LLI Fellowship

What does it take to move the heart of God? For me, based on my excruciatingly difficult waiting processes caused by holy delays, I have been challenged to come to grips with the real questions of faith and the role of prayer to change a painful circumstance to one of where I feel His favor.

Through these times I have come to see that "excruciating" is necessary part of the emotional part of my walk with God so He begins a new work that has my heart praying His heart for me and for my world.

I now know more of eternal value that is developed by the press of hard circumstances. Also to "know" that my circumstances are being perfectly meted out by my Creator and Redeemer to get me to the point where I am honest with myself and Him about life and what is making me sad. 

All the minute details of my personal struggle to find Him in these uniquely designed delays are orchestrated by the One loves me and wants to meet me at the place that squeezes out words that touch His heart. Cries from the deep, even from the places within the unknowable depths of my spiritual bowels, have words that move heart and eventually His grace works down to the points of pain to bring into our time space history His change to my world and my heart.

I have personally witnessed the presence of His power move hard things out of my way. But I have also experienced an increased endurance to press on and through those very hard times. Both works of His grace are incredible. Both means of grace represent His power to change my situation and accomplish much before His Throne in heaven. 

---

As of today, July, 10th 2012, it has been quite a while since I cried out to The Father with great fervor. The level of pain our family has endured over the last few years has desensitized me to some to the typical things that can shock most Americans. 

The loss of a business and a ministry. Weird delays in finding a way of escape in places of demonic stronghold. Tough arduous fights with belligerent spiritual foes. Desertion from former friends and allies. Loss of income. Loss of loved ones. Words of shame from our closest friends and family.  Unexpected loss of income right after your 8th child is born. Little or no spiritual fellowship. Etc. Etc. Etc.

While desensitized, I still feel the pain, I just don't kick my feet as much as I used to. The days of acting like a little baby and throwing a temper tantrum are less and less. This reality is good and it is bad. Babies want all of mommy or daddy. They want all the attention their little hearts can get, mommies and daddies love to give that attention because they love to be loved. So too with our God. Maturing in the ways of God has its advantages, but still, the cry of desperation is the most powerful force in moving the heart of our Heavenly Father. 

I have seen power and yet still I seek to learn more of His power touching my desperate heart. My soulful cries to God move His, just as the heart cries of Yahshua moved the Father's heart in the Garden of Travail. 

Cries that well up from deepest parts of us, those so deep within us, fears and pain we don't know exist until the trials we face force us to deal with the pain they cause and bring us to deal with our pain before our Loving Redeemer. 

Welling up from the very bedrock of my heart are the weeping and unction that moves me from complacency to place of hearing to a place of submission to a place of action. Actions that were intended by my King before the foundations of the world. Actions He has been working in me to get me to that place of anguish and confusion. 

Amazingly these times typically move me in a new direction. Our God uses the "straits" of difficulty to wake me up to fresh prayer and new action. The two forces of nature are inextricably bound together. Many times He wakes me from sleep and forces me to pay close attention to the movement of His Guiding Presence. Just to get me to the place where I decide to place my will in His Hands and I would have it no other way.

---

All those who have been drawn aside to pursue the kingdom of heaven will find their path congested with these kind of setbacks and challenges. Why? Because cries of the heart inspire the most simple and sincerest of prayers that move us toward the ultimate goal of building His kingdom. 

Simple heart groans like: “Lord, show me Your way!” or, “where are you God!” or, “I need you now!” or another olde but goody, “Save me, I'm perishing!” 

These rough and oftentimes guttural exclamations form the basis of the kind of prayers that move the heart of God. In the end they are the absolute best prayers, even if they come out as unintelligible grunts or groans. He knows the language of your pain.

Rom.8:26 says, “the Spirit helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought,but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which can not be uttered.”

Don't you think our Father in heaven deliberately seeks to move us to the point where simplicity in communication is all we can offer Him? Can you really imagine trying to lay out a complicated case of this and that before the Lord of Glory when your Gulf Coast beach house is about to be overwhelmed by category 5 hurricane? 

Ps 61:1-2

Hear my cry, O God;

Attend to my prayer.

From the end of the earth I will cry to You,

When my heart is overwhelmed;

Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.

Jesus modeled these kinds of prayers. He instructed us to pray, that we should not prattle on with spiritual speak of repetitious and vain words, but rather, to offer our supplications with the simplest of introductions,“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name”

We see that He purposely delivers us over to the place of fear and worry, even a place of crying before Him, to get us to the point in our very fragile lives to pray real prayers. To change us on the inside.

To stop us from bringing shame and discredit upon His Name. To motivate us to get back to work.

Here we find fellowship in the Garden with Our Lord. Here we die to self and take our cross willingly and follow His leading! Here confession of sin takes on a whole new meaning.

It is here that we say the right words that get a real answer, “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven” 

As we cry out through the Spirit, His inner voice speaks back to us, answering our cries with questions that challenge our will to where we are stuck and also shows us where we need to go. We see people we are supposed to call or visit to ask their forgiveness and it drives us back to cries of anguish because our flesh doesn't want to take that hard step toward forgiveness. It is here that our worldview is challenged. Our 5-year plan endures a great lash from the Lord of Providence and we gain a better view of who we really are before His bright white hot and very Holy throne. Here we become honest and vulnerable and finally, yes finally, we get to the point.

The weight of our carnal worry discloses to our inner man the reality of eternal things verses the silly stuff that has us agitated. These heavy weights of anxiety press us down to break us and to get us to finally see what matters to us and God. To reevaluate our situation in light of eternity. To gain new levels of sobriety and to learn the benefit of staring with a longing and yearning eye to our eternal home and ultimate destiny.

When temporal conundrums block our plans, we are left many times with a blank look. But It is here, in the darkness and confusion, that Our Father does His greatest work on the inside of us - our inner man. 

He kneads as a wise master baker His purposes into the fabric of our redeemed humanity. Deep down into the depths of our soul He introduces fresh and new measures of grace and assurance of His love that heretofore had not been offered. 

Don't you love it when some bring the trite words of, “God is on His throne, I say to myself, of course He is, that wasn't the issue or question”. 

As travails of our good old friend Job are seen when he was overwhelmed by the words of his woeful friends answered with the cry, “No doubt but ye [are] the people, and wisdom shall die with you”

===.

My problems don't change God or my eternal destiny. He is not surprised by my pain. He is actually going to take my pain and convert it into fresh power when I seek His Help. When I put all distractions aside and pursue exclusively Him. When I drink from His well.  The cry of faith brings quickly the true refreshment of heaven's nourishment. For His answers are different than the wisdom of this world, they are not derived from human reason. 

The fact that Our Lord on the Throne is not the question. Most assuredly He is firmly established as the High and Lofty One. The issue is will I rise to see the pain I am feeling from His perspective. 

David said in Ps 61 “Lead me to the rock that is higher than I” 

Whether we standing solid ground or on ground quaking under the power of an earthquake measuring 9 on the Richter scale. Or, as in David's case, we find ourselves underneath a torrent of water, The Lord is higher than our predicament and His wants to literally lift us to His Throne.

One of the toughest if not the toughest places to stand with Our Lord is at the bed of a dying loved one. Yet here we also draw comfort knowing that He is taking us all to the place of eternal light if we know Him. At the side of our friend or family member we are led with them to the Throne of Glory.

If today you are desolate. Alone and broke. Our God is enthroned in judgment as much as He is enthroned in times of feasting and mirth. He tends to the weary and the broken person. He takes special care of the orphans and widows when they cry out to Him

All of these shakings in the earth and around us remind us of our temporariness and His power over all circumstance and epochs of time. He stands over the tepid nature of man and reminds him that He is King over time and circumstance. But He cares for each who call upon His Name.

The greater question might be for some of you, “why doesn't He move in closer when I pray?” Why does He seem to take so long?

Knowing that our Dad is our dad is not enough, we need to feel His love and His comfort in our soul. 

We aren't seeking to write a paper on the Sovereignty of God, no, we are not about learning the intricacies of theological and abstract truth. 

No, and a thousand times No, we are seeking nothing less than the personal intervention of God Almighty. I assure all of you reading this article that He delights to show up when we are totally ready and desperate for Him. 

---

Let's be honest with ourselves for a just a moment.

What kind of prayers does God take delight to answer?

Does it really matter how we pray?

Do fancy scriptural words move His heart more then simple heart wrenching grunts from the depths of our being?

The word of God says,

Is.56:17 “For thus says the high and exalted One Who lives forever, whose name is Holy, "I dwell on a high and holy place, And also with the contrite and lowly of spirit In order to revive the spirit of the lowly And to revive the heart of the contrite.'

As we also read on in the recordings of Jesus life here on earth, we discover that the disciples of Jesus were sincere when they asked Him to teach them how to pray. 

Why then did they ask Him such a question? Don't you think they prayed many times in synagogue? What was missing in the prayers they uttered before they met the True Messiah? 

I believe they saw in Jesus a different manner of prayer.

To follow Yahshua in a simple childlike way literally means to walk as He walked. This walk includes a need for constant dependent prayer just as a nursing child constantly needs the milk and nourishment of his mother's breasts. A nursing baby has no desire to try to find another source of nourishment. The baby can't and would never stray too far from the source of life. 

If we embrace the way of a nursing child we will live constantly in His presence, staying before His face knowing there is no other place of real comfort.

Heb. 5:7-9 tells us that He prayed this way, 

“who in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear, though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him.”

We suppose so many times that following Jesus means joining a “christian” group or changing how we vote. It is so much more than learning how to be nicer person.

Paying our taxes, at least most of them, and having a moral core is not the goal of our salvation from the lost and dying world. Going to the “church” meetings. “hangin” with the people who think like us and play “happy” like us is, is not the end point of our salvation. 

The Lord died for us to save us from fitting in and being fake to get us all to a place of transparency. O how I long to be a part of a gathering that is full of this kind of transparency. 

Jesus hung with bad people. He was strong enough in His walk with the Father to keep His flesh in subjection. Following Jesus means to “become” more and more like Jesus. To “do” the stuff of Jesus.

He is our Messiah and Immanuel. “He is” our ever present help in time of need. He, through His Spirit, dwells on the inside of us, so we., and He will never be satisfied by halfhearted prayers. The Spirit of Christ in us presses us to the Throne of Our King in truth and sincerity.

In pressing us to His throne He puts in places of outreach that make us feel His Sorrow, His pain for lost people. This will also cause us to cry out. A cry to see people set free from bondage. Even anger wells up from the depths as we actively become a hater of evil and the evil one.

To be continued