|
One of the expectations of prayer is that it be approached as plausible on a regular basis. The psalms speak of prayer as a daily walk. It is not anything would we necessarily take a vacation from and prayer is part of the vitality of living in a world partly physical and seen and partly spiritual and unseen. How much concern should we put into seeing and finding the actual results of our prayer efforts? I can be observant of any possible answers, but often the efficacies of my prayer efforts are unknown to me as I steady ahead for an answer. Within this, God might bring an answer very close to the time of the prayer, being that the Spirit is sensitive to our inability at times to discern an answer to a prayer. It is important as well, on our watch, to identify at times what does appear as the appearance of the means. I identify something that comes from the Lord within my watch as the means to do something, and I might then want to bring into discussion with the Lord as to what I believe might be needed as further means towards this. The further means might include additional finances, additional insights, additional healings, ect. But I do see that the Lord is giving me means, and I can believe what I am seeing, and therefore my faith or belief for a furthering of the means has as aspect to it where I am already seeing and believing. It says in the Bible, we walk by faith, not by sight, but in this case we are seeing, in that, on our watch the Lord has given us means and we are just asking for a furtherance of that, and that furtherance might just be in terms of a deepening of our understanding and discernment. Some much of what happens is outside the range of my vision and lacks real visibility for me. Hebrews chapter 10 and verse 35, Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward." Just focus on those words, cast not away, cast not away, and just what that means to you as you begin to pray. The idea is, that you are literally throwing away chances, opportunities, options that you might not have otherwise found without the benefits of prayer. I am partially sheltered as to what is going on no matter what and this probably is a good thing at times.. I don’t know of an approaching storm except when it appears for lack of a good weather report, I just lack the means to know. Acts 5.7 “After an interval of about three hours, his wife came in, not knowing what had happened." At times, you want to preface your prayers and say to the Lord, I just don't know. This is honing in on the truth of the matter. . Being that the amount of control I have as to the answers to my prayers, is limited as I am limited, I don’t necessarily want a mindset where I am looking ahead for answers around a corner that I can’t always see. And indeed there are many answers I might have obtained in the distance that I’ll never see and the far reaching effects of prayer we take in part by faith. However I can let a little bit of life come to me, instead of always looking for the worst. And I do however keep watch, remaining first in prayer, which becomes my watchtower as well. My point of prayer, wherever I happen to be physically, it could be a subway or a ballpark, also is a watchtower, metaphorically speaking. Jesus told his disciples to watch and pray, and without prayer, I also lose my watch as well. You are watching for a calm sea or rough sea, and you don’t quite believe it when it changes after having been one way for a long time. This may be even more applicable to intercessory prayer, where I might be praying for someone at another location, say someone even in another country, a country I have never been to and may never actually go to. Even though I never met these people, I have knowledge of them through my watch, maybe I have read about them. At this point it would be someone on the same planet of course, given the current limits of space travel. Then, something happens, quite dramatically and prayers effects suddenly come into view. Cast your bread on the waters, for after many days you will get it back. Ecclesiastes Chapter 11. This is almost like putting a message in a bottle and casting it to the seas. How that bottle will travel and who will receive the ultimate message is something I can’t know. Continuing to verse 5 in Ecclesiastes Chapter 11," Just as you do not know how the breath comes to the bones in the mother’s womb, so don’t know the work of God who makes everything. In the morning sow your seed, and at the evening let not your hands be idle( maybe tied), for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good." A major theme here is that not knowing is so much a part of our prayer efforts. The fisherman really doesn’t know what lurks below the surface of the sea when he is casting from the shore. I can go full steam ahead in my prayer efforts, but I don’t necessarily steam ahead to look for an answer, outracing God’s response, as this is not the redoubling of my efforts but an area where I can easily lose steam and earthly desire and gather discouragement because I have so little control over the results of my prayer efforts at most points. I still maintain diligence towards my watch for answers, but that diligence is not found outside the prayer conversation but only in reference to it. I can refer to prayer in the past, as really, previous discussions with the Lord and just add saying as we discussed previously Lord, I am looking for help in this area that will bring me past these troubles, help me to do something I really want to do and I hope to do with your additional help and grace for me. My answers to prayers may come back to me months and years down these new roads. I don’t recoil from my better prayer efforts because I don’t see, hear, or feel any tangible results from my prayers at certain points. Because the natural synergy of prayer is, even though I don't know its depth and breath, there is still a synergy to prayer where I do know it is not going to work against me, it can only work in a fashion that would be favorable and applicable in positive and appropriate ways, ways that may at this time be unknown or unfamiliar but are going to settle in for me, as God is always on my side. There can be some evidence of timeliness in prayer and in that sense I can get right to it. People might say I’m waiting for God’s timing, but this doesn’t apply to prayer itself. There isn’t a time to pray and a time not to pray like that Canticle from the Books of Wisdom. 2 Timothy 4 “Be instant in season, out of season". Any person I could pray for would always need or could always use prayer at any point in time, no matter if there is any evidence of a need being apparent to me. I don't have to fully discern a need for prayer before I take that leap of faith. There might be timely issues on the international front, the home front, the spiritual front and my personal front that have recourse to the benificence of prayer and maybe even your prayers. No prayer lacks usefulness. I don’t pray blindly about these issues, I can accumulate knowledge about them which are helpful in crafting my prayers as I apply some diligence in prayer towards these issues. I can pray about the gathering storms as they are happening as I believe that prayer is real time, as real time as the storm in the skies overhead that I am witnessing now. I can give thanks in all circumstances, see Ephesians 4.20 which means that I am not excused from looking for reasons, potentialities and actualities to be thankful for. Part of my watch includes watching and increasing my awareness of what to be thankful for and including this in my prayer efforts. Even in a seemingly negative situation, I can still call upon myself to find another angle which gives me a chance to be thankful. I am delayed for hours in the airport, I can be thankful for the time to read, the chance to chat with someone new, or I can be thankful for the renewed insight that a century ago I wouldn’t have the available option of hopping an airplane in the first place. I can be thankful for the possibilities as well. I can’t walk across this bridge now but there is a chance I could walk across this bridge in the future, because I can walk and I can walk over this particular bridge if it were to open for me, so I am thankful that openings for me can and might happen, whether it be in my career, friendships and any number of concerns. I can be thankful that I have some abilities towards that which I hope to do. I may have been slighted in many or all my attempts, but does that always have to reflect on my native abilities negatively and reach deeply into my mirror image. I can do a double check on my own native abilities in my prayer efforts. I backtrack and reach back just to see where I am coming from in the first place. I reach back past this circumstance or that circumstance and realize that my talents are still there and I can rejoice and give thanks for them. I may have been so involved in the seeking that I have expunged the identifying forces around me. I’m trying so hard I’m looking past the easy breezes of what I already have as gifts. I need to be more open on my watch, which includes an openness to what I already have as gifts and openings to new and better ways that they can apply and become operative in the world before me. In the strivings, I forget my original blueprint. The question is also, should I be holding myself to a first blueprint, and if I am, how long should I be going with this blueprint since I’m on a continual watch. Think of God handing you todays plans, today. What is happening in my life that would cause me to bring my original blueprint into question? I have some of the devices under my control. However these devices can lend themselves to other blueprints, which I could find and follow in freedom. I can follow an exact road that someone else has taken and get a completely different result. Or others have left tracks that can be followed with a seeming exactitude, and I wish to emulate their course by following those very same tracks. The road someone else has taken on a particular trip whether it is spiritual or otherwise is not the only thing I need to be watching for. I may derive only so much from what has already taken place. God's newness and freshness is something spoken of in his word and I can believe it as I search for it. In the same way, I can recite rehearsed prayers, written or recorded previously by others or myself, I can pray just like someone else has prayed, hoping to get similar results and that someone else might be who I was in the past. The person I am today isn’t always the same as who I was then. But I might be following a broken trail, a trail I can no longer find on my watch. I see someone else, and I want what they want, say something as simple as a big boat, but I don’t see the trail that got them there, to own this boat, or I make possibly errant assumptions as to what that trail is. Even if I do locate this trail, as to how this person obtained this boat, the trail that they followed to that boat might not be there any more. It may have been a hot trail then, but things have cooled off considerably since then. While I can be inspired by what the saints have achieved in prayer and I can take some solace and comfort in some of the results they have achieved and ushered forth, I can’t always expect to follow these trails, since I really don’t always have the same presenting opportunity to do so. By searching for their trail, I might be withering before my own unique opportunities, whatever they may be now. But just don’t assume that your opportunities are humble. Your opportunities may be no less dramatic than theirs. What I can expect from the saints, is more encouragement and inspiration, and some guidance, rather than an always discernable or known trail in some specific form that I can follow now. A jet flying at an extremely high altitude leaves a discernible trail in the sky that you can see. But take another look a little later and that trail is gone. Even that trail will fade slowly from your sight if you stay with the sight in the sky, and soon the evidence is gone of its existence, and it is lost on my watch. Ironically, although there may be no trail I can follow in my prayers, the prayers we get to, make our way to, and do leave some sort of trail. Some sort of trail of faithfulness, some sort of trail of seeking, indeed, there might yet be a real showing of His good hand and presence, if I can believe it when I see it. Cast your bread upon the waters. We can at least hope that this is true for us. That our prayers how formed into some sort of mystical trail that can help me, or help somewhere and sometime. By the way time travel is possible in prayer, we can pray for the future generations and across the generations. I have formed my own trail, by casting my bread upon the waters, maybe a trail of continuous and ongoing effort towards prayer, and if I have taken a break and slackened off, that doesn’t mean my renewed effort at this time and place doesn’t count. Opportunity always knocks when it comes to prayer. Those waters are still there for me and ready for my next casts into the seas. My prayer efforts have not been lost because I have formed a trail behind me, that can come right back in front of me. My watch isn’t over yet. Celine Dion has a hit song called, “It’s All Coming Back to me now." In the case of prayer, this can be true. It can all come back to me now. In the past, I have met with the present, actually met with the present in real time, with some good prayer efforts. Those prayers are still real although they were said in the past. I was casting my bread into waters as the waters were in front of me, and the results are now coming into shore. . Casting my bread into waters also includes and never excludes intercessory prayer. Those waters are partly in my world but more so representing an outer world that is only widened for me by my good efforts towards intercessory prayer. Cast your bread, or your prayer upon these waters. Soon the ground I stand on becomes stronger because of my efforts of intercession, because I am not building my house on sand and even if I am, I have another investment that transcends that. I can see my own trail, especially if I chronicle my own prayer efforts in a journal, but I didn’t see and I don’t know exactly how they mingled upon these vast waters. Therefore I can limit my expectations as to what results I will see, when and how I will see them, especially for my intercessory prayer efforts, which often recall beyond the presence of the space and time I inhabit now. If the Spirit affords me witness as the efficacy of an individual prayer, it is only by spiritual sight that I can do this, although with an understanding that spiritual sight extends into the natural world. The exact cause and effect for me and my prayer effort has settled upon vast waters. From this, I might rarely derive the exact etiology of a given prayer although there can be specific sightings upon those waters. If I see a whale emerging from the depths, this is something I can specifically see over the vast seas and maybe the effects of my prayers will rise up someday from those vast waters like the emergence of a great whale. My efforts aren’t truly lost, I can understand that I have left a trail, where this trail could lead I am not sure, but I have some remembrance of what I prayed for and when I prayed for this. But once those prayers are on those vast waters, I have let them go, and they will be what they will be. I have no more control over them and how they might rise. Even if I don’t remember my own prayers myself, they are written across those waters, a record is kept there. I try not to put all my efforts into any one type of prayer, but I try to get some good and possibly effective prayers over these waters, like a fisherman getting better casts over the sea, in his search for his future. I can only see the surface of these waters, I don’t have full realization of the depths of the sea in my sight, nor its changing contents. I could be surprised by a school of dolphins, a sudden turn of events from seemingly no where. I know the seas will yield its surprises. That the sea is deep and mysterious is evidenced by what I do see. I could say the same about the unknown mysteries of space. Look at the wide appeal of the new popular movie, Finding Nemo, set in the interior of the sea and the mystery of its depths, a movie watched by many people. The Bible says that efforts at prayer will be rewarded. See acts Chapter 10. Cornelius was a Roman cohort of Italica, and he was in the habit of giving generously to the people and he constantly prayed to God. An angel appeared to him, and said" Your prayers and your generosity have risen in God’s sight, and because of them he has remembered you. As the story weaves, he is visited by Peter himself. That is something to meditate on, God’s sight and what that actually means for you. I can’t see over those vast waters, even as Cornelius couldn’t see exactly but in faith, but my prayers and your prayers can reach the sight of God, just as those of Cornelius did. His prayers and good deeds left a trail of remembrance, as God did remember Cornelius and his prayers did rise from those vast waters into the sight of God. Much of what happened to him in Peter’s and the angel’s appearance to him was from God’s remembering his prayer efforts from a long time ago now. His efforts were not unseen or unremembered. We can see within the story, that Cornelius did not have full insight and knowledge yet continued to pray and cast his net over the waters. Part of his generosity to people included his prayers for them. He had enough believe in his watch to accept what was happening when the supernatural appearances came. Here we see the intercessory aspect of his prayers, and specifically that he was generous to people either in his prayers or in other ways. This generosity reached the sight of God. Elijah prayed for rain with actual effect. Elijah could not have had much insight into such things as real time weather reports based on satellite views that we have today. Yet he still cast over those waters. His prayers reached high enough from those vast waters that it changed the outcome of the weather in a powerful way He found his answer in his own watch. Any prayer situation casts over particular waters, the waters of health, the waters of salvation, and the waters of guidance and so on. There are so many weapons of prayer. These examples show the power of prayer in past times, and they are worth remembering now as an example in present times. Imagine taking a train, hopefully expecting it to land somewhere, and getting off the train realizing no one is out there and this just another way of being stranded. This happens to people today that study for a particular field and find after finishing their studies that there is nothing out there for them or no one is out there to greet them with a related position. That he or she obtained these credentials falls on deaf ears. But there are so many ways a person can feel stranded in this big wide world. An interesting movie on this subject was Castaway with Tom Hanks. He hiked to the top of the island he was alone on after surviving a plane crash on the open seas, and turned in each direction and in seeing waves of gigantic proportions in the distance at each and every turn he realized he was stranded on this island with no means of escape. Years later, when he made it back to mainland, and failed to reunite with his women friend, the movie ends with him looking at each turn in a road, and maybe realizing although he was in a different place, he felt as stranded now as in that same moment of realization on the top of the island. He was symbolically at another island, an island of emptiness and aloneness and at each turn again, he saw the same empty roads before him. This was his watch. I would hope that if I end up on an empty train that God is still out there. I might take a train, and think when I get off I will be able to go about my interests. But imagine getting off at your stop, and none of the expected amenities are there. I have no place I can buy water, a sandwich, a newspaper. The outer world is not complying. This is no resort, there is no first resort and no last resort. We do expect certain things as we travel and we are dependent on things operating a certain way. The whole world then or a least most of it seems deaf to my interests. There is no one out there. The sea seems like that sometimes as well. It is so vast, that it looks almost infinite to our limited sight. No one’s out there. How is my little cast ever going to make even a dent in anything like this? Yet I am admonished to cast my bread across the waters, and I don’t really see anything never mind a good reward. Yet as solitary and alone as the sea can be, my prayers can rise from those distant waters, and reach into the sight of God, just as they did for Cornelius. Whatever is happening, my central interests reverberate back to God, with God I make my cast. Just as Jesus, helped the fisherman in his first meeting on the first watch with them, He helps us as we search across those vast waters, even at the very beginning of our journey. But maybe years later God’s reward somehow has arrived, but I don’t take it because I myself don’t clearly remember what the reward is for, those good deeds in prayer from back then are faint in my own memories, and so much time has passed me that I really hadn’t believed that God would finally do this for me, and I really haven’t kept watch for this eventuality from God. I had believed in my prayer, but not in my watch. But if I don’t believe my watch, will not this soon go to my core belief in prayer itself? Ezekiel 47:3 -12“Going on eastward with a cord in his hand, the man measured one thousand cubits, and then led me through the water: and it was ankle-deep. Again he measured one thousand, and led me through the water and it was knee-deep. Again he measured one thousand, and led through the water: and it was up to the waist. Again, he measured one thousand, and it was a river I could not cross, for the water has risen: it was deep enough to swim in, a river that could not be crossed. He said to me," Mortal, have you seen this?" Then he led me back along the bank of the river. As I came back, I saw on the bank of the river a great many trees on one side and on the other. He said to me, “ This water flows toward the eastern region, and goes down into the Arabah and when it enters the sea, the sea of stagnant waters, the water will become fresh. Wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be many fish, once these waters reach there. It will become fresh: and everything will live where the river goes. People will stand fishing beside the sea from Engedi to Eneglaim it will be of a great many kinds, like the fish of the Great Sea . But its swamps and marshes will not become fresh, they are to be left for salt. On the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing." Personally, I may have been knocking on a door that is just not opening. I can realize then that this door may in fact be closed now. Jesus cursed the fig tree, that wasn’t ready there and then, like a lemonade stand that wasn’t open on a hot summer afternoon. We can look at this in two ways, has your lemonade stand stayed open when Jesus walked by? Or when you yourself are facing a closed door, can you make the call as Jesus made the call while searching for your own cup of lemonade. We can also look at gifts that we are not using that eventually become like fig trees without figs. The gift that was supposed to be there isn’t there anymore or has been left to the side and brushed aside, not used and ultimately not having what it once had. I can’t seem to use it in the way it was intended to be used. I am further and further away from the applications of faith. But Jesus did have the expectation that the fig tree would have figs and he has the expectations that his followers will have prayers. Don’t let your prayer life dry up like the fig tree and be alert and on watch, for answers. It is like looking at a lighthouse over the open sea, and waiting for what will happen. When and how it will happen I don’t know, but I need to keep watch. If I had made my casts, things will come back to me, and my unwillingness to watch for this is just a further lack of faith. We see this even in little ways like a fan at the game watching her favorite team. She can’t bear to watch the final minute of a close game, not quite believing that her team will come through with the wanted victory. People may be given to discouragement, and have given up the watch, not realizing that an answer can come at any time, just like the sea can change at any time. God’s presence isn’t held down by circumstances including my own discouragement. No matter what way things seem to be coursing along for you and me, they can change as rapidly as the formation of the waves of the sea, and although I don’t pray for the reward, I don’t expect that God will not reward me in some way, or He may reward me in some other way that I don’t expect, as it is His choice to do so, if He so wishes. Isaiah Chapter 45 and verse 4 “I will give you treasures of darkness, and riches hidden in secret places." I don’t feel like I deserve a reward, but what I feel and what God wishes are not the always the same for me. So I watch the seas, not expecting a particular reward because I just don’t know how God will act, but if it does come, realizing and acknowledging that it is from God, and from the truth of this word. I can more firmly believe in both my prayer and in my watch.
Related Articles -
discernment, watch,
| 
