McHenry takes a look at the life of E.M. Bounds in this chapter. As Bounds served as a medic during the Civil War, lack of medical supplies often meant that the only thing he could offer the wounded was prayer. McHenry says, “he never left the battlefield of intercession…and was convinced that intercessors could hold the spiritual line of the nation with their prayers.” Changed forever by what he had witness, Bounds carried the heart of an intercessor for the rest of his life.
Intercession in this chapter takes two forms. One is prayer for individuals that God brings to us and the second is prayer for a nation.
Here are two quotes about personal intercession:
“When God calls men and women to a life of intercession, he is calling them to a life of sacrifice – a sacrifice of time, emotional energy, or even their lives.”
“Interceding – praying on behalf of others – may be the toughest kind of prayer, because it can break the intercessor’s heart.”
But possibly the most important quote to me was this in response to Hebrews 7:25:
“In a fractionally small way then, we imitate Christ as we give of our time, focus and energy as we pray for those around us. We go to God for others, just as Christ goes to God for us.”
This chapter wasn’t the direction I thought it would be. My thought was all about the passionate dynamic things that get done when we are in constant communication with the father. This chapter had the focus was primarily on avoiding the formluaic prayers and the ways that prayer has always been done in favor of truely listening to God and praying in the way He leads you moment by moment.
I loved this quote:
Our day of prayerstreaming with God may begin as a discipline, but it should then flow naturally. A stream begins with the purpose to head down a hill but is interrupted with rocks and fallen logs that make it move right and left – or even pause in a pool. We head to prayer as we awake – perhaps as a discipline with a list or perhaps just with a longing heart. From then on it is like falling down hill. We won’t control every moment with the next request on our list.
McHenry advocates again in this chapter that we need the discipline of time in the Word and time set aside for God, but not that we ever get done with our time and think we can simply check it off the list and be done.
Spurgeon is the focus of this chapter and there is a quote from him: If I seek in prayer the good of my fellow creature, and then go and try to promote it, I am practically praying for his good in my actions.
Pray without ceasing leads to loving with actions.
Where is it that you want to go today, God? Who will you put in the path of my course today?
Sorry can’t let this one go! This could be the best illustration I have ever heard on how to commune with God. It is a quote McHenry used from Richard Foster.
Communion with Him isn’t something you institute. It’s like sleep. You can’t make yourself sleep, but you can create the conditions that allow sleep to happen.
This chapter is so good, that I can’t quite process all my thoughts without writing the great American novel. It also connects to the post I did on Friday about being a prisoner of hope. So here’s a little testimony to go with the abiding in Him chapter.
Last fall we got notified that the IRS was going to audit our 2005 income taxes. Even when you have not done anything wrong, the word audit is pretty intimidating. I got all in a snit and a bother and the stress of this weighed heavy on me for several weeks.
One Saturday morning, I came to prayer and my dear friend Gay came up to me with something in a bag. She told me that she had been in Walmart and God had told her to give this to me. I opened the bag and inside was a coffee mug with a penguin on it. Penguins are my FAVORITE and I really appreciated the fact that of all the mugs in the store God had directed her right to the one I would have picked up for myself.
But God wasn’t done with me. I went home that afternoon and as I was cleaning, I felt the LORD tell me to look at the mug. Then it hit me again that penguins are my favorite, and that I am God’s favorite. It blessed me and I thanked Him for the reminder. But God wasn’t done with me yet. He said to me, “LOOK at the penguin.” And it hit me. This penguin was praising God. He had his little face turned to the sky and his wings were lifted up. God showed me through a gift that if I will turn and praise Him no matter what is going on, that since I am His favorite, He will take care of me.
So the discipline of learning to always look up and praise (or abide in Him) even when I am afraid or the circumstances around me look like the waves did to Peter when he got out of the boat is a huge lesson for me. I have been working on this daily since the end of November, and you know what – it’s working. The fear and anxiety are not the hallmark of my days. And somehow the hard times seem to be shorter than they have in the past.
Oh and by the way, even though 75% of the people who get audited end up having to pay more taxes, the IRS ended up owing us $147 since we had under-reported our church giving. Hmmm…giving to God paid out in the end.
In order to remain in constant communication with the Father we must abide in the Son. McHenry’s first sentence in this chapter is that “prayerstreaming is a form of abiding in Christ.”
So I went to John 15 and took a good look at what it means to abide in Him.
Verse 4: “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.
So if we abide in Jesus we will bear fruit. Branches connected to the vine can pull at any moment on the nutrients and water delivered by the roots. They don’t have to wait for a quiet time or a weekend service. His constant resource is available to me night and day, and when I draw on that I become fruitful.
Verse 5: “I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.
Yep, I know what it means to not be able to get anything done. I want my life to be productive rather than the way that I feel on unproductive days like yesterday. I got up with a check list I thought I’d take care of during the day and didn’t even get half way. I just felt sleepy and blicky.
So would yesterday have been different if I’d spent more time with Him that doing what I thought needed to be done?
Verse 6: “If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned. Don’t want to get thrown away! “Then keep close”, Jesus says.
Verse 7:“If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
Ahh…there are two things in this verse that lead up to me being able to access unlimited provision for what I want and need. The first is abiding in Him – the constant flow of uninterrupted prayer. The second is His words abiding in me. The necessity of the Word becoming a part of me will take some work, but saturation in it is like Miracle Grow to my life.
Prayerstreaming/the Abiding Heart is my access all the resources and nutrients I need for a productive life that bears fruit, keeps me in the presence of God and makes it possible for me to ask and receive whatever I need from the Father.
In this chapter McHenry examines the life of Teresa of Avila. Teresa’s greatest revelation was the revelation of how her sin seperated her from God and prevented the unbroken dialogue she longed for.
When I read this I kind of snorted out loud, because the quote was, “On one side, God was calling me; on the other, I was following the world.” That struck me as funny because she was living in a convent in the 1500’s. I didn’t think that the “world” there and then had any comparison on the “world” today. But what I discovered is that Teresa wrote about how she did all the prayers and worship leading at the convent, for the praise of others. That she often posed as praying, but would actually just be counting the moments for prayer time to end.
Ah, conviction. Do we do what we do in a religious context to look good to others? A form of godliness (2 Tim. 3:5) where Jesus said, “Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.” Matthew 6:1.
So how do I ponder this in prayer? McHenry writes it this way: “praying is the awareness that God sees us. He sees our willing hearts, certainly, but He also sees the shadows over them that inhibit the intimate realtionship we say we want.”
Here are some questions to take with you to prayer and allow the LORD to help you see the answers:
What keeps me from God’s presence?
What problems distract me?
What emotions or personal struggles bog me down from feeling close to God?
Is there a root weakness that causes these to rise and trip me up as I try to pray?
Do I struggle with anger, fear, worry, jealousy, bitterness, insecurity, lust, self-centeredness …or something else?
If the God we are listening to loves us so much, will He not tenderly reveal and work with us to remove everything that hinders love?
Prayer Streaming – The Loving Heart (con’t from yesterday)
Praying without ceasing becomes easier when we see God as our loving Father. This chapter in McHenry’s book also talks about seeing God as our Shepherd, Physician and Beloved.
Shepherd - Hmmm…Jesus said that his sheep know his voice. I guess that whole part from the other posts about listening to God’s voice came first so that I would understand the reason why I need to listen. Psalm 23 is so good for meditation in prayer, because it tells me the things that my shepherd does for me. Take time to sit with this Psalm today and listen phrase by phrase to what God wants to tell you about the way that He cares for you.
Great Physician – There is a song that ministers to me so greatly based off of the account of the woman who was healed by touching Jesus’ garment. The words are worth meditating on:
If I’m healed by just one touch of your garment, Lord
Then how much more of your love is for me than I’m tasting, Lord.
When I first read the title of this chapter, I figured it would be a chapter about loving people. So it was going to be about the work I need to do. I was wrong. This is a chapter about loving God. I love to love God! And I know that as His love works in me I’ll get better at the other.
In the PrayerStreaming book, McHenry details the life of Madame Guyon and her move into being able to pray without ceasing. McHenry notes that as this woman of prayer came closer to God she knew Him more deeply as Father, Shepherd, Physician and Beloved. Today I’ll post this longer entry and talk about the Father part and tomorrow post about Shepherd, Physician and Beloved.
FATHER: Just to spend time with Him! I find I am better able to touch this on a more regular basis. It is becoming easier and easier to simply enter His presence. Why? I have to guess it is simply because I’m making a practice of doing it more often. Finding the secret place where its just God and Me. Or maybe it is recognizing when He is whispering over me. I don’t understand every word yet, but I recognize more and more quickly and frequently.
McHenry uses Zephaniah 3:17 as the main passage to illustrate God as our Father. Which just happens to be one of my all time favorite Old Testament verses of all time! Here it is in NASB.
“The LORD your God is in your midst,
A victorious warrior
He will exult over you with joy,
He will be quiet in His love,
He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy.
Just let each of those phrases sit over you as you pray.
He is a victorious warrior. - What ever battle you face, He’s already won. He exults over you with joy. – He loves to be around you! Most of us do not get that! He will be quiet in His love. – There is a steady warm assurance with that one. This is a love that doesn’t end. And it invites you up to sit on the Father’s lap and simply rest and relax into Him. He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy.Now I missed this in NASB but the NIV puts it like this: He rejoices over you with singing. And there’s one of my favorite songs.
You dance over me
While I am unaward.
You sing all around,
but I never hear the sound.
Lord, I’m amazed by you.
How you love me.
“But listening for God’s voice can be much more difficult than talking to him.”
One of the things that the enemy throws at me when I need to listen to God is the fear that even though I talk to God, he might not be interested in talking to me. And so I avoid talking to God because he might not talk back. That’s scary!
Do I believe that He speaks today? Yes. Then I need to learn how to listen. McHenry gives some steps in learning to listen to God
#1 Open the door. Revelation 3:20 says that He stands at the door and knocks. Open the door. Believe that He is on the other side.
#2 Give Him a chance to speak. In other words take some time, ask a question, expect Him to answer, STOP TALKING and wait for Him.
#3 Allow Him to speak to you through his word. Whatever you are dealing with, there is scripture to go with it. Take the word, and then ask Him to enlighten your understanding.
#4 Allow your heart to be open to other trusted believers. The LORD frequently speaks to us through those He puts in our lives. Be sure you know who you are listening to because the devil will try to lead you astray and discourage you through well intentioned people. If you get something from someone else, and it doesn’t feel right then ask another person to help you discern truth and error.
#5 Train your ear. Listen to the testimonies of others as to what God’s voice sounds like. Then turn off the noise. No music, cell phone, etc.
The second quality of unceasing prayer is the quality of a listening heart.
McHenry writes about her study of the life of Frank Laubach. As she distills all that he had written and discussed about prayer the one quality that she came up with that revolutionized his prayer life was the quality of simply listening to God.
The testimony of Laubach’s life was that he knew he needed to listen to God and went through the exercises of working toward that end. He set a timer for 15 minute intervals but he could not carry through with the discipline. It took a real live encounter with the voice of God to change what was a duty like taking daily vitamins into enthusiastic expectation.
Today’s question for thought is this: Do you actually believe that God speaks today? Don’t answer that with the trite yes that religious training has ingrained in you. Do you really truly believe that God speaks today?
McHenry writes that perhaps the difference in Laubach’s experience was that he came to the point of expecting the LORD to speak to him.
Do you believe that God speaks today? Meditate and comment please!
