A Time for Faith – for Lovers of God

For the last month I’ve stepped into another unwanted transition. It isn’t the first time I’ve been in survival mode within five years, but this might be the bleakest. Things could be worse, of course, so I count my blessings, but not without questioning the Lord in my prayer times. Hmm…I’ve wondered, for example, why I’m encountering what begins as particularly well-suited opportunities, that turn into closed doors and deferred hope. Knowing the particulars involved, I can easily blame our hurting economy, which is also in survival mode.

The timely sermons at church encourage me not to worry but trust in God, to make Him my one and only. He’s the Source of all we need. The Lord continues to get His point across to me. His mercy and understanding is a flood of grace whenever needed. It comes on an “as needed basis” for those He calls His own. I am also looking hard to find a job, but I start to worry if I think too much about how and where to live, and about those who need me. I try to keep focused on Jesus, who walked on water to get across a stormy sea and to the place He was heading.

It seems I am sitting in a boat, it’s terribly dark, stormy, everything is tossing and heaving, and I don’t even know which shore I should head towards.  At this moment, all I see is Jesus and He’s  barely within sight of my pitching, frightening situation. So, I live these days in faith and trust, but not without occasions of panic.

Putting the present aside for a moment, I perused some of my earlier blogs here. I read the one “Mountains of Glory” which, by the way, gets the most hits. I reminisced about my mountaintop experience with the Lord when I went to the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem and the Mount of Beatitudes along the Sea of Galilee. That was in 2009. In 2010 I completed the novel the Lord inspired me to write: His Kingdom Come. It turned out wonderfully. 2011 hasn’t been so kind.

My past blog helped me remember the beauty of Jerusalem and the Galilee area, Israel’s two sacred mountains, the inspiration I experienced and the acute sense of the Lord’s presence I felt there. The holy ground of those mountains beneath my feet, the view my eyes beheld . . . the memory is still vivid. I felt on top of the world there and God’s Spirit burned true and real within me. Those were bright, heavenly places. And I knew then that we live in the days ushering in the climax of the Ages – the nearness of our Beloved’s return. So, although I am in a different place right now, I know it’s not forever and God will intervene for me. 

The other day I read Luke 18:8 in which Jesus unveiled His heart so poignantly: “…When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?”

Faith means everything to the Lord. I’d like to live this time of uncertainty and at least give Him a little pleasure – if nothing else, that He will see my faith and smile.

Practice, Practice, and Practice – for Lovers of God

PRACTICE, PRACTICE, AND PRACTICE

Righteousness is something I don’t normally think about. I try to live the good Christian life. I know that Yeshua has earned my righteousness. That has been the extent of my ideas about it. However, in James, I read something and, because I have been “practicing” Christ’s presence, some new things occurred to me.

Here’s the sentence in James: “The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results. (James 5:16b)”

Do my prayers produce wonderful results? Hmm… I think they do sometimes. I tend to leave that mystery where it belongs: in God’s hands. However, on further thought … if I can do something about producing better results, as James must think possible, how does one go about it? He admonishes believers to “confess our sins to each other, and to pray for each other so that we might be healed.” Is being “healed” to become righteous? Yes. But God has urged me to go further.

This Scripture text from James is in context of a letter he wrote likely to those in the Jerusalem fellowship. It was meant to give them the courage to be righteous and to pray and see powerful results of their “earnest” prayer. I don’t think he meant that the prayer would be long, frequent, or full of emotion—which could define “earnest.” I think earnest in this sense also could mean a “fervent work”—perhaps another way to say it is to “keep practicing”… work at it … be earnest about it. Does that mean to repeat the prayer? It could. But I think it means something more. First, though, the other piece of this is to be “righteous” and if we add “earnest” what do we get? How do we combine these qualities?How do we gain a righteous character and lifestyle? How do we facilitate the Lord’s righteousness to live through us?

I think the answers to these question lies simply in this: Put God and His Kingdom first, others before ourselves, and trust God with patience. Actually, it is to act upon the two great commandments and keep the faith. However, don’t we all know, it is one thing to know what we should do and another thing to actually accomplish it. Also, we have troubles, worries, and enemies that test our desire and ability to be righteous. This is all part of living in the world (in it but not of it); and we know we were not destined to be here that long and God will bring us FULLY into His kingdom, in due time (this is the patience part).

If we put God before us and make choices based on what we think He’d like us to do, I think that would naturally make us righteous, and like HIM. But this needs to happen on a moment by moment basis, from little thoughts to big decisions. The Lover and Maker of our souls is as close to us as is our own breath. Can we be more conscious of this? Can we, knowing of His Presence in us, bring captive every thought, every desire, every action? This would make us righteous and we’d become the Lovers we were meant to be.

I have often tried to “practice God’s presence” but fail at it—my mind is a wild donkey going its own way during my waking and sleeping hours. This is based on the habit of decades of years. Most of us would like to continually focus on God, but we have to fill our thoughts with other matters we deal with all day long. What if we tried to control our wandering mind, that habit of the decades, and started to practice focusing on God?

Perhaps through practice, practice, practice—we could keep our minds stayed on HIM. Here are some things I think we could do without too much trouble: We can glance in His direction often throughout the day, maybe just an inward smile, or even a groan meant as a prayer might do; we can look to Him regarding any matter at hand, moment by moment. Might we talk to him about the smallest of things? We can stay on our tiptoes, noticing whatever He may be bringing our way or showing us. We must take time to reflect when we have quiet, alone times. We must create space to do this for it is essential to our relationship with Him—and our Presence to Him will become habit.

If we fervently did whatever we could to be AWARE OF GOD’S PRESENCE we would be praying earnestly and we would certainly become more righteous, in a natural and true way. Nothing about our prayer or righteousness would be, for us, something to muster up. We would shine quite naturally through the constant and ongoing union with the Lord in us. Our prayers would bring powerful results. In fact, they’d be full of His Presence. All we need to do is to earnestly practice, practice, and practice the presence of our Lord dwelling within us. Don’t you think God longs for us to live with Him in this way?