The Nearness of God is our Good/addendum

Psalm 73:28

New American Standard Bible (NASB)

But as for me, the nearness of God is my good; 

I have made the Lord God my refuge, 

that I may tell of all your works.

This is one of those passages that you can really pass over until you are in a crisis. When you read this passage in a crisis it really confronts you with its claim.  Do  I really believe that God's nearness to me is what is good? It doesn't have to be circumstances, it doesn't have to be outcomes that result in healing, health and prosperity. Simply having the nearness of His presence I can say with confidence: You are my refuge Oh Lord. I am really safe because you are with me. Not safe from. Not always delivered from. But safe through the fire, in the furnace, even through the portal of death.

You know at some point in my walk with God it finally began to really sink in what David realized against Goliath: that it doesn't matter what my battle is,  how formidable my opponent is, or how overwhelming my circumstances are. The reason God ALWAYS puts me in those circumstances or up against overwhelming odds is so that He can show up. He means to impress upon my heart with every single instance, that I will never be able to predict the outcome based on the odds of my success. Because it doesn't matter what I'm capable of, but what He's capable of.

And I don't say this tonight from an ivory tower of a tranquility. My husband got a call today that no one ever wants to get: He needs to fly up and see his dad because it might be his last time to see him. He has been battling lung cancer for two years and he has developed pneumonia during this last round of chemo. He may not make it through this round. Mike might be going up there to say goodbye.  Meanwhile I have to stand by on the sidelines and take care of two kids at home and pray. All I can do is pray. 

Wait let me say that to myself again: All I can do is pray. I guess I'm in good company: with the likes of Daniel (in the lion's den) Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, Abraham, Job Anna, Hannah, Moses, Elijah, Noah, Peter, Paul...the list gets long. I got a pretty good cloud of witnesses that know what it means to pray and wait for God to show up. So I'm going to say in faith at the beginning of this week, without any good outcome to report: The nearness of God is our good. I say that for myself, and for my husband. I pray that and declare that over both of us. I know that He will show up for Mike in this and for me. I know that if He chooses to shed Leo's body from his soul and take him to glory, that He will give those of us longing for His appearing, the grace to wait a bit longer. The hope to know that someday the trumpet will sound and the dead in Christ will rise first, and those of us who remain will be caught up in the clouds with them, and thus we shall always be with the Lord. I really can say it: The nearness of God is my good. 

As an addendum to this blog I wanted to share that Leo passed into glory this morning at 7:30 am May 14, 2013. How is God good to us even in this?  He did not have to suffer the terrible pain of his lung cancer which had metastasized. He was surrounded by his family. My husband got to see and talk to him yesterday while he was lucid. When my husband first got to the hospital, his dad motioned for a piece of paper to write something. He wasn't able to speak b/c he had been intubated due to fluid in his lungs. On the piece of paper he wrote "Thanks for coming Mike, I love you." God gave Mike a few precious hours with his dad yesterday to say goodbye. His other two kids and their families had just been down to visit him the weekend before so they had time with him too. 

Death is not an easy reality. It is not an easy passage. But just as God promises in Isaiah 43:1-3 "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire you will not be burned, for I am the Lord your God." Yes, we have passed through the waters and we are walking through the fire. But I know that there is safe passage for us, and there was safe passage for Leo. In Jesus Christ, he walked through the portal of death and into glory. And he will be the first in the clouds when Jesus comes back, ready to usher us home. We can't wait to see you again, Leo. But in the meantime let me say, "The nearness of God is my good."

Contentment--your issue or God's

Tonight was a sobering but uplifting night for me. I have finally taken the plunge and joined a women's bible study at my church. You never know how honest those forums will be. And I don't really have time for a group unless its spiritually earnest. But tonight I was refreshed by a sister's very honest answer to the question--How are you? She replied, " I am struggling with being content in my life. I have this vague sense of discontent that makes me wonder if I am doing enough. I feel like I'm in a rut." My heart connected to hers. I so get that.

When it comes to being discontent sometimes it can be hard to discern if we are the problem or our attitude is the problem. Sometimes we are genuinely discontent about because we aren't doing what we ought to be doing. We are the problem. Other times, our discontent stems from really being trapped in our current circumstances and we just can't get out of them. We are stuck because of things beyond our control. "Divinely confined" as my friend Brenda Smith says. So how can you tell the difference?

Well I think it begins with prayer. Ask God to show you if He has put you in these circumstances and it really is out of your control. If it is, you can take comfort that God is doing a work in this "remaining season" and you need to press into it and learn all there is to learn.

Sometimes though upon reflection I have realized that I am paralyzed by my own fear. It's not God holding me back, it's my own fear of risk and the unknown. For me in those cases, I need to ask God to show me what root of fear is holding me back and force myself to take some steps to move through that fear.

A very personal example for me is actually writing and blogging. I have felt called to do it for years but I think fear of failure (and possibly success) has held me back. This past January I was redoing my personal mission statement (via Franklin Covey's method) and I realized what was operating to keep me from achieving personal goals. So...I began to lean into my fear and write. Since that self-reflection about five months ago, I have one book I'm about to self-publish and I've been blogging regularly.

I have come to believe more and more in the past few years that there is no personal or spiritual growth without reflection. We must consider what God has done, is doing and how we are to respond to that. It means sitting still and doing some work of looking at and listening to the message in my life. It is from that place that things begin to shift. Internal shifts that can happen regardless of my circumstances; all of the sudden just like Paul and Silas, the doors of my prison swing open, and I am free. Free to stay as an opportunity or free to go. And so I pray for the eyes to see...

Having eyes to see

I bought a clock a few years back and had hung in on a wall in our bedroom. Even though I loved it in the store, once I got it home and put it in our bedroom, I just started hating it. It didn't look good at all. I was about to give it away and I had a thought: Maybe it's just hanging in the wrong place. So I took it out to the dining room and hung it on the wall next to my bookshelf. Suddenly it looked completely different. Immediately it belonged and I loved it again.  It looked great there. I can't believe I had hated it and wanted to give it away. As I think back on why I hated it so much in our bedroom, I think it was just too small a clock for such a big wall.

As I was staring at that clock one day thinking again about how funny it was that I had hated it so much in the wrong room, a thought hit me: Maybe there are lots of things like this in my life. I don't mean physical things. But maybe there are things that God hasn't removed from my life yet, because I just haven't gotten His perspective on them. Maybe they really do bring a blessing to me that so far has eluded me because I'm not seeing it the way He does. What things in your life are you longing to rid yourself of? Are there situations or people whose value you just don't see? Ask God to hang it on the wall of faith for you. Maybe you will see them with new eyes.

Which kind of beggar are you?

I was reading yesterday in Scripture about people who are beggars, and something very clearly hit me.  There are two kinds of beggars. The kind who know they are, and the ones who think they are rich but they are poor. Scripture is very convicting on this point because it tells the story of the man who prayed in the streets for all to see. Jesus says he went away still in his sins, because he prayed for effect, out of  his own sense of worthiness and therefore he receive nothing from the Lord. The other kind is the one who came to God keenly aware of his unworthiness and yet willing to come anyway because he so desperately wanted forgiveness. Jesus says that man went away forgiven. How convicting. I am going to begin to pray that God always gives me a fresh sense of my spiritual need before Him. I don't want to go away empty handed because I think I am an asset to His team. Lord, keep me always aware of how much I really need you. Amen.

Go Ahead and Ask

Recently my husband has lost a  bunch of weight. So yesterday Mike tells me with a heavy heart that his wedding ring fell off his finger at some point in the day. He had retraced his steps and couldn't find it anywhere.  I asked him if we could pray to find it. So we did. And then I went out the garage and in the driveway and every other place I could think of. No ring. Privately I told the Lord it would really mean a lot to me if He would let Mike find it because I knew it would really speak to Mike in a special way, for the Lord to answer such a small prayer that matters so much to us.

I hoped in my heart the Lord would answer me as He has so mercifully in so many other ways. Yesterday, no ring. Today, no ring. I have to be honest, when it didn't show up right away yesterday I started giving myself the mental out, and Mike too. I told him not to worry if we couldn't find it we would just go back to the jewelers and replace it, no big deal. But in my heart I hoped. Hoped that God would once again answer my prayer. For some reason when He does that for me, it speaks to me. I guess because its an amazing thought to know that the God of the Universe, who knows all things, knows where it is. You see to me, its in these moments that I realize the vast chasm between Christianity and other religions.

Because I don't merely seek a state of peaceful being, worship a lofty God not to be bothered with such trivialities, or simply ponder the wisdom of timeless truth; I worship an all knowing, all powerful God who is personal. So personal that such a prayer isn't scorned by Him. Tonight as I was washing the dishes (yes it means the dishes had been in the sink since yesterday) and finally got to the bottom of them, there it was. Mike's ring.  He didn't have to. He would still be good and still be God if He hadn't said yes. But He delights to answer. He delights in our asking Him. That ring, the symbol of our covenant is also a symbol of God's covenant love to us. He sustains our promise with His;  "In Him all thing hold together." Col. 1.

I love that God speaks to me with such symbolism. I can't even keep up with the symbol of my covenant. But He can. He can keep the symbol and the substance of my covenant. So--go ahead and ask. God's greatness will be manifested in just how much He will show you that He can do "exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think..." Deuteronomy 33:26 says, "There is none like the God of Jeshurun, who rides the heavens to your help, and through the skies in His majesty. The eternal God is a dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms;" I love knowing that in all things and in every season I am both fully known and firmly held in those everlasting arms.

What lions' mouths....

I was listening to Chuck Swindoll preach this morning on the life of Daniel and something struck me that had never occurred to me before. I have always thought of Daniel as one of those people who is just in a category all his own. I can only think of one other man in the Bible who lived a high-profile. political life and never ever buckled, not once--Joseph. But these two have always seemed to be the exception to me of how people can truly live--not the rule. They never gave into moral decay, they never compromised who they were even when it got them thrown into prison or worse....

The thing that occurred to me today though, was that Daniel was who he was because he prayed-- three times a day without exception. Prayer punctuated his life. Daily. Consistently. So much so that when his fellow advisors were looking for a way to discredit him, they could find only this as his "weakness". The only point of attack into his life. Not that there is something magical about praying three times a day for us, or that its some kind of formula. I think what strikes me is the fact that THE non-negotiable, everyday, integral part of his very, very busy, very important, politically demanding life was prayer. 

He was never too busy to pray. There was no such thing as not having enough time, or having too many demands on his schedule. Nothing was ever more urgent.  It was never up for negotiation; even when his life and career depended on it.  He was defined by this unwavering commitment to pray. His life, his habits and his time reflected his mindset of looking to God. He didn't try to conceal it; he didn't try to flaunt it. It wasn't a political decision, it was who he was. A man who prayed. 

He accomplished rare and unusual things.  Things that happened because he never lost sight of whose he was and who his God was.  The consistency of his integrity and his obedience didn't happen in a vacuum. It was a result of the consistency of his prayer life. And why was he so dad-gum consistent?  I venture to say that it was of his view of God.  A view that gave him the staggering confidence to dare to put his life, his career and his reputation on the line and tell the king that God could reveal the dream. He put it all on the line because of one surety--his God would hear him, and his God would answer him. What in the crazy world would my life look like if I had such confidence in my God who hears and answers prayer? Woah.  I wonder what God would accomplish through me if my faith and my prayers were that bold.  Wouldn't that be something. I wonder what lions' mouths would be shut in this generation if we were up to such a challenge. 

Recognizing Divine pauses

I was talking with my friend Becki Parr a while back and she said something that stuck with me. She said that she had been praying for pauses in her day. Moments where she can breathe and reflect and connect with God or someone else and recognize that her time, her agenda don't belong to her. I had several of those moments today. But I didn't recognize them. I was too busy fuming about the accident on the freeway and the train schedule in front of the school. I didn't really recognize them for what they were until much later. Everyday we have moments where our "best laid plans of mice and men often go awry." Those moments are our chance to breathe, to surrender, to pray and to say "Ok, Lord, my agenda isn't always in line with your agenda. Give me eyes to see and a willingness to stop and see the blind man begging along the road as you did. A willingness to stop and listen, no matter what other people demand of me. Let me never take my agenda so seriously." 

Honestly, I didn't do that today. I missed seeing them for what they were. So my prayer tonight is, "Lord, let me not take my agenda so seriously. Give me gratitude for those pauses, and eyes to see that even those annoying events are my chance to see that you need me to stop, and to surrender. Forgive my sense that my time is so important I can't get off schedule." Ministry often happens in those interruptions that are not in my schedule. When my baby or my friend need me at the most inconvenient times. I need grace to surrender my plans to His. Sometimes my hardness of heart in these moments makes me grieve that I miss God's purpose for me in the moment. I guess that's why I need to be told, to be reminded that "God causes ALL THINGS to work together for good for those that love Him. For those who are the called according to His purpose." Sigh. And so I offer up a prayer of repentance and surrender. 

frazzled prayers

So I've been feeling a shift lately in my prayer life. I don't know when it became perceptible to me but I've had glimpses of it over the past two years that would fade back into my old pattern. I think my whole life when I've had the feeling of my life being too complicated and too busy or too stressful, I've felt like the needed response is to go into high gear. I need to try harder, find my A game, come up with new and better solutions to dealing with my weaknesses in order to compensate and make everything work. I guess what I've felt is that the pressure to make my life work, especially when it comes to organizing the details of my life, the complexity of all the roles and tasks and obligations that pull on me. I remember reading a story of Corrie Ten Boom one time from her caretaker Pam Moore. She said that Corrie would be sitting at the table and a problem would arise and she would just say out loud "Lord, take care of it." It seemed to me a bit odd at the time. But I think I'm beginning to get a sense of what it was really beneath that simple prayer. Those who heard her pray said she would just start talking out loud to God even if people were around. It was to her as if He was at the table. They weren't fancy or lengthy or even eloquent prayers. 

Lately I think I get that. My life is too complicated and complex and overwhelming, and its really creating a sinking-into-my-everyday-consciousness-kind of way that apart from Him I can do nothing. I'm not designed to. I'm designed to be connected. To hang with the full weight of my branch from His limb and every source of life and strength and sustenance come from my being connected. Nothing else. So then praying that He works out the logistics of having to be here and then somewhere else and do more than my energy levels and time says I can somehow works--IN HIM. As Colossians says, "In Him all thing [ALL THINGS] hold together." Can that actually mean my house, my car, my budget, my time, my frazzled nerves, my energy? I think it really does. 

So those quick prayers of "God help" that are childlike and real and frazzled aren't my unspiritual dumb moments. They are my most spiritual, my most "I get it" moments. They really are. And asking Him to take care of those things, even the smallest things points to a belief that His greatness is marked as much by the fact that He can oversee and order the most minute details of parking spaces and appointments as well as galaxies and planets. Wow. I'm kind of liking the feeling rather than the rising panic-- of the internal peace that settles in when I lift up those in the moment prayers and feel the weight of the yolk coming off my shoulders as I climb into the harness; one He's already pulling for both of us. His shoulders are broad and strong enough for both of us. More and more I hope that I learn of the yolk that is easy and His burden which is light. Of prayers that cry out without dressing up my fears or desires in acceptable attire. I don't need to. He's my Daddy. He's got it covered.

Contentment: What's on your plate?

I find myself reflecting quite a bit about my single days in my walk with the Lord. I remember one particular day having a powerful lesson with the Lord. I was working at a private Christian school at the time and liked to go outside during my lunch period and enjoy some sunshine on my break. This particular day I was feeling very sorry for myself, bemoaning my singleness and in the spirit of authentic prayer told the Lord, "I am single, and starving here. You know I'm struggling to be content in my singleness and you won't provide me the meal of marriage." The Lord answered me as He frequently does with a picture and a word.

At once in my mind there was an image of a plate with a hot meal on it. And with the picture the Lord spoke this to my heart: "Child, everyday I give you exactly what you need for life and godliness. I prepare a table before you everyday. But some days you refuse to eat. You have decided that you get to pick the meal, and if you can't have what you want, you won't eat. That is why you starve." It was a humbling moment for me for sure. I felt somewhat like Job must have when the Lord answered him; there was some real food for thought, and I needed to shut my mouth and chew on it. And I find that lesson has stuck with me. Everyday the Lord in His infinite wisdom has gives me what He knows I need for today. Each and every day He brings to me His new mercies which are new every morning. The question is: Do I come to the well and drink? Do I eat the bread of life? I can receive His gifts to me for that day, even if they look to me to be burdens or broccoli. Or do I stubbornly decide that if certain things aren't on my plate I'm not being fed? It is my constant prayer that I respond to His daily manna with a hungry heart, knowing that He knows what I need so much better than I do. For God's invitation to His people is one of open abundant provision:

Isaiah 55 says, "Ho! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; And you who have no money, come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and delight yourself in abundance. Incline your ear and come to Me. Listen, that you may live."

Clinging to God: A Model in Prayer

Clinging to God: A Model of Prayer

For me, having an authentic prayer life has definitely been a journey. When I was single I was convinced that it was a God-honoring prayer to ask Him when every new guy came along, “Lord, is he the one?” Really convinced that knowing that answer would help me to conduct myself rightly, I persisted in this prayer until one weekend I was challenged by a very godly man at our church to rethink this. Sinclair Ferguson, a Scottish reformed minister, had been asked to speak at our single’s retreat and having sworn off single’s retreats in my 30’s for all the melodrama inherently imbedded in them, I decided to go one last time, just to hear him talk. He gave a talk at an outdoor amphitheater one afternoon I will never forget. He titled it, “Why doesn’t God give us the red phone?” He started his talk with this question and shared his own angst in the dating process when he met and began to date his wife. Doing what apparently most of us singles do, he had been asking the Lord to show him if she was the one prior to asking her out, when he was challenged by a godly man at his church if she was a woman of character and the right kind of woman to marry. When Sinclair said yes, the man responded that he should not hesitate then to ask her out. That God might not want him to have that answer that the beginning of the process. He said that gave him much material for thought and spurred a shift in his thinking in this matter of knowing God’s will. He went on to point out that perhaps our prayers that are so rabidly focused on the outcome of the events of our lives and whether or not something was God’s will was really not at all about seeking God’s will. That is was rather a means of risk management. That we sometimes ask God if a thing is His will because we want to know at the beginning if we will get hurt, if we need to be guarded in the process. But taking us to the Scriptures, he pointed out that God is actually much more concerned about this process of conforming us to the image of His Son; that He is committed to a process in our lives not just a specific path, course of action or outcome. The importance of being in this process is that by not knowing how God will provide in every instance and having to wait upon Him and see how He works things out is what builds our faith and our trust in Him. He pointed out that God in fact only calls us to be accountable for one day at a time. To seek Him and His will daily, with a surrendered heart to whatever the outcome might be. He challenged us to consider that perhaps rather than praying that we know if this person or that person is the one, we commit rather to praying that we are the right kind of spouse and that God works in us to be the partner He wants us to be for the person He brings to us. That we pray that we are committed to honoring God in the dating process and allowing Him to unfold His plan regarding this person as we walk with the Lord daily, rather than praying that we see the end from the beginning. That can just be our way of managing the risk of a situation. While it looks Godly on the surface, underneath it lurks a dark motive of suspicion and mistrust of God’s mercy in our lives.

That talk really had an impact on me and I decided from that day on not to pray anymore that I would know ahead of time in a flash of revelation who was the one for me. I began to pray instead that God would keep me open to who He would bring into my life, and keep me open to His will in the process of leading us together. I actually prayed that God would lead through the man’s assurance that I was the one. He was pleased to honor that prayer when I met and started dating my husband to be. It was actually a grueling process for me though, and revealed to me in the process that I really did want to maintain control of the situation.

As I have reflected on the nature of prayer as God intends it, I have decided that the reason Sinclair had really landed on the right idea about prayer was because it promoted a posture of clinging to God. In the past few years my eyes have been opened to this being not only a minor theme that runs through the Old and New Testament but also actually an underlying theme in what right relationship with God looks like. Consider the passage in Jeremiah 13:10-11 where God makes a strange request of Jeremiah and asks him to get a waistband and hide it under a rock for many days. When God tells Jeremiah to retrieve it awhile later, naturally having been exposed to the elements, it has been ruined. He tells Jeremiah in this story that the people of Israel have become worthless to Him because they refuse to cling to Him. “For as the waistband clings to the waist of a man, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah to cling to me, declares the Lord, that they might be for Me a people of renown, for praise and for glory; but they did not listen.”

Again in Deuteronomy 13:4 when the people are challenged to keeps the Lord’s commandments, along with that admonition is a call to cling to the Lord. It says, “You shall follow the Lord your God and fear Him; and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him and cling to Him. When the people of Israel were being led by Joshua into the Promised Land God says to His people, “But you are to cling to the Lord your God as you have done to this day.”

The most godly king who ever ruled Judah is described this way in II Kings 18: 3-6. It says, “And he did right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his father David had done…He trusted in the Lord the God of Israel: so that after him there was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor among those who were before him. For he clung to the Lord; he did not depart from following Him, but kept His commandments, which the Lord had commanded Moses.” And then it goes on to describe his response when the king of Assyria’s messenger went to Israel and told them not to let their naïve king Hezekiah mislead them. That they would be not delivered out of his hand by the living God. How did Hezekiah respond? Did he get into some theological banter with that evil king? He went into the temple, laid this letter of scorn before the altar of God and cried out to Him to deliver them. And boy did God answer. It was one of the few battles described in the Old Testament where God directly sends an angel of destruction to wipe out the enemies of God. His prayer life was a reflex of dependence, surrender and vulnerable expectation before God. His response to life’s trials was to run to His heavenly Father and cling to Him.

What keeps us from operating in such vulnerable expectation with the Lord? Again reflecting back on my single years one of the other most impactful talks I heard was regarding this issue of prayer with our single women’s leader Kari Stainbeck. She was talking about this matter of prayer and said that the reason we don’t come before the Lord with our hearts wide open is because we are afraid to let our desires and fears be as big as they really are because we don’t really think God will come through for us. So we tell ourselves it’s really not that big of a deal. It really isn’t that desperately lonely to be single. I really don’t want kids that badly. We hide behind this very Christian-sounding rhetoric that says, “I’m really ok with this” because it’s the Lord’s will when in fact our hearts our breaking. But we can’t admit to ourselves let alone the Lord just how big or devastating this issue is to us because on some level we really believe He just might not come through. He might not answer me. His love might not be enough to cover and heal this. So we minimize our needs and desires when we pray because our God is frankly just too small.

Elizabeth Elliot describes a similar struggle in her prayer life shortly after the death of her second husband in her book A Path through Suffering. Having lost her first husband to a massacre by a tribe of Auca Indians, it was unimaginable to her that God would ever call her to suffer the death of her second husband to cancer. Finding herself a widow however for the second time, shortly after his death, she was sitting at her table trying to have time with the Lord but feeling entirely at a loss with what to bring to Him. She told him in a moment of complete honestly that she knew she needed to worship Him but the only thing she really had to bring before His throne was heartache, disappointment and despair. She recounts that the Spirit softly replied to her, “then child that is what you are to bring to me. For it is not that you bring your best, but that you bring what you have in your heart and offer it on the alter of surrender. For it is in laying it down before me, that it becomes a fragrant offering to me.” It was a totally liberating moment for her to recognize that we do not come before the Lord in prayer with the right attitude or the right heart, but in this model of clinging, rather we just run to Him. We see him as our refuge, our only hope and we run to him because as Peter says in John 6: 68, “Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” We do not come to Him because we can do it right or well or in a spiritual frame of mine. We come to Him because He is Abba---Daddy. We come to Him because we know that ultimately He is our only hope, our only rock and our only refuge. There is nowhere else to turn.

What better example is given to us of this kind of clinging in prayer that Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane? It is interesting because as many times as it mentions in the New Testament that Jesus went alone by himself to pray, this is our only intimate glimpse of what actually took place in His prayer life with the Father. And it isn’t what we would expect. For Jesus does not come with pious stoic words of lofty notions of suffering. He cries out to His Father in complete vulnerability that this cross is not one He wants to bear. That this cup of suffering is one He would rather not drink. He doesn’t minimize his fear or his emotions. He doesn’t hide from the Father his true human feelings about facing the cross. Instead He pours out his heart before the Father so fervently that He sweats blood. He held nothing back. He threw Himself with unguarded passion at His Father’s feet, and in doing so found that He received mercy in His time of need. As it tells us in Hebrews 5: 7 “ In the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the one who was able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His piety. Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered.”

Several things fascinate me about this passage. It says that Jesus appeal to His Father was emotional, heart-felt and completely honest. He did not try to dress up His feelings or diminish His very real fears about going to the cross. He did not hold back revealing His true desires and even making requests of the Father that if possible He would not have to go to the cross. What is interesting about the text though is that the Scriptures clearly tell us that He was heard because of His piety. His Father heard Him; and yet Jesus did end up going to the cross. The Father did not say yes to His Son in this, even His only Son. Do we trust the Father as Jesus did? Enough to come to Him as our only source of comfort and pour out our hearts? Willing to accept whatever the Father has for us in the process?

One of my favorite stories of prayer is about St. Augustine’s mother Monica. She was a godly woman of prayer who had prayed fervently for the conversion of her wayward son Augustine. When he announced to her that he planned to move to Rome, the capital of debauchery at that time, her heart was broken. She was convinced that if he moved to Rome he would never be converted to Christ. And so the night before his planned departure, she lay on the dock from which his ship was to embark and prayed fervently all night long that God would not let him get on that ship. And yet when morning came, he did get on that ship and leave for Rome. She was crushed. Had God not heard her prayer? Did He not have more of a heart for her son’s conversion than she did? And yet it was a few months later in Rome that Augustine met the Lord.

What is interesting about this story is that God was working out Monica’s prayer. It did not look like it. How could she have known that in order for God to say yes to the heart of her prayer—her son’s conversion---He would say no to the particular of her prayer—that he not go to Rome. Such is the wisdom of God in our lives. And so the challenge for us is to entrust our lives into the hand of our faithful creator and practice a life of clinging abandon with Him. If this was not what He intended why would He say in John 15:5 “I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from me you can do nothing.” The image He gives us for relationship with Him is that of total dependence, total surrender, a clinging to our Vine. Are you willing to enter into this kind of prayer relationship with your Father? Ready to lay before Him all that you have, and wish for, and have not, that you might discover the riches of His grace? Cling to Him and see if He is not worthy of all your trust.