What are you praying for?

Okay, got hit with this a couple of weeks ago during a sermon at church. Still trying to digest it so thought it would help to write through it.

Imagine two canvases. On the left is a painting of a bright sunshine lit day. Across the top of the canvas, there is a crisp blue sky with only a few white clouds. In the foreground is a perfectly still lake with smooth as glass blue water. Rising in the distance is a majestic Colorado type mountain perhaps snow still visible on the peaks. All around there are beautiful trees with unmoving leaves depicting the calm peaceful tranquility of the morning scene.

Now on the right is another painting. Same location but this time the bright sunshine is gone and a storm is in full fury. The lake is churning with large white capped waves crashing against each other. The mountain is no longer visible through the massive dark storm clouds. The trees are bent over as they are being whipped by the gale force winds. Yet, on the lake there is a small boat being tossed at the mercy of the waves and wind. You can see inside the boat and there is a man asleep completely relaxed inside all of the turmoil.

So here is the question. What are you praying for? Do your prayers focus on God bringing you the perfect day or beg God to build your trust in Him so that the circumstances mean less? Do you want to dictate the how the picture should look or do you work on how you should look in the picture? Is your desire for God to deliver something you can be peaceful with or to trust him to bring peace to you no matter how it is delivered?

I have pondered these questions for weeks. I hope it strikes something with you as it did with me.

Playing It Safe

"A ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for."

Grace Murray Hopper

So what were we built for? Are we here only to play it safe? So much of our focus tends to be on keeping ourselves tightly tethered to the shore.

However, are there plans waiting beyond the horizon that we just can't quite see? Something that may not come easy but a passion burns inside that requires pulling up anchor and setting sail.

Over the past few years I have met so many of the people that have headed out to find what God had waiting for them. No promises, no guarantees, just an over whelming love for God and a deep desire to trust what he had put on their hearts. Some are on the other side of the world while others are just down the street. It is amazing to see the peace and freedom in someone who finds what they were really built for.

God's miracles show up through us when we pursue the things other then those we can do on our own.

The Sea

“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea” - Antoine De Saint Exupery

How often do we as Christians wrap ourselves in the details of building the ship instead of casting the vision of the endless immensity of the sea? If God's endless immense love is not communicated then the acts of discipleship in ones life will never find their target. I blush at how often I have beat the drum of reading the Bible or finding your quite time or getting involved in service but spent too little time kendeling a desire to be like Christ.

What is it like for even a small moment in time when my heart is touched by God? Why does the creator of an entire universe allow me to draw near? Where does this amazing peace come from when everything seems to fall apart around me? What happens when my eyes open to see what God is really doing around me? What does it really feel like when God connects my heart with another heart to share their load?

That is what I need to find out how to say. Then reading the Bible, quite time, service, solitude, worship and prayer will be joyous simple tasks that build the ship to float along on God's endless sea.

Rhythm

Never have been consider one with rhythm. Even though the drum was my instrument of choice in the junior high band, my teacher never once mentioned that a protegee lay inside me waiting to be discovered. After all, the drum choice was more about not having to learn to read music then an actual passion for creating the beat. Have found little in the relationship between my muscles and nerves that show a gift of rhythm.

However, God calls me to a rhythm that has nothing to do with the coordination of my body and far more about the beat of my heart. Am I in rhythm with him? Is the flow of my life in line with His pace or am I once again dancing to the beat of my own drum?

God has given the natural world around us a rhythm. Spring/summer/fall/winter, morning/day/evening/night, sowing/growing/harvesting/resting, birth/child/youth/adult. These are God’s inescapable patterns.

However, I fail to find a pattern in my life when chasing the bright shiny bobbles that too often catch my eye. Look at all I have to get done today? What do I need to push aside so I can move forward? What other information do I need so I know it all? Who is ahead of me and what do I need to do to catch up? What new luxury do I need to impress those around me? Can’t everyone see how important I am? If they would just do it MY way they could be just like me.

Oh how the world needs my management and input. If I leave it alone for just a few seconds everything falls a part. Blindly I plunge ahead not comprehending, this is what breaks my rhythm. This is the way the world cuts me off from God.

When there are those all too short seasons of unbroken rhythm in my life, there comes a peace, a comfort and a joy that can not be explained except to know I am on beat with Him. Not that everything is perfect. Problems do not just simply vanish but the importance I place on them does. Romans 8:6

Jesus showed us the beat, the perfect life in rhythm with God. It does not come by managing the world. It comes when following the One who created it.