We have a long way to go right now in learning to pray for our friends, and I'm smack in the midst of this journey with all my readers, not having attained. Not at all.
During seminary, my friend Jenn gave me a willow angel figurine of a girl on her knees, praying. Jenn said it reminded her of me because I was such a prayer warrior. I remember being completely confused by her saying that and wondering, honestly, if she was just making it up. In hindsight, I probably presented much differently than I was behind closed doors at the time, and there was also the issue of the pit of self-condemnation of which I struggled to climb out which compacted my dismay at being called a prayerful individual. I kept that willow angel though, and I treasured Jenn's words. She saw something in me that I didn't see in myself, I thought. Interestingly enough, more than a few people over the years have told me that they appreciate my praying heart. And, typically, I'm quite confounded trying to figure out the words that are coming out of their mouths. I don't feel like a praying person. I talk a lot. I've got a big mouth. And I most certainly CARE a heck of a lot about people I know, don't know, and watch on TV, (yes. I've literally worried and prayed for the Kardashian sisters multiple times in my life... like I'm their best friend, their resident blond-sister-pray-er), but an actual saint, like someone who just prays for people? That doesn't FEEL like me. I have to be reminded, and it takes patience.
A: "Uh humm.... Mommy. We didn't PRAY yet. Why are you eating?"
Mommy: [mouth full] "Oh. Ry rad- rust a recond, ret me svallow."
But perhaps in this political climate, this Corona-virus-clad climate, this cultural climate, PRAYING for people, (yes...OTHERS...not ourselves) is exactly what we need to be doing.
Mr. Chambers brought it home again this morning. I haven't read him in a few weeks but picked him a few moments ago with the thought that perhaps God had something to say, and ... God did. I'm going to quote the whole thing because obviously Chambers writes it better, more concisely, than I can paraphrase.
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And the Lord turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends. — Job 42:10
"The plaintive, self-centred, morbid kind of prayer, a dead-set that I want to be right, is never found in the New Testament. The fact that I am trying to be right with God is a sign that I am rebelling against the Atonement. “Lord, I will purify my heart if You will answer my prayer; I will walk rightly if You will help me.” I cannot make myself right with God, I cannot make my life perfect; I can only be right with God if I accept the Atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ as an absolute gift. Am I humble enough to accept it? I have to resign every kind of claim and cease from every effort, and leave myself entirely alone in His hands, and then begin to pour out in the priestly work of intercession. There is much prayer that arises from real disbelief in the Atonement. Jesus is not beginning to save us, He has saved us, the thing is done, and it is an insult to ask Him to do it.
If you are not getting the hundredfold more, not getting insight into God’s word, then start praying for your friends, enter into the ministry of the interior. “The Lord turned the captivity of Job when he prayed for his friends.” The real business of your life as a saved soul is intercessory prayer. Wherever God puts you in circumstances, pray immediately, pray that His Atonement may be realised in other lives as it has been in yours. Pray for your friends now; pray for those with whom you come in contact now." -Myutmost.org
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Are we praying for people? Or are we just preaching at them? (Asking myself that question). Are we telling them how they should be thinking right now, or are we coming before the throne of God and asking that GOD might increase in their hearts? If we aren't doing the latter, we need to shut our mouths and close up shop until we are willing to do it. There is nothing that needs to be said that cannot wait until we have first talked to the author of all the words, the Word of Life Himself.
That's all. That's all I got this morning. I am going back to praying. There is too much at stake NOT to seek God and ask that God enlarge the Spirit that raised Christ from the dead, the Holy Spirit, in each of our hearts. Come Lord Jesus. Just come. Amen.
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