayer and supplication with fasting, sackcloth and ashes. Daniel is saying here he is involved in a turning and he is specifically looking for an answer. This turning to God for an answer by analogy would be like turning from darkness to sunlight. The sun lights up the whole sky in its presence, I am facing into a vastness when the sun appears to me.
God doesn’t necessarily gather up points and when you have enough points towards the wanted prize you get it. Truly, the sovereignty of God works right from the beginning and doesn’t suddenly appear now. If indeed God does have plans for your future, he has the pictures as well. This is why God does communicate to us in pictures as well sometimes.
Even so, I can change the words of my prayer as my first dance with change. It might be helpful to me in identifying for me what I am asking for or considering by varying my approach to prayer and I can freely choose and change the words of my prayer at any time. It might be helpful to change the words I use at times just to have that sense of freedom that I can change my words and change within prayer itself. One of the changes I can make sometimes is to back off of my persistent requests for myself a bit and just see where everything settles and more wait on what the Lord does have to say to me about this. But the back off doesn’t have to be permanent either.
I might be considering something with God in prayer. It’s isn’t always an outright asking that I’m involved with. It might be that I am considering something as a possibility, a possible change scenario, and I am not asking for it definitively as I am just not to sure myself. Evidently what I want will be more apparent if and when I ever get there. I am more asking about it as a mater of inquiry, saying I might want this. This is why I might want to make a change in steps. I take the step of going to Greenland and after I reach that step, from there I can decide whether to trek to the North Pole.
For example, I might say to God, I am interested in possibly moving to Virginia, rather than outright asking for help in finding a good house in Virginia. I am considering moving to Virginia as a location I might enjoy and I am passing the idea along to God in prayer without being committed to the idea in advance.
But I’m unworthy I say. I haven’t been able to just bring my unworthy self into prayer. Even if I get the right words, these proposed changes will never fly because, I just don’t deserve it. A prayer begins to be seen like it gives greater exposure to my unworthiness, the unworthiness which is keeping me from change, and therefore I have another reason to hold off on prayer. Or would be changes brings further exposure my deficiencies or even bringing these things into the light of prayer makes me feel deficient because now I see them ever so brightly. What I don’t seem to get, seems to further validate my low opinion of myself. Since I didn’t get this, because God is all knowing, He knew I wasn’t good enough. When I pray, I seem to find the unanswered prayer, and then what does that say about me, this might be just another seeming rejection that stops me cold in my tracks from changing. More and more I don’t know why. My real lack becomes further intensified. I didn’t even get a word or a wink from God, I really must be on the down and out and I might as well just stay there. I told you to forget change. With the unanswered prayer, I am really looking lack in the mirror. Even God is saying I’m no good. I might have had some inkling towards change, but Gods review is the final straw, forget it now.
But this view is erroneous to the vastness of God as well. If I am unworthy since the totality of thoughts about me are not with me but with God, and since his thoughts about anything including me specifically as an individual outnumber every grain of sand on every shore, then whatever my state of worthiness is, God thinking on this is inclusive of this but goes beyond this still because whether I am worthy or unworthy prayer itself exposes me to more, because God already has full exposure on me in His line of sight and in prayer I am speaking into this vastness about me.
But until I find that special prayer, I’ll hold off and this and any other real changes I’m thinking about because I have to get prayer right just like I have to get everything else right like my golf game before proceeding.
Since I am praying, God forbid but I am actually looking for some answers but I can’t quite identify when, where, and how these answers are coming. So I’ll hold off while waiting for the right time and the right answer, when God makes his bold approach, writes its out for me, and gives me the proper signs to go ahead. I want that handwritten notice from God, about the change, so I’ll have it in agreement on paper. Did Jesus hit his disciples over the head with a lightning bolt every time he talked to them? I never think that prayer itself sometimes is an answer, that when praying I am right there in the presence of God and then I can get some peace and presence.
For example, I want to change my vacation share and plans about that. I’ll pray about this and wait for an answer. I might get an answer but not that clarity so I’ll hold off. I only read signs from God at the 5th grade level. Maybe in this case I can get bolder with God, can you answer with extra clarity? Can you give me some extra cheese on this slice of pizza? Or maybe God doesn’t speak my language, I am speaking French and he deals with English only. But I didn’t get a particular sign I could read, and lots of time has gone by and I still have taken a vacation and maybe it was a proper time, a vacation would have done me good as a good change of scenery. It’s a small world after all, or is it?
I delayed my decision way into the future as I was looking for a certain prayer result, while my decision itself would have produced the result in this big wide world I am in.
Then again, prayer began for me to be associated with change or a lack of it and my inability to face it, and therefore with further indecisions on my part and therefore stagnation within, leaks in the smooth approach, breaching change and finally finding myself lacking in several motivations, and somehow I grow less fond of praying because it all seems to be holding me back. Because I didn’t change I missed on maybe my only chance or my best chance and I missed out. My only boat I believe was going by but I didn’t get on it because I was praying. I have a weakening will to do anything more now. In fact I’ll give up looking for another boat and praying another prayer as well.
I don’t have to be so afraid of change because I am moving not within a narrow channel with little margins for error but within the vastness of God through prayer. If I make some mistakes, the wide latitude of the vastness will help me bounce back into the wanted change.
I could have taken my best guess at a vacation spot, taken the trip, and continued to pray, erstwhile continuing to pray about this issue as well and getting another answer about another place and then I could just take another trip, as God provides.
Then prayer itself might begin to be seen an involving a devotion or devoted lifestyle that involves certain predilections and particularities and therefore precludes certain ways of living that still interest me. . I don’t seem to be made up of the right particles for this. But didn’t my uncle say God doesn’t make junk way back then? Yet I stilled all my good plans for myself as they slid off the shelf of what might have been possible in the unseen future and heaped them into a junkyard of regret and unworthiness piled upon shame. Thou shall not-Thou shall not change commandment #?
Or I am already involved on an already well predicted and course, maybe I’m a thief in disguise and I’m relieved of my duties towards prayer because of this sin of commission or this precludes me from praying because I’m am indeed a thief and this idea of prayer doesn’t fit my job description and if I pray I can’t be a thief anymore. I can’t do both or be both and I further deprive myself not of the contents of the safe I intend to crack but the overwhelming presence of a God who still may freely allow me to converse with Him in prayer and what might have been held for me there in the context of that prayer relationship.
God’s followers aren’t supposed to be thieves and this is clear from the commandment, which is thou shall not steal. But there are other things that people might do or not do that doesn’t involve the Ten Commandments as such but they who set the rules seem to think so. And the thief can pray too, God issues wide invitations as he is hosting the party. From the Gospels we see that if you are not going to show up at the door of prayer then Jesus will call others in your place including the prostitutes and thieves on the streets. Don’t ignore that first invitation to prayer and if you are ignoring it, hardening your heart, it is to your own peril.
We know one thief made it to paradise. There are many man made rules that seem to impose on these invitations. But if you’re a thief, don’t plead innocent based on not knowing the commandments, come up with a better argument.
But the converse of this can take place, people plead to God, you didn’t tell me I could have this, you didn’t tell me I could be happy. I thought it would be more pleasing to you to stay where I am. I can stay like this, and you can be my divine shrink, and I can always talk to you about my unhappiness. Why look into things that might make me happy when I always have you Jesus to listen to my problems? What this tells me and you, that people of the faith actually do this, is that when I am in a situation of change and I am trying to understand what course I could take, I might ask God specifically what would please him in this situation or even what might make me happy. Often we are encouraged often somberly to preface our prayers, if it be your will Lord, can I make this change, but I could also similarly preface it, if it pleases you Lord, should I go ahead with this change? Or if you think I’ll enjoy this, should I go ahead with this change or if it is good for everybody concerned should I go ahead with this change. I can preface my prayers in different ways while still seeking God’s guidance and still searching but this time trying to get to a more optimistic view of the proposed change. If I still don’t quite believe for example that God wants me to actually enjoy something, I can test this by prefacing my prayers as to this, God, I think I’ll enjoy it if I get to see the most scenic area on my trip West. Or I’ll think I’ll enjoy it if (fill in the blank). But I can also take another look as to how I might view God’s will. Wouldn’t it be brilliant, like the most brilliant moment of the most brilliant day and didn’t God create Einstein and isn’t He behind every genius of every kind?
I deep down believe that I might skew the prayer relationship, the back and forth dynamics of it, by changing. Not understanding, that prayer is like the sun, that is going to follow me wherever I go. I seem to stay adrift on an island of prayer, not feeling that I need to interact with other facets of this world that God thought I might enjoy.. Unless, I am specifically led off this island, I stay there. I really don’t believe that God can lay it out before me over any possible landscape.
Yet I am called by intercession to pray for this world I am avoiding. And I can pray the prayer of intercession like a king whether I am a king sitting in my palace, Dick Van Dyke on the street corner again drinking his bottle of liquor out of a paper bag to the tune of Yesterday, or if I am own my own little island of my choosing. I can also pray for the smallest concern of the most obscure person. You don’t have to be together with the entire world and all of yourself to be with God. I can pray for others even in the face of my own weaknesses. I don’t however want to be dealing cocaine and praying for the goodness of God’s people.
As my prayer requests become more personalized to me and my own situation, I become more concerned about changing the dynamics. I might be praying and praying and finally begging God for something, and when I finally get my chance for it, I hold off, because it will upset the apple cart as I have already balanced it, the dynamics of my prayer relationship might be upset, because if I get all this, what do I have left to beg God for? So I keep on begging right to the end of time, so I can keep the relationship as is. God seems to recognize me while I’m in this state, if I change He might not know who I am anymore because I believe he needs to have me in this state to identify me. I’m like the blind man who felt so identified with blindness by the village he was in and the blindness he had known for so long and was locked in with his circumstances or at least for him this condition seemed to have forged into a certain path and identity where he was known as the “blind man". I don’t change then, keeping everything level to the status quo, not realizing that it may have been God that called me to change in the first place, telling me to move my rump in another direction. . And maybe God was the lead author on the proposal at hand anyway. . If I do find myself caught in this drift, I can at least keep my intercessory efforts going, not letting the stagnation of my own personal prayer concerns seep deeply into my brilliant intercessory efforts and the focus I want in order to maintain that. . I can keep the waters of intercession flowing well. What I want to do if need be is leave personal issues unresolved while going into the prayer of intercession. I want to keep going without necessarily having to have full resolution on all issues.
The issues closest to us seem difficult and larger, also further magnified to some degree because they are so close, even though others at a distance are truly in greater difficulty, and in a sense we do pray from them from a safe distance. If I am praying for the soldiers in Iraq from my waterfront home in the Bahamas, I can understand that in some ways they are in a more precarious situation then I am when I can’t find the channel changer for the lastest fastest show I have to see and this is my big change I’m facing at the moment at a personal level. .
Prayer seems to keep me from getting the ball rolling on change because I need to pray better first and hear God’s answer better first, and if I’m waiting so long, I might be so disconnected from this idea that the change doesn’t have that initial appeal it once had. There doesn’t seem to be a concept of God being with me through my change and right at the beginning of my change where the change might seem especially daunting and challenging, and only at the arrival point of being finally and fully changed will I meet God and find out then.
On the other hand, Jesus took and held the blind man by the hand led him out of the village. Mark 8.23. He was going to give him his sight, but this would be a big change for him, he might have never seen or hadn’t seen for a very long time, Jesus walked with him into this change, he led him side by side into this change. He knew for this individual at this point in history, that he needed to be led out of a village of unbelief and disbelief to a place that was new and fresh and where he could believe in change. In the village he was the blind man and always was the blind man. Neither he nor they could identify him as anything other than the blind man, otherwise they wouldn’t know who he was anymore.
The blind man was making a radical change or transition towards obtaining his sight. However what was actually happening was He was going from a radical situation of not being able to see in a world that requires sight to the more moderate position of being able to see properly in a visible world. What Jesus was doing for him, by giving him his sight, was bring him to a more moderate position. And this is a very important point that in most cases, even when Jesus brings us into a radical change, it is in actuality a moderating change for our practical life. The blind man was brought from an extreme or radical position of not being able to see to the more moderate position of being able to see his way around. Yes Jesus was bringing him into a radical change, but in actuality He was moderating his life, holding him by the hand, and walking back to a position that would be more moderate to who he was and the world he was in.
I might have a more radical view of problems that causes me to stay stuck. By radicalizing my position, I am making more of something than it really is. A common example might be a person who loses a given job, and thinks they have also lose their native talents and abilities with this. By making more of something that it really is, somehow altering the reality of it, not necessarily making a mountain out of a molehill but tending towards that, I lose the moderating view which would have been otherwise operative. The tendency to radicalize is somewhat rampart in many ways and one example is the all or nothing mentality, and another would be making things so big and looming. This tendency works against change, because if I a going to easily bounce or react into a radical position, I am that much more unwilling to try new and different things.
I can apply a soft touch to change, brushing against it lightly in my own manner of praying, knowing that while I might not be physically blind, I may be in part blindfolded in so many ways to all I could know about the change I am entering into in various ways. Jesus was gentle yet firmly attentive with his approach to the blind man, who was entering the world of sight maybe for the first time and surely uncertain of how these new wanted dynamics would change the way he would interact both with himself and others and the presence of the good Lord who was coming to him now as an individual. Maybe we should be gentle with ourselves as we approach change sometimes realizing in some ways we might be like this blind man in weak areas of our lives and in our difficulties in understanding our own pathways. . Jesus was with this man in the totality of this change, just how He can be with you and me in the totality of the change we hope for in the loving presence of his goodness for us.
The case of Jesus helping the blind man is also symbolic of what we might want from God as we seek change. As I seek change, I might be looking for an across the board clearness. I am more comfortable and hopeful of my way if I feel things are clear and clearer.
The rightness and wrongness of things get attached to prayer efforts as we can see this has happened throughout history. I might be asking as well for God to bless an effort that he hasn’t sanctioned in his will and plans for me. Can I ask for a victory from God when he didn’t want me to do this? Should Jonah have asked God for a better escape route from his call to preach to the great city? The converse of this is if God really wants me to do something, I hope He will back me up all the way through in providing the means needed. For example, God wants me to surf in Hawaii on one side that doesn’t have the most extreme surf and still these waves are higher that I am used to. I will need a better surfboard, and maybe when I get there I need to hook up with some experience guides for these waves and how they break here. I bring up in my prayer that I do need some further means to walk in the way that has been pointed out to me. God has given me a thesis and I need some help to accommodate around this notion. I can cite His original proposal in seeking to further the means. If then I do get guidance towards this great surfboard as part of the means I need then this answer regarding the well apparent means reinforces God’s original call for me to surf these waves and God is saying yes I want you to surf and I will get you that surfboard you need as your means to do this. Further provisions as to the means in answer to my prayer relates back to the bigger call.
So one possible tool of prayer is to ask for the means and if the means are provided than that helps tell me my goal might be kosher after all. Also, if I feel in providing some of the means and some of the help, God is pointing me in a certain direction I can ask to be helped more fully if I am already being provided with part of the help.
Another tool might be to link my request with some outer comparable success story or similar or compatible situation. Deep down I really want these positive comparisons and a pro or yes to these prayers tend to confirm this and help me lift myself into the change. God, I ask, are you a pro for me getting a new surfboard?
An example would be anything I could want, maybe I am just playing a sport like golf and I could say thank you God that I can sometimes drive the ball like Tiger Woods. There is some measure of comparability even within one individual shot. Even an occasional shot off the tee like this tells me that I have some affinity and predilection for the game and this can help my mindset towards additional improvements. What you are doing is inserting your request into the outer environment in some way that helps you locate what you want as it pertains to the outer world. Maybe there are some individuals who are doing what you would like to do or maybe there is a camped legion of people doing what you want to do. A woman asks that she can have a hairstyle like her favorite movie star, and if she gets to a similar hairstyle this possible match is further augmented by her seeing that indeed it is close to her heroine’s hair in actuality. She has one aspect for herself that she feels ranks for her with the best. She finds this an apt comparison parceled in a way that is helpful to her in accommodating her own changes. She then can say to herself, I have a hairstyle as good as so and so. So it can be helpful to explore commonalities with good, optimistic and affirmative comparisons and real compatiblity in an encouraging and accommodating way with the outer environment within my prayer requests.
When Peter was walking with Jesus, I am sure they discussed right and wrong but the conversations weren’t just about that, even right from the beginning they talked plainly about fishing which is morally neutral. Jesus called his disciples friends and friends don’t normally discuss only what’s right and wrong.
In the gospels, we see Jesus talked fairly liberally to known sinners, and cited knowledge of their current conditions. If Jesus talked to sinners, then this was an invitation for them to talk back. They could talk to Jesus in their derelict state and for example the woman at the well was not even referred to as a sinner by Jesus although the rules of the times may have told her that she was.
I might feel defective and dejected and that feeling stops me from trying something new or finding different approaches that could lead to change and might involve some change at the get go. I find I can’t pick myself up from here and I can’t get my jet off the runway to somewhere new. So I wave goodbye to change and any of the possibilities it might have held for me.
Since I’ve been good, after all I have been praying, I’ll want the change imposed on me by some divine directive or I’ll wait until I get the okay from above. And this absolves me of some leg work that might be humanly possible, when maybe in Gods eyes He wanted me to do the leg work or research to change or to help me better captain my own ship. But I’ll wait until I get the okay and maybe in a sense the okay is God saying your on your own, I trust you to do this for yourself with the talents I gave you.
The signals, the particular lights I believe I’m waiting for, I can’t see yet. I’m following for the warning lights but as yet there are no warning lights. I’m looking for all my yes and no’s in prayer right up front. And of course we should consult the Lord, but realistically, is the discussion always going to revolve around yes and no? Do I set up my own narrow gate by praying within narrow confines, dressing this notion a certain way, and does this make me better if I can get through my own narrow gate, since I’m the one who made it narrow in the first place? Jesus spoke of the narrow gate as per getting into heaven, but does this apply to every single decision we can make in every area of lives and even prayer itself? To believe that I am trying to get thru a narrow gate with prayer itself contraindicates the vast presence of God both to the world and to me in prayer as I contemplate the vastness of God as I speak to Him and the smallness of any even great change that comes under this vastness.
It may be that I just set or lined things up a certain way, and now I feel I’m walking around without those guideposts and I want to get these guideposts in prayer as a good intention on my part. God will give that narrowness in prayer only because it will help you. Trying to narrow my own choices by applying part of the “everything is no good" mentality can interrupt my thinking process towards what in fact may be good. You yourself might be confused by the myriad of choices out there and God will help you find the better choices by favoring those choices through narrowing your pathway in some way. But I believe that narrowness is there for other reasons involving rules, prescriptions or needed good behavior and I need to somehow to earn my way through, which is like trying to set up a toll to see the rising of the sun in its vastness. And now, this might be another point where I might begin to see prayer as a hindrance to change or at least not much of a help. Although, I mean well, I’m still however lost. I want marked streets with names I can remember because I am used to that. Otherwise, where am I going?
Or maybe I’m trying for guidelines in this specific instance, and I don’t need those guideposts in this specific instance as this case is different or what I am doing now has little to do with guideposts or anything similar, and other factors are critical such as being aware in the moment of what God is saying to me now, and maybe if God already fixed them then it ain’t broken. God bless me.
I’m adding in rules when I shouldn’t have been, I’m finding limits where there are few and none, I’m searching again for the narrow gate because the gate is narrow, or so I believe. But if indeed I am I lost, it can be in so many ways, I can find my way lost in indecision, in the haze and fog of just not knowing, lost in seemingly increasingly elusive goals and plans, lost in goals I once had that seem more and more left behind in an ash heap of disappointments and what could have been, lost in being left behind in so many ways, and in trying to find my way through increasingly narrow gates.
If I am facing another narrowing gate, I can take the big wide turn to God, as the big wide road back. Jesus admonished his disciples to watch and pray always, where I find every step I take in every direction on the road of prayer is the road back and is the way through because I am following the right road sign which is to pray always. The rule of thumb is, to do it.
If I’m on the football field and I’m a kicker. My goal is to kick the ball between the uprights, the goalposts. But if I am not the kicker, my role on the team might not involve these specific goalposts. Not everyone on the football team has the role of kicking field goals. There are some situations where I am marching to some tune or the same tune I have already heard before, that just isn’t there now, and I’m looking for 10 miles and the rules that apply to that distance, and that isn’t the distance I need to chart in this instance, and because I’m used to familiar rules and regulations for that distance that is what I am looking for this time again, but there really isn’t any similar rule this time because that isn’t the distance I am charting now. Or there is one rule to find and I make it 10 rules to find to feel better about the situation, the more rules the merrier. Or I go to the drug store for a prescription for poison ivy and then I want a prescription for ten other ailments as well when I have none. I want a prescription for alopecia when I have all my hair. So I am looking not only for rules and regulations but situations that have will give me those rules and those regulations as they have done previously. And unfortunately, that situation might not be prayer as my search for rules in that only begins to bring me distant from what I am trying to do in the first place. If God is going to answer me, He will answer me in any way, manner or time of His choosing and that is what I watch and listen for. But still, the more rules the merrier, because that is how I am used to seeing my way down the highway. . But how far can you go into a usual situation without bumping into rules because this is what I am taught. If I expect to find rules where there are none, I make them myself.
Micah, Chapter 6 verse 8 “What is good has been explained to you man, this is what Yahweh expects as of you: only this, to act justly, to love tenderly, and to walk humbly with your God."
There are not too many rules or prescriptions presented here as this expectation is prefaced with only this. Only three items are mentioned here, not hundreds and prayer comes under the heading of walking humbly with your God.
We walk humbly with God by talking in prayer to Him and paying attention to Him and the affairs of his people. As far as other things, don’t step on God’s toes. Act justly. You don’t this by first stepping on the toes of the least of the brothers. Jesus said, if you do this for least of your brothers you do this for me, the converse is if you step on the least of your brothers in any way, you are doing it to Him. If you pray for the least of your brothers, you are doing this for Him. The blind man, who Jesus prayed after he walked him by the hand out of the village, was the least of His brothers. But only Jesus saw into the depths of his heart’s discontent and when we pray for others, we begin to ask God to reach out to those persons who might be the greatest or the least of my brothers, and God will go further as He takes our prayer and reforms it because He can reach the depths that we can never get to but yet we can get there through Him in our intercessions for others. Your more surface oriented prayer reaches the depths as it is amplified through God. This is why simple prayer can work. For example, I say God, please help every individual person in China, I can’t and couldn’t possible know all of the billion plus people in China personally or how they need to be helped. But God can take this simple prayer and amplify it to the depths of who these individuals are and what their particular needs are.
If you do this for the least of course also means you can still do it for the greatest of the brothers as well. Joseph indeed was the greatest of the brothers amongst Jacobs’s sons but God watched over him with careful concern as well.
I might be living vicariously through my prayers however, I want this for everyone else when I really also want this for myself. I pray for the prosperity of the land, but I never ask for myself when I really do hope for a good piece of the American pie as well. I don’t have to be overly focused on myself as my first call is intercession but I can still say a quick honest prayer as to my own self interests. I don’t know is honesty is rewarded by God but I don’t expect to be punished for being honest in prayer. God might answer my prayer not by taking me to extremes but by moderating my own view of what would make me happy. I am discouraged I didn’t get a date with Cindy Crawford and she is no longer available but the more moderate view tells me there are others whose company might be mutual enjoyable and situations that can be happy for all concerned. What is moderate is different for each person. If I really love to travel, then it is moderate for me to take a few short trips or one big trip during the year. If I really don’t have the wanderlust, then an occasional trip might be moderate for me. If I really love to swim, then it would be moderate for me to swim fairly often. If I have a general aversion to the water, then maybe only on the most oppressive heat waves will I dip in and this would be moderate for me as far as a swim.
I might feel like I am overly interested in something. But if I am really that interested, I can go easy on myself by saying overdoing this is really only being moderate for me because I have such a strong interest in this. For example, the girl reads two romance novels a week, mostly on her long train rides too and from work, yet she feels guilty about her continual consumption of these type novels. However, she really enjoys these novels and the contrast to her job as a lawyer and she is only being moderate to her strong interest in these novels.
I also can more easily rebound into a moderate position. It might help me get back on the horse better because by getting back on that horse I am only being moderate. I have a bad experience socially. However, since I do want to socialize a lot more, I will continue to be social as this is only being moderate to what I really want to do now.
I pray about taking a first jump into something, and this goes on just about endlessly, and when it comes to the actual change, I hold off indefinitely partly because I was overly focused on myself and didn’t balance that properly with the outward focus on intercession, in the beneficent elements of change as they may involve others, so selfishness in prayer can begin to inhibit my own efforts towards change ironically because the selfishness becomes a heavy weight I have to carry forward into this wanted change. So maybe I can craft my own request by also asking that if it is beneficial to all concerned. Also, it might not be a matter of selfishness but of narrow thinking. In my prayer search, I might ask God about how others might also benefit from what I am proposing for myself. This will help me to form a more rounded view and after all the earth is round. If I can see how my change might also benefit others who are involved, then this could give me further impetus to actually go forward into the change.
God is closest to any individual, including closer than the individual is to himself or herself. He has all of their concerns in mind as well, if I can see that the change I am proposing is beneficial to someone else’s welfare then this is all the more reason to follow through. I should ask God how this change may or may not benefit others. The more moderate view in trying to get a handle on what to pray for would include others, even those who I will never know or interact with on a personal level as I still know of these people and this also makes for more bountiful sowing. From the second book of Corinthians Chapter 9 verse 6 and 7.’ Remember, sparse sowing, sparse reaping: sow bountifully, and you will reap bountifully. Each person should give as he has decided for himself: there should be no reluctance, no sense of compulsion, God loves a cheerful giver."
God isn’t necessarily going to answer me with a rule, or give me another rule through prayer telling me what I can and can’t do, or whether I can involve myself in change by finding a rule and following it. The rule He did give me was to pray, there isn’t necessarily another set of rules after this. If God has a plan B in mind, it is still God’s thoughts I’m seeking, since I’m perusing through God’s innumerable thoughts specific to me, I am not really seeking generalized rules. What I need to search out is his personalized plans for me as the individual I am. The first rule on anything involving a decision to change is prayer itself. If God says I can’t do it, then this not being the usual course of an answer, I can really take it seriously because God doesn’t always do this and throw out the blocks. Just because I feel uneasy about this, it doesn’t automatically specify to a rule from God, or God saying I can’t. I can review what exactly prayer is to me. Is it an imposition or is it supposed to help me or isn’t it God himself who imbued me with the capacity for growth and change in the first place. With prayer I am actually being within and a part of that capacity. I can’t always change all that much, I can’t take off and fly to Venus. I also need to accept some things about myself and maybe sometimes the change I might need is towards acceptance.
I can keep going with prayer, no matter what else happens, because I can always find that particular flow as God will candidly adjust that river for me. There is an answer I might get, but I just don’t see it while I’m off the river. My own limited view is always going to inhibit me in part. Take a scene where you are walking through a big city. There is a lot going on right around you that you aren’t seeing. Every nook and cranny of the scene I’m in and around me is not observable in the moment. All of the sudden, everything and everybody seem to have changed and where have I been?
My unwillingness to change involves all sorts of issues that I need to sift through. I have marked certain things as having to do with this I might have marked flying a kite higher and higher in the distant sky with whether I’m a good person. I can challenge myself to disassociate from my defaulters, my default lines on the tennis court, my markers, and the way I have zoned my own landscape against other good possibilities, in causing difficulties with change seemingly as being linked with my prayer efforts which I falsely believe involves entering some narrow gate. The lines I want might stay between be too easily frayed by corruption and scandal anyway.
I do believe I am always in the flow rather than out of the flow with prayer and that means because I am in flow I have an automatic wider contrast with prayer towards my own difficulties with change. Then I attempt to best rearrange what I have actually seen in my life. I seem to have gotten some answers on some prayers that seem to indicate the beginnings of change or involved actual change. I can gather some evidence from the past that prayer has helped me to change or involving promptings of the Spirit towards this change that I could choose to follow or carry along with.
Be careful especially if you misrepresent who God is to others. Give yourself no guarantees. God has the final verdict. Despite the wide call to prayer, there is a narrow gate between good and evil. Some said to Jesus, but didn’t we perform wonders in your name and he replied, step aside, I never knew you. That for sure is a final verdict and we need also to be careful of what has been revealed here in God’s word.
Then I can take a more relaxed view of prayer. Jesus didn’t have the blind man in a scene of frenzy as he walked him into the big change. The blocks I’m facing are not from prayer at all. Change or no change, either way prayer is available to me as a free flowing river. I can pray one way or another way. I am still welcome to pray later as a changed person or a person who wanted to change but didn’t quite measure up to the hoped for changes but who can still find the particular flow of being able to pray. God will adjust the flow of the river to the speed you are at so you can always pray. He will adjust it to the temperature you like. The slope and meanderings of that river can be changed by God for you. God will moderate the flow of that river to accommodate you. I don’t have to see all the changes I might make as consequential towards prayer views I might obtain, dripping away at my prayer efforts. The changes I make don’t have necessarily inhibit my prayers and the prayers I say don’t necessarily have to inhibit the changes. I can fire up my prayer engines with the change or without the change in my case. The dictum that I should pray always applies rather than change always. That is a constant whether I’m changed or I just didn’t make it there. Sometimes a good place to start is being thankful to establish good grounding before getting into proposed changes.
Prayer is another form, located where I’m not subscribed into a body of rules and regulations, and where I’m not fixated on any one outcome it’s not a race for me to win or lose but to join, to get in with. To the degree I am entering into sincere and true blue prayer, to that degree I am entering into a relationship with God.
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On this river of prayer, I might pick up what I want or I might not, but the fault of not trying is not the prayer. I could never really say prayer itself is not trying. That has to be somewhere else. Why would the word persistence be applied to prayer if there wasn’t persistent trying? Praying and persistent praying are one and the same.
Psalm 32 verse 7 says" You are my hiding place." Prayer is a place I can relax in because it is a hiding place. The hiding place can be like a hidden river I can flow with, surrounded by friendly foliage. I can reinvigorate myself by this relaxation. I can keep things confidential there. I can hide and relax.
I might usually think of a hiding place as being in a little corner or that small tree house in the woods, or some little island. . Here the opposite is true my hiding place is the vastness of God, who holds more than the stars in his hand. Everything else is more in a little corner.
Prayer as my hiding place is not telling me not to unless it’s for my own good. Change or no change I’m hiding. In many cases, it’s my own disappointments that I have been following, which is not the trail to pick up on and continue with. I can see prayer as sometimes involving that separate sphere that hiding place, where I can be all have all, where the rules of change don’t really apply. I can roam freely in my hiding place after all there are no wolves there. If anything, prayer will help me cross those rivers or see that those breakers sometimes are for me. Just because I can’t seem to take a yard for change in my own life, doesn’t mean I can’t take a mile in prayer or many miles, especially on the stretches of intercessions highway.
I can’t go to the country fair here because I lack the funds now, but in my hiding place of prayer I can take liberty after liberty. I don’t have to follow any drills or particular signals I feel I absolutely must find. I let the scenery come to me as I follow the river of prayer.
Since I am praying, I might feel obliged to wait for an answer. That is understandable to me. But God creates opportunities for people without them even asking for them. The sun shines on the just and the unjust according to the scriptures. If the sun is already shining, I don’t need to ask for sunshine, and I may get many other things I didn’t ask for. God creates the day whether I show up for it or not. I don’t need to put brakes consciously or subconsciously in waiting for an answer as something that comes my way might be a surprise gift. Surprise answers can happen right then and there when I am praying.
Since I am walking with God, in prayer, things might be revealed as I go along. I don’t clearly see the magic right up front, and indeed sometimes I might, but that doesn’t mean the situation itself couldn’t be magical. I was talking to a friend about his improbable get together in meeting his wife from the distance of another country, and he said with cheerful optimism, “There is always magic in the air."
In looking for an answer in an always specific format, I am bringing in my own hesitation, maybe hindering my openness as to how God will be present, since that presence can be so wide. Books and movies usually move from a beginning to an end, but opportunities in real life can operate in more of a haphazard or circular fashion. God’s presence can come out of anywhere and anything. I can ask in prayer for God’s presence in anything but still it is up to God. I can ask for God’s presence specifically in a decision, in a moment, in my particular plans, in my disappointments. God as the master orchestrator can conduct any number of weaves out of an individual’s circumstance. I could be involved in the most adverse of circumstances as to what I really want and God can still weave what I really want out of this.
I read 100 pages of a book. I’m now involved in the story, I want to know what happens. . I want to know if its Gods wish that I continue to the finish at page 500. So I wait for that green light. Maybe God doesn’t want me to finish this story, I’m looking for lights, neon signs, or something like a newsflash from God. Then I am losing concentration, I am more looking for these signals than immersing myself in the story. I could also reverse this and wait for a red light saying stop and continue reading until I get that red light. It might be better just to concentrate on reading and then if the signal arises somehow, I’ll catch it without constantly looking over my shoulder.
So I don’t see any light green or red, but I want the green because I like the book so far. But I am used to dealing with signals telling me to stop or go and I am bringing that into other things where I want similar signals. I want to look down a road with green light after green light because that’s how I see my way down the highway and I want to finish this book.
But different people might be reading different books, and God knows what book you are reading and deals with each person as an individual. I-Kings 8.37-40 “ If there is famine in the land, blight, mildew, locust, or caterpillar, if their enemy besieges them in any of their cities, whatever plague, whatever sickness there is, whatever prayer, whatever prayer there is from any individual or from all your people Israel, all knowing the afflictions of their own hearts so that they stretch out their hands toward this house: then hear in heaven your dwelling place, forgive, act, and render to all whose hearts you know-according to all their ways, for only you know what is in every human heart- so that they may fear you all the days that they live in the land that you gave to our ancestors."
This passage shows how God deals with the prayers both coming from either the multitude or from any one individual, and that individual could be you and me in this particular time and place.
Someone is sitting on a plane, his fellow passenger says, and" What are you doing." You say, “I’m waiting for a plane," He says, “You’re already on a plane and you’re halfway to Texas.
Some people don’t know what they are, where they are, and what they already have going for them. They think there doing one thing and they are already doing something else. They have got it going and they are on their way, but they just don’t get it. How much has to happen before you can say, I’m sure this could be my way. Sometimes, I need to look at what I am already sitting on that could be like gold. I Corinthians 2.12" Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God,"
If I had known I was sitting on a gold mine, I wouldn’t be sitting on a gold mine. If I really think it is too late, I can find another new vein of gold.
Part of the change I will make will include what?. Some times if I can’t get at the full change I want to make, I can have some peace in that I am very sure about part of the change. In looking at the “big change" in the face of all it is it does seem quite daunting and almost unmanageable to task. But if I can be quite sure about what part of that change will be or will be composed of, and hone in my thinking about that part, it can be very helpful in arranging the change and being most positive about particular parts and components of the change I am sure about.
For example, I am taking courses, I know for sure I can drop anything with hard core math as part of my change, and I would take in a literature course as part of my change. I have some parts of my change that I feel definite about. But the part of dropping the math is definite and including a literature course is definite as I round out my changes, the next change is still uncertain, but I ‘m on my way downstream and I’ll decipher and discern my course the further I go and it is helpful if I find parts of the change I am sure about up front on my journey.
I had taken a boat trip on a tributary of the Amazon River.. It was about 100 degrees and while we were stopped, I began to swim out in the river a bit. I was warned of piranhas and told to come back towards the shore. Within minutes I saw a large bird being devoured on the waters surface right were I had been. I was told the piranhas usually ignored people unless they were still but who knows if they always followed that pattern. Later we pulled into an inlet that had had such thick exotic overhang that I thought I was in the Indiana Jones movie. When we stopped, I again went into the water, this time everybody was not going out too far in this inlet of the river because of crocodiles.
In God’s river of prayer, we would never encounter such obstacles. God always wants us to step into the river of prayer as a warm welcoming home.
If I am setting up fleeces, it could be any fleece. God if you want me to read the rest of this book, please have it rain and hail in Idaho tonight and please have someone knock on my door tonight at 7 o’clock. I get both answers, it rains and hails in Idaho and someone does knock on my door at that time. So I begin to think I need a fleece with the next book I read. God in his humor answered this way this time and I look for this again as a universal approach or solution for the next time.
First though, I need to look for God’s vast ways and the better way and means I have for me to search this is through prayer myself. I can take my own peek that way. Prayer isn’t just this just that but can involve anything and everything and predate or postdate change. Nothing compares to the vastness of prayer. That doesn’t mean God doesn’t get involved in the tinniest of issues within that vastness. That vastness encompasses big and small. God can listen to millions, trillions, beyond countable numbers of prayers at once and address them individually and specifically or collectively.
God wanted the ship Noah built to be without a rudder. Noah would be facing a great change with the eyes of God guiding him into this calamitous change. The ship would be guided within the conversations of Noah and God. The rudder was God’s close presence and guidance. Even though Noah was involved in a kind of apocalypse at that time and was lost in a way for sure or at least lost enough that he needed to be guided back, he did eventually find himself to land, which was like his promised land. He did make it through. Here is an example of an individual man, making it through an apocalypse, onto the other side of God’s verdict, into a vast bright new world at which he was at the beginning. Through this journey, God kept this individual in his sight. Like Noah, I can only hope and pray that I come out okay on the other side of God’s verdict if and when and in whatever way it comes.
One of the interesting things about Noah, was, he did have no choice about going home, or going back to his village. It wasn’t going to be there anymore. Prayer is about getting closer to home but this wasn’t going to be home anymore. Change was built into his scenarios. He was to confront change whether he liked it or not. He wasn’t going back to his Kansas because his Kansas wasn’t there anymore. Just like Dorothy, who after a tornado was facing a whole new world, Noah was to face great changes. Imagine going on a trip and saying let’s go home but home is no longer there because of something similar to a great flood in terms of its effect. This is how Noah had no choice but to face change. He could either face this change with God or without God but I am sure he felt the fear of the unknown within his journey. But the proposals in front of him no matter what his ultimate choices were to be, did not include not changing.
Noah was involved with big picture stuff. The whole earth is flooded, big picture, there was no dry land to park his ark on, big picture not a bit picture, none of the people he had dealt with in his village would be around anymore, big picture. Both are important, in Dorothy’s case, it was a detail that saved her from the wicked witch.
Noah was able to grasp both the details before him and the bigger pictures which were forming in front of him within his ongoing conversational relationship with God, which is no small matter.
This is another thing to look for and ask for in prayer, the big picture, and the big stuff. I need to not only follow details, as Noah did have detailed instructions as to how this ark was to be built and constructed according to specific specifications, but I also realize that there is bigger picture stuff to get a handle on that is part of God’s doing. Genesis 6.17 “For my part, I am going to bring a flood of waters on the earth." Those that had turned against God in those times in ways we are not quite sure of were to be literally submerged. Bring your own submerged wishes to the surface of prayer before it’s too late. When God is telling you about His part, it is usually in reference to a big change. Noah had to deal with details regarding the ark and big picture changes as coming before him..
An important tool with this is the confirmation. The dove was sent out three times by Noah from the ark which had been adrift for many months, each time after seven days. The second time, it returned with a freshly plucked olive branch in its beak, confirming that the waters were receding to reveal land. Through prayer, in what ways can my troubles and difficulties across so many waterways recede into the goodness of God for me? How can through prayer, long standing difficulties recede to where I finally see land as that oasis of the goodness of God for me?
I might need a fresh confirmation from God as I deal with big changes, either real or still hoped for. Noah still could get some sort of deal from God. He wasn’t going home to his village but God still had a deal for him and dealings with him. Solomon the wisest man of his times, asks in his prayer, 1 Kings 8 26, “Now, Lord, God of Israel, may this promise, which you made to my father David, your servant, be confirmed,"
Prayer is a like a great river that will flow whether I jump into it or not. I can catch change with the flow and some things will only be graced through that great river. But there is a lot of room in that river for lots of answers and for good things whether I have exactly asked for them or not. As great a river as it is, it is a river where I can relax and I don’t have to worry about drowning, as God is my guide.
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