Sleepwalking

"Awake! Awake! Put on strength, of arm of the Lord..."

"Awake! Awake! Stand up, oh Jerusalem..."

"Awake! Awake! Put on thy strength, oh Zion..." Isaiah 51:9, 17; 52:1

How true it is that most of our prayers act as though God were asleep. How fitting it is, then, when His answers reveal that it is we who have been asleep. The revelations of God are very much like awakenings, like coming out of a dream and into reality. We only thought we knew what was and is; we find instead that we have been fools. We thought that God was ignoring us; we find instead that we were the ignorant.

"I am the Lord thy God." (51:15) We ask that God remembers us; He replies that we should remember Him. All fears and doubts come from the dreamlike state of not accounting for God in your circumstances. Until God is real, we are sleepwalkers, and we know not where we are, or what we run into. Once God is real, however, immediately we awake, and the dawn lights all of our surroundings: "Why, God was there the whole time!" God's dealings with us (in regards to prayer or anything else) is constantly bringing us to this revelation: the infinite-personal, Scripture revealed God is there, and he4 wants to set you free from delusions and bind you to Himself.

"Destroy all illusions

And self-made forgeries.

Melt them all like shadows

Before the Sun..."

-Jon Vowell

"The God who is there..."

"Awake! Awake! Put on strength, oh arm of the Lord; awake as in the ancient days, in the generation of old!"

"Awake! Awake! Stand up, oh Jerusalem, which has drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of His fury...Behold, I have taken out of thine hand the cup of trembling...I will put it into the hand of them that afflict thee...." Isaiah 51:9, 17, 22-23

When need to spend some time soaking in the truth that God answers prayer. We go through the whole rigmarole of how God answers prayer (yes, no, wait, etc.), but we kind of slump over the very fact that He answers at all. Answered prayer (regardless of the answer) is always a cause for rejoicing, for it is one of the moments in our lives when we witness God's intimacy with us in concrete form. God's intimacy is mere abstraction to us until it becomes concrete, and answered prayer is one of those concretions.

We live on a multifaceted plane of existence, but we (unfortunately) have a solely concrete plane of perception; 'non-concretions' are easy to forget and ignore, and that to our peril. It is no small wonder, then, that God gives us Himself in the concrete: in prayer itself (trinitarian communion), in the Bible (alive through the breath of God), in Creation (His invisible attributes made know), and in Incarnation (God made flesh), among others. Whenever we think on or partake of these things, let us not forget to give praise to the God who will not leave us alone.

"Praise to the Lord,

Who comes in a robe of flesh

And and a cloak of pages.

Tis Heaven on earth,

That we might see Him

Face to face..."

-Jon Vowell

Your Tears are not an Offense

"Thus saith the Lord...I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears..." Isaiah 38:5

I hope we do not fall into the foul snare of seeing prayer as mere sober petition. We can act sometimes like our emotions will hinder His presence, or drive Him away completely. "If I am not strong and stable when I talk to God, then He will not listen." If you are strong and stable, then why are you talking to Him? What was true of salvation is true throughout our entire lives: you are not to fix yourself up before you come to God, namely because you cannot fix yourself up. You are to come to Him as you are: fearful, emotional, doubting, angry, and all around broken. Run to Him with your burdens; your tears are not an offense to Him.
It is a lie that levity has nothing to do with God's Spirit. In His presence is the fullness of joy, and at His right hand are pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11). God's presence is not a joke, but it most certainly is not deadness either, and too often what passes for "holy sobriety" is merely a self-righteous mask meant to cover true sincerity. "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit," and He does not despise such things (Psalm 51:17). People seem to miss that, of all places, the presence of God is where you can (and should) be real: openly, nakedly real. All your attempts to cover your joys and sorrows merely hinder you from knowing fully the intimate communion of God.

"In Your Presence
There is Mercy,
A place for my fears,
Joys and my tears,
And You despise none of them..."
-Jon Vowell

Come Unto Him

"And Hezekiah received the letter from [the Assyrians], and read it: and Hezekiah went up unto the house of the Lord, and spread it before the Lord." Isaiah 37:14

We are the worst when it comes to prayer; we make it more complicated than it needs to be. We fill it with useless pomp and circumstance, acting like we have to say this or that, or else God will go all humbug on us. That is not the God we serve, the One to whom we cry, "Abba, Abba" unto. So many of us get caught up in the tangled web of our preconceived notions when it comes to our relationship with our heavenly Father. How many of us have experienced the joy of simply bringing our burdens to Him and spreading them before Him?
"And Hezekiah went up unto the house of the Lord, and spread the letter before the Lord." How simple and grand! No ceremony; no juggling; no performance; no hoop-jumping. He just came and brought. What more is required of God's children? Absolutely nothing, except to come unto Him all ye that are heavy-laden, and He will give you rest. Too often we make our giving of burdens to God a burden in and of itself. We have to learn: God's grace is poured out in abundance to us, and we can do nothing to make Him deal with us any more or less than that abundant grace.
There is a difference between bringing burdens and bringing petty problems. We often easily bring the latter while over complicating the former. This should not be! Bring your Father your pains, spread them before Him, and know the joy of watching Him fix them.

Unending Love,
Amazing Grace,
Poured out to us.
May I revel in it always...
-Jon Vowell