Prayers

 "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you." James 4:8

A pastor friend of mine wrote in the margin of a book concerning this verse, "Good news and bad news." I think I understand what he meant. It is very good news for our spirit and life that He comes near, because He brings with Him the infinite beauty of His life. It is bad news for our fleshly ways, because they cannot stand or go on in His Presence. So, in short, we need to understand what it is we ask for when we desire for Him to come near.

With that I thought I'd share a few more things from my prayer journal centered around this Scripture. They speak to me. I hope they speak to you.

"May I, we, live lives that attract Your heart, life, and Spirit." Scripture says that He is drawn to the humble but He resists the proud. God will always be near to those, attracted to those, whose hearts reflect His. When we live feeding our lust for control, the fulfillment of all our desires, and the achieving of what the world calls success, we are, consciously or not, resisting Him. He will never be drawn to such a life. Yes, He loves us, but He is far from us because all that we are focused on is at root, not Him. The self-life is on the throne of our hearts, which means that He is not. It is when we live a life that seeks His face, His will, His love, and have as our desire, pleasing Him, being His living testimony and witness to a dead and lost world, that He always draws near to us. He seeks fellowship, relationship, and intimacy. The self-centered life seeks what He can give, not who He is. He won't draw near to such a life because He can't. It is when we walk in a spirit of humility that He reveals Himself to us, We lay hold of Him as He lays hold of us. Good news for our spiritual lives and bad news for our self-centered ones. But the bad news turns to good when we finally realize what we have in Him. May we live in His good news each day.

"Holy Spirit, speak to me in the morning about the journey ahead. Prepare me for each day." Chris Tiegreen....His Word says that His mercies are "new every morning." How tragic that so many of us step out into the world each day having no idea of what they are. We don't step out into the day, the day hits us in the face at full force. It's true that we don't know the full content of what any day may hold, but He does, and when we have had our time of intimacy with Him before we enter into it, His Spirit speaks to ours and ministers most especially in those place where we need to be fortified against what the day holds. Every day is a journey. Most of us just hope to get through it. He desires that we grow deeper in Him in it. Most of us are unprepared for what any day may hold. In Him, we are not unprepared because He never is. He gives strength, wisdom, understanding, discernment in the midst of any and every day. These are only gained through times of intimacy with Him. In my last writing I wrote that He "overwhelms the overwhelming," but He can only overwhelm it when our day is saturated in His life and Spirit. Otherwise, we are every bit as overwhelmed by life as those who make no profession of faith at all. This is a terrible witness. Is it yours and mine?

"Though we can remember God's presence in the past and anticipate God's presence in the future, we can only practice God's presence in the present." Alicia Britt Chole....."This is the day the Lord has made. Rejoice and be glad in it." God's time is always now. His presence is always today. Where might we be missing Him? Where have all of our distractions, our busyness, our agendas, robbed us of Him? Where have we taken His presence for granted but failed to spend any time cultivating it? Where is His presence nothing more than a vague awareness of His being "around?" Where is it not even vague? Yes, He is in our past and will surely be in our future, but where is He for us today? Is our sense of Him a vital one, or a dull, barely registering one? Do we "practice His presence?" Just as one doesn't become a master musician, athlete, or surgeon apart from "practice," neither do we become intimates of Almighty God without much time spent in intimate relationship with Him. We practice His presence not just with our quiet times with Him, but all through our daily activities. He is always near to our conscious thoughts. We can slip right into easy communion with Him as we might when leaving one room of a house for another. Is it that way for you and me, or have we consigned Him to the past and the future, while missing Him completely in the now?

Just a few thoughts and prayers for this day. May they take root in each of us.

Blessings,
Pastor O