A HUMBLE PRAYER FOR YOU

Photo Credit Ralph Felzer

A HUMBLE PRAYER FOR YOU

Since our prayer service this past Sunday (wasn't that awesome, by the way?) I've been thinking quite a lot about prayer and trouble and humility, so I thought I would share a few insights with you, and then I want to pray for you!  I hope you'll be blessed.  Let me know!

We are coming off of a Christmas season that, as always, has been wonderful for some but sorrowful for others.  It's good for us to think back on the past year (or years) and remember God's track record with us.  I wonder if you can see yourself in this passage from Deuteronomy 8 that I just read this morning:

Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you … in order to humble you,

testing you to know what was in your heart….  He humbled you by letting you hunger,

then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were

acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone but

by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. (vv. 2-3)

Think back over the "long way God has led you" over the years.  The hardships.  The illnesses.  The loved ones who have passed away.  The disappointments.  The broken relationships.  But also the healing, the deliverance, the provision, the new relationships.

Now consider that while we may not know the whole picture, God has led us in this way "in order to humble us."  It is not just good, but very good to be humbled, to be reminded that we are not the focal point of all creation!  Think of the company we keep when the Lord humbles us!  Think of David's words in Psalm 119:  

Before I was humbled I went astray,

     but now I keep your word…. (v. 67)

It is good for me that I was humbled,

     so that I might learn your statutes…. (v. 71)

I know, O Lord that your judgments are right

     and that in faithfulness you have humbled me…. (v. 75)

So first, when the Lord humbles us we are reminded that like Adam we have been formed from the dust of the earth and that He has breathed His very own life into us–we owe our very existence to God's loving, shaping hand!  It can never be wrong to be humbled before the Lord, if for no other reason than to remember that we are dust and to remember that those whom the Lord humbles, He also raises up!

Secondly, His humbling teaches us to know our own hearts.  Remember what God says through the prophet Jeremiah: "The heart is deceitful above all things" (17:9).  Not only do we tend to have too high a view of ourselves, we also tend not to know ourselves very well either!  God allows Israel to be hungry–that is, to know lack. Sometimes we hunger for more than food. Sometimes we don't have everything we wish we did or think we need.  Why would He let us suffer lack, need, hunger?  In order "to test us to know what is in our hearts."  This doesn't mean that God doesn't know what's in our hearts, but that we don't!

He humbles us, Deuteronomy says, by letting us hunger so that He can then feed us.  It's beautiful, isn't it?  (If it weren't often times so hard!)  There really is a beauty in the hardship, in the humbling, in the hungering, because then we know what it means for the Lord to provide for us.  Because all of this is meant, He says, to teach us that we "do not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord."  When I read this I see a picture of a momma bird feeding her young in the springtime.  Those little ones chirp away all day long, clamoring to be fed, and momma makes sure it happens!  Think of those birds when you read this from Psalm 84:

My soul longs, indeed it faints,    

for the courts of the Lord;

my heart and my flesh sing for joy    

to the living God.

Even the sparrow finds a home    

and the swallow a nest for herself,    

where she may lay her young,

at your altars, O Lord of hosts,    

my King and my God.

Happy are those who live in your house,

ever singing your praise.

I bet by now you thought I forgot about prayer, didn't you?  Aha, no!  Think of how often and incessantly we are like those birds, clamoring and chirping and tweeting our little hearts away, asking God to feed us!  Of course, there's nothing at all wrong with being persistent in our prayers–don't get me wrong!  It's just that every now and then God tests us to know what is in our hearts, to humble us, to help us grow strong in faith and love.  Think of the picture we see in Psalm 131:

I do not occupy myself with things

     too great and too marvelous for me.

But I have calmed and quieted my soul,

     like a weaned child with its mother;

     my soul within me is like a weaned child. (v. 2)

The aim, the goal, of God's humbling of us is that we should remember that He is God and we are not, that we owe our existence, our very breath to Him; that it is He who feeds us and not we ourselves, giving us the proper food at the proper time; and that there is a calm, a shalom peace, an overriding sense of well-being (like that of a weaned child) in store for all those who trust in the Lord.

And thirdly, the food God gives us is Himself!  He doesn't just give us "stuff." He doesn't just provide the food on our tables or the clothing on our backs or the shoes on our feet–all this is too little by far (though we certainly do need all these, and He knows that!).  He gives us His very self–Jesus.  And Jesus says this very thing in John 6 (remember again back in Deuteronomy where God feeds His people with manna from heaven?).  Jesus says, "It wasn't Moses who fed you in the wilderness, it was my Father who gives you the true bread!  I am the bread of life.  Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.  This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.  I am the living bread that came down from heaven.  Whoever eats of this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh." (vv. 32, 48-51, lightly edited)

I want to leave you with more than just an encouraging word for those of you who are stuck right now in the middle of a hard, dark, challenging place.  I want you to know that the very God who made the heavens and the earth is not only in the business of humbling you, He's in the business of raising you up, of nourishing the soil of your hearts, of growing fruit in you from which you yourselves can eat and be strengthened and refreshed! (Notice how much "fruit-bearing" is happening in the following beautiful passages!) 

There is "a hope laid up for you in heaven through the gospel.  And just as it is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world, so it has been bearing fruit among yourselves from the day you heard it and truly comprehended the grace of God…." (Col. 1:5-6, lightly edited, emphasis mine).

I want to close by praying for you.  Receive this prayer right now. And just as the Apostle Paul prayed for the Christians in Colossae, I pray these words over you: 

Father, I ask that those who read these words "may be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that they may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to You, as they bear fruit [there it is again!] in every good work and as they grow in the knowledge of You.  May they be made strong with all the strength that comes from Your glorious power, so that they may have all endurance and patience, joyfully giving thanks to You, their heavenly Father, who has enabled them to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light.  You have rescued them from the power of darkness and transferred them into the kingdom of Your beloved Son, in whom we all have redemption, the forgiveness of sins."  (1:9-14, lightly edited).

May you know the love of the Father, the peace of Christ, and the comfort of the Holy Spirit throughout this coming year!

Be encouraged, friend, for God, the Maker of Heaven and Earth, who spoke all worlds into being, is both with you and for you.