Mid-Week Meditations – Prayer

CALL.

COME.

PRAY.

Are there 3 stages to prayer?

I have been meditating on this thought since reading this passage in Jeremiah 29

Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 

 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 

I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity”

Jeremiah 29:12-14

There seems to be a progression in the Calling, the Coming and the Praying.

Let me illustrate:

We live on a croft (smallholding) and if my husband is up in the field and I want him or want to get his attention I first of all have to CALL him. I call his name, I shout for him. Then when he hears and turns towards me he beckons me to him, to COME. Now I may not want to come to him, I may not have time to go up the field, I may want him to come and see what I am doing or what I want, but he beckons me to COME, so when I come close I see then what he is doing and then we have conversation.

So too spiritually, often I may call to God, I want Him to come to me and see what I have got going on, but He beckons me to come to Him, and when I come to Him and see what He is doing, what His ways are, then I pray, then we are in conversation and then my prayers are much more likely to be God-focused and according to His will rather than if I had stayed in my own thoughts and troubles.

CALL. COME. PRAY.

So often I fear that I miss out that middle stage; I am in too much of a rush, or I come with my prayer list, my concerns and I just want to trot through them, or I am just too caught up in myself and my own troubles that actually I just want God to see what I am doing as if that is more important than what He is doing!!

Whereas that middle stage is so important; that drawing near, that coming close; that time to pause and listen. It is that stage which leads to conversation, otherwise we are just shouting out our requests and then getting on with our day.

And ofcourse we have the wonderful promises that God ‘will be found by us’; He will not hide Himself from us; but He hears us, we can find Him and He will listen!

So let us: Call upon the Lord. Let us come before Him, draw near to Him and then let the conversation begin – pray.

Your

Writing today along with the #Five Minute Friday group of writers who write for 5 minutes on a one word prompt. Today’s word is: Your

Definition of Your = belonging to or associated with any person in general.

So it is a case of what belongs to you is yours and what belongs to me is mine! Or I have heard it said, “what is mine is mine and what is yours is mine too”!!

But what if we didn’t associate things as being either ‘yours’ or ‘mine’, what if we ‘had all things in common’ like the early church did?

What if we took away the “y” and made it our?

What if when we confessed sin, it was a corporate act, we confess OUR sin. And what if when we worship, we do it corporately and it is OUR act of worship. What if we grieve with those who grieve, so that it is also OUR grief, what if we sit with the sick and weak, so that it becomes OUR weakness and vulnerability? What if we rejoice with those who are happy, so that it also becomes our joy? What if we carry one another’s burdens, so that we don’t feel the weight of them because they are OURS?

Less of the individualism and more of community, brotherhood, sisterhood, church, fellowship, unity, Jesus.

Monday Musings – The Wound is where the Light gets in

I have mulled this saying over for a while, not comprehending it:

The wound is the place where the Light enters you

For surely the very nature of the wound means you want to keep it closed, you want it in the dark, wrapped up. How can you want to let the light into it?

Then yesterday I was doing some very severe pruning in the garden and as I chopped down trees and bushes I realised that actually the amount of light now coming into the garden was remarkable. What may have seemed like wounding, damaging the bushes, was infact for their benefit, the light would get in they would grow stronger, the ones at the front now would have a chance to grow and blossom.

So instead of shunning away from light and hiding our wounds in the dark, if we open them to God and allow His light to shine into them, then we may find that actually the act of wounding was an act of love.

The pain and sorrow in our hearts may be the means of God reaching us, so instead of keeping the pain in, instead of holding tight onto our sorrow, maybe we need to release it and allow the light to come in and heal.

The wound is the place where the Light gets in

Church

Joining today with the #Five Minute Friday group of writers to write on a one word prompt. Today’s prompt is: Church.

I have to say that I have loved, loved, loved on-line church!! I have rejoiced in the way the church has risen to the challenge of putting the gospel ‘out there’, the use of technology and social media which perhaps it once shunned.

I have loved the way in our own congregation different members have taken part in our services when once it was the minister only, seeing those gifts used and brought to the front has been lovely.

However, with Covid restrictions still in place & with us not yet having ‘in-person’ services I have been more concerned and burdened recently about those adherents (church-attenders) who may have been lost and not connected to services, also locally two fellowships have disbandoned and since we are not meeting in person it is difficult to reach out a hand of fellowship and welcome them into a local congregation.

Church, local church, local fellowship and the discipline of meeting together is good, it is beneficial, it is support, it is accountability, but it is also family and keeping the family together and strong in such times is difficult. We have to pray and pray and trust that at the end of all this God will bring in those who will respond to Him, that He will raise up leaders and workers and that we would always be willing to respond with a ‘start with me Lord’ to help bring in the harvest and feed the lambs and sheep.

Mid-week Meditation – Psalm 139 (part 3)

As I was looking at these verses (13-18) of this Psalm I was struck by how it speaks right into our identity, who we are, who we perceive ourselves to be, or even who we wish we were! Let us look at these verses together:

You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body

and knit me together in my mother’s womb.

Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!

Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.

You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion,

as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.

You saw me before I was born.

Every day of my life was recorded in your book.

Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.

Psalm 139: 13-16

There we were in our embryonic stage in our mothers’ wombs, being made, being formed in God’s likeness male or female. No gender fluidity here – one or the other – male or female; God did not make any mistakes here, He did not make any mistakes with us.

This being the case means that we should not be rebelling against ourselves, the people we are, wishing we were someone/something else, we are who God created us to be.

So for me, God created me a short person, He created me female, an introvert, emotional, the ‘wonderfully complex’ person I am within a time and place in history. Yes, I am tainted by sin, yes sin has had it effects on the environment in which I grew and that may have affected genetics and my DNA, but still created, known, formed, loved by God even before I was born.

Every day of my life was recorded in your book – Wow! He knows my every day – the good days, the bad days, the mediocre days and even the tedious days – all written, all recorded in His book of Life.

Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. – Even before I was born, God knew my days, how many there would be, my allotted time-span, He already knew!

So what does this mean for me today?

In many ways it means self-acceptance. Acceptance of who I am as a person, of who God created me to be. So I accept my short stature, I accept my emotional temperament, my complexities and in many ways I accept and learn to live with the things I perceive as short-comings, the giftings I don’t have and the ways I may not be like others.

My life has been known and numbered by God, He has seen the sin which has broken me, the experiences which have tainted me, the scars which have shaped me into who I am today, BUT He is also the One who can redeem my story and change me into who I can become in Christ.

And when I think of these things, then my response is worship:

How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered!

I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand!

And when I wake up,you are still with me!

Psalm 139: 17 & 18

In other words, I am struck by awe at such knowledge! Struck by the thoughts God has of me: the number of them and the good in them.

He saw me being formed in my mother’s womb, He sees me every step of every day, and He sees when I lie down at night and is there again when I wake up in the morning! Surely indeed that is cause to bow the knee and worship?

Could

Joining today with the #Five Minute Friday group of writers who write for 5 minutes on a one word prompt. Today’s prompt is: Could

The word could refers to choice; I could do something, or I could choose not to do it, but I have the means and am able to do it. Whereas the word should give me the impression of having some sort of pressure to it. I feel obligated to do something or other, I feel I should do it.

So choices? Should I, could I, do I want to? Often I do feel pressure, either from society, from friends, from family or even from myself to always be ‘doing’ as if my worth was measured in what I have achieved. At the end of the day do my achievements of the day add up to whether it was a good day or not?

So what if I just made the choice to sit and ‘be’ as opposed to be ‘doing’, could I be satisfied with that, could I count my worth that I have just sat and been with the Lord, been with my own thoughts and feelings?

Could I, should I, do I want to? Choices. Every day there are choices, some days I may choose the right ones, other times I may not always get it right, but always I have the choice to come before the Lord and ask Him, seek Him – could I, should I, do You want me to? And always I have the choice to give thanks – could I, should I; yes I could and yes I should, even if I don’t necessarily want to!

So Lord, make Your paths plain to me, that I may know what I could and should be doing for Your kingdom and may I always choose to give thanks to You. Amen.

Mid-Week Meditation – Psalm 139 (Part 2)

Last week we looked at how we are known to God, and how we cannot wear a mask before Him, for He knows us through and through. This week in verses 7-12 of this Psalm I want to look at how there is no place we can escape from His presence.

Where shall I go from Your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from Your Presence?

If I ascend to heaven You are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, You are there!

If I take the wings of the morning & dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea EVEN THERE

Your hand shall lead me and Your right hand shall hold me.

If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me and the light about me be night;

EVEN the darkness is not dark to You, the night is bright as the day

for darkness is as light with You.

Psalm 139: 7-12

Even there!

There is no end to God’s knowledge or presence – Even there He is with me.

There is no-where God will not lead and hold me, and there is nowhere too dark for God to see me.

Supposing it is the heights of heaven or the depths of despair, and everywhere in-between even there God is with me. All the in-betweens – God is there. Heaven & Sheol, Morning and night, Light and Darkness, all are the same to God, His light so shines in them all that they are the same to Him, the Creator fills all of His universe with His presence; even there.

So whether we are at one of the extremes today or just in the ordinary, in-between Even There God is with us to uphold us. Where ever we are, we are in a place God can reach us, there is nowhere out of His reach, God the creator fills all of His universe, even all the empty spaces.

This is a Psalm of faith and trust, trust and knowledge that Even There, even in that hard place God’s Hand and Will and Grace can hold us. So in acceptance, in rest, in surrender let us trust our ‘Even Theres’ to God, our Creator, our Redeemer, our Saviour.

He can still reach us …. even there!

Mid-Week Meditations – Psalm 139

As we get used to wearing face coverings I wonder how much we can now cover up of our emotions, the way we present ourselves to the world? Our smile may be hidden behind our masks, but do we hide our grumpiness or feelings, do we even try to hide our identity and hope that no-one recognizes us?

We hide so much from the world, even from our friends and family, we hide behind that facade of “I’m fine”; “I’m doing okay”, when sometimes we are anything but fine and the illusions of control we have is fast slipping through our fingers.

As we come to the first 6 verses of this Psalm we see that we cannot hide from God, nothing goes without His notice, He doesn’t just SEE all we do and say, but He KNOWS us, He knows why we do things, what brought that thing on, He knows our background, He knows our hurts, He knows the things which have shaped us.

You have searched me, Lord,

    and you know me.

² You know when I sit and when I rise;

    you perceive my thoughts from afar.

³ You discern my going out and my lying down;

    you are familiar with all my ways.

⁴ Before a word is on my tongue

    you, Lord, know it completely.

⁵ You hem me in behind and before,

    and you lay your hand upon me.

⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,

    too lofty for me to attain.

Psalm 139:1-6

With God we can’t hide behind any masks of ‘coping’, any lies of ‘I’m fine’. We are known by God.

He knows all our activities – He knows when we get up, when we lie down, when we go out, when we come back in, who we are with, and how we have felt, He knows it all.

He knows our scattered thoughts, He knows our thought processes, He knows the chains which connects them which to others would seem random! He knows our words what we are going to say even before it is out of our mouth!! I wonder if we would cringe if we thought about this when we utter unkind, selfish words?

What does He do? He hems us in, He draws us closer and closer until there is no escape and there is just Him. Breathe. Just God. No need for any pretense, no need for any mask, no need to put on a show, just God.

Breathe.

He lays His hand gently upon us, stilling our wayward thoughts, our guilts, our anxieties, our fears, our worries.

He is.

Peace.

Be still.

God knows not just what we are going through, but God knows us. Breathe. Be still.

No need to hide, He knows, He knows it all and still He draws, still He wants us closer, He wants us to come, bare, exposed, vulnerable, to be healed, to be calmed to be stilled, to be in awe.

God.

Breathe.

Be still.

You are known.

You are loved.

Breathe.