A favorite poem

A poem from my quote book for you:

"From prayer that asks that I may be
Sheltered from winds that beat on Thee,
From fearing when I should aspire,
From faltering when I should climb higher,
From silken self, O Captain, free
Thy soldier who would follow Thee.

From subtle love of softening things,
From easy choices, weakenings,
(Not thus are spirits fortified,
Not this way went the Crucified)
From all that dims Thy Calvary,
O Lamb of God, deliver me.

Give me the love that leads the way,
The faith that nothing can dismay,
The hope no disappointments tire,
The passion that will burn like fire,
Let me not sink to be a clod:
Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God."
-Amy Carmichael

Open My Eyes That I May See

2 Kings 6:8-17. " Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them." I resonate a lot with this story, in obviously a very different way than the story portrays. You see, I think this type of setting happens a lot in life. Have you ever been stuck, run out of ideas, the enemy has surrounded you and you have no hope? I feel a lot of times just like this. I feel like the enemy has come "by night (surprise) and surrounded" me. I wonder what the temperment of the servant was as he conveyed to Elisha about the army surrounding them.? I know mine would have been panick "Ahhhh! They're coming to kill us. We have NO hope!" That's me though, I dare not put words in his mouth. At my first opportunity I'm so quick to turn to my own methods or antics to try my hand and see if I can survive instead of immediately, instinctively turning to God. It actually kinda frusterates me, if I'm being honest, at how rationally Elisha responds. I've always wanted to be that person who has seemingly total faith, who believes before doubting, but honestly, I'm not. My first instinct is to sceam up something that can save myself. Now my situations are not typically life and death in a physical sense as this story is (thankfully!), but all of our human sceaming, no matter how big or small it is, it's all not going to save us. And you know what? My stuff is "less" of a deal than what Elisha and his servant are up against in this passage, but honestly I envy them. Think about it- they're in a situation that they will die if they don't trust God.Have you ever truly realized that in life? Have you followed God wholeheartedly because He was the only way? There's so much in our culture distracting us, filling up life and keeping us from God and to be put in a situation where He is the only choice is actually quite freeing. I've never been in their particular situation, so I won't vouche for them, but the times I'm at the end of my rope and have no other places to turn but God, there's no greater time in life. Look at the passage- The Lord opened the eyes of the young man and he saw the mountain full of horses and chariots of fire. Did you know they're around you too as a believer? "The Lord will fight for you, you need only to be still" (Exodus 14:14).Do we realize the power and great ability we have on God's side? And listen to this- verse 23b says, "And the Syrains did not come again on raids into the land of Israel." They didn't even fight and nothing bad happened in particular. It means that the ability of God was so powerful over them that they stopped raiding Israel. That's incredible that the presence of God scared them away and stuck in their minds so decidedly that they stopped raiding altogether. Do I live in my daily life knowing that with God, one is a majority? a BIG majority.

Prayer is not a trade floor

A lot has happened in life recently, Christmas break has been full. I will talk about that another time though. Today, while at lunch, we began to talk about prayer and how often we incorrectly pray. And yes, I do believe that we can and often do incorrectly pray. Not to say that the ultimate forgiver and gracious God didn't already know ahead of time of our even trite mistake, but non-the-less, we slip up and say things that aren't actually intended as such. My first awareness of some of this was a couple summers ago. A friend and I got to talking about how we have the promise that God will never leave us or forsake us. He promises that He will always be with us, right beside us, as believers. Well, if we have this promise, and a promise from God will NEVER be broken, taken out of context or anything- it's plain and simple, then why do we always pray for God to be with us? "God, please be with her as she goes through this hard time or God please be with me on this test today." If we really have that promise that He is ALWAYS with us then why do we pray stuff like that? Now let me not blow all of this up and act like it isn't good to pray for guidance, His sure presence to put you in the right direction or make Himself known to someone. My point is that often we spit things out in prayer, reel it off like we're reading our prayers or have memorized them years ago and so we lose not only our passion and meaning but also our desire for them to come true because we're so used to saying them we don't really even know we've uttered them or what these prayers really mean. Anyway, so like I was saying, that was the first time I've considered actually praying correctly. I've always tried hard to view God as an all-encompassing kind of God to pray to- meaning that everything you say while praying or however you say it was ok with Him as long as you talked to Him. I think the church may tell us that so we all can feel more comfortable talking to God, I'm not really sure. But now I see that there is a right way of praying. It's not a set of specific words, it's a lot of things, but there are right things to pray. I think during prayer we convey what we think about God, His abilities and His character. I don't know if you've really thought about that, but if you do, I think you'll agree. When we pray we infer in our prayers, in our tone and words, what we think about the abilities and character of God.

Prayer is not a trade floor. It is not some bartering system where we can "make a deal" with God. It's not a negotiation, it's not one big swapping game trying to make both parties happy. Why are we so quick to do the "God, if you let this thing happen then I'll be good the rest of the week" or "If you let this happen and I won't ask for anything else" we all know the game. Oh, sure, you're mature and "don't play" anymore. PLEASE. I play, and I bet you do too. We may subconsciously do it, making deals with God or begging Him to do "just this one thing". I'm drawing a blank right now as to a really great example, but I think you get the drift. We have to realize that God is first Father, above being creator, about sustainer, He is Father. "Jesus is the firstborn over all creation" Before anything was put into being, God was Jesus' Father. My point is that we beg and plead for Him to "answer" our prayers the way we want them to be answered. We pray not yielding to the Father to provide but instead telling Him the situation and then telling Him the way He should fix it. Now there are times that we must intercede in our prayers but I believe that God will make it known to us when this time arises. I'm talking about the first right now though. A Father greatly desires to give His child everything, do you know that? Do we believe it? God so desires to give us everything we want, but that wouldn't be a loving Father would it?