I have gone through my share of days that were troublesome. Some of those days I found myself making decisions or at least thinking of solutions, in fear. If I had followed through on any of them they would have made the situations more devastating. Faith mattered in those days. It was the difference between being swept away or stopping, breathing, kneeling and believing that God is with me and wanted to help.
The people began to complain to the Lord about their troubles. When the Lord heard them, he became angry and sent fire on the people. It burned among them and destroyed one end of the camp. The people cried out to Moses for help; he prayed to the Lord, and the fire died down. – Numbers 11:1-2 GNT
It is a reminder for me to understand what power is all about and where it comes from.
The kings gathered together
and came to attack Mount Zion.
But when they saw it, they were amazed;
they were afraid and ran away.
There they were seized with fear and anguish,
like a woman about to bear a child,
like ships tossing in a furious storm. – Psalm 48:4-7 GNT
Does power come from intimidation or attack? Is it about victimizing before becoming a victim? Is it God’s power of love? Am I able to love my enemies and pray for those who come against me? I believe it is the power of God’s love in me so that He may be known in my weakness.
It is the reason why confession is so powerful. Working with my Middle Eastern friends, prayer is about spreading out our hands. It is their posture of prayer. Instead of heads bowed, eyes closed and hands folded – their faces are turned towards heaven.
When you lift your hands in prayer, I will not look at you. No matter how much you pray, I will not listen, for your hands are covered with blood. – Isaiah 1:15 GNT
May we leave our eloquent, stirring and emotional prayers until after confession for they may be empty, hollow and useless if God is not looking or listening.
It becomes you, therefore, out of love to this true life, to account yourself desolate in this world, however great the prosperity of your lot may be. For as that is the true life, in comparison with which the present life, which is much loved, is not worthy to be called life, however happy and prolonged it be, so is it also the true consolation promised by the Lord in the words of Isaiah, I will give him the true consolation, peace upon peace, without which consolation men find themselves, in the midst of every mere earthly solace, rather desolate than comforted. For as for riches and high rank, and all other things in which men who are strangers to true felicity imagine that happiness exists, what comfort do they bring, seeing that it is better to be independent of such things than to enjoy abundance of them, because, when possessed, they occasion, through our fear of losing them, more vexation than was caused by the strength of desire with which their possession was coveted? Men are not made good by possessing these so-called good things, but, if men have become good otherwise, they make these things to be really good by using them well. Therefore true comfort is to be found not in them, but rather in those things in which true life is found. For a man can be made blessed only by the same power by which he is made good. – Augustine
The Practice of Prayer 