Getting Desperate
It’s quite an amazing feat of the brain to remember some things vividly and forget so many others. We may not remember what was in our Netflix queue last year or the third to the last book we read. But that one thing that one person said that one time; it stuck.
I need more to stick in my own mind from what we’re learning in the Sermon on the Mount. We talked this week about Jesus’ invitation, “Do not worry…” but I realized this week that it’s hard to live without worry unless the prayer Jesus taught us sinks deeper into my own heart. I want the way I talk to God to be simultaneously:
deeper and simpler;
more frequent and more effortless;
and quite honestly, more… more.
I’m pressing into prayer more. Judy Kuehn let me borrow a book from Pete Greig, and it really resonated with me when he opened by saying something along the lines of – We believe in the most amazing, interactive, powerful God! Shouldn’t our lives be more different than they are?
For me – shouldn’t Jesus’ invitation to not worry be a lot easier for me on an average Wednesday mid-week because I believe God is with me and in me?
Is it not possible for our lives to be different than they were before we talked with God all the time? Before we knew that our access to him was direct? God’s most beloved Son, God himself, Jesus, “always lives to make intercession for us.” (Hebrews 7:25)
So why on a Wednesday morning do I chug to get going? Sipping the coffee a little more desperately, walking the block to grab that crisp alertness. Sure, it’s daylight savings; we’re all a bit more desperate. Desperate enough, apparently, for our Senate to find a way to unanimously agree this is a bad idea (just search Sunshine Protection Act).
Can we get desperate enough to unanimously agree that access to God is something we don’t want to wake up everyday ignoring? Or, as I often have, I’ve gotten into seasons where I’m desperate enough to pour out everything in my mind but not yet desperate enough to slow down, pause and listen to what he wants to say back.
The Lord’s Prayer keeps beckoning me back to reality. Reality that we have a Father in heaven who is ours because we are united with Jesus, the Son. He’s in the heavens, over all the skies of all the earth, seeing everything simultaneously and holding it altogether. He alone is holy, worthy, capable, trustworthy. When his Kingdom comes and his will is done, all is set right in the world. So please, Lord, bring it.
Are you chugging to get started today? Does your list of requests, if you were to spill them, seem long? Let me invite you to the recentering that I myself am settling into. What Netflix had going yesterday is long forgotten. But I suspect if I give God even half that amount of time, he’ll have something to say through his Word, through the song on in the background, through an impression by his Spirit on my soul, that will outlast today’s trouble. “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.
Each day has enough trouble of its own.” (Matthew 6:34). Pause and give God a moment to speak to you now.