The heart behind prayer.

*I wrote this a week ago after a really hectic week emotionally/spiritually/physically.

This week has been rough, to put it simply. And it's only Wednesday...

I tend to be my Father's stubborn child. I tense up when things don't go my way, get angry, throw a spiritual/emotional temper tantrum, only to eventually relax in His arms and follow His guidance. I don't know why I make it so difficult, but I'm thankful my Father is stern and patient with me.

The weeks before this were focused on prayer. The challenge to pray kept popping up everywhere I went. Passages. Sermons. Teachers. Lectures. Books. Blogs. Friends. Even people around me have pointed out how much prayer has been coming up within the past few weeks.

He was showing me this whole aspect of trusting Him wildly, praying in faith, finding security in Him, absorbing His heart and praying confidently as His daughter and co-heir with Jesus. I had lots and lots of questions, and still do for the most part, but I've learned a few things within the past month or so.

Firstly, I've learned that prayer is one of the most neglected aspects of my relationship with Jesus. I'm sure you can relate. It's easy to let prayer time dwindle or to sleep later than normal. It's difficult to make an exerted effort to clear our minds and focus our heart on communicating with Jesus. Life can be frustrating, and busy, and often self-centered. I know this. I battle with it. I'm sure we all do. We so quickly neglect prayer. Why though? What is the heart of the issue? I think we've categorised prayer as another spiritual practise that we must do to be the ideal Christian. It's just another check box we've added to our list. Our motives have changed. Our understanding has vanished. Our hearts have lost sight of the gift of prayer, and the beautiful Father who gives it to us.

Secondly, knowing our Father's heart is crucial to our prayer lives. Why do we pray? Why do we lay ourselves before this Jesus? Why should we speak to Him about everything? Because He is our loving, compassionate Father. He desires to hear from us. He wants us to experience the joy of His presence. And we learn about who exactly He is so that we can pray accordingly.

I've been having a really difficult week. I knew I needed to sit and just talking to Him about it all, but I was upset and angry and confused. Then my lack of desire sent me into a fit of self-condemnation. How could I not pray? Why didn't I force myself? I had lost focus of who He was, and concentrated on myself.

Carey e-mailed me this earlier today, and my eyes welled up with tears. It was from a letter she had written to me 3 years ago after we had a terrible fight. If you know the story behind this, you know how much love is found in these words.

"I love you and Ernie loves you. Immensely. We CHOSE you. We still choose you. As much as your words hurt me, I still love you. I love you unconditionally."

And that is exactly what our Heavenly Father wants us to understand. He wants us to be wrapped up in His embrace and to hear His voice assuring us, "I chose you. I love you unconditionally. Immensely."

We add prayer to our never-ending list of things we must do to be worthy of Him. We struggle to be obedient. We've lost sight of our Father's heart. We've lost sight of the character of God.

We need a change of heart. A fresh understanding. A heavenly outlook.

We pray because we understand that this God has a passionate and holy love for us. He chose us. We are His dearly loved children. We pray because He is our Abba who wants to give us good gifts that are found within His will. He wants to align our hearts to His and change our desires so they are satisfactory and fulfilling in all that He is for us. He wants us to bring our requests and prayers and praise before Him regularly, laying everything we are before Him, and trust Him to be God in our lives. He wants us to have the freedom and confidence to address Him as Dad, and to be transparent with Him, acknowledging Him hourly, begging for His guidance. This is the heart of prayer.

And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints. Ephesians 6:18

In that day you will ask the Father in My (Jesus) name. I am not saying that I will ask the Father on your behalf. No, the Father Himself loves you because you have loved Me and have believed that I came from God. John 16:16-17



*God has been showing me SO much about prayer within the past few weeks, and this is simply my little compilation of what I really saw Him repeating. I don't know everything about prayer, and I know some who are very opinionated about this topic (that is all a part of studying theology at a seminary). BUT I do believe these two points are simple. We've lost the focus of prayer, and we don't know our Father's heart like we should. Those two things influence our prayer lives tremendously. I feel God is calling us to come back to the heart of it all. Falling in love with Him. Wanting to spend time with Him. Wanting to know Him deeper than we already do.

I'm praying that we would fall in love with Him and consciously seek Him and draw near to Him through prayer. That... "prayer would become as beautifully unconscious as breathing, an ongoing thread of conversation. It is the expression of a life that says: I am so known by this God-Man that all I want to do is be with Him."

Last week I saw Jesus in the streets.

It's been exactly a week, but my mind is still processing what happening last week on the way home from church. James and I had just finished up with a handful of 8^th and 9^th graders, teaching, talking, questioning and being questioned. I was so thankful on the way home and I just couldn't get over the fact that they were truly grasping the depth of the gospel and how it impacts their lives, day by day. I remember being there. I remember sitting in very similar circumstances, learning about this Jesus and how His love changes me and everything around me. I was on a high, thinking and dreaming about all the plans that the Lord has for their lives. And then, my little moment was shattered. Into a lot of different pieces. Everywhere.

You see, we drove past a man in a wheelchair. The wind was bitterly cold and the raindrops were mean. My heart dropped from it's high straight down into my stomach. The few seconds of driving past him as if we both didn't notice him felt like hours. My heart dropped more and more the farther we drove. It hurt. And it should have. James and I both looked at one another, and he turned around. Both of us were really unsure of what we were going to do, but we knew we couldn't just pass him on our way to the warmth of our bed and the comfort of a full stomach.

He was sick. More than just physically. Though his body categorised him as a man, his mind clearly deamed him a child. At the same time the constant jitter caused by parkinson's disease made the situation even worse. He kept reminding us that his parents didn't want him. He was left here on the streets to fend for himself. He was born with physical limitations that left him in a wheelchair. Abandoned. Sick. Hurt. Alone.

We went back to our flats. I made soup and James got together clothing. One of the most humbling moments of my life happened last week. He couldn't feed himself because of the continual shaking, so I fed him. Like a child. With my hands. He couldn't put his clothing on himself. So I pulled a hoodie over his head. I put his arms through the sleeves and tucked his hands in the pockets, trying to keep him as warm as possible. He kept looking up at me, calling me mommy. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to react. I honestly wanted to run away from the pain and deep hurt of the reality that this man lived this life.

Daily.

Hourly.

But Christ didn't run away from me when I was sick, and fatherless, and abandoned, and lost.

This gospel that the youth were clinging to and starting to grasp, it changes us. Sometimes I think I've got it all figured out. And then God changes me, and reveals more of Himself to my self-absorbed heart. The same thing is happening within people all around me, and I love it. I love the way He works.

The world tells us to cling to material wealth, and safety, and to focus on tomorrow rather than the day before us. Jesus encourages us to trust Him daily for our protection and provision, to focus on His will for this day, and to seek first His kingdom above all else. I see this practically as a friend makes the difficult choice to wrecklessly abandon the “things” in life that falsely promise satisfaction and success, and even normalcy, for the purpose of those in the streets knowing Him. I love it! He has purposefully decided to live on the streets, among the least of these, for the sake of them knowing Christ. He doesn't have a home to go to at the end of a difficult day. He has the contents of a backpack with him, and that is it. He has literally counted all things as loss compared to knowing Christ and partaking in His sufferings.

Christ came to us. Jesus was seated next to God, in perfect fellowship within the Trinity. Yet He was obedient to the will of His Father and took on the form of man, becoming flesh, living and breathing, and intentionally speaking, healing, providing, teaching, and much much more for us. He accepted, willingly, the sin of the universe – every single sin that had ever been committed by every single human being that had, and was, and would walk the earth. He took that upon Himself, nailing it brutally to the cross as His body was stretched out for the world to see. He sought us. He stopped, and bent low to us, to bring us back to the Father and restore our brokenness.

This is the gospel, and it changes us.

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry, and provide the poor wandered with shelter – when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness wil go before you, and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the LORD will answer; you will cry for help, and He will say: Here am I....and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry, and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday. Isaiah 58:6-9, 10

I'm not saying that we must all go out and sell all of our possessions to serve God. But I know that God wants and desires us to focus on Him. He wants us to be in a state of understanding of the gospel, of His love, of the way He sought us out. How do we not want to spend ourselves on behalf of those who don't know Him? We should want to bend low and do everything in our power for others to know the gospel and the love of Jesus.

Then the King will say to those on His right, “Come, you who are blessed by My Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave Me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave Me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited Me in, I needed clothes and you clothed Me, I was sick and you looked after Me, I was in prison and you came to visit Me... I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the leart of these brothers of Mine, you did for Me.” Matthew 25: 34-36, 40

Last week, I saw Jesus in the streets.