The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…
"Intensely Personal"
The privilege and responsibility of prayer provides a gift for which we can never prayerfully offer enough thanks.
"The LORD will command His lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night His song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life" (Psalm 42:8).
Our Heavenly Father beckons His trusting children in Christ to Himself for loving and living communion of Heart to heart. Great mystery comes with the calling. Why are our voices "sweet" to Him? Why does He take "delight" in our prayers? (Song of Solomon 2:14; Proverbs 15:8). The Bible provides some answers to the question. However, to a significant degree, the mystery remains regardless of how much we ponder and study the wonder of prayer as it glimmers in the pages of Scripture. "What is man that Thou art mindful of him" asked the Psalmist (Psalm 8:4). Job took the matter further: "What is man, that Thou shouldest magnify him, and that Thou shouldest set Thine heart upon him?" (Job 7:17). The latter inquiry escorts God's relationship to us into the matter of the intensely personal, and thus, into the matter of prayer. "When Thou saidst, Seek ye My face, my heart said unto Thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek" (Psalm 27:8).
God exists in terms of the "intensely personal." No characteristic of His loving nature more defines Him than communication, so much so that Scripture identifies His Son as "the Word" (John 1:1). If, therefore, He creates a race of beings "in His image," we can be sure that communication will also be central in our existence. It is. Our Lord made us for personal fellowship with people, but far more, with Him. Sin has greatly clouded and complicated the issue, of course. It remains, however, that those who have trusted Him throughout history have known Him and walked with Him in genuine communication. Certainly, "we see through a glass darkly" (I Corinthians 13:12). But we do see in spiritual terms, or as the writer of Hebrews declared of Moses: "He endured, as seeing Him who is invisible" (Hebrews 11:27).
Prayer provides a powerful means whereby we open the eyes of our hearts, as it were, joining the Psalmist in his determination of faith: "As for me, I will behold Thy face in righteousness" (Psalm 17:15). David well knew God's "intensely personal" nature, and responded accordingly. We know it better, through the Scriptures, the indwelling Holy Spirit, and the recorded history of believers through the ages walking with God. Thus, we do well to respond even more than David, availing ourselves of the greater gifts God has given to us since the advent of the Lord Jesus. Most importantly, we do well to remember that no matter how much prayer means to us, it means far more to our Heavenly Father. He loves our hearts and our voices in the wonder of His love and grace. Let us love His heart and voice in response, and seek by the leading and enabling of His Spirit to be "intensely personal" with Him.
"My voice shalt Thou hear."
(Psalm 5:3)
Weekly Memory Verse
For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things: to whom be glory forever. Amen.
(Romans 11:36)
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