Hide and Go Hide (1)
I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints Ephesians 1:18 NASB
May be enlightened – Prayer. No, that’s not right. We know what the noun is. We can define it. But the problem is with the verb. Praying. That’s when the sky falls to the earth, when the ceiling is made of lead and when we stop talking because we don’t know what else to say. That’s when the voice of a true saint needs to be heard.
God is hiding, and man is defying. Every moment God is creating and self-concealing. Prayer is disclosing or at least preventing irreversible concealing . . . Prayer is pleading with God to come out of the depths.[1]
A soul without prayer is a soul without a home. Weary, sobbing, the soul, after roaming through a world festered with aimlessness, falsehoods, and absurdities, seeks a moment in which to gather up its scattered life, in which to divest itself of enforced pretensions and camouflage, in which to simplify complexities, in which to call for help without being a coward. Such a home is prayer.[2]
Just as the body, so the soul is in need of a home. . . . At home I have a Father who judges and cares, who has regard for me, and, when I fail and go astray, misses me. . . . What is a soul without prayer? A soul runaway or a soul evicted from its own home.[3]
The world has forgotten what it means to be human. The gap is widening, the abyss is within the self.[4]
Human distress—wretchedness, agony—is a signal of a universal distress. It is a sign of human misery; it also proclaims a divine predicament. God’s mercy is too great to permit the innocent to suffer. But there are forces that interfere with God’s mercy, with God’s power. This is a dreadful mystery as well as a challenge: God is held in captivity.
I pray because God, the Shekinah, is an outcast. I pray because God is in exile, because we all conspire to blur all signs of His presence in the present or in the past. I pray because I refuse to despair . . . I pray because I am unable to pray.
And suddenly I am forced to do what I seem unable to do. Even callousness to the mystery is not immortal. There are moments when the clamor of all sirens dies, presumption is depleted, and even the bricks in the walls are waiting for a song. The door is closed, the key is lost. Yet the new sadness of my soul is about to open a door.[5]
The irreconcilable opposites which agonize human existence are the outcry, the prayer, Every one of us is a cantor, every one of us is called to intone a song, to put into prayer the anguish of all.[6]
Topical Index: prayer, Heschel, Ephesians 1:18
TRAVEL NOTE: On June 23 I will fly to Hamburg, Germany. I will be lecturing on an Azamara cruise and will not return until July 8. Book orders places during this time will be delayed until July 10. If you want a book shipped before that date, please order today.
[1] Abraham Heschel, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, p. 258.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid., pp. 258-259.
[4] Ibid., p. 259.
[5] Ibid., p. 260.
[6] Ibid.
It is the duty of every man to meet the Lord in prayer every day.
Update: It is my wife’s 25th day in the hospital. Her primary physicians are amazed that she has survived. She is still in ICU and may remain there for awhile yet. Many friends and family have prayed for her healing. Sometimes life will intensify your prayer time.
John, thank you for posting this! I am going to pray for you and yours,and worry, too, Please continue to let us know so that we can know how to pray. Both of you are dear to me.
I don’t know your exact circumstances but I know suffering in helplessness as I’ve watched many loved ones suffer in hospitals. I’m praying for you and yours right now.
John, it’s often that when we are in the wilderness we are able to hear the Lord more clearly. I pray that you and your wife are hearing and feeling His presence like never before.
I think love is like water; counter-intuitive to all other substances it appears to resemble. Water expands when it freezes, unlike everything else that contracts. Without this property, life could not exist. Love, also, is not like anything else it resembles. Love is the great ordering element, yet, because it requires free choice, must ride a sea of chaos. Love is the great attractant; yet, because it is exclusively jealous and brooks no rivals, causes us to abandon all else, and to be abandoned by all else – UNLESS it, also, is connected to life.
Love is inexorable; it outlasts all else, yet it will not advance its own cause, but instead relies on everything else to “declare the glory of God”. The Hound of heaven hunts us all into corners, but we have to hand our own hearts over. Love is “perfected in weakness” and shines brightest in the darkest places, yet it ‘needs’ nothing else to be itself.
We have forgotten how to pray. We don’t know how. That fact may escape us for decades, until the cracks start to show or disaster strikes, and then we notice that we have been using convenient smoke and mirrors to convince ourselves that God is near; that God is on our side. We are never so far from Him as when things appear to be ‘going well’ and so we, because we have not actually been having a two-way conversation with Him on a continual basis already. have no way of noticing that we have been rambling on by ourselves for a long time, but forgot to listen to see if the other side of the line is dead.
Prayer is a positional proposition. Prayer is a way of living (thank you, Heschel and Skip!). Prayer is supposed to be a place in reality that we are supposed to be in and stay in, for prayer IS our connection point to life; to our Lifeline. Life should be lived, I am finding, as a two-way conversation that never hangs up. If other conversations occur, they should be conducted as a three-way conversation: we should keep up the one we already have, and treat the other party as an adjunct; a third wheel. The prayer should just include them and the topic, and whatever is being discussed should be run through the First Party before replying.
The Mind of Christ is a phenomenon of continual relating. Prayer as a formal exercise is good, but prayer as a lifestyle is probably better. Nope. Not there yet, but I think I have to keep scooting on over until I figure out how to stay there.
Desperation is the wall that separates our East from our West; our attempts to achieve order without love and the underlying desperation of the soul (honest assessment of reality) that already knows that is not possible. Desperation is what clues us in, and we must plow through that desperation before we are safe on the other side. Prayer that does not come from that place, then, may not be actually reaching heaven, for desperation is our home base; our perpetual starting point. Continual prayer: “pray(ing) without ceasing” is the only way I have found to stay out of desperation as my honest reality to reach out from.
Pain is the clue we have been given to learn to stop and not go there any more. Desperation is the pain of the soul that shows us our separation points from heaven, but also shows us where (when) we dropped our end of the lifeline with heaven. Indeed, please “teach us to pray”!
Whoops! Clicked on “Read More” and up popped thumbs down. Didn’t that just recently happen a day or two ago?
I propose this:
PRAYER, ALONE, IS NEVER ENOUGH! IT IS NOT PRAYER THAT IS THE SOUL’S HOME. IT IS FAITH.
“Now without faith it is impossible to please God. For the one who comes to God must believe that He exists AND that HE IS A REWARDER OF THOSE WHO SEEK HIM.” [Heb 11:6]
One can pray with littleness of faith, believing only that God exists. But that “faith” will not be rewarded. It’s the effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous one that avails much. The only faith that pleases God is faith that believes He will reward the one who prays. If one prays but does not believe he will be rewarded by God in his praying, he may soon despair of not only his condition in life but also that God is not answering his prayer as he expects when he expects, and he will likely then not continue to pray until God rewards him. That is not faith that pleases God, because God wants to reward those who persevere in faith, praying for the reward He wants to give the one who is praying.
Also, it is not faith to pray for something that is not God’s will. That is presumption, not faith. Faith is the evidence of things hoped for and the substance of things not seen, and that is only possible by knowing the will of God. Otherwise, apart from knowing the will of God, one will not have the evidence of the thing hoped for or the substance of the thing not seen, before he prays for it. However, once God has revealed what His will is, then one may have faith that when he prays and asks for it, God will hear him and grant that for which He is being asked. And it is the prayers of the righteous that God hears and that righteousness is a righteousness based on faith.
“But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all without hesitation and without reproach; and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith, without any doubting—for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord—he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.” [Jas 1:5-8]
“The effective prayer of a righteous person is very powerful.” [Jas 5:16]
Last year we were in Hamburg. The boat tour through the city reveals
there are over 1200 bridges which you would never possibly know unless
you took the tour. Kind of like never knowing the full extent of God unless
you take up His offer to pray.
And, yes, fully agreeing with Jerry. “Faith is being sure of what we hope for
and certain of what we do not see.”
P.S. Praying for John Offutt’s wife.
I agree Rich, faith in prayer does many things believes all things trust all things Etc. It is man’s Duty to walk with the Lord everyday in prayer that’s what Man was created for to walk with God to hunger for God and to show God to others