Prayer has always been an important aspect of my life since I came to Christ in 1989 and throughout my ministry. Before we started Ren in 2003 countless hours were given to bathing the idea in prayer. In 2009 prayer deepened in my own life and began to overflow to the community. What I've observed in my life and the life of the church through the years is that prayer can be a little like the waters of the sea. At times it can be dead and other times there is rapid movement. It's up and down. It's a fight to maintain a strong passionate fiery prayer life. It seems like everything in our flesh, and in this present world and in the invisible demonic realms around us, is fighting to squelch the spirit of prayer within us. I'm feeling that resistance this week.
You've heard me preach over and over that we desperately need a revival in our lives and in the Church that will have an impact on greater Providence. It's not that we don't know God. We do. It's not that we don't have God in our lives. God is with us. The image that God keeps giving me is of a light bulb that is dim. Or a small cup of water. Or water up to the ankles. You've probably heard me unpack each of these at various times. The idea is that we have the presence of God but in a rather small measure. The Bible has much to say about measures of the anointing. Jesus had the Spirit without measure. Some were described as filled with the Spirit. Paul talks about being filled with the full measure of the fullness of God (Eph 3). I am fully persuaded that there's much much more. As believers we are nibbling at the feast instead of feasting at the feast. And God is eagerly inviting us to eat more and drink deeper!
Because of this great truth it always leads us to the subject of prayer. Because prayer is the primary way that we access the riches of God. When I say prayer I'm including the full range of praying. I'm thinking of contemplation and writing and sacred reading and studying the Word and fasting and crying out in the car or in the woods and corporate prayer and shutting yourself away in the closet and praying earnestly. I'm talking about stilling the soul and listening, as well as, “loud cries and petitions”. All these forms of prayer are important in helping us access greater measures of God’s presence.
This practice of unceasing prayer requires more than discipline and willpower. There are a lot of really hardworking Christians that are failing at prayer. There are Christians who in most things have extraordinary willpower but cannot seem to build a raging fire of prayer. What I've been learning from God in this season is the importance of joy in sustaining the momentum of prayer. In His presence is fullness of joy and the joy of the Lord is our strength!
The secret to sustaining the passion of prayer lies in the hidden fuel of reminding ourselves that God is joyful and that He delights in us and we exist because He wants us to be happy. There have been famous people like Jonathan Edwards and John Piper and CS Lewis that have tried to get this message through to the Church but I'm not sure we fully get it. I know I have much further to go to comprehend this. Piper puts it this way - “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him”. In other words, not only does God permit us to pursue happiness in Him but He gets glory when we find our happiness in Him. God wants us to be happy! And the more we understand this the more we will be sustained in a life of passionate prayer that alone will bring an outpouring of the Spirit.
My encouragement to each of us is to push away the clouds of condemnation and to stop thinking of God as an old cranky gloomy God who is mostly sad, sometimes angry and rarely happy. We really need to shift our entire thinking about who God is. There is incomprehensible joy within the Trinity. God delights in us as His children beyond what we can imagine. As we begin to see God as He is the clouds of heaviness begin to thin and vanish away and the sunshine of His presence begins to fuel our passions for Him.
Oh I feel so inadequate to articulate this and even more inadequate to convince you. Perhaps that's why I've decided to write weekly on this in the hopes that as it's sinking into my heart more and more it will sink into yours as well. I love you all dearly and want the very best for each of you. I'm praying that we would be a house of prayer for all nations and that our gatherings would be marked by the full glorious tangible presence of Jesus !!!
Scott