Tag Archives: prayer

The God who Sees & Hears: Atonement & Attunement

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One look from my most loved ones can level me. A look of fear from my son on the pitching mound makes me ready to climb the fence and rescue him. A silly look of affection from one of my teenaged sons covers a thousand little irritations and miscommunications. The upturned, attentive face of my husband when I am hurting says more than a million missives.

Those who live together in close quarters know that there is a language without words. An upturned chin, a sharp glance, a tender gaze– these speak volumes in closely-attuned relationships. In fact, just this past Sunday at church, a dear friend caught on to our inter-family communication (which happened, at that moment, to be the frustrated-mom signal). He then proceeded to make crack us all up with his very fine-tuned impression of my silent signal to one of my sons. Maybe we need less-easily-intercepted signals. But I digress.

This Easter Monday, a stanza from George Herbert’s “Prayer (III)” reminded me of the accessibility of our incredibly-attuned God:

“Of what an easy access,
My blessed Lord, art thou! how suddenly
May our requests thine ear invade!
To show that state dislikes not easyness,
If I but lift mine eyes, my suit is made:
Thou canst no more not hear, than thou canst die.”

Though I’ve read this poem before, the last two lines struck me anew, perhaps because we had celebrated Christ’s inability to stay dead the day before. Christ can’t die, and he can’t not hear his children. In fact, he died so that God could, without separation or hindrance, hear directly from his children. He offered himself in atonement so we might know the Father’s attunement.

I’ve been musing on those two little lines for a few days now, alternating between awe and disbelief. That the God of the universe notices my needy gaze is hard for me to believe, but I long to believe it and become completely persuaded of this precious reality. My mind knows it, but I long for my emotions and body to join my brain in believing this kind of security.

Unlike me when reading my children’s various gazes, God has not only depth of care but also complete control. I can’t help my son pitch or heal a hurting heart or secure peace, but the God of the universe most assuredly can.

He hears sighs as loud, clear cries (Romans 8: 26–27). He reads looks like letters. He knows what we need before we do. Before a word is formed in our mouths, his mind knew it (Psalm 139:4–6). In the book of Exodus, God reassured the captive Israelites that he was the God who saw and heart his people: “And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel– and God knew” (Exodus 2:24).

Though it is only one verse, there is enough fodder here for the fires of our faith: God heard. God remembered. God saw. God knew.

In his short but powerful book With Christ in the School of Prayer, Andrew Murray wrote that all true prayer begins when we are able to say and mean: “My father sees. My father hears. My father knows.”

I don’t know how to translate sighs, and I can’t see your looks of pleading desperation. But there is One who does. I pray that you would know the astonishing attunement of his love today.

How Teenagers Have Changed My Prayer Life

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Before parenting teenagers, I would have given myself a passing grade at prayer. I felt, at least, moderately faithful and fervent in prayer. I have Scripture cards in my purse for praying in carlines and at halftimes. I journal prayers for my boys weekly during my Sabbath time. All in all, I thought I was doing pretty well. However, recently, I have discovered that as my teen’s worlds are expanding, God is doing a similarly expansive work in my prayer life.

Shifting from Prosperity to Presence

My limited knowledge of the future and my extensive knowledge of our budget has had me praying about college funding for my boys for the past few years. As the distance between my sons and graduation diminishes, academics and athletics have, for better or worse, become pressurized. I am embarrassed to admit it, but my prayers for one of our boys, who happens to be very fast, have been inching toward prayers that sound like, “Keep him fast, Lord.” Thankfully, the Holy Spirit, who does his convicting work both excellently and gently, has been shifting me from the fearful prayer, “Keep him fast,” to the hopeful prayer, “Keep him near to you.”

One of the prayers I have been praying over my boys for years comes from Psalm 104.

“These all look to you, to give them their food in due season. When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things. When you hide your face, they are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. When you send forth your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground” (Psalm 104:27–30).

I memorized this particular psalm precisely because it emphasized our ultimate dependence upon God for every breath, every success, and every blessing. After all, every good thing given comes down from above from his opened hands (James 1:17). However, even while praying the Scriptures, I find ways to try to twist God’s will toward mine rather than bending mine toward his. I cannot tell you how many times I have asked God to open his hands for my children (in provision, in protection, in blessing).

Recently, however, I have found that I am praying for God to open his hands, not first so he can bless them, but first so that he can hold their hands.

Of course, I want good things for them, and I know from whence all good things come. But I am increasingly, ever-so-slowly realizing (for myself and for them) that his nearness is our good (Psalm 73: 28). Yes, I want my children to have prosperous lives; I long for their provision. However, I most long for God’s presence and nearness in their lives. Keep them near, Lord. Open your hands, so they can hold them..

Shifting from Safety to Security in Christ

We have always prayed in the morning on the way to school and before trips for God’s protection and safety. I have prayed prayers for safety so often that they ought be tattooed on my palms by now. As my teenager’s worlds get bigger, the dangers they face grow proportionally. Yet, I have found myself surprised by the Spirit’s help in beginning to shift those prayers for safety to prayers for a more robust security in Christ. Just when I thought i would be a puddle of desperate prayers for safe driving and street smarts in a fragile world, I find myself begging for my boys to know sturdy security in Christ (Colossians 3: 1–4).

My prayers have shifted from a bubble of protection to a boldness of faith, a resilience of spirit, and a cemented confidence in Christ. By God’s grace, I am learning to let them risk and beginning to believe that experience really is a trustworthy teacher. I find hope and courage in the father from the parable who, rather than bolting the doors and battening down the hatches, entrusted his son to the Lord and let him wander off (believing he would wander back home transformed).

The Scriptural truths upon which these boys have been raised stand up under suffering and storms. The Spirit of the living God dwells within them and goes where I cannot and ought not go (1 Corinthians 1: 10–13; 3: 16). They are secure even when, from my vantage point, things feel less safe, predictable, and controlled. I am learning to pray with Moses, “There is none like God, O Jeshrun, who rides through the heavens to your help, through the skies in his majesty. The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deuteronomy 33: 27–28).

Shifting from Solutions to Questions

Finally, I find that my prayer for my teenagers consists much more of honest questions than sincerely offered solutions. I still think that I have some insight into my boys and their lives, but I am less likely to storm into the throne room like its a war room roundtable with my plans and potential solutions. I am much more like a tired parent/child longing to rest in the presence of one immeasurably more responsible, wise, and good than myself (Hebrews 4:16). .

The Spirit is helping me replace, “Lord, please do x, y, and z” with “Lord, what are you trying to teach son x, y, or z?” The following are some of the question/ requests I frequently bring to the presence of God for my teens:

  • Lord, in this situation, what is mine to do? Theirs? Yours?
  • Lord, how have you wired them? What wisdom might you have for me in this situation?
  • Lord, what are you trying to do and how can I come alongside you?
  • Spirit, bring to mind specific Scriptures I can pray for them, offer to them, and./or discuss with them.
  • Lord, to what are you calling them? Give them that which will help prepare them for just that.

I love that we will never reach the end of growth in prayer this side of glory. I love that I am growing spiritually alongside these boys of mine.

Early in the Morning

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To know me well is to know that I am not a morning person. I want to be because of the early bird and the worm and such, but my mind and soul come alive after the hour of 10 am even if my body is up earlier. Six am feels early to me and anything before 5 am feels unthinkable. At this point, all the morning people in my life start telling me about the stillness of the morning and the rising sun and how productive they feel before the rest of the world is awake. I hear them, but my body does not seem to get the point. I have stillness in my bed. My sleep is very productive in its own kind of way.

I give this as context because, as I was studying the last few days of Jesus’s life, the phrase the Lord used to draw me toward him in wonder was “in the morning.” Of all the things in the living and active word of God, it was the Greek word proi, which means “early in the morning; at dawn.” God certainly has a sense of humor!

Two Very Different Morning Motivations

In Mark 15, we hear that the chief priests, “as soon as it was morning,” held a counsel after which they “bound Jesus and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate” (Mark 15:1). In the Greek, the words are much stronger: “Euthus proi” begins the verse. Euthus means straight away; immediately; without any unnecessary zig zags or delay.”

As much as it may seem like mincing words, the strength of these words shows the organizing passion of their lives. Straightaway, as soon as they could, before dawn, without delay, the priests had to meet to get rid of Jesus. What made them rise early was their need to stop the one who was threatening their power, position, and tradition.

We hear proi again with a different additional descriptor a chapter later, in Mark 16. The Marys and Salome “brought spices, so that they might go and anoint him” (Mark 16:1). “And very early on the first day of the week, when the had risen, they went to the tomb” (Mark 16:2).

This time, we see in the Greek lian proi: very early, exceedingly early, utterly early. The emphatic lian adds intensity of intention to the women rising early in the morning. While the chief priests rose early and with straightaway intensity to destroy the body of Jesus, the doting women rose exceedingly early to show their devotion to the torn body of Jesus. Of course, the Spirit was quick to prod me with the questions, “What makes you rise early in the morning?” and ” What are the ordering passions of your life?”

The One who Rose Early for the Father

These are not the first occurrences of the phrase “early in the morning” in Mark’s gospel. Way back in the first chapter of his gospel, Mark writes the following of Jesus:

“And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed” (Mark 1:35).

In the Greek, we have lian proi (like we saw with the ladies heading to the tomb), but we also have the added ennuchos, meaning “while it was still night.”

Again, it may seem like splitting hairs, but words create worlds. Underneath that rising-early-before-the-dark-Jesus, we sense the passion, the urgency, the priority of being with the Father.

Long before Jesus rose from the tomb, he was raising early to be with the Father. Love for the Father, hunger for his nearness, and readiness to obey him were the organizing passions of Jesus’s life. What got him out of bed every morning was the existing, eternal smile of the Father and his desire to live ever-pleasing the Father while walking the earth.

Jesus never wavered in his morning motivation. I do. Jesus never missed a moment of being with the Father. I do. Yet, he rose from the dead that I might be empowered by the indwelling Spirit to rise with the desire to please the One already fully at pleasure with me through Christ. No matter how early I rise, there is one already waiting for me.

I was reminded of one of my favorite George Herbert’s poems, “Easter (II).”

“I got me flowers to straw thy way;
I got me boughs off many a tree:
But thou wast up by break of day,
And brought’st thy sweets along with thee.

The Sun arising in the East,
Through he give light, and th’ East perfume;
If they should offer to contest
With thy arising, they presume.

Can there be any day but this,
Though many suns to shine endeavor?
We count three hundred , but we miss:
there is but one, and that one ever.”

Herbert recognized that no matter how early arose on Easter morning to greet Jesus, Jesus was already risen and ready to greet him. The same is true of us daily.

Christ’s Vulnerability in the Garden of Gethsemane

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As we approach Holy Week, there are two realities that shout from the gospel records of Jesus’s days in approach to the Cross who which he came: his deity and his humanity. Both are true at the exact same time, but as I read the gospels this week to prepare my heart for Holy Week, I have to take the optometrist office approach: switching lenses from deity to humanity, from humanity to deity. My finite mind struggles to hold the mystery of the Incarnate Christ.

When I read Matthew’s account of Jesus in the Garden in Gethsemane looking for the humanity of Jesus, I found myself in tears. Here we meet Christ, finding a hidden spot on the Mount of Olives to express his growing grief to the Father. Bible commentator Alexander MacLaren powerfully wrote, “He withdrew into the shadow of the gnarled olives, as if even the moonbeams must not look too closely on the mystery of such grief.”

He may have hid his grief from the moonbeams, but, in his humanity, he invited his three closest companions into the weight of heaviness that had been building to the point of crushing, encompassing grief. Matthew notes the following:

“And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, ‘My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me’.” (Matthew 26:37–38).

Stay and See

The English translations don’t capture the intensity of the pain Jesus is expressing and the vulnerability he shows in needing the companionship of his human friends. The words Matthew uses to express Jesus’s pain mean “extreme vexation,” intense pain like in childbirth, and an engulfing heaviness. As these waves of human emotion (which have their own somatic effects) come over Jesus, he asks his friends to do two things: stay with me and see me.

The Greek word meno is translated “to abide, to stay with, to remain with.” Jesus, in a sense, invites his friends to join him in this sorrowful space, to hold space for him and be with him. Anyone who has attempted to accompany another through unthinkable pain (be it physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual) know what a challenge it is to stay. Our compassion and empathy make us want to get moving to offer solutions. Jesus asks to stay and offer our selves. First, Jesus asks his friends to stay, then he asks them to see.

The Greek word gregoreo is translated “to stay awake, to be vigilant, to be watchful, and to be responsible.” Anyone who has experienced suffering knows that it makes the sufferer feel invisible, unseen, unnoticed, and alone. Jesus, whose heart was not hardened by even a hint of sin, felt suffering in ways no other human ever could; yet, he asked his disciples to stay awake, to stay alert so that they could be watchful and see him.

The requests which sound so simple are simply profound. The One who created olive trees kneels bowed down in olive grove under the weight of grief, inviting humans his power caused to stand to stand with him in his pain.

We know how it goes. The disciples, even at their best, fall palpably short of their Master’s requests. Multiple times, they fall asleep. Perhaps it was the heavy meal and the wine from the Passover, perhaps their brains were shutting down at the immensity of emotion being shown by the One who was always their security and their calm. Either way, they could not and did not stay or see.

This is where we see the deity of Christ on full display. He wrestles, but fully submits (Matthew 26:39–46). He wills what the Father wills, even when it means willing a death he does not deserve. He chooses to shut his eyes in submission for the friends who can’t keep their eyes open for him in his pain. He greets his betrayer still calling him friend (Matthew 26:50). He who could call legions of angels to protect him offers himself willingly (Matthew 26: 52–56).

Staying with and Seeing Our Savior

We live on the other side of the story, we who are indwelled by the Spirit of the Living God. We know that he suffered alone so we would never again have to. We know what our sin couldn’t do and what Jesus did so we would no longer be enslaved to sin. We can learn (even if ever-so-slowly) to stay and to see our Savior.

Isn’t that what Jesus asked his disciples earlier in the same evening before this episode in the olive grove? “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches” (John 15:4–5). That is the same Greek word, meno.

The invitation remains: stay with me. Stay alert, be watchful, be vigilant, learn to see as I would see and to be as I would be.

Stay with him. See him. Savor him. Speak of him. These are the natural responses of the love he has shown us in bowing himself to the Father’s will that we might stand freely in the Father’s love.

Dealing with Disappointments

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This one is for those who feel a little behind on dreaming and goal-planning for a new year. This one is for those who are sitting paralyzed in an attic of boxed-up disappointments, feeling the clutter of the crowded past year.

I am very slowly learning that the best gift I can offer my husband and children is the plodding progress of my own soul. As I am learning to healthily deal with my own disappointments, I am modeling for my family an honest way forward into the presence of the Lord. As I identify and speak openly about the two ditches I can fall into when dealing with disappointments or hopes deferred, I offer my children a map towards their own maturity.

Two Ditches when Dealing with Disappointment

Every year is full of its own delights and disappointments. As a culture, we have a place-holder for the joyful moments, the celebrations, the goals achieved, the awards received. We smile for insta-gram and post about them. We brag on them in our Christmas letters. But what about the dead ends, the disappointments, and the setbacks?

When we deny that they happened or ditch them too quickly, we end up carrying them much longer in the transmuted form of distance from God. After all, he knows our hearts and our desires, so pretending or preemptively trying to move on serves neither him nor us. 

On the other hand, we may be tempted to drag them along with us everywhere When we hold on to the negative emotions that comes with disappointment too long, they have a way of warping our view of reality and our approach towards God.

I’ve tried both over the years and am very slowing learning a better way through the mire of disappointment: to dry them out in the warmth of his presence and the light of his truth.

This is terribly uncomfortable at first, as it requires admitting our own fears and perceived failures. It requires a level of intimacy and vulnerability with God that feels risky. Yet, I am learning though experience that his delight begins to disarm all my false coping mechanisms. 

In the security of the trinitarian love, I can let out the unruly emotions and speak the irrational lies. He receives them and swallows them up in truth and grace, with all the calmness of one who has long ago settled all my accounts. 

It takes awhile for the old disappointments to dry up, as I imagine it would take fresh fruit to fully dehydrate in the sun naturally.  But, at the end of this process, he has seeds to plant in my life and I have space to dream again with Him.

Sun-dried Disappointments

Lay out your losses before me. 
We can count them one by one. 
Don’t hide or grasp them tightly;
Bring them out to dry in the sun. 

Disappointments left in darkness 
Tend to fester or mold or grow. 
Naming them in my presence 
Invites me into all I fully know. 

You need not be brave with me.
I don’t want your stiff upper lip. 
I want your honest, alloyed tears;
I want you clinging to my hip. 

My purposes may elude you, 
But you must trust I am good. 
For I am God outside of time;
I don’t do things as you would. 

Your sun-dried disappointments
You may safely entrust to me. 
I’ll plant these seeds of sorrow 
To grow gardens you don’t see. 

So, open up your clenched soul;
Let me linger with you a spell. 
For even amidst your sadness,
I continue to do all things well. 

If you find yourself holding a clammy handful of past disappointments, perhaps it is time to bring them into the presence of a God who already knows them and who has good plans for them. His radiance, purity, and delight have the power to dehydrate those disappointments, making space for new dreams.

What Mary Knew: Lessons in Mothering

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If your family is anything like mine, Pentatonix has been crowding your home with the rhetorical question “Mary, did you know?” for at least a fortnight. As I was walking this morning, I found myself thinking about all the things Mary probably did know far ahead of me as a mother.

I am so thankful that Christ sanctified every stage of human life from infancy to childhood, to young adulthood. I am also thankful to know that Mary walked through the various stages of mothering — and made it through all of them (even the un-welcomed stage of losing a child that no parent should have to experience). I am so grateful that the Spirit saw fit to prod Luke to share, “But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Luke 2: 19). There is a world within those few words, and I find solace and space within it.

I’ve mentioned before that, during the early years of motherhood, my task and territory as a mother felt as large as the Sahara Dessert. The challenge in that season was to be stretched beyond my imagined capacity and far beyond my felt strength, to come alongside God in shaping the souls of my sons. Now that I am parenting teenagers, I feel an equal but opposite challenge: my role seems to be shrinking to the size of a small sandbox. The Lord is teaching me how to rightly shrink to come alongside Him in the shaping of souls. That’s a lot of stretching and shrinking for a human heart and a sentient soul.

It helped me on my walk this morning to know that other mothers, not least the mother of our Mighty God, have walked this path before me, holding space for both wonder and loss, brokenness and beauty.

What Mary Knew

Mary, I think you intuitively knew
Making space in a stable was just the start
To the quietly intrusive process 
Wherein a mother makes space in her heart.

Mary, I think you instinctively knew 
A mother’s heart is ever under construction—
Annexing area, warehousing wonder—
While preparing for future reduction.

Mary, I think you innately knew 
The womb merely mirrors the soul—
Stretching, straining, then shrinking
So another may become whole.

Mary, I don’t think you could ever know
The model you offer this mother.
You gave a glimpse of His sacrifice,
In laying desires down for another. 

Mary, I know that one day I’ll know
The joy of a difficult job well done.
I’ll stand side by side with my sons,
Complete in the presence of your Son.

Momma, whether you find yourself overwhelmed by the expanse of Saharan-sized needs or grieving the tight confines of a sand box, I pray that you would know the Savior who stands beside you, the empowerment of the Spirit who dwells within you, and the pleasure of the Father who beams over you and your children.

Timely Words as the Year Turns

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As we approach the New Year, we are getting all the emails seeking to neatly wrap up the year: Spotify has individually wrapped the year by sharing the songs you most listened to and various organizations are giving you the year’s story in statistics and sales.

I appreciate the thoughtful review of a year as much as the next girl (if not more); however, I am also acutely aware that years don’t always wrap up neatly and that the highlight reels rarely show the full picture.

What happens when your year feels like it is mostly wrapped in darkness and disappointment? What if, underneath the sweet moments, there remained a standing sense of isolation or confusion or feeling lost in the shuffle? When that is the case, the highlight reels feel heavy and attempts to wrap up the year, wearying.

I am all for remembering the high points and inviting others to share in our joy, but, if you know me, I am also for naming the hard and trying to speak the unspeakable. A few Scriptures and a few thoughts from Paul Murray’s I Loved Jesus in the Night: Theresa of Calcutta have helped me as the world seeks to wrap up its most recent trip around the sun.

Give Him Your Everything & Your Nothing

As everyone is rattling off everything that has happened and been achieved and accomplished this past year, Mother Theresa has been reminding me to give to God both my everything and my nothing.

Despite the radiance she gave off, Mother Theresa often confided in those closest to her the utter darkness she often felt. In fact, in a letter to a priest, she said, “If I ever become a saint — I till surely be one of ‘darkness’.” We know her as the tiny woman who gave her everything to God, but she took great delight in offering her nothing to him. She often felt her own bankruptcy of soul. In another letter to her spiritual director, she wrote the following line that struck me deeply: “To spend myself and yet to be in total darkness.”

Mother Theresa instructed her friend Paul Murray, “If, Father Paul, at the time of your prayer or meditation it seems to you that not only have you been distracted in your prayer, but that you have done nothing at all….First — turn to God and give God that nothing.”

The same advice seems to hold true if, when looking over your year, it seems like you have done little to nothing that you had hoped or expected. “First–turn to God and give God that nothing.”

It seems to be that God might desire our nothing more than our something. In our nothing, we are most vulnerable and dependent. Thus, to give him our nothing and to offer him our darkness, we entrust him with our most vulnerable parts. He is, after all, the God who created everything ex nihilo (out of nothing). If nothing was his chosen medium for painting the canvas of creation, perhaps he can do something with our nothing.

Darkness is Not Dark to Him

If your year seems more marked by darkness than by light, it helps to remember that even our darkness is not dark to him. As David wrote, “If I say ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me and the light about me be night, even the darkness is not dark to you; for the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you’ ” (Psalm 139: 11-12).

What feels and appears dark to us doesn’t daunt our God. He is so radiant, so clear of sight, that our most muddled and messy seasons are clear as day to him. He sees what we cannot see. When we don’t have our own light circumstantially or internally, we still have Him who is our light. David exclaims to the Lord, “For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light” (Psalm 36: 9).

Micah sang a similar tune in the midst of Israel’s season of great darkness:

“Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me” (Micah 7: 8).

This is your gentle reminder that Scriptures bears witness to both darkness and light. God created both, so we can learn to hold both.

Mother Theresa was proud to look back on her life and be able to say, “I loved Jesus in the night.” May the same be true of us.