Prayer and the Hope of Generosity
Posted: Thursday, July 21, 2011
by Joseph Jagde
The place of prayer is the place you want to be if you are in deep trouble.
Even with being in this good place, there can still be the matter of feeling stuck and finding out which way to proceed.
In a given prayer session, it might seem like you are getting stuck on the road and just not propelling forward into the upcoming graces of the Lord.
And this is just being realistic in the search for graces as where if the Lord is appearing to be generous towards you personally, you can cite this generosity as a demonstrated quality of the Lord and something that as a quality can be relied upon within the prayer relationship.
The specific ways in which the Lord might be generous are manifold and mostly unknown at first, but it can help to get going in prayer to cite that generosity that has already begun to form in your personal skyline and see where this generous outpouring of graces might lead you and bring about in the circumstances you will soon encounter.
It is not like you will be relying on a one time low odd event such as winning the lottery as the generosity of the Lord spreads out over time and place. While the generosity of the Lord might incorporate something like that or might not exclude something like that, it can stream into your life from every direction and on a constant basis irregardless of whether something like winning the lottery happens or not. Indeed the Lord spreads the wealth.
And so many graces do obviously come under the heading of generous graces and abilities, talents, and personal gifts are from the generosity of the Lord and it is likely that the Lord will just add to these gifts within his unfolding generosity.
The Lord in a sense upkeeps the original gifts. In the movie Chariots of Fire, the runners saw their talents as a God given gift, and they upkeep was found in the competition and comraderie of the other runners and maybe some new state of the art sneakers.
The reliance isn't on any one thing happening, but the great and vast generosity of the Lord appearing across all upcoming landscapes.
In the parable of the workers in the vineyard in the gospels, the workers who showed up and just worked at the end of the day, got full pay and those who had been laboring in the hot fields all day weren't too happy about that and perceived the owner of the vineyards to being unfair.
And the reality is, sometimes the Lord is so generous that is seems unfair.
Someone might have so many talents and gifts the red carpet rolls out for them wherever they go and whatever they do, and this doens't seem fair but this is how the generosity of the Lord can be as well.
The parable reads as follows from Matthew Chapter 20 in the NIV version of the Bible:
1 "For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. 2 He agreed to pay them a denarius[a] for the day and sent them into his vineyard.
3 "About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. 4 He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.' 5 So they went.
"He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. 6 About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?'
7 "‘Because no one has hired us,' they answered.
"He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.'
8 "When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.'
9 "The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. 10 So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. 11 When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 12 ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,' they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.'
13 "But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? 14 Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. 15 Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?'
16 "So the last will be first, and the first will be last."
What actually happened at the end of this parable was out of the genorosity and this is telling that actually happenings are actionis of generosity by the Lord are on behalf of those upon whom he is bestowing this generosity and this is of course a demonstrated reality that is experienced as real.
Those who toiled the full day were displeased that the late coming workers got the same full day's pay as they did.
The meaing of this parable also goes to the idea that in an overall sense it may not be too late and this can also apply to personal concerns where you might have messed up and the Lord can still meet you in situations that are seemingly too late and get you in with full graces symbolized by the full days pay.
So in a sense, the full days pay, symbolized full graces.
The parable symbolized the generosity of the Lord which can include what is a last minute reprieve, an 11th hour blessing, or an outpouring of graces to a newcomer that matches the graces given to someone who has been with the program all along.
But on a personal level, maybe you squandered most of the day and squandered weeks, months and years on misguiding adventures and the Lord can get you back in the fold even at the 11th hour and at points seemingly too late in the game.
In this parable, when this generosity was demonstrated there were complaints and this was the answer from Mathew Chapter 20 verse 15
15 Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?'
The generosity of the Lord is out of his own choosing, and can emanate in any direction or way of his choosing in being pointed to specific individuals.
There can be a catch up aspect to the generosity where the Lord brings things to home base in full, even as in the parable with regards to the wage for the workers who basically worked the last hour of the day, and is isn't necessarily that they were lazy but they might have been doing the wrong thing all day, cavorting in any many of digressions that weren't in the house of graces.
This can be important for discernment purposes.
You as the praying person might be looking for much less from your point of view based on days gone wrong or the most of this day gone wrong.
You might never think you could get all the way from point A to point B given your present lack of resources of available time, available knowledge, and insight or means financial or otherwise and basically in realizing how far away you have been from the blessing you might have had.
But the generosity of the Lord can sort of sidestep that bad show and all those contending issues still swirling about and bring about a full blessing even at the 11th hour where it looked like this would never happen and the blessings were too far off and long ago missed by now.
But wherever you are with your present contenting circumstances, you can get a better look in the window of heaven's blessings if you cite the quality of generosity in your prayer requests and prayer discussions, as this generosity is well above your circumstances even if you seem to poorly positioned now for these blessings.
People might stop by for a wonderful meal, but then still think about how much less they have compared to others in the material sense, and doing that can begin to bring you on the road of losing sight of your own blessings, which can be more at this junction spiritual than material and in doing that also lose your compass and direction towards the generosity of the Lord for your personally.
Begin to talk about generosity in the prayer walk even if you can't quite see it and comprehend it in the relative haze of your maybe difficult circumstances now and remember the Lord is not held hostage by your lousy circumstances in terms of bringing about his generosity towards you.
Thus there might be that bottleneck or logjam at the point of prayer, where you are just not acknowledging the generosity of the Lord as a whole and towards you in particular and you can begin to break that logjam by calling upon the generosity of the Lord specifically in prayer. You don't have to win the Lotto to talk to the Lord about generosity.
In asking for things for others, whether it is other individuals or global matters, you can also call upon the generosity of the Lord for them and for the issues at hand.
The workers in this parable did in fact begrudge the generosity of the Lord.
A better approach would have been at first sighting of the generosity of the Lord in any given area to acknowledge the generosity of the Lord and go with it.
If the Lord is giving perfect conditions for swimming at the beach this day then maybe I should go for a swim at the beach
It might be good to tune into the generosity of the Lord and we do this by praying in the first place but this parable does mention generosity specifically.
It is the Lord's prerogative as to whether he will be generous in any particular or specific way towards you, and whether the intentions are for generosity towards you in a given area.
This might also be the subject of belief. While it may it may not be true that the Lord is being or is intending generosity towards you personally in this way or that way, if you do not believe it, you may not follow the lucky stars set for you.
So it is good to discuss the issue of the personal generosity of the Lord for you in prayer and in praying for others to also cite the generosity of the Lord as you never no it what way he may choose to be generous through the means and approach of prayer to his generosity.
Just being able to discourse in prayer with the Lord is a benefit that is of the generosity of the Lord in the first place, as are many other daily benefits that are right in front of us, if we can only see it and believe it a bit more and act on and begin to follow through on the premise that the Lord is showing generosity towards us personally and we can trust in that pervasive generosity which is a specifically cited quality of the Lord in how he deals with people according to part of the message of the parable of the workers and in many other scriptures in the Bible.
That generosity need not be limited in any way and you don't need to stop talking about as it will come around the next bend for you continuously.
A good place to find that enduring generosity is the place of prayer, but it is helpful beyond that to specifically acknowledge, thank and praise the Lord for specific generous actions and benefits that you are already well aware of and there is no reason not to stay with this ongoing and continously manifesting generosity and also see where it might be leading as the means of grace appears to you lighting new and exciting roads paved with the Lord's generosity.
Remember the yellow brick road in that great movie about the land of Oz? Well there is that but there is so much more, so many more roads than the yellow brick road paved with awesome graces.
The generosity of the Lord is as real as the light of day and is very important to the practical matters and affairs of our lives now and going forward as we seek, find and rely on this real generosity.
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