It’s such a sweet and mysterious thing to venture into faith—to feel entirely vulnerable, yet entirely protected at the same time. Like living in two simultaneous realities but trusting that the invisible one secretly trumps the visible one every time. And I, a naïve and whimsical child of the visible, dance around leaping from precipices into the mist of the unseen—too foolish to trust in common sense over dreams and miracles.
Father in Heaven, so many are hurting right now.
So many hearts are heavy with the brokenness of this world.
Our souls cry out, “How long?”
So easily they betray the hope our lips profess,
fighting back in protest one moment and sinking in anguish the next.
Make it stop! Make it right!
Oh, Lord, may this longing bear witness to us of our home in another dimension.
Convince us, Father, of the beauty You are growing just beyond our field of vision.
Speak to our hearts of Your power amplified in our weakness!
Oh, take this clay and make it worthy of that power!
For the sake of your name, God, enter our mess and turn it around.
May Your kingdom come.
May You reign here.
Let this hurt persuade us all the more of the glory to be revealed.
Set our hearts at rest in Your presence.
When our hearts condemn us, flood our minds with assurance of Your victory over our hearts.
Satisfy us, Jesus, with the sweetness of Your attentiveness moment by moment.
I just listened to a wonderful sermon by Tyler Staton: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0IjK6yMUXMZ9ah8zuTxxV8?si=_QW8yoZ6TOK-P_JLlg3PAg
A few quotes I resonate with strongly:
"In the place of prayer, belief becomes knowledge"
"Without prayer, belief becomes agonizing. Prayer is meant to be the hydration of the spiritual life... Spiritual knowledge has to be inhabited. 'Belief' is buying into a theory. 'Knowing' is to personally, vulnerably trust the theory that you already believe in."
"It's not enough to believe in the love of God. We have to allow God to love us exactly as we are, naked and unashamed, and the way that we let that love in, is prayer. As we pray the blinding light of God's love seeps into every crack in our inner world and the Spirit opens our eyes to discover ourselves as we really are, fixed in the firm gaze of God. That's the invitation of prayer. I believe in the love of the Father--prayer is the experience of that love. I believe in the friendship of the son--prayer is the experience of that friendship. I believe in the supernatural power of the Spirit--prayer is the experience of that power."
“What if the hour you spend in the prayer room is when you refocus on Jesus so that you can carry His presence with you into the other 23 hours of the day with a heightened awareness that He is with you, that He likes you, that He is for you, that He hears your thoughts. You start to pray in real time. You instinctually lift situations to the Lord in the actual moment that you experience them…. You’re no longer deferring all of your prayers to some later holier moment, because your whole life is becoming that holier moment.” – Brennan Manning
These are realities I have begun to know rather than merely believe, and it is pure joy. The delight that accompanies the realization of how incredibly attentive the God of the universe is to you, personally, is astonishing and exhilarating. One day perhaps I will detail what this journey has been like for me.
