Showing posts with label Prayer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Prayer. Show all posts

Sunday, 27 May 2012

A Rest on Sunday

I have been reading a wonderful book on prayer called "God on Mute" by Pete Grieg.  He has started an international chain of prayer rooms where people pray 24-7.   You can find out all about his ministry here.  On the wall of one of the prayer rooms, someone once wrote this piece of prose called "The Vision".  I have been enjoying simply focussing on these words, which are deeply inspiring.


So this guy comes up to me and says:
“what’s the vision? What’s the big idea?”
I open my mouth and words come out like this:
The vision?

The vision is JESUS – obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus.

The vision is an army of young people.
You see bones? I see an army.
And they are FREE from materialism.

They laugh at 9-5 little prisons.
They could eat caviar on Monday and crusts on Tuesday.
They wouldn’t even notice.
They know the meaning of the Matrix, the way the west was won.

They are mobile like the wind, they belong to the nations.
They need no passport.
People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence.
They are free yet they are slaves of the hurting and dirty and dying.

What is the vision ?

The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes.
It makes children laugh and adults angry.
It gave up the game of minimum integrity long ago to reach for the stars.
It scorns the good and strains for the best.
It is dangerously pure.

Light flickers from every secret motive, every private conversation.
It loves people away from their suicide leaps, their Satan games.
This is an army that will lay down its life for the cause.
A million times a day its soldiers choose to loose,
that they might one day win
the great ‘Well done’ of faithful sons and daughters.

Such heroes are as radical on Monday morning as Sunday night. They don’t need fame from names. Instead they grin quietly upwards and hear the crowds chanting again and again: “COME ON!”

And this is the sound of the underground
The whisper of history in the making
Foundations shaking
Revolutionaries dreaming once again
Mystery is scheming in whispers
Conspiracy is breathing…
This is the sound of the underground

And the army is discipl(in)ed.
Young people who beat their bodies into submission.
Every soldier would take a bullet for his comrade at arms.
The tattoo on their back boasts “for me to live is Christ and to die is gain”.

Sacrifice fuels the fire of victory in their upward eyes.
Winners. Martyrs.
Who can stop them ?
Can hormones hold them back?
Can failure succeed?
Can fear scare them or death kill them ?

And the generation prays

like a dying man
with groans beyond talking,
with warrior cries, sulphuric tears and
with great barrow loads of laughter!
Waiting. Watching: 24 – 7 – 365.

Whatever it takes they will give: Breaking the rules. Shaking mediocrity from its cosy little hide. Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs, laughing at labels, fasting essentials. The advertisers cannot mould them. Hollywood cannot hold them. Peer-pressure is powerless to shake their resolve at late night parties before the cockerel cries.

They are incredibly cool, dangerously attractive

Inside.

On the outside? They hardly care.
They wear clothes like costumes to communicate and celebrate but never to hide.
Would they surrender their image or their popularity?
They would lay down their very lives - swap seats with the man on death row - guilty as hell. A throne for an electric chair.

With blood and sweat and many tears, with sleepless nights and fruitless days,
they pray as if it all depends on God and live as if it all depends on them.

Their DNA chooses JESUS. (He breathes out, they breathe in.)
Their subconscious sings. They had a blood transfusion with Jesus.
Their words make demons scream in shopping centres.

Don’t you hear them coming?

Herald the weirdo’s! Summon the losers and the freaks.
Here come the frightened and forgotten with fire in their eyes.
They walk tall and trees applaud, skyscrapers bow, mountains are dwarfed by these children of another dimension.
Their prayers summon the hounds of heaven and invoke the ancient dream of Eden.

And this vision will be.
It will come to pass;
it will come easily;
it will come soon.

How do I know?

Because this is the longing of creation itself,
the groaning of the Spirit,
the very dream of God.

My tomorrow is his today.
My distant hope is his 3D.
And my feeble, whispered, faithless prayer invokes a thunderous, resounding, bone-shaking great ‘Amen!’ from countless angels, from hero’s of the faith, from Christ himself. And he is the original dreamer, the ultimate winner.

Guaranteed.

Wednesday, 11 January 2012

Giving the year to God


Today I read this wonderful post at the Girltalk blog, which has a wealth of Christian resources.

'Will you wake up on January 1, 2012 and say to God: “I don’t need to read your Word or pray or listen to your voice today. I am competent on my own. I can keep my New Years' resolutions all by myself, thank you very much.”?
Of course not!  We would never dare say these frightfully arrogant words.
But if we neglect God’s Word and prayer, we are saying with our hearts and actions: “I can do it all by myself.”
Jesus has a different perspective: “Apart from me you can do nothing.” He says in John 15:5.
We can’t start a new diet, stick to our budget, or kick that bad habit without Him. None of these things—no matter how hard we work at them—will have any “eternal value or…produce spiritual fruit” without God (ESV Study Bible).
To bear fruit, we must sit at Jesus' feet and listen to his teaching (Luke 10:38-42).
We must renounce our self-sufficiency.
We must repent from our arrogant independence.
We must come to the God of mercy who is eager to forgive.
And we must sit.
When we sit at Jesus’ feet, we are saying: “I need you! I can’t obey you without your help. I can’t serve you in my own strength. I can’t walk in a manner worthy of the gospel by myself. I need your grace.”
And you know what? He will give it! God doesn't correct our self-sufficiency to push us away. He wants us to draw near to sit and listen. He wants to speak to us, to teach us, to give us grace to bear fruit.

So let’s say—with our words, our hearts, and our actions—I need you, Lord, today and every day this year!'

What an excellent reminder or the all-sufficiency of our God.

Monday, 28 February 2011

Resting in Him

Just taking some time out for a breather today.  Feeling a little under the weather, so enjoying a looong lie in bed for a while!

Enjoying reading through some of the many words I write in my journal.  My journal is an A4 size page a day diary.  As I read through my Bible, I write down any verses that are particularly relevant to me that day. 


 Psalm 80 v 3 and 18 - "Restore us, O God, Cause Your face to shine, and we shall be saved!...Revive us, and we will call upon Your Name."

And I've been reading a little of Amy Carmichael - "Sometimes in prayer, it is difficult to find the words.  Often our Lord Jesus turned Bible words into prayer.  The Psalms were the prayer book of the Early Church.  It is ours still.  We cannot ever fathom the depths of this book."

Bishop Moule said that a hymn book was a good prayer book too.  They offer words to us when we have none of our own.

I am very grateful today that daily God restores us.  Nothing is impossible for Him. 

Isaiah 26 v 3-4  "You will keep him in PERFECT PEACE,
Whose MIND is stayed on You, because he trusts in You.
Trust in the Lord forever, for in the Lord Jehovah is EVERLASTING STRENGTH!!!"

I am feeling better already, I have read and prayed and thought and learned and blogged my way out of feeling 'under the weather', and ready to get up now and start that casserole that's waiting for my attention.  I work all day on Tuesdays to Thursdays, and sometimes part of Mondays and Fridays too, so I have got into a good habit of filling my slow cooker with good things on my home days, so I have something home-made to heat up when I am busy.  Tomorrow night, when I walk in the front door at around 6.30 pm, I'll be very glad that casserole is there!

Be encouraged, be strengthened, accept the perfect peace of God today my friend.
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