...Anchoring Your Life With Prayer

June 28, 2013

 

God shows Himself throughout the whole of His creation.

"For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse." (Romans 1:20)

The heavens tell of the glory of God. The skies display His marvelous craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make Him known. They speak without a sound or a word; their voice is silent in the skies; yet their message has gone out to all the earth, and their words to all the world..." (Psalm 19:1)

 

Yet with all of the technology and the vast potential resources at our disposal, there simply cannot be any way to justify ignorance of our Creator other than by choice.  

 

That we are conscious and aware, that we even exist at all, is solely due to God's decision for it to be so.  Yet countless individuals live out their entire lives utterly absorbed with themselves and how they are affected by the world around them.  Even worse, are the countless individuals which live out their entire lives in a conscious effort to run away from the reality of His existence. 

 

After all, the logic of the world states that if God doesn't exist, then there is no accountability to Him.  Unfortunately, God exists whether anyone believes in Him or not.  And that also goes for the issue of accountability. 

God "desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of truth. For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." (1 Timothy 2:4,5)

 

Jesus said "seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you."  Our Savior is trustworthy and no lie can be found in Him.  The problem is, people are simply too distracted and too wrapped up in themselves, their lives and everyone else's, to stand there and knock.  God works in His timing, not ours.  Our effort to seek gets interrupted, put off until the next day, but the next day comes with distractions of its own, "...tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." (Matt 6:34)

This process repeats itself until our mind becomes a slave to this world and our necessities and desires that go along with it. 

Yet Jesus told us to be kingdom minded,  "Your kingdom come. Your will be done, On earth as it is in heaven." (Matt 6:10)

 

To be kingdom minded is to be aware of and understand that the world we live in and perceive around us is an illusion.  We live in a paradox:  all the things that are seen and perceived will rot and fade away; yet the things that truly matter cannot be seen for they are eternal, and can only be perceived through God's Spirit.

Our only anchor among the raging waves of distraction and deception in this sea of illusion is the substance of prayer.  The burden of our longing to be with our Father, tethered by a line of hope that reaches unto heaven itself.  Without prayer and intimate consumption of His counsel, we are left to be tossed about in the tempest of this present darkness. 

 

To stay afloat, is to stay in prayer,
"...that at all times they ought to PRAY and not lose heart." (Luke 18:1)
"We must pray in faith without doubting" (James 1:6,7)
"pray without ceasing;" (1 thess 5:17)

 

To ride out this storm is to hang on to our line of hope with all that we are-- not all that remains of us after being ransacked and gleaned by the distractions of this world.

 

God has given us His all.  The whole of creation was purposed for the creation of mankind, which was and-- although at this time still fallen-- is to be an eternal habitation for His Glory.  A multitude of individual reflections of all the potential expressions of His holy nature, yet having been endowed with the free will to choose such.  An eternal abode constructed of living stones-- Unique, individual souls, each having chosen to seek out and reflect their ultimate potential. 

 

Jesus stated, "Whoever seeks to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it."  Therefore only those whom are willing to give God their all, make up the true Body of Christ.  Forsaking this world for the next, honoring Him and not ourselves, is how we preserve the eternal inheritance He eagerly awaits to share with us.

"The God who made the world and all things in it,

since He is Lord of heaven and earth,

does not dwell in temples made with hands;

nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything,

since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things;

and He made from one man every nation of mankind

to live on all the face of the earth,

having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation,

that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him,

though He is not far from each one of us;

for in Him we live and move and exist,

as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.’

 

Being then the children of God,

we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone,

an image formed by the art and thought of man. 

 

Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance,

God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent,

because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness

through a Man whom He has appointed,

having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.” (Acts 17:24)