SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/1/2017 5:25 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 “The
Speech of Prayer”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Colossians
4:2
Message of the verses: “Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving;”
In our last SD we ended up looking at a couple of
parables from the gospel of Luke which speaks of prayer and today we want to
give some comments on these two parables.
MacArthur writes “The point of both those parables is
that if unwilling and sinful humans will honor persistence, how much will our
holy, loving heavenly Father?” He then
goes on to quote Virginia Stem Owens who wrote the following about wrestling
with God in earnest prayer:
“Christians have always
interpreted the splitting of the temple veil during the crucifixion as symbolic
of their liberation from the mediated presence
of God. Henceforth they were ‘free’ to
approach Him directly—which is almost like telling someone he is ‘free’ to
stick his head in the lion’s jaws. For
once you start praying there is no guarantee that you won’t find yourself
before Pharaoh, shipwrecked on a desert island, or in a lion’s den.
“This is no cosmic teddy bear we are cuddling up to. As one of the children describes him in C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, ‘he’s not a tame lion’ [Jacques] Ellul is convinced that prayer for persons living in the technological age must be combat, and not just combat with the Evil One, with one’s society, or even one’s divided self, though it is also all of these; it is combat with God. We too must struggle with Him just as Jacob did at Peniel where he earned his name Israel—‘he who strives with God.’ We too must be prepared to say, ‘I will not let you go till you bless me.’
“Consider Moses, again and
again intervening between the Israelites and God’s wrath; Abraham praying for
Sodom; the widow demanding justice of the unjust judge. But in combat with God, Ellul cautions, we
must be ready to bear the consequences:…’Jacob’s thigh was put out of joint,
and he went away lame. However, the most
usual experience will be God’s decision to put to work the person who cried out
to Him…Whoever wrestles with God in prayer puts his whole life at stake.’
“Awful things happen to
people who pray. Their plans are
frequently disrupted. They end up in
strange places. Abraham ‘went out, not
knowing where he was to go’…And Mary’s magnificent prayer at the annunciation,
she finds herself the pariah of Nazareth society…How tempting to up the stakes,
making prayer merely
another consumer product. How
embarrassing to have to admit not only that prayer may get you into prison, as
it did Jeremiah, but also that while you’re moldering away in a miry pit there,
you may have a long list of lamentations and unanswered questions to present to
your Lord. How are we going to tell them
they may end up lame and vagrant if they grasp hold of this God.” (“Prayer—Into the Lion’s Jaw,” Christianity Today, November 19, 1976,
pp. 222-23; italics in the original)
6/1/2017 5:45 PM
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