Understanding Our Humanity's Collective
Need for Prayer
It should be remembered that prayer is, in its most simplistic understanding, meaningful conversation with God. It should also be clearly understood that it is God Himself that is doing the listening. If every human being on earth today and every human being that ever lived on earth were to pray all at once, the LORD God would still be able to hear your prayer, uniquely, distinctly, personally with understanding which transcends all human comprehension. In His omnipresence and omniscience He is able to know and engage all who chose to engage Him in the spiritual dialogue that is prayer.
Ritual prayer profits little if it profits at all. Apart from the prayers of adoration, praise and worship expressing personal devotion and gratitude toward God, ritual prayer is not even truly prayer. It is tantamount to a one way rant throwing something up on a perceived heavenly wall looking to see what will stick so we can get what we want, which on its face is not particularly reverential. There is no conversation in ritual prayer, simply empty words in one direction more often than not seeking favor, or preferential benevolent action and/or miracles from the LORD. There is no, or little acknowledgement of the human condition and position before the LORD, no humility, no repentance, or self examination seeking direction and correction in one's life. Most persons as they engage what they believe to be prayer place all their begs in one asket, continually begging and asking God for one thing or another never yielding to the voice of God which always speaks to the human spirit and never coming to the knowledge of the truth. God, the LORD Jesus Christ, is truth Himself and He seeks persons to worship and pray to Him in Spirit and in truth. He desires to talk with us.
Today in my early morning prayer and devotion, I opened up the Word of God to the book of the Old Testament prophet Micah, chapter seven.
"Woe is me! for I am as when they have gathered the summer fruits, as the grapegleanings of the vintage: there is no cluster to eat: my soul desired the firstripe fruit. The good man is perished out of the earth: and there is none upright among men: they all lie in wait for blood; they hunt every man his brother with a net. That they may do evil with both hands earnestly, the prince asketh, and the judge asketh for a reward; and the great man, he uttereth his mischievous desire: so they wrap it up. The best of them is as a brier: the most upright is sharperthan a thorn hedge: the day of thy watchmen and thy visitation cometh; now shall be their perplexity. Trust ye not in a friend, put ye not confidence in a guide: keep the doors of thy mouth from her that lieth in thy bosom. For the son dishonoureth the father, the daughter riseth up against her mother, the daughter in law against her mother in law; a man's enemies are the men of his own house. Therefore I will look unto the LORD; I will wait for the God of my salvation: my God will hear me. Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the LORD shall be a light unto me. I will bear the indignation of the LORD, because I have sinned against him, until he plead my cause, and execute judgment for me: he will bring me forth to the light, and I shall behold his righteousness." Micah 7v.1-9
This scripture speaks to the lamentation and anguish in the heart of the prophet desiring truth, honesty, integrity and goodness within the heart of men and finding none, and to the contrary he finds the heart of men to be deceitful and desperately wicked, seeking blood and desirous to do evil with both hands earnestly. Even within hearts of the best of men wickedness pervades. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit he prophecies to trust not in a friend, place no confidence in a guide and to keep the doors of your mouth closed from even the woman that lies in your bosom. Micah is not telling us to be anti-social, he's telling us that our trust and the deepest yearnings of our hearts should be in and shared with God.
I know of no person that would agree with Micah's assessment of the condition of the human heart, particularly in our modern day civil society. But I will tell you that the prophet was absolutely correct. The greater our human progress and achievement the deeper we sink into the abyss of human depravity, and our moral sensibilities and shallow human kindnesses veil what we truly feel and the truest expressions of our human character. However, Micah's indictment was not simply an aspersion towards the rest of humanity while he stood alone as perfect. He, as I do myself, acknowledges his guilt and sin before God and willingly accepts the LORD's indignation because he has ultimately sinned against God having sinned against others. If we are honest with ourselves and with God we will acknowledge that most of the problems and suffering in our lives have to do with our own life choices and its consequences. I thank God that He is not this awful god of wrath waiting to beat me up, but just like in any good relationship if we humbly confess our faults and turn from our errors their is forgiveness, grace and mercy and the relationship grows and bares great fruit. It's what we tell our children, but it means nothing to us in our daily lives and we wonder why we have such great problems with adolescent behavior.
The LORD is speaking through the prophet, telling us that there is a day of reckoning to come for our world whether we want to accept it, believe it to be false, or simply conclude that the Bible and all of its books are simply the rants and ravings of a series of religious fanatics and/or their crazy god. God is speaking to us everyday in our world and we are simply not listening. Because we do not want or care to listen, its an interruption in our carefree, selfish lives and we are not interested. Human beings believe that if we ignore what is right in front of us the inconvenient truth will simply go away.
God has given us a spiritual voice box, an audible voice within us called the human conscience. Most of us ignore it, but through our conscience God has given us the tools to defeat evil and embrace the good in our life and our world. But we shun the inner voice and embrace the evil, paying lip service to what we know to be good and right in our life and the world, and look with amazement and horror at all of the destruction, suffering and pain around us. Some of us even have the nerve to blame, and even curse God because of it. Choices and consequences.
Humanity needs prayer. We need to pray, NOW. We need to pray to a God that is listening and who can do something about the hurricane in our lives. We chose ritual and ineffectual prayer and religion because in it we can absolve ourselves of guilt, we don't need to embrace self examination, or confess errors in our human walk to a holy, righteous, but loving God. Just bless me and do miracle type stuff in my life. Just make it all good and I'll see you in church on Sunday, for an hour, maybe, if i don't have a hang over, or if I don't get caught up in something else more important.
Tell me, what would you characterize to be a meaningful relationship with God?
The Revelation Pilgrim
