Fly Fishing Hooks Comparison Chart
Praying with the Hope of Change
The case of Jesus helping the blind man is also symbolic of what we might want from God as we seek change. As I seek change, I might be looking for an across the board clearness. I am more comfortable and hopeful of my way if I feel things are clear and clearer.
The perspective of the rightness and wrongness of things get attached to prayer efforts as we can see this has happened throughout history. I might be asking as well for God to bless an effort that he hasn’t sanctioned in his will and plans for me. Can I ask for a victory from God when he didn’t want me to do this? Should Jonah have asked God for a better escape route from his call to preach to the great city? The converse of this is if God really wants me to do something, I hope He will back me up all the way through in providing the means needed. For example, God wants me to surf in Hawaii on one side that doesn’t have the most extreme surf and still these waves are higher that I am used to. I will need a better surfboard, and maybe when I get there I need to hook up with some experienced guides for these waves and how they break here. I bring up in my prayer that I do need some further means to walk in the way that has been pointed out to me. God has given me a thesis and I need some help to accommodate around this notion. I can cite His original proposal in seeking to further the means. If then I do get guidance towards this great surfboard as part of the means I need then this answer regarding the well apparent means reinforces God’s original call for me to surf these waves and God is saying yes I want you to surf and I will get you that surfboard you need as your means to do this. Further provisions as to the means in answer to my prayer relates back to the bigger call. So a yes with regards to a means can also be indicative of a further yes towards a possible end, in this case surfing. There needs to be some forward motion to the possibility that the answer is yes and the Lord will supply in the means as you go forward.
So one possible tool of prayer is to ask for the means and if the means are provided than that helps tell me my goal might be kosher after all. Also, if I feel in providing some of the means and some of the help, God is pointing me in a certain direction I can ask to be helped more fully if I am already being provided with part of the help.
Another tool might be to link my request with some outer comparable success story or similar or compatible situation. Deep down I really want these positive comparisons and a pro or yes to these prayers tend to confirm this and help me lift myself into the change. God, I ask, are you a pro for me getting a new surfboard?
An example would be anything I could want, maybe I am just playing a sport like golf and I could say thank you God that I can sometimes drive the ball like Tiger Woods. There is some measure of comparability even within one individual shot. Even an occasional shot off the tee like this tells me that I have some affinity and predilection for the game and this can help my mindset towards additional improvements. What you are doing is inserting your request into the outer environment in some way that helps you locate what you want as it pertains to the outer world. Maybe there are some individuals who are doing what you would like to do or maybe there is a camped legion of people doing what you want to do. A woman asks that she can have a hairstyle like her favorite movie star, and if she gets to a similar hairstyle this possible match is further augmented by her seeing that indeed it is close to her heroine’s hair in actuality. She has one aspect for herself that she feels ranks for her with the best. She finds this an apt comparison parceled in a way that is helpful to her in accommodating her own changes. She then can say to herself, I have a hairstyle as good as so and so. So it can be helpful to explore commonalities with good, optimistic and affirmative comparisons and real compatibility in an encouraging and accommodating way with the outer environment within my prayer requests.
When Peter was walking with Jesus, I am sure they discussed right and wrong but the conversations weren’t just about that, even right from the beginning they talked plainly about fishing which is morally neutral. Jesus called his disciples friends and friends don’t normally discuss only what’s right and wrong.
In the gospels, we see Jesus talked fairly liberally to known sinners, and cited knowledge of their current conditions. If Jesus talked to sinners, then this was an invitation for them to talk back. They could talk to Jesus in their derelict or less than ideal state and for example the woman at the well was not even referred to as a sinner by Jesus although the rules of the times may have told her that she was.
I might feel defective and dejected and that feeling stops me from trying something new or finding different approaches that could lead to change and might involve some change at the get go. I find I can’t pick myself up from here and I can’t get my jet off the runway to somewhere new. So I wave goodbye to change and any of the possibilities it might have held for me.
You would also really want to question the Lord as to what changes might be suggested to anything you are doing. We chart are course full steam ahead when maybe the Lord wants us to change course a bit or consider other possibilities that would warrant change.
Since I’ve been good, after all I have been praying, I’ll want the change imposed on me by some divine directive or I’ll wait until I get the okay from above. And this absolves me of some leg work that might be humanly possible, when maybe in Gods eyes He wanted me to do the leg work or research to change or to help me better captain my own ship. But I’ll wait until I get the okay and maybe in a sense the okay is God saying your on your own, I trust you to do this for yourself with the talents I gave you. Anything to think about is when God signals to you more. He might want you to do more of this. For example you write a good short story, the message might be that the Lord wants you do this more; he wants you to write more short stories. You have to be on the alert or lookout that the Lord sometimes wants more, in whatever it is. Looking at the case of Joseph in Egypt, as things began to turn in his life through the hand of the Lord, you see that the Lord wanted more and more and as the drama unfolded further he was second in command for all in Egypt, when originally he had been sold in slavery.
The signals, the particular lights I believe I’m waiting for, I can’t see yet. I’m following for the warning lights but as yet there are no warning lights. I’m looking for all my yes and no’s in prayer right up front. And of course we should consult the Lord, but realistically, is the discussion always going to revolve around yes and no? Do I set up my own narrow gate by praying within narrow confines, dressing this notion a certain way, and does this make me better if I can get through my own narrow gate, since I’m the one who made it narrow in the first place? Jesus spoke of the narrow gate as per getting into heaven, but does this apply to every single decision we can make in every area of lives and even prayer itself? To believe that I am trying to get threw a narrow gate with prayer itself contraindicates the vast presence of God both to the world and to me in prayer. As I contemplate the vastness of God as I speak to Him and the smallness of any even great change that comes under this vastness. That monumental change you could experience is minuscule compared to the Lord’s vastness.
It may be that I just set or lined things up a certain way, and now I feel I’m walking around without those guideposts and I want to get these guideposts in prayer as a good intention on my part. God will give that narrowness in prayer only because it will help you. Trying to narrow my own choices by applying part of the “everything is no good” mentality can interrupt my thinking process towards what in fact may be good. You yourself might be confused by the myriad of choices out there and God will help you find the better choices by favoring those choices through narrowing your pathway in some way. But if I believe that narrowness is there for other reasons involving rules, prescriptions or needed good behavior and I need to somehow to earn my way through, which is like trying to set up a toll to see the rising of the sun in its vastness and the graces involved in this are really uncontainable. And now, this might be another point where I might begin to see prayer as a hindrance to change or at least not much of a help. Although, I mean well, I’m still however lost. I want marked streets with names I can remember because I am used to that. Otherwise, where am I going?
Or maybe I’m trying for guidelines in this specific instance, and I don’t need those guideposts in this specific instance as this case is different or what I am doing now has little to do with guideposts or anything similar, and other factors are critical such as being aware in the moment of what God is saying to me now, and maybe if God already fixed them then it isn’t broken. God bless me.
I’m adding in rules when I shouldn’t have been, I’m finding limits where there are few and none, I’m searching again for the narrow gate because the gate is narrow, or so I believe. But if indeed I am I lost, it can be in so many ways, I can find my way lost in indecision, in the haze and fog of just not knowing, lost in seemingly increasingly elusive goals and plans, lost in goals I once had that seem more and more left behind in an ash heap of disappointments and what could have been, lost in being left behind in so many ways, and in trying to find my way through increasingly narrow gates.
If I am facing another narrowing gate, I can take the big wide turn to God, as the big wide road back. Jesus admonished his disciples to watch and pray always, where I find every step I take in every direction on the road of prayer is the road back and is the way through because I am following the right road sign which is to pray always. The rule of thumb is, to do it, that prayer is always the recourse.
If I’m on the football field and I’m a kicker. My goal is to kick the ball between the uprights, the goalposts. But if I am not the kicker, my role on the team might not involve these specific goalposts. Not everyone on the football team has the role of kicking field goals. There are some situations where I am marching to some tune or the same tune I have already heard before, that just isn’t there now, and I’m looking for 10 miles and the rules that apply to that distance, and that isn’t the distance I need to chart in this instance, and because I’m used to familiar rules and regulations for that distance that is what I am looking for this time again, but there really isn’t any similar rule this time because that isn’t the distance I am charting now. Or there is one rule to find and I make it 10 rules to find to feel better about the situation, the more rules the merrier. Or I go to the drug store for a prescription for poison ivy and then I want a prescription for ten other ailments as well when I have none. I want a prescription for alopecia when I have all my hair. So I am looking not only for rules and regulations but situations that have will give me those rules and those regulations as they have done previously. And unfortunately, that situation might not be prayer as my search for rules in that only begins to bring me distant from what I am trying to do in the first place. If God is going to answer me, He will answer me in any way, manner or time of His choosing and that is what I watch and listen for. But still, the more rules the merrier, because that is how I am used to seeing my way down the highway. . But how far can you go into a usual situation without bumping into rules because this is what I am taught. If I expect to find rules where there are none, I make them myself.
Micah, Chapter 6 verse 8 “What is good has been explained to you man, this is what Yahweh expects as of you: only this, to act justly, to love tenderly, and to walk humbly with your God.”
There are not too many rules or prescriptions presented here as this expectation is prefaced with only this. Only three items are mentioned here, not hundreds and prayer comes under the heading of walking humbly with your God.
We walk humbly with God by talking in prayer to Him and paying attention to Him and the affairs of his people. As far as other things, don’t step on God’s toes. Act justly. You don’t this by first stepping on the toes of the least of the brothers. Jesus said, if you do this for least of your brothers you do this for me, the converse is if you step on the least of your brothers in any way, you are doing it to Him. If you pray for the least of your brothers, you are doing this for Him. The blind man, who Jesus prayed for after he walked him by the hand out of the village, was the least of His brothers. But only Jesus saw into the depths of his heart’s discontent and when we pray for others, we begin to ask God to reach out to those persons who might be the greatest or the least of my brothers, and God will go further as He takes our prayer and reforms it because He can reach the depths that we can never get to but yet we can get there through Him in our intercessions for others. Your more surface oriented prayer reaches the depths as it is amplified through God. This is why simple prayer can work. For example, I say God, please help every individual person in China, I can’t and couldn’t possible know all of the billion plus people in China personally or how they need to be helped. But God can take this simple prayer and amplify it to the depths of who these individuals are and what their particular needs are.
If you do this for the least of course also means you can still do it for the greatest of the brothers as well. Joseph indeed was the greatest of the brothers amongst Jacobs’s sons but God watched over him with careful concern as well.
I might be living vicariously through my prayers however, I want this for everyone else when I really also want this for myself. I pray for the prosperity of the land, but I never ask for myself when I really do hope for a good piece of the American pie as well. I don’t have to be overly focused on myself as my first call is intercession but I can still say a quick honest prayer as to my own self interests. I don’t know if honesty is rewarded by God but I don’t expect to be punished for being honest in prayer. God might answer my prayer not by taking me to extremes but by moderating my own view of what would make me happy. I am discouraged I didn’t get a date with Cindy Crawford and she is no longer available but the more moderate view tells me there are others whose company might be mutual enjoyable and situations that can be happy for all concerned. What is moderate is different for each person. If I really love to travel, then it is moderate for me to take a few short trips or one big trip during the year. If I really don’t have the wanderlust, then an occasional trip might be moderate for me. If I really love to swim, then it would be moderate for me to swim fairly often. If I have a general aversion to the water, then maybe only on the most oppressive heat waves will I dip in and this would be moderate for me as far as a swim.
I might feel like I am overly interested in something. But if I am really that interested, I can go easy on myself by saying overdoing this is really only being moderate for me because I have such a strong interest in this. For example, the girl reads two romance novels a week, mostly on her long train rides too and from work, yet she feels guilty about her continual consumption of these type novels. However, she really enjoys these novels and the contrast to her job as a lawyer and she is only being moderate to her strong interest in these novels.
I also can more easily rebound into a moderate position. It might help me get back on the horse better because by getting back on that horse I am only being moderate. I have a bad experience socially. However, since I do want to socialize a lot more, I will continue to be social as this is only being moderate to what I really want to do now.
I pray about taking a first jump into something, and this goes on just about endlessly, and when it comes to the actual change, I hold off indefinitely partly because I was overly focused on myself and didn’t balance that properly with the outward focus on intercession, in the beneficent elements of change as they may involve others, so selfishness in prayer can begin to inhibit my own efforts towards change ironically because the selfishness becomes a heavy weight I have to carry forward into this wanted change. So maybe I can craft my own request by also asking that if it is beneficial to all concerned. Also, it might not be a matter of selfishness but of narrow thinking. In my prayer search, I might ask God about how others might also benefit from what I am proposing for myself. This will help me to form a more rounded view and after all the earth is round. If I can see how my change might also benefit others who are involved, then this could give me further impetus to actually go forward into the change.
God is closest to any individual, including closer than the individual is to himself or herself. He has all of their concerns in mind as well, if I can see that the change I am proposing is beneficial to someone else’s welfare then this is all the more reason to follow through. I should ask God how this change may or may not benefit others. The more moderate view in trying to get a handle on what to pray for would include others, even those who I will never know or interact with on a personal level as I still know of these people and this also makes for more bountiful sowing. From the second book of Corinthians Chapter 9 verse 6 and 7.’ Remember, sparse sowing, sparse reaping: sow bountifully, and you will reap bountifully. Each person should give as he has decided for himself: there should be no reluctance, no sense of compulsion, God loves a cheerful giver.”
God isn’t necessarily going to answer me with a rule, or give me another rule through prayer telling me what I can and can’t do, or whether I can involve myself in change by finding a rule and following it. The rule He did give me was to pray, there isn’t necessarily another set of rules after this. The Bible says continually to pray and it doesn’t really specify as much about the wide variety of scenarios that can have pertinence. This is because the walk of prayer is the first walk.
If God has a plan B in mind, it is still God’s thoughts I’m seeking, since I’m perusing through God’s innumerable thoughts specific to me, I am not really seeking generalized rules. What I need to search out is his personalized plans for me as the individual I am. The first rule on anything involving a decision to change is prayer itself. If God says I can’t do it, then this not being the usual course of an answer, I can really take it seriously because God doesn’t always do this and throw out the blocks. Just because I feel uneasy about this, it doesn’t automatically specify to a rule from God, or God saying I can’t. I can review what exactly prayer is to me. Is it an imposition or is it supposed to help me or isn’t it God himself who imbued me with the capacity for growth and change in the first place. With prayer I am actually being within and a part of that capacity and fusion with the Holy Spirit. I can’t always change all that much, I can’t take off and fly to Venus. I also need to accept some things about myself and maybe sometimes the change I might need is towards acceptance.
I can keep going with prayer, no matter what else happens, because I can always find that particular flow as God will candidly adjust that river for me. There is an answer I might get, but I just don’t see it while I’m off the river. My own limited view is always going to inhibit me in part. Take a scene where you are walking through a big city. There is a lot going on right around you that you aren’t seeing. Every nook and cranny of the scene I’m in and around me is not observable in the moment. All of the sudden, everything and everybody seem to have changed and where have I been?
My unwillingness to change involves all sorts of issues that I need to sift through. I have marked certain things as having to do with this I might have marked flying a kite higher and higher in the distant sky with whether I’m a good person. I can challenge myself to disassociate from my defaulters, my default lines on the tennis court, my markers, and the way I have zoned my own landscape against other good possibilities, in causing difficulties with change seemingly as being linked with my prayer efforts which I falsely believe involves entering some narrow gate. The lines I want might stay between be too easily frayed by corruption and scandal anyway.
The key marker is that I am walking the walk of prayer and swirling changes around me are secondary to that walk.
I do believe I am always in the flow rather than out of the flow with prayer and that means because I am in flow I have an automatic wider contrast with prayer towards my own difficulties with change. Then I attempt to best rearrange what I have actually seen in my life. I seem to have gotten some answers on some prayers that seem to indicate the beginnings of change or involved actual change. I can gather some evidence from the past that prayer has helped me to change or involved promptings of the Spirit towards this change that I could choose to follow or carry along with.
Be careful especially if you misrepresent who God is to others. Give yourself no guarantees. God has the final verdict or final say. Despite the wide call to prayer, there is a narrow gate between good and evil. Some said to Jesus, but didn’t we perform wonders in your name and he replied, “Step aside, I never knew you.” That for sure is a final verdict and we need also to be careful of what has been revealed here in God’s word. If I am a bit chagrined about something I have been praying for and about for awhile, then ask for the Lord’s final say on this. Don’t let anything else rule the matter but the Lord’s final say.
Then I can take a more relaxed view of prayer. Jesus didn’t have the blind man in a scene of frenzy as he walked him into the big change. When Jesus said you can have faith that will move mountains, he was saying that the mountain is not a big deal. It is dwarfed by the prayer relationship.
The prayer relationship is much bigger, much more gigantic than anything you could pray about.
Think for example of someone asking the Lord for a large sum of money. The much larger sum is in a sense not a big deal. Because whether the Lord gives a smaller sum or a larger sum, your indebtedness to Him, is that you can’t pay Him back. The real debt owed is the debt of prayer and any given request in a sense is a small matter. You might think then for example that asking a large sum of money from the Lord, or some large favor is a big deal where it is to a degree not a big deal, it is small in relation to the totality of the prayer relationship which is the paramount cause to the situation. The size of any request always pales in comparison to the prayer relationship itself.
In the NIV version of the Bible it says in James Chapter 1 verse 5,” 5If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.”
God is a liberal and generous given who isn’t going to fault you for asking and isn’t going to hold you accountable or indebted for the gift. The answer is no big deal; the big deal is that you are present in prayer with faith in prayer.
The proper proportion in this is too understand that it is the prayer relationship that is to be kept and any given answer and gift is secondary to that relationship.
The blocks I’m facing are not from prayer at all. Change or no change, either way prayer is available to me as a free flowing river. I can pray one way or another way. I am still welcome to pray later as a changed person or a person who wanted to change but didn’t quite measure up to the hoped for changes but who can still find the particular flow of being able to pray. God will adjust the flow of the river to the speed you are at so you can always pray. He will adjust it to the temperature you like. The slope and meanderings of that river can be changed by God for you. God will moderate the flow of that river to accommodate you. I don’t have to see all the changes I might make as consequential towards prayer views I might obtain, dripping away at my prayer efforts. The changes I make don’t necessarily inhibit my prayers and the prayers I say don’t necessarily have to inhibit the changes. I can fire up my prayer engines with the change or without the change in my case. The dictum that I should pray always applies rather than change always. That is a constant whether I’m changed or I just didn’t make it there. Sometimes a good place to start is being thankful to establish good grounding before getting into proposed changes.
Prayer is another form, located where I’m not subscribed into a body of rules and regulations, and where I’m not fixated on any one outcome it’s not a race for me to win or lose but to join, to get in with. To the degree I am entering into sincere and true blue prayer, to that degree I am entering into a relationship with God.
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On this river of prayer, I might pick up what I want or I might not, but the fault of not trying is not the prayer. I could never really say prayer itself is not trying. That has to be somewhere else. Why would the word persistence be applied to prayer if there wasn’t persistent trying? Praying and persistent praying are one and the same.
Psalm 32 verse 7 says” You are my hiding place.” Prayer is a place I can relax in because it is a hiding place. The hiding place can be like a hidden river I can flow with, surrounded by friendly foliage. I can reinvigorate myself by this relaxation. I can keep things confidential there. I can hide and relax.
I might usually think of a hiding place as being in a little corner or that small tree house in the woods, or some little island. . Here the opposite is true my hiding place is the vastness of God, who holds more than the stars in his hand. Everything else is more in a little corner.
Prayer as my hiding place is not telling me not to unless it’s for my own good. Change or no change I’m hiding. In many cases, it’s my own disappointments that I have been following, which is not the trail to pick up on and continue with. I can see prayer as sometimes involving that separate sphere that hiding place, where I can be all have all, where the rules of change don’t really apply. I can roam freely in my hiding place after all there are no wolves there. If anything, prayer will help me cross those rivers or see that those breakers sometimes are for me. Just because I can’t seem to take a yard for change in my own life, doesn’t mean I can’t take a mile in prayer or many miles, especially on the stretches of intercessions highway.
I can’t go to the country fair here because I lack the funds now, but in my hiding place of prayer I can take liberty after liberty. I don’t have to follow any drills or particular signals I feel I absolutely must find. I let the scenery come to me as I follow the river of prayer.
Since I am praying, I might feel obliged to wait for an answer. That is understandable to me. But God creates opportunities for people without them even asking for them. The sun shines on the just and the unjust according to the scriptures. If the sun is already shining, I don’t need to ask for sunshine, and I may get many other things I didn’t ask for. God creates the day whether I show up for it or not. I don’t need to put brakes consciously or subconsciously in waiting for an answer as something that comes my way might be a surprise gift. Surprise answers can happen right then and there when I am praying.
Since I am walking with God, in prayer, things might be revealed as I go along. I don’t clearly see the magic right up front, and indeed sometimes I might, but that doesn’t mean the situation itself couldn’t be magical. I was talking to a friend about his improbable get together in meeting his wife from the distance of another country, and he said with cheerful optimism, “There is always magic in the air.”
In looking for an answer in an always specific format, I am bringing in my own hesitation, maybe hindering my openness as to how God will be present, since that presence can be so wide. Books and movies usually move from a beginning to an end, but opportunities in real life can operate in more of a haphazard or circular fashion. God’s presence can come out of anywhere and anything. I can ask in prayer for God’s presence in anything but still it is up to God. I can ask for God’s presence specifically in a decision, in a moment, in my particular plans, in my disappointments. God as the master orchestra or can conduct any number of weaves out of an individual’s circumstance. I could be involved in the most adverse of circumstances as to what I really want and God can still weave what I really want out of this.
I read 100 pages of a book. I’m now involved in the story, I want to know what happens. . I want to know if it’s God’s wish that I continue to the finish at page 500. So I wait for that green light. Maybe God doesn’t want me to finish this story; I’m looking for lights, neon signs, or something like a newsflash from God. Then I am losing concentration, I am more looking for these signals than immersing myself in the story. I could also reverse this and wait for a red light saying stop and continue reading until I get that red light. It might be better just to concentrate on reading and then if the signal arises somehow, I’ll catch it without constantly looking over my shoulder.
So I don’t see any light green or red, but I want the green because I like the book so far. But I am used to dealing with signals telling me to stop or go and I am bringing that into other things where I want similar signals. I want to look down a road with green light after green light because that’s how I see my way down the highway and I want to finish this book.
But different people might be reading different books, and God knows what book you are reading and deals with each person as an individual. I-Kings 8.37-40 “ If there is famine in the land, blight, mildew, locust, or caterpillar, if their enemy besieges them in any of their cities, whatever plague, whatever sickness there is, whatever prayer, whatever prayer there is from any individual or from all your people Israel, all knowing the afflictions of their own hearts so that they stretch out their hands toward this house: then hear in heaven your dwelling place, forgive, act, and render to all whose hearts you know-according to all their ways, for only you know what is in every human heart- so that they may fear you all the days that they live in the land that you gave to our ancestors.”
This passage shows how God deals with the prayers both coming from either the multitude or from any one individual, and that individual could be you and me in this particular time and place.
Someone is sitting on a plane, his fellow passenger says, and” What are you doing.” You say, “I’m waiting for a plane,” He says, “You’re already on a plane and you’re halfway to Texas.
Some people don’t know what they are, where they are, and what they already have going for them. They think there doing one thing and they are already doing something else. They have got it going and they are on their way, but they just don’t get it. How much has to happen before you can say, I’m sure this could be my way. Sometimes, I need to look at what I am already sitting on that could be like gold. I Corinthians 2.12″ Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God,”
If I had known I was sitting on a gold mine, I wouldn’t be sitting on a gold mine. If I really think it is too late, I can find another new vein of gold.
Part of the change I will make will include what? Some times if I can’t get at the full change I want to make, I can have some peace in that I am very sure about part of the change. In looking at the “big change” in the face of all it is it does seem quite daunting and almost unmanageable to task. But if I can be quite sure about what part of that change will be or will be composed of, and hone in my thinking about that part, it can be very helpful in arranging the change and being most positive about particular parts and components of the change I am sure about.
For example, I am taking courses, I know for sure I can drop anything with hard core math as part of my change, and I would take in a literature course as part of my change. I have some parts of my change that I feel definite about. But the part of dropping the math is definite and including a literature course is definite as I round out my changes, the next change is still uncertain, but I ‘m on my way downstream and I’ll decipher and discern my course the further I go and it is helpful if I find parts of the change I am sure about up front on my journey.
I had taken a boat trip on a tributary of the Amazon River. It was about 100 degrees and while we were stopped, I began to swim out in the river a bit. I was warned of piranhas and told to come back towards the shore. Within minutes I saw a large bird being devoured on the waters surface right were I had been. I was told the piranhas usually ignored people unless they were still but who knows if they always followed that pattern. Later we pulled into an inlet that had had such thick exotic overhang that I thought I was in the Indiana Jones movie. When we stopped, I again went into the water, this time everybody was not going out too far in this inlet of the river because of crocodiles.
In God’s river of prayer, we would never encounter such obstacles. God always wants us to step into the river of prayer as a warm welcoming home.
If I am setting up fleeces, it could be any fleece. God if you want me to read the rest of this book, please have it rain and hail in Idaho tonight and please have someone knock on my door tonight at 7 o’clock. I get both answers, it rains and hails in Idaho and someone does knock on my door at that time. So I begin to think I need a fleece with the next book I read. God in his humor answered this way this time and I look for this again as a universal approach or solution for the next time.
First though, I need to look for God’s vast ways and the better way and means I have for me to search this is through prayer myself. I can take my own peek that way. Prayer isn’t just this just that but can involve anything and everything and predate or postdate change. Nothing compares to the vastness of prayer. That doesn’t mean God doesn’t get involved in the tinniest of issues within that vastness. That vastness encompasses big and small. God can listen to millions, trillions, beyond countable numbers of prayers at once and address them individually and specifically or collectively.
God wanted the ship Noah built to be without a rudder. Noah would be facing a great change with the eyes of God guiding him into this calamitous change. The ship would be guided within the conversations of Noah and God. The rudder was God’s close presence and guidance. Even though Noah was involved in a kind of apocalypse at that time and was lost in a way for sure or at least lost enough that he needed to be guided back, he did eventually find himself to land, which was like his promised land. He did make it through. Here is an example of an individual man, making it through an apocalypse, onto the other side of God’s verdict, into a vast bright new world at which he was at the beginning. Through this journey, God kept this individual in his sight. Like Noah, I can only hope and pray that I come out okay on the other side of God’s verdict if and when and in whatever way it comes.
One of the interesting things about Noah, was, he did have no choice about going home, or going back to his village. It wasn’t going to be there anymore. Prayer is about getting closer to home but this wasn’t going to be home anymore. Change was built into his scenarios. He was to confront change whether he liked it or not. He wasn’t going back to his Kansas because his Kansas wasn’t there anymore. Just like Dorothy, who after a tornado was facing a whole new world, Noah was to face great changes. Imagine going on a trip and saying let’s go home but home is no longer there because of something similar to a great flood in terms of its effect. This is how Noah had no choice but to face change. He could either face this change with God or without God but I am sure he felt the fear of the unknown within his journey. But the proposals in front of him no matter what his ultimate choices were to be, did not include not changing.
Noah was involved with big picture stuff. The whole earth is flooded, big picture, there was no dry land to park his ark on, big picture not a bit picture, none of the people he had dealt with in his village would be around anymore, big picture. Both are important, in Dorothy’s case, it was a detail that saved her from the wicked witch.
Noah was able to grasp both the details before him and the bigger pictures which were forming in front of him within his ongoing conversational relationship with God, which is no small matter.
This is another thing to look for and ask for in prayer, the big picture, and the big stuff. I need to not only follow details, as Noah did have detailed instructions as to how this ark was to be built and constructed according to specific specifications, but I also realize that there is bigger picture stuff to get a handle on that is part of God’s doing. In the book of Genesis chapter 6 and verse.17 it says “For my part, I am going to bring a flood of waters on the earth.” Those that had turned against God in those times in ways we are not quite sure of were to be literally submerged. Bring your own submerged wishes to the surface of prayer before it’s too late. When God is telling you about His part, it is usually in reference to a big change. Noah had to deal with details regarding the ark and big picture changes as coming before him..
An important tool with this is the confirmation. The dove was sent out three times by Noah from the ark which had been adrift for many months, each time after seven days. The second time, it returned with a freshly plucked olive branch in its beak, confirming that the waters were receding to reveal land. Through prayer, in what ways can my troubles and difficulties across so many waterways recede into the goodness of God for me? How can through prayer, long standing difficulties recede to where I finally see land as that oasis of the goodness of God for me?
I might need a fresh confirmation from God as I deal with big changes, either real or still hoped for. Noah still could get some sort of deal from God. He wasn’t going home to his village but God still had a deal for him and dealings with him. Solomon the wisest man of his times, asks in his prayer, 1 Kings 8 26, “Now, Lord, God of Israel, may this promise, which you made to my father David, your servant, be confirmed,”
Prayer is a like a great river that will flow whether I jump into it or not. I can catch change with the flow and some things will only be graced through that great river. But there is a lot of room in that river for lots of answers and for good things whether I have exactly asked for them or not. As great a river as it is, it is a river where I can relax and I don’t have to worry about drowning, as God is my guide.
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