2020 Prayer

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Have you given much thought recently to what Jesus prays for you? I hadn’t, but a few days ago it struck me that He was praying for me. So, I asked Him, “Lord, what is your prayer for me this year?” I listened and waited and, in time, I heard.

I belong to a “pack” of 10 women. We have ministered together and lead worship at many events over the last couple of decades. We know each other all too well and have prayed each other through the ups and downs of life. With 10 of us, that translates into a lot of prayers!

When we were rehearsing weekly, we would always spend time in prayer. When it was someone’s birthday, it was our tradition to eat sweets then pray only for the birthday girl. I can’t tell you what it does to your heart when you hear nine people each talk to God specifically about you and for you. It’s surprisingly hard to sit still and let people love you in that way. It often moved the birthday girl to tears.

Right now, Jesus is lifting throne-room prayers for you. He knows you all too well and has fervently prayed you through the ups and downs of life. His continual thoughts toward you outnumber the grains of sand in all the deserts and seas, and He daily bears your burdens. So great is His care for you!

Imagine listening in on those prayers. It would move us to tears. I believe we can know, at least in part, what He’s praying, but we need to be in the throne room to hear. So, step into the Most Holy Place by His blood and set yourself before Him in stillness and quiet surrender. Lean into Him who is leaning into you so full of tender love, and let Him love you. Ask what’s on His heart for you this year, and ask for ears to hear it. He wants you to know. Ask and it shall be given.

Jesus waits for those who will take time to listen and open themselves to the inconceivable…who will sink into Him in quiet surrender and be swept up into the impossible.

Open your mouth

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I asked God for a verse this morning, something from His heart to mine, and He gave me this:

Open wide your mouth and I will fill it. Psalm 81:10b

When my boys were little guys, I would bring a spoon of deliciousness to their mouths and say, “Open wide.” Sometimes they would open like little birds, and sometimes they would stubbornly hold their lips together in silent refusal. So, I tried the old airplane hangar trick with special effect sounds and all. Sometimes it worked, but often they stuck to their stubborn refusal.

God asks me to open my heart and soul as wide as I can to receive His deliciousness. He promises to fill and flood me with the abundant richness of His own life and satisfy my deepest yearnings. My part is to simply open wide and receive it. His part is to fill me with more than I can hold.

I’m afraid there are times when I stubbornly press my lips together not trusting or believing His gift. I fall into the performance trap and think I need to do something to earn it or cause God to respond and fill me. Consider the baby birds. They do nothing but receive what’s given. God implores us to eat what is good, and let our soul delight in the abundance He so freely gives.

Andrew Murray wrote, “We have been made to be a vessel into which God can pour out His life, His beauty, His happiness, His love. We are created to be a receptacle and a reservoir of divine heavenly life and blessing, just as much as God can put into us.” [1]

He will fill you and me with exactly what we need and so much more, more than all we can ask or imagine. Just open wide and receive it.

Chew on this: Psalm 81:10, John 10:10, Ephesians 3:19-20 and Isaiah 55:2.

[1] Murray, Andrew. (1895). The Deeper Christian Life, An Aid to Its Attainment. Chicago, Illinois: Fleming H. Revell Company.

Full Face to the Sun

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In the spring and summer, I curse them and nuke them, but this week I admired their tenacity. I was running along on a cold sunny morning, turned a corner onto a patch of grass and was struck by a single happy face looking up at me. Seeing the yellow spot of joy against the frosty green, I had to smile at the dandelion’s humble courage and perseverance.

The little spot of joy seemed undaunted by its current difficult season of life. Oblivious to all the frosty reasons for dormancy, it kept its face fully set upon the glory of the sun and saw nothing else. Regardless of its circumstances, it shone as if reflecting the very orb of the sun.

I recently finished reading a book on the life of Lilias Trotter, artist and missionary to North Africa from 1888 until her death in 1928. She wrote of a day in a wood and reflected upon a “single bright spot shining as a great golden star. It was just a dandelion, and half-withered – but it was full face to the sun, and had caught into its heart all the glory it could hold… There is an ocean of grace and love and power lying all around us…and it is ready to transfigure us, as the sunshine transfigured the dandelion, and on the same condition – that we stand full face to God. Turn full your soul’s vision to Jesus, and look and look at Him, and a strange dimness will come over all that is apart from Him. For He is worthy to have all there is to be had in the heart that He has died to win.”[1] Helen Limmel was so inspired by Lilias’ challenge to “turn full your soul’s vision to Jesus, and look and look at Him,” that she wrote the hymn “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus.”

He is worthy to have all there is to be had in this heart that He died to win. And He will give it all the glory it can hold if I look and look and keep looking full face at Jesus.

[1] Rockness, Miriam Huffman. (2003). A Passion for the Impossible, The Life of Lilias Trotter. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Discovery House Publishers.

The Sonoran

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A few weeks ago, God gave me an amazing gift of a weekend in the Sonoran Desert. The desert is unique in its simplicity and stillness. The sense of rest and thirstiness that permeates the arid land seeps into the lingering soul.

Sonoran Desert, Tucson, Arizona

For the past three months, God has pressed me with this one thing – to be still before Him and wait patiently for Him (Psalm 37:7). So, I have been holding my soul quietly open to God and waiting on Him. It has been both a season of relinquishment and of soul expansion. The desert is a place of both.

Its expansiveness and silent power create a sense of smallness and marvel in the heart. It gives an interesting sense of peace and freedom. When I come to realize that I’m surrounded by Someone so much greater than myself and my circumstances, it’s gives a sense of peace and freedom knowing He’s in control.

Because of its intensity, the desert is also a place where shadows are sought for relief and protection. I was told by a local desert dweller to walk in the shade (my Oregonian soul was meandering about in the full sun). Resting in the shadow of the Almighty has taken on new meaning.

Saguaros of the Sonoran, Tucson, Arizona

The iconic saguaros – the silent sentinels of the Sonoran – seem to wait in quiet expectation with arms uplifted. Interesting side note – a saguaro doesn’t start growing arms until about 75 years old. The young ones stand as an arrow pointing heavenward, while the old ones have grown more ways to do so. In desert years, I’m still young. But even if I have little buds or no arms at all yet, I’m lifting them up on the inside!

God has been gradually drawing me into arid nothingness to show me His oasis of abundant life, genuine joy and soul rest. I’m coming to realize more fully that I can do nothing, and from that place He can and will do everything. Indeed, He is everything and so my soul waits in silence for God alone. If one doesn’t enter the desert with humility, one certainly leaves with it.

Blank Spaces

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Some of you know that I’ve been retired for two months and have been wondering what I’ve been up to. Well, some art, some grandchildren and a lot of silence.

Over the past 12 months, God has erased three significant responsibilities from the white board of my life and brought me into a season of stillness and solitude – a blank space, so to speak. I was surrounded by people to help, problems to solve, answers to give, meetings to run to, places to go, projects and deadlines. Then I woke up July 1 and, poof, I was nobody and didn’t need to be anywhere. At week three, I felt a downshift and slowing on the inside. It’s very disorienting and redefining but gloriously freeing. And it’s an odd mix of grieving losses with joyous anticipation.

A dear friend recently reminded me of a quote from Oswald Chambers: When God gives you a blank space, don’t fill it in. So, I have been doing a lot of listening and contemplation and leaving the blank space blank.

Yesterday as I read from II Corinthians 3, verse 18 jumped off the page and grabbed me: And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

David Benner wrote, “Contemplation is a way of opening our self to the ineffable – to something that is beyond us and upon which we gaze with awe.” He described it as “leaning toward God in faith with longing, openness and love.”[1] This contemplative quiet and openness to the ineffable has been transforming. God has brought me into a deeper knowing of Him. But, to my surprise, the path also wound through hidden places of my own soul.

I sought an encounter with God, but I first encountered the unwhole parts of me hiding in the shadows. Yet it was the encounter with my unwholeness that revealed how truly wide and long and high and deep is His love for me. He gently embraces me just as I am in my weakness and insecurity, and loves me too much to leave me there. His unconditional compassionate love for all of me is absolutely staggering.

In the contemplative quiet, He transforms me from the inside out to look and think and live more and more like Christ. So, I wait in the blank space and listen and gaze with awe upon the Eternal Majesty. In His perfect timing, He will show me the next step.

When God gives you a blank space in your day, your week or your life, you might want to resist the temptation to fill it in.

[1] Benner, D. G. (2010). Opening to God, Lectio Divina and Life as Prayer. Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press.

Here am I

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Last week, I was struck by two statements in Isaiah 65:1-2. “To a nation that did not call on my name, I said, ‘Here am I, here am I.’ All day long I have held out my hands to an obstinate people….”

The vision of God calling and reaching out to people who disregard Him struck me deeply. Many times, I have disregarded God in the craziness and chaos of living life and distanced myself from Him. All the while, He says…Here am I, here am I. He repeats it to grab my attention and underscore His intent. All day long He stretches out toward me longing for me to reach back. It’s overwhelming and completely undoing that Yahweh, the Eternal Majesty, continually reaches for my self-centered preoccupied soul.

God is the silent footfall at my side leaving invisible tracks of glittering glory winding through the reality of my messy days. He does not pursue me for anything in me, but what lies in the core of Him. We are an undeserving obstinate people, that God deeply loves and gave His life to redeem. His open hands are an open door to a deeper dimension of knowing Him. I cannot get my mind around why the transcendent God would open Himself to a personal encounter with me.

When I seek Him and when I don’t, when I cry for help and when I’m self-sufficient, all day long He holds out His hands to me. Catch that? All day long He is reaching for you. Right now, before you read further, pause with that picture. Envision the open hands of God before you. Sit with it. Ponder it.

He is reaching through all of my life whether I see Him or not. He says, “Here am I” in the unfolding Spring bud. In the dropping Autumn leaf, “Here am I.”  In the first beat of a new heart and the stilling of another, “Here am I.” In the colors of dawn and in the deepest darkness of night, “Here am I.” When surrounded by a never-ending stream of issues and people and when alone in the silence of myself, “Here am I.” Here am I in your mess. Here am I in your joy. Here am I when you face challenges and struggles. I am named “God with you.” Name Me in your peace and in your turmoil. Name Me at the insurmountable and impossible. When the way ahead is unclear, here am I, I AM with you. See Me.

There’s a phrase from the movie Avatar that has found its way into my soul and into my dialog with God: I see you. It means, I see your love. I see your heart and soul for me and you mean everything to me.

Every moment holds the possibility of a personal, intimate encounter with the transcendent God. This is the sum and whole of the journey – to respond to His loving invitation and be filled with the fullness of His life. My part is to turn toward Him in trusting openness throughout my day, and say, “I see You.”

Why does He so persistently reach for me? What does He want? Does He want me to spend more time reading scripture, volunteering at church, taking up a cause, giving more money, helping people, surrendering my time and talents to Him, etc., etc.? I used to think so. Those doings are outcomes but they are not what God is so intentionally and passionately pursuing. Maybe He’s opening His hands to take my fears, my worries, my struggles and my pain so that I can rest in His sweet embrace and simply be with Him. His whisper of “Here am I” is His reach of tender compassion. He wants me see Him and sink into His love. He will do the rest as it most pleases Him.

I see You, and You mean everything to me.