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| Try as you might you just can't break through. |
Have
you ever been paralyzed by prayer?
I
think this happens to more than a few believers, especially when they are
facing big decisions. With great
earnestness we pray seeking God’s will and we wait for His leading. Sometimes the Lord answers our prayers with
great clarity and sometimes Heaven is silent.
Answer
me honestly; have you ever wanted a burning bush experience? We pray and we pray and we pray and we get no
answer. There is not willful sin in our
lives but there is no leading, direction, or calling. We can’t stay put and we won’t move without
conviction of the Lord’s leading. We
throw out fleeces and with the greatest honesty that we as humans can muster;
we look for God to act and still nothing.
Un- willing to “move ahead” of God we wait and hear nothing. From somewhere deep in the heart of our
conscience we begin to feel pressure. We
examine and then reexamine our motives to try to have them as pure as possible
as we ask for God to reveal His will.
Still nothing. With the growing
silence there is a growing feeling of dread, we feel like something is wrong, and
in this equation we know it is not God.
The longer and the harder we pray the deeper the silences of heaven.
I
am well aware there are a multitude of reasons why prayers are not
answered. In my journal, I have about
four and a half pages of lists and reasons for unanswered prayers. I have explored the possibilities from one
end to the other about Divine silence. I
still don’t have the answers to resolve the struggle. I suppose if I did, then I suppose that God
would be entirely too small. The fact of
the matter is that sometimes we don’t know.
And when we don’t know we can sometimes be paralyzed by prayer. Not moving till prayers are answered and all
the while being convicted that the status quo is not acceptable either.
Perhaps
I am the only one with this struggle. If
that is the case feel free to stop reading or if you want to send advice do
so. But if your answers are very
simplistic or very long I may not read them.
Waiting for the break-through we return to the passages of scripture that
give us hope. We believe them and we
trust the Author, but we are no closer to resolution. We repeat the clichés to ourselves that we
have shared with others and we realize that while true, they can have a hallow
sound to them. “When you can’t see God’s
hand, trust His heart” is absolutely true, but it doesn’t solve anything.
James
4:13-15 (NASB) Come now, you who say,
“Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there
and engage in business and make a profit.” Yet you do
not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a
little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord
wills, we will live and also do this or that.”
We
often misapply this passage to say that we are to wait for the Lord to lead us
in all our decisions. That is not what
James is saying. This is not a call to
be paralyzed by prayer or by waiting. It
is a call to hold our plans with an open hand.
It is not a demand that we have an angel descend on a stairway to Heaven
and hand us a scroll with a life plan from God written on it. It is a call to answer the heart beat that
the Lord has put into our lives and to delight in the understanding that God
may make minor adjustments, major corrections, or complete reversals. It is not life to be paralyzed by prayer; it
is the life we have empowered by prayer.
I
know for most Christians this is simple stuff.
But when one approached learning God’s will with great earnestness it is
easy to become a little tight. Maybe I
project onto God my concepts of climbing the ecclesiastical ladder. Maybe I am expecting God to treat me like
some Christians where my status, role and performance are apt to be judged by
arbitrary standards. Again the problem
is not God it is my perception of God.
St
Augustine once said, “Love, and do what you will.” (He is misquoted as saying
“Love God and do what you will”.) The
point is that when we are motivated by love for God and our fellow man it is
okay to act as we are convinced is best.
(Yes, we could offer a thousand disclaimers here). The loving thing maybe the hardest thing, it
maybe the most fun thing, it may seem irrational. As long as Love for God and man His supreme
creation is the motive we don’t have to worry about getting it perfect. And that may be the hang up; we don’t want to
move till we know the perfect will of God in a given moment. If we got the perfect plan we would muff it
up. Better to have loving, self-giving
imperfection than supplication-induced immobility.
This
will have personal meaning for me, but most of all it takes the pressure off
and allows me to enjoy being a child of God.
I will share this adventure in these pages, but if you hear I have gone
off the deep end believe it. I am hoping
to go deeper and deeper into God’s love.
Prayer
Request. Tonight is my Author Release
event for my new book. I have put a lot
of chips on the table with this book and (forgiving the gambling metaphor)
would be most thankful if you would ask God to bless this book both as it
touches lives and in sales.
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