Listening to God: The Mystery of Silence and Prayers Devo

Septemner 22nd, 2019

Devotional

“Listening to God: The Mystery of Silence and Prayers”

                                James 4:8

Matthew 6: 5-15 

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Monday: “When You Pray” -  Matthew 6:5-6

At the center of our life of devotion to God is prayer. It’s our chief way of communicating with the Holy One. The key word being communication. But sometimes, sadly, our prayer lives don’t look anything like a healthy living relationship. Take a moment to think about your prayer life in terms of how you talk with your friends and family. When I talk with folks there is a lot of talking back and forth, but it doesn’t always feel that way when I’m communicating with God. Instead it is me. Talking. A lot. 

For some reason so many of us refuse to listen to God. We either quickly run through our list of requests just to throw them out there and make sure God knows what they are because, well, we’re just too busy for anything else. Or we take prayer and reduce it to a model, such as the ACTS method – making sure to have adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication (or requests) in our daily prayers. Once again pause and think about how this compares with your other relationships throughout the day. Are your friends and family feeling cared about if you don’t listen to them? Or don’t follow the line of the present conversation because you have a set method you want to follow or are afraid that what you deem needs to be said will be forgotten.

  How would you describe your prayer life? Is it mostly talking or listening?

Prayer: Lord, we confess that sometimes it feels like we talk a lot more at you, tell you what we want, then with you, listening to your responses. Remind us that pray is about a deep and meaningful relationship with you.  Re-teach us how to pray. Amen. 

Tuesday: “Do Not” - Matthew 6: 7-8

Even not listening, as detrimental as this is, isn’t as overwhelming among Christians today as not believing God will answer prayers. Are we believing God for so little that we do not even come to God in prayer? Are we putting the breaks down on our prayer life because we are afraid to ask God for big things? Do we only pray for those things that we will expect God to answer, or don’t care if he doesn’t answer. Or worse when we pray for something big do we expect God not to answer at all? And friends, that is a tragedy is the words of John Wesley are true when he said, “It seems that God is limited by our prayer life, that he can do nothing for humanity unless someone asks him.”

Do you come to God in prayer for all things, big and small? Why or why not?

Prayer: Lord, sometimes we feel like giving up on prayer. We look around and feel like prayer hasn’t worked for us in the past, because we haven’t received what we asked for. Or we start to doubt that we are worthy of praying to you at all. Lord, refresh our relationship with you through prayer, and allow the floodgates to open, we pray. Amen. 

Wednesday: “Hallowed” - Matthew 6: 9

Jesus was teaching his disciple to pray a very big prayer.

“Our Father, who are it Heaven, Hallowed be your name.” Even in teaching his disciples how to pray Jesus is being controversial as well as teaching a radical lesson. Jewish culture lesson, God’s name was considered to be so holy that it wasn’t even to be spoken out loud, yet here Jesus is taking the name that wasn’t to be spoken and adding this intimate twist to it, by addressing the Most High God as Father. He made God approachable.

When I think of this statement I immediately think back to the book of Exodus. In Exodus 3:5 God told Moses to take off his sandals because he is standing on Holy Ground. As Moses goes on in verse 13 to ask what God’s name is, God responds, “I am who I am. That is what you are to tell the Israelites, I AM has sent me.” Here God’s holiness was perceived as a boundary between himself and the Israelites. He was so Holy that he didn’t even have a recognizable name. Yet, in the Lord’s prayer, we find that we can have a deep, close relationship with God, and it doesn’t diminish his holiness as the Israelites had feared for so many years. What does it mean to you to pray “hallowed be your name”?

Prayer: Lord, there are so many ways of describing you and your Kingdom - but Jesus reminds us that above all you are holy. You, O Lord, deserve all the honor, glory and praise that we can give you and more. Lord, when draw close to you in prayer, make it be a holy time and place, where your name is lifted up above all names. Amen. 

Thursday: “Your Kingdom” - Matthew 6: 10

  “Your Kingdom Come, Your will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.” When you read the Gospels you see that there is a tension in Jesus’ talk about the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven is present and not yet. All too often we get caught up in the future, and just passively wait for Christ’s return and for him to fix everything. But if are agents of God’s will, we recognize that we have a place in his present kingdom. 

In the book of Jeremiah, God speaks through the prophet saying “I act with steadfast love, justice, and righteousness, in the earth for the things I delight in.” If this is the way God loves and if this is what brings him honor, then we should act as he does, pursing justice, righteousness, and mercy fervently. The Church, as the bride of Christ, exists to bring honor to God both now and in the future.

What is the Kingdom of God?

Prayer: Lord, you have dominion over earth and heaven. Sometimes we trick ourselves into thinking that we are in charge, but the truth is that we are your servants. Lord, speak, for we are listening and eagerly await working to honor your Kingdom. Amen. 

Friday: “This Day” - Matthew 6: 11-15

  “Give us this day our daily bread.” God has created us with basic needs. We need food, water, and oxygen. And he sustains us by giving us these things. And this little line should take us back, once again to Exodus, causing us to remember God’s provision as the Israelites wondered in the wilderness for 40 years. He reigned down Mana, a bread like substance, from Heaven and the Israelites were to collect what they communally needed to sustain them for one day. We’ve become such a self-centered society. We hoard food and don’t think about the needs of our neighbors. But notice that the word “our” is used in this phrase instead of “my”, therefore, we should be praying for the provision and sustaining of our neighbors as a way to “love your neighbor as yourself.”

“And forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.” The power behind this statement is two fold. First it serves as a reminder that we must daily ask God to help us examine our hearts and point out our sins. And we must trust in his forgiveness. For some reasons we tend to cling to guilt of stains that Christ’s blood has long washed away. This examination of our heart also lets us fully give our sins over to Christ and be absolved of them.

How does the Lord’s prayer help us to look to God to provide?

How does the Lord’s prayer invite us to examine our hearts?

Prayer: Lord, you do not leave us alone. You do not let us be the same today as we were yesterday. Use our relationship to you, through prayer, change our hearts and lives, we pray. Amen. 

Saturday: Preparing for the Word

You are invited to read and pray this week’s text and topic: “Listening: The Mystery of Miracles” - 1 Kings 17 and 2 Kings 5