**My deepest apologies for not getting this post out in a timely manner.**
Then the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.
Genesis chapter two details for us Adam’s life just after the creation. Genesis chapter three details Adam’s fall. The very interesting part of this for me is that Adam was lonely before the fall. Loneliness in itself is not fully because of the fall of man. So how do we understand this condition of the human heart?
If Adam was made in the image of God, then God’s character qualities should shine forth in Adam’s unfallen state. Adam was a worker v.15, “put him into the garden to cultivate and keep it”. Adam was creative – just think about the name aardvark, that’s even kind of funny! But Adam was lonely. Loneliness did not come after the fall or as a result of sin. Adam, created in God’s image, desired companionship. This is not a Plan B, but the Plan A as set forth by God from the very beginning.
“God used loneliness to cultivate something in the heart of Adam. God created longing in his heart and made Adam endure a rigorous process of recognizing his lacking. Loneliness became the birthplace for longing and desire. Aloneness presupposes desire and longing. Without the longing for something else, loneliness is impossible…desire for a companion grew within Adam. This was God’s ultimate object lesson for Adam to understand something of God, himself. Adam was a creature of desire and intimacy, made in the image of his Creator. God stamped his own longing for communion on the very nature of human beings.” Alan Hood – The Excellencies of Christ.
So what difference should this make to me when I am lonely. God knew that the fall would happen, so He introduced longing so that we would find our way back to Him. Today we run from loneliness like the plague, while in fact it is the Divine invitation to run to Him who longs for us.
Luke 5:16 tells us that Jesus OFTEN withdrew to a lonely place to pray. How interesting is it that He knew the best place to commune with His Father was in the LONELY place.
So not that my introvert side needs more help, but I am seeking out the lonely places lately and God has been meeting me in ways that I have not seen before.
Your heart was made for Him. And when you are lonely, the person you might just be missing is your Creator and coming Bridegroom. Seek Him and He promises to allow us to find Him. Loneliness, itself, is not what we seek, but in loneliness we find the One for whom our hearts were made.
Desire for God will cresendo at the end of the age, because wait…a wedding is coming. Think of the cry and anticipation of a Bride for a Bridegroom. “And the Spirit and the BRIDE cry, ‘Come.’” The cry of a bride is one of joyful longing.
Here’s a link to a great blog about being diligent in our relationship with Jesus as the key to “working out our salvation with fear and trembling”. (Philippians 2:12)
Therefore, brethren, be all the more diligent to make certain about His calling and choosing you; for as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble;
Guess what? What I wrote yesterday isn’t always that easy to do. Making “certain about His calling and choosing” isn’t easy. It takes diligence. The dictionary says that to be diligent is to be “constant in effort to accomplish something; attentive and persistent in doing anything”.
If I want to walk with Jesus through life without stumbling, I need to be diligent (constant in effort, attentive and persistent) to be certain of his calling and choosing me. Hmmm…sounds a lot like Ephesians 6 where Paul tells us to “stand firm” three times in four verses.
The confidence born of certainty makes the holding on in adversity, trial and testing simply a matter of time until the purposes of God get worked out. My own personal story bears this out. When life is painful and hard, I look back to the assurance that God chose me and that what I am doing is what He called me to do. Then I stand firm with the shield of faith (Hebrews 11:1 – now faith is the assurance/certainty of things hoped for and the conviction/certainty of things not seen) and extinguish all the flaming arrows (doubts and fear) of the evil one.
Which all leads back to where this whole discovery of 2 Peter 1:10 began. The armor of God. “now put on the helmet of salvation”. What is the thing that protects my mind and my thoughts about myself and about my life? The confidence of my salvation. The confidence that the God of the Universe not only knows me but chose me despite myself. And the confidence that He and His purposes for my life have been ordained. These I diligently seek and He promises that when I seek Him with my whole heart, I will find Him.
Therefore, brethren, be all the more diligent to make certain about His calling and choosing you; for as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble;
So what is it that Peter tells us will make us sturdy on our feet in the face of adversity?
Being certain of His calling on our lives and that He has chosen us.
When I know that God chose me, I am humbled under his mercy, but honored all at the same time. How could the God that created EVERYTHING want to be in relationship with me? How could He in all His perfection ever stoop to talk to me, to use me for his purposes. It makes my heart yearn for Him all the more. As David said in Psalm 139: “such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is too high. How can I attain it?” But they are truth. If you are in need of knowing that God chose you, there are many scriptures and we would love to help you.
But you also need to know that God doesn’t just choose you and the story ends with “happily ever after” at that point. If He chose you, He also called you. There is a destiny over every life. There is a God-breathed calling for which you were created.
Knowledge of these two things are the deciding factors in whether or not we stumble.
KNOW YOU ARE CHOSEN. KNOW YOU ARE CALLED AND TO WHAT YOU ARE CALLED!
If you can say, “Help!”, you are eligible for the prayer movement.
You will only find true pleasure, when you find what you were created for; until then you will have a gaping hole in your life.
The most important 4 word prayer of my life: GOD, WAKE ME UP! (Ephesians 1:15-23)
We have a poverty of spirit when we think we know who God is and in reality – We Don’t Have a Clue! (Job 36:26)
Revelation 4 – They sing, have sung and will sing, “Holy, holy, holy” for millions of years and everytime is like it is for the first time. God give us an unending revelation of who you are.
We have got to have moms and dads who take risky steps to invest in the future of thier children.
When I watched this video this morning, I involuntarily gasped the Name – Jesus.
If you never come back to this blog again, if you don’t read/watch anything else this year, you must see this. It is an 8 minute video and at about 2:50 Louie Giglio starts the story. Please,Please,Please watch the whole thing. Then share it and pass it on the everybody!
When you think about praying without ceasing, THE classic that comes to mind is Practicing the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence. Its a classic; if you haven’t read it, you should.
When McHenry writes about Brother Lawrence, she uses phrases like…faithful dedication, passionate pursuit and determined goal. Brother Lawrence knew that unceasing prayer wasn’t something that we could do just because we wished we could. It was a commitment that we needed to make much like the commitment of a marriage vow. Here’s a great quote from McHenry:
Just as a wife cannot make a marriage commitment and continue seeing other men, when we make a commitment to pursue a relationship with God, we need to discontinue the pursuit of activities or relationships that would draw us further from Him…when we allow the pulls of the world to come between Christ and us, we are committing spiritual adultery.
Nothing articulates this better than the song Blessed Be Your Name. I’m using it for my meditation today. Here are the lyrics followed by a youtube video of the song.
Blessed be Your name
in the land that is plentiful
Where Your streams of abundance flow
Blessed be Your name
And blessed be Your name
When I’m found in the desert place
Though I walk through the wilderness
Blessed be Your name
Every blessing You pour out I’ll
turn back to praise
And when the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name
Blessed be Your name when the sun’s shining down on me
When the world’s “all as it should be”
Blessed be Your name
And blessed be Your name on the road marked with suffering
Though there’s pain in the offering
Blessed be Your name
You give and take away
You give and take away
My heart will choose to say
Lord, blessed be Your name
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.
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?
