I decided to move my writing day to Friday instead of Wednesday so this is a bit later than usual. See last week's post to see the story behind my ABC's. I'm going to cover the first half this week and the last half next week.
Always Be Compassionate.
Great "rule" for life in general but in prayer I believe that it means to pray without judgment. Jesus was led by compassion for the people and I believe that compassion will guide our prayers to be more other-oriented than self-oriented.
Do Everything For God.
We spend too much time praying for what WE want (I know I do anyway) and not really listening or considering what God wants. If our life were truly directed in the way that we say we say it is, then everything we do is done for God – everything we do would be ministry and everything we do would be prayer.
Hope in Jesus.
I'm tempted to just say "no explanation needed" but I think that it does bear saying that without Jesus as our Mediator, Lord, and Savior, we have no hope.
Keep Loving.
Maybe this sounds redundant but I don't think that the point can be emphasized enough – we need to be loving in life and in prayer.
If we keep loving God, we serve our brothers and sisters better. If we keep loving our brothers and sisters, we serve God better.
Minimize Negativity.
I've heard it said that for every positive statements we hear, we hear eleven negative ones. Not sure if that is true, but we do hear a lot of negative things day in and day out. Minimizing negativity does not mean ignoring the bad things of life but we don't need to add to the mix our own negative thoughts and feelings. Often we even pray negatively – Scripture says ask and we hedge our bets by waltzing around in our prayers so much to keep from being wrong that any answer that God could give us would be vague at best. There is nothing wrong with direct, positively and strongly stated prayers – look at the Psalms; all of them, not just 23, 100 and the "nice" ones.
Next week, I'll finish this line of thought. with the rest of the alphabet.
Father, help us to see the basics of life and prayer as You see them. Help us to live as You Son lived, to pray as He prayed, to love as He loved. For it is in His Name, I pray, Amen.
Be well,
Steve
A few days ago, I woke up thinking about the alphabet – the ABC's. For some reason, I was pondering statements made up of words that started with each letter of the alphabet. I had part of it figured out by the time I got out of bed and finally I came up with the following:
Always Be Compassionate.
Do Everything For God.
Hope in Jesus.
Keep Loving
Minimize Negativity
Orchestrate Peace
Quit Resisting Spirit
Trust Unceasingly
Visualize Wholeness
X Your Zealotry
Now I know this is nothing earth shattering but I'm going to spend the next couple of posts going over what I think this mean for prayer and for life in general. If you can come up with something different (or better), I'd love to hear about it! I'll keep playing with this and maybe update it later. (And before you complain, at least two different dictionaries said that X was a word – meaning to cross our or stop; I don't make this up but I do use it to my advantage).
Come back and share with me your thoughts on this.
Be well,
Steve
It's all too easy for us to think that God isn't listening, or doesn't respond to our prayers, when the answer is right in front of us. Unfortunately – for our expectations anyway – it doesn't look like what we expected it to, or wanted it to, so we don't even see it.
I know I, all too often, have very specific ideas of what I want from God, and if I don't get exactly that, I tend to think He didn't answer my prayer. Now, specificity is a good thing, and God wants us to be specific rather than vague when we place our concerns before Him. The problem isn't with being specific, but rather with limiting our expectations to only one possible answer. If we don't get that answer, we got no answer at all – or so we tend to think. It's very hard for us, either because we want control or simply our American instant-gratification mind set, to accept that sometimes the answer might be "no". Or perhaps its "wait a while". We, or at least I, find it very easy to interpret "wait a while" as "no", even though it isn't. Or maybe the better, more beneficial or fulfilling answer looks a little different from the specific version we asked for. Rather like wanting a specific shade of bag or shoe only to realize that a different shade actually matches or contrasts more attractively with the outfit, but we hadn't seen that beforehand.
God sees the big picture, while we only see what is right in front of us, and even then sometimes our focus is a bit fuzzy. One of my favorite images of how different our perspective is from God's is that of a weaving or piece of needlework. We see the back side, and we might see a bit of the pattern, but we often see more knots and tangles and confusing patches of color, but God sees the front, and even more, He knows the pattern even before it is woven or stitched.
Father God, Forgive me for being so focused on my own expectations that I miss the evidence of Your activity all around me. Help me to see with your eyes, and recognize Your many acts of grace, mercy, and generosity that impact my life constantly. Especially when an answer to prayer isn't exactly what I was expecting or hoping for, help me to see it as the answer I needed. In Jesus' name, Amen.
Kathy
