"The Matter At Hand"

   We might never be able to overemphasize prayer.  We can surely, however, wrongly emphasize this blessed gift and calling of God.

    "When ye spread forth your hands, I will hide Mine eyes from you.  Yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear.  Your hands are full of blood.  Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings from before Mine eyes.  Cease to do evil, learn to do well, seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow" (Isaiah 1:15-17).

   In essence, the Lord chided Israel, "Get off your knees, get on your feet, and with your hands do those things of My will that lie obviously before you.  Indeed, prayer is no substitute for fulfilling the matter at hand.  We may pray as we do so, but we spin our spiritual wheels if time spent in apparent communion with God would be better spent in doing His obvious will.  Indeed, our spiritual enemies do not hesitate to tempt us with good things in order to hinder our doing of the best thing, namely, our Lord's will concerning the matter at hand.

    We live in times wherein prayer is considered among believers more than in any other generation.  We may well be actually praying more than ever.  This can certainly be a good thing, but only if our "many prayers" correlate with a life devoted to the will of God in all things.  Sometimes our Father may direct us away from the Throne and unto the fields where crops need our tending.  Again, we may pray as we go and as we work, but only if we expend the same spiritual energy in the going and the working.  Prayer is no substitute for the obvious, for the responsibility, for the matter at hand.

"Beware of the scribes, which desire to walk in long robes, and love greetings in the markets, and the highest seats in the synagogues, and the chief rooms at feasts, which devour widows' houses, and for a show make long prayers."

(Luke 20:46-47)

Weekly Memory Verse

    I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living.

(Psalm 116:9)