prayer

Berakah Blessings

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Lately, I’ve been getting a triple dose of The Chosen. I’m watching the latest season on the app, reading the books as they hit the shelves, and listening to the novels based on earlier seasons on Audible.

One thing I notice is how many times the disciples and other followers of Jesus will recite a prayer of thanksgiving that starts “Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe . . .”

Today, I was reading in my devotional, 52 Hebrew Words Every Christian Should Know, and the word for today just so happens to be berakah. It’s the Hebrew word for blessing. The Jews of biblical times practiced berakah blessings throughout the day. Those are basically short prayers of thanksgiving for things like waking up, watching the sunrise, meals, and various other things. They even have a prayer for going to the bathroom.

In 1 Thessalonians, the Apostle Paul instructs believers to “pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17). I don’t think he meant to walk around all day every day with your eyes closed in prayer. There’d be a lot more accidents — especially traffic accidents.

I do think that Paul wanted us to keep a spirit of prayer and an open dialogue with the King of the Universe. One way is to recite these berakah blessings throughout the day. I’m sure there are prescribed prayers you can follow. As a Gentile believer grafted in, I can’t speak with authority on this, but I think it’s okay to make up your own prayers of thanksgiving and blessing.

I like the idea of starting each prayer with “Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe” because it feels connected to the people of God of old. It’s also a healthy reminder that there is a King and it’s not me. I’m not the one in charge who’s supposed to figure out every detail. That’s God’s job. My job for today is to follow Jesus and the rest will take care of itself.

I have to give credit to the character of Matthew from The Chosen (and to the incredible screenwriters and director). It’s such a great line that fits in with the gospel accounts and message. Follow Jesus, seek the Kingdom of God, and give thanks. That’s my job.

God Speaking

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I always pray for God to speak to me. I usually follow up with something like “and give me ears to hear when You are speaking.”

I can’t say that I’m one of those who has ever heard God speaking audibly. Typically, I can’t say I’m very good at discerning God’s voice. I usually have too many other noises and voices in my head.

Other times, I’ll see a social media post that just so happens to hit me square in the feels. It will be something that speaks specifically to me in the moment.

The above meme is an example of me reading a meme or a post that stops me dead in my tracks because it’s so accurate to where I am in my current situation. Then I wonder if it could possibly be one of the ways God speaks to me.

I wonder if I limit my ability to hear from God by limiting the ways He can speak to me. Obviously, the primary way God speaks is through His revealed Word, but I think God can communicate through other ways as well.

I also wonder if I took something as just a really neat coincidence when it was actually God’s way of speaking to me. Like one of those timely posts or snippets from a sermon. Or maybe it was a line from a song or a movie.

I wish I could remember how C. S. Lewis put it. He said that sometimes we’re too busy banging on the door to God’s throne to hear from Him. We’re too anxious and occupied with our pleading to be still enough to listen.

I think sometimes the prayer goes like this: “Lord, calm my mind enough to hear from You. Still all other voices so I know it’s You. Give me enough sense to recognize You speaking when I ask You to speak. And help me really to hear and obey what You tell me. Amen.”

Ministry Mindset

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I think most of us (including me) have the mindset that says, “Whenever I get to a comfortable place in my life with lots of money in the bank account, then maybe I’ll serve. When I get my career sorted out and my kids raised and shipped off, then I can go be a missionary or do ministry within my local church.

First of all, no one is promised tomorrow. Not to be completely morbid, but if you’re waiting until a magical age or after a certain number of years, you may not have that. Today is what we have. Today is the day God has gifted us.

Also, where you are right now is not happenstance. Where you are at this moment is exactly where God has planted you to serve not five years down the road, but right now. Your workplace is your mission field. Your homeschool group is your mission field. If you’re like me and in between jobs, anywhere you go on any given day is your mission field.

I pray we can have the mindset of Isaiah, who prayed, “Here I am, Lord. Send me.”

The joke is that if you pray for mission opportunities, God will send you to a remote spot in an isolated jungle in some third world country with no luxuries or comforts or even — gasp — no wifi. But more likely, God has set people around you who can be your mission field. You may not have to travel around the world but only across the street or down the block.

Once again, I’m preaching to myself. I need to get back to starting every day praying for chances to have gospel conversations wherever I live, work, or play. Then I need to get back to praying for courage to actually have those conversations when the moment arrives.

God is at work right now. I pray we can have eyes to see and join in. As I heard recently in a sermon, we need God’s love to move from our heads to our hearts to move through our hands to transform our habitat.

New Beginnings

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A few years ago, I told my friend who was the Groups Minister at The Church at Avenue South at the time that whenever he took his first job as senior pastor at a church and preached his first sermon there, I wanted to be there.

Today, I fulfilled that promise. He was called to be the campus pastor at The Church at Woodbine, so I was there as I said I would be. It was actually an honor to support my friend, plus I got to see what God is up to in the Woodbine area of Nashville.

During the prayer time, I prayed for that church that they’d grow beyond the capacity of their current building. I also prayed that they’d become a church that looks like heaven with every tribe, tongue, nation, ethnicity, language, and race represented.

I know that was a bold prayer, but I know that God is able. I believe God put that prayer in my heart because I know I’m not wise or brave enough on my own to think of a prayer like that. I know greater things are still to come in Woodbine just as they are in the Berry Hill area where Ave South is located.

The point of all this is that is good to support your friends in new ventures. It’s good to keep promises, even if it means driving a little outside of your comfort zone. Also, I believe it’s good to pray big bold prayers. I think God honors those. I’d rather pray big and not see it come to pass than to not pray at all and alway wonder what could have been had I been braver.

I still believe God’s about to do some amazing things in the Greater Nashville area and I’m praying for revival for Middle Tennessee and the nation. I hope you’ll do the same for your area and for the nation as well.

Mountain Mover

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It’s easy to be intimidated and discouraged by the size of the mountain, isn’t it? Real mountains can be a pain, but those metaphorical mountains can seem impossible to overcome.

I was reading recently about Mount Everest and all those who have attempted the climb and died in the effort. They thought they were smart enough, strong enough, tough enough, etc., but the mountain proved to be too much.

Some obstacles in your life can seem like that. When you look ahead, all you can see is that mountain in the way. There’s no way around it or under it or over it. The thought of climbing it fills your heart with dread and fear.

But remember that every mountain has a maker. Jesus said that if we had enough faith, we could say to the mountain, be cast into the sea and it would obey. Basically, Jesus said that it’s not big faith that gets past the mountain but faith in a big God.

So don’t look at the mountain, but cast your eyes on the One who can move that mountain. Talk to the One who has already overcome all of death, hell, and the grave. What is it that you’re facing that is stronger than what Jesus has already overcome?

Mountains are scary, but remember that the taller the mountain, the better the testimony at the end.

Christian Maturity

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“Christian maturity is the distance between God’s call and your capacity for obedience” (from the Growing Deeper class this morning).

I’m reminded of something my pastor once said during a sermon. He stated that you can’t wait until you confirm the call of God on your life to start getting reading. You have to be ready. You have to develop a life of disciplines before God calls you.

I believe that maturity look a lot like leaning on the Lord. It’s a declaration of dependence that acknowledges the words of Jesus in John 15:5: “Apart from Me, you can do nothing.”

I can’t expect to recognize the voice of God if I never spend time with Him. If I rush through my prayers and Bible reading, how can I learn to discern when the Shepherd is speaking? If my prayer life is spiritual version of my Amazon wish list, I leave no room for God to respond.

Sometimes, I think the best prayers are ones where I’m silent in the presence of God, not bringing any petitions or requests or even thanksgiving, but simply sitting at the feet of Jesus for as long as it takes to come to a place of calm where I can hear Him speaking. Sadly, I’m often too busy or impatient to wait that long.

I’m also learning that it’s better to read less Bible and ruminate on it more. I tend to speed read for information instead of prayerfully meditating on what I read and turning it into a prayer. Also, it’s easy to leave the words on the page and not put them into action. Then nothing changes.

But thankfully God is more patient than I am. He still speaks when I’m less inclined to listen. He has more time for me than I have for Him. And I believe He’s making me more like Him even on those days when I don’t act very much like Him.

Lord, speak to me and all your servants, for we are listening.

The Litmus Test of Our Faith

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“We pray for the big things and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet really not small) gifts. How can God entrust great things to one who will not thankfully receive from Him the little things?” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community)

I wonder if the litmus test of genuine faith is gratitude. I also wonder if one of the hindrances to answered prayers is failure to give thanks for previous answered prayers. It could just be that the more we’re able to give thanks for God’s graces and gifts, the more discerning we are to God’s responses in the present. The more we can see and hear God at work.

I also know that God is not bound to my obedience. The life of faith is a life of grace. I know that if for God to answer one of my prayers required complete faithfulness and obedience, I’d be lost, both figuratively and literally.

Still, the word I keep hearing over and over is thanksgiving. Saying “thank you” to God isn’t a magic formula that forces God’s hand, but a prayer that frees us to see more of God’s smaller gifts and maybe makes us able to receive the larger gifts.

Telling Stories

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“Child,’ said the Lion, ‘I am telling you your story, not hers. No one is told any story but their own” (C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy).

I’m beginning to understand that we all have different stories. We also have different seasons and struggles. I am in the middle of a career transition. I overheard where someone else has a parent dealing with a cancer diagnosis. Yet someone else I know has struggled within the past year with mental health issues.

Each story is different. Each struggle is unique. It’s no good for me to compare my story with someone else’s and to either think that mine doesn’t matter because it’s not a potentially terminal diagnosis or that I have it way worse because someone else might have an ingrown toenail.

The Bible doesn’t say God never gives us more than we can handle. Often, it’s way beyond our capacity to bear so that we are forced to lean in on the Lord for daily strength. He does give us grace equal to the struggle. He does promise to be with us in each season.

In each story, the testimony is that God is able. I am in as much need of God’s continual grace and strength as anyone else alive right now on this planet. My need is no more or less than theirs. And my God is equally up to the task.

That’s the beauty of intercessory prayer. I enter into your story and you enter into mine. We share each others burdens and magnify the name of Jesus equally. Sometimes, we can speak words when the other has none or believe for the other when they can’t find the faith at the moment.

The best part is that God is always the hero of our stories and we can rest assured that in every case we know that God works all things together for good and for a happy ending.

The Soliloquy of Prayer

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They tell me, Lord, that when I seem
To be in speech with you,
Since but one voice is heard, it’s all a dream,
One talker aping two.

Sometimes it is, yet not as they
Conceive it. Rather, I
Seek in myself the things I hoped to say,
But lo!, my wells are dry.

Then, seeing me empty, you forsake
The listener’s role and through
My dumb lips breathe and into utterance wake
The thoughts I never knew

And thus you neither need reply
Nor can; thus, while we seem
Two talkers, though are One forever, and I
No dreamer, but thy dream” (Unknown, quoted in Letters to Malcolm by C. S. Lewis).

That’s how prayer works for me. Sometimes, I feel like I’m talking to the ceiling. My words can’t possibly be reaching God’s ears, and if they are, He doesn’t seem to hear. But then I remember that God is not just in some faraway heaven beyond all time and space. He’s in the room with me.

Other times, my prayers seem to come from somewhere else. I find myself praying words the same way an actor speaks lines written by another. It’s as if God Himself is giving me the very words to speak to Him the desires of my heart.

Often, I will rattle off a list of my own requests and desires and then give God no time to reply. Even then, I think He hears the heart cry behind the list. He is way more patient with me than I am with Him most of the time.

On occasion, I won’t even be able to speak. Either through grief or fear, I can’t find the words. In those moments, the Holy Spirit and Jesus intercede for me in those groanings too deep for words.

Whatever the case, I am never alone. If there is but one voice speaking, it’s not mine, but God praying through me to God who hears and honors the request. Not God in the sense of me and all things are a part of God, but God as holy and totally other who still dwells in me and makes Himself known to me. That God.

A Puritan Prayer

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This is most likely a repeat, but it’s worth reading again. It’s from The Valley of Vision, a collection of Puritan prayers that is one of the best books I have ever read outside of the Bible:

“O God of Grace,
Thou hast imputed my sin to my substitute,
and hast imputed his righteousness to my soul,
clothing me with bridegroom’s robe,
decking me with jewels of holiness.
But in my Christian walk I am still in rags;
my best prayers are stained with sin;
my penitential tears are so much impurity;
my confessions of wrong are so many aggravations of sin;
my receiving the Spirit is tinctured with selfishness.
I need to repent of my repentance;
I need my tears to be washed;
I have no robe to bring to cover my sins,
no loom to weave my own righteousness;
I am always standing clothed in filthy garments,
and by grace am always receiving change of raiment,
for thou dost always justify the ungodly;
I am always going into the far country,
and always returning home as a prodigal,
always saying, Father, forgive me,
and thou art always bringing forth the best robe.
Every morning let me wear it,
every evening return in it,
go out to the day’s work in it,
be married in it,
be wound in death in it,
stand before the great white throne in it,
enter heaven in it shining as the sun.
Grant me never to lose sight of
the exceeding sinfulness of sin,
the exceeding righteousness of salvation,
the exceeding glory of Christ,
the exceeding beauty of holiness,
the exceeding wonder of grace” (The Valley of Vision – A collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions, Edited by Arthur Bennett).