When I
look at the prayers of the Old Testament and the New Testament I’m
always communing with the Saints. Have you ever read the bible and feel
like they are your friends? Their story is your story. I read the
story of Jacob and realized... Jacob is me. Jacob is you. David is me,
David is you. Isaiah 55 says that God gave David as a witness to the
people; his life was an example before men then and now. We read the
Bible and we find real men and women of God and we say, "I know what
that is like". When I'm reading their prayers, the prayers align my
heart because I’m put into their story in a personal way.
It’s
not the right combination of words, it’s the power in the inner man
that lives the life of those prayers so that when your life matches
that prayer, you pray it and something breaks out.
There are words, than there is prayer. There is intercession and then there are intercessors.
In
Psalm 109 David is being attacked, they hate him and he describes this
situation where he is being surrounded by his enemies, then he says but
‘I pray.’ In the Hebrew language it's translated as ‘I prayer.’
"The wicked surround me, they’ve hemmed me in on every side.." and
David declares. "I prayer."
Prayer
is the word made flesh. Prayer is alive, its active, it comes from the
gut, it comes from the belly of a life lived of failures, triumphs, of
the discovery of mercy, of the discovery of grace, the discovery of
redemption. When we signed up for God, we got Him on the inside. He
wanted us; He didn’t want you to go through the script just reading the
lines. He wanted Himself within you, in order to take you on the guided
tour from the inside out.
David
didn’t say, 'the evil are around me, they are all around me. I’m going
to a prayer meeting'. No, he said, the evil are all around me but ‘I’m
prayer.’ In other words, I have intimate acquaintance with you God. You
know the weakness of my frame and you know the intentions of my heart.
He’s
not after mere words, but the word made flesh. Treasure in earthen
vessels. It’s the reservoir of God in us, that when our words of God
match the reality and the atmosphere of our hearts in the grace of God,
something crescendos in the spirit and things shift, because it tells
God’s story. He is the Lord; apart from Him we can do nothing. But we
are the Saints, the excellent ones in whom is all His delight (Psalm
16). Its screams the story. We’re nothing, He is everything, but He
loves us, and my weak frame matched His large heart and prayer came
forth. Something guttural, something on the inside.
There are words and then there is prayer. There is intercession and then there are intercessors.
Intercessors
don’t have the corner on the market of insight, no, they have guttural
words, things from the inside, breaking out that match the story in the
Word. When our lives match the Living Word, when something lines up on
the inside, suddenly, God is there and He is glorified that the story
is repeated.
Some
of my motives are pure, some aren’t. I have God in me. I’ve got to
have something real. I’ve got to have something on the inside where He
puts me on and displays Himself, in spite of me. In the midst of the
wrestling, there is glory and drama and weakness and repentance and the
discovery that God loves us. In other words, He is meddling with us.
He is in there. This is not a 12 step program for us to become
intercessors, or Christians. It’s God, in us, with an agenda, who is
brilliant, who is dreaming up ways to make things so complex we can’t
sort it out in our own limitations. He doesn’t have the agenda to make
us great in the eyes of men, but to bring our lives into cooperation
with grace so that at the end of the day fragrance of Christ comes out
of us.
I’m longing
that the Word become flesh inside of me. I join Him in His intent, His
desire and my life matches His beautiful grace. At the revelation of
mercy, I utter a word I cannot comprehend at the moment but God escorts
it somewhere and He shifts something and He looks down and says, a
Saint, a holy one, one born of the Spirit, one who trusts in God. I may
be groaning with some heavy burden, not knowing why or what, but God is
taking my willingness to be part of His great plan and trnasforms my
groanings. Where there is humility in prayer there is breakthrough in
the answer.
This is
our greatest call. To stay in the place of prayer for the next
generation, even to our old age. If we don’t see the breakthrough in
our day, we will keep going. Who will stay in the place of prayer and
cooperate with transformation and all of its complexities and learn how
to possess your soul for honor, for holiness, until God makes you
‘prayer’?
Father,
give me grace to agree with your heart for my life. Would you work in
me and transform me, according to the Living Word. Make me alive in
Christ so my prayers are the very prayers of the Great Intercessor,
Jesus Christ.
