How Bad Do I Want It?

How bad do I really want your revelation, Lord? It is like life to me. It transforms all the regularity and boringness into light, power, and motion. To see you, to know you, to hear from you is the only thing that truly feeds my soul. But do I cry out to you like the prophets? Jesus, am I like you interceding for your people with loud cries and tears? Would I be willing to seek you from morning till evening and through the watches of the night?

Why do these obstacles get in my way? I am embarassed by the indignity and surrender of passionately calling on your name. We cannot find you unless we come on our knees, humble, weak, pathetic. Not because you seek grovelers, but that is simple honesty. Unless we know ourselves authentically, we are not ready for intimacy in our relationship with you -- we cannot know you authentically.

But I would rather seek your face as a friend and equal. "I'll meet you for coffee and you can give me some cool imagery, a couple of catch phrases and a few suggestions." But your glory and you Kingdom are not coffee table conversation. When we truly encounter your glory, it will take our breath away, we will fall on our faces as if we are dead. Dignity will give way to joy. Self-confidence and competence to empowerment and inspiration.

Elihu once told Job that we do not hear or see you because we do not wish to. I suppose the revelation I've been asking for is all around me all the time. I do not see it because I refuse to enter that world. I do not see because still, deep within, I would sign my own byline to your words and apply them selectively.

Set Us Like Stone

Set me like flint. Make my face like stone. Make me hard so I will never waver in faithfulness. You are a Rock that casts its shadow over a weary land, so those parched and sun-beaten can find refuge in your shade. Jesus, you are the corner stone of all our hopes and ambitions, you are the key stone of the community of the saints.

But are you so hard and unyielding as stone? No, you are gentle and warm in your nurture. You Fatherly embrace is firm, but comforting. But you are a Rock in terms of faithfulness. You are immovable according to your promises.

Jesus, teach us such faithfulness. We flail about, flopping here and there, bouncing from method to method, hope to hope, savior to savior, relationship to relationship. The only thing consistent about us is inconsistentcy. In regards to faithfulness, set us like stone. In determination to be obedient, make us hard as flint. In our conviction that strong, aggressive, radical love changes all things, plant us in concrete.

Defend Our Cause

God, what's wrong with these people who attack us? They say we do the work of Satan, but our whole hearts are bent on doing your work and living your life. Are they so consummed by their own pain and hunger that they would devour us? Does their jealousy burn them so much they must pass the flame to others?

Jesus, am I like this? Do I hate anyone who has some success? Do I become so poisonous when I fall into comparison with others? Am so threatened by those who think differently, walk differently, and look differently than me? Is their very existence taken as a condemnation of who I am?

May we all, Lord, discover ourselves in you. From your depths flows springs that cannot be exhausted. From your imagination sprouts diversity that cannot be comprehended. Teach us to celebrate your grace, which manifests intself in vessels as varied as the colors of this great universe. May we become lost in the work of redmeption and not ever err to think our work is condemnation. Defend our cause, but we do not pray that you condemn our accusers. No. Instead, lavish on them the riches that have turned our own souls from vicious thieves to heirs of your Kingdom. Amen.

Our True Pasture

"In those days, at that time," declares the Lord, "the people of Israel and the people of Judah together will go in tears to seek the Lord their God. They will ask the way to Zion and turn their faces toward it. They will come and bind themselves to the Lord in an everlasting covenant that will not be forgotten. "My people have been lost sheep; their shepherds have led them astray and caused them to roam on the mountains. They wandered over mountain and hill and forgot their own resting place. Whoever found them devoured them; their enemies said, 'We are not guilty, for they sinned against the Lord, their true pasture, the Lord, the hope of their fathers.'" [Jeremiah 50:4-7 NIV]

Lord, in these days you are tearing down to oppressor that has exiled our souls. We have been held prisoner by our own pride and arrogance: institutional self-righteousness, doctrinal bragging, human kingdoms in the guise of religion. As these kingdoms fall, the hearts of your people are turning to you. They seek to know the where your mountian is so they may marry you and you alone. We have been lost and wandering in this dessert of our own making. Our leaders led us here and we've been aimless, without rest. We have been prey to every scammer, hustler, dominator, and exploiter. They proclaim their innocence and use our dysfunction as an excuse. But you are our homeland -- land of a thousand hills wide, rolling, and green. You have no boundary, but provide nurture for miles beyond our imagination. You have been the hope of the fathers of our faith for generations. The idea of seeing you face-to-face made them pilgrims and kept their feet upon the road.

Life of a Prophet

The Sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary. He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being taught. The Sovereign Lord has opened my ears, and I have not been rebellious; I have not drawn back. I offered my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard; I did not hide my face from mocking and spitting. Because the Sovereign Lord helps me, I will not be disgraced. Therefore have I set my face like flint, and I know I will not be put to shame. He who vindicates me is near. Who then will bring charges against me? Let us face each other! Who is my accuser? Let him confront me! It is the Sovereign Lord who helps me. Who is he that will condemn me? They will all wear out like a garment; the moths will eat them up. [Isaiah 50:4-9 NIV]

Jesus, teach me how to skillfully speak to those who tire of living. May my words turn grey to light and give life to those who dispare of it. Each morning, wake me into the wonder of listening -- teach me your ways. Let me sit at your feet each morning to learn who to care for and lead your people. And when trouble comes, give me courage to stand my ground -- to offer myself defiantly to those who want to harm me, and not turn away from the ones who want to humiliate me. Teach me to be stone faced and determined because I can feel your presence. You will stick up for me like a big brother. Bring it on! Let those who want a peice of me come and get it because the Lord is my backup. Their own condemnation will wear them down. They will decay in their own hatred and injustice.

Too Small a Thing

"It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth." [Isaiah 49:6 NIV]

Father, you tell us it is not enough for us to simply restore your people, though they need restoration. They have been exiled from you to lands ruled by foriegn gods of comfort, money, success, status, security, consumerism, and many more terrible idols. While it is our call to serve you by restoring and bringing your people back, you have more in mind for us. You intend to set us up as a light to draw in those who do not know you as either Father or God. You have destined us to carry freedom and life to the edges of the world.

In the world of my ambition, it would be enough to simply make the church a better place. Who applauds religious efforts, but the religious? But you are not willing to leave me with this small thing. You would use me as polished arrow, hidden in your quiver, until launched to spread your reality in the world. Amen.

What It Means to Know You

"But a beautiful palace does not make a great king! Why did your father, Josiah, reign so long? Because he was just and right in all his dealings. That is why God blessed him. He made sure that justice and help were given to the poor and needy, and everything went well for him. Isn't that what it means to know me?" asks the LORD. [Jeremiah 22:15-16 NLT]

Father, I want to lay my books aside and give up on trying to figure you out. It all ends up in manipulation anyhow. "How can I get you to give me what I want?" But that is not knowing you anyway. It is pretense. As if correct doctrines force your hand. Or certain prayers spoken with certain motives bind you. As if the Bible were a manual for learning how to use you. Or Christ a token to forever secure my salvation.

But then there is being just and right in all my dealings. Beginning with authentic friendship with you that is nothing about how you can solve my problems, increase my porfolio, or give me spiritual currentcy. How much would I be concerned with knowing you as Father and Friend if all I wanted from you was something else? Lord, we are so dishonest and fake.

Teach me who you are, bring me to know you. Do it by sending me to care for the weak and poor and needy. They can never repay me. They have nothing to offer. In service with to them, I will learn how to be a true friend who seeks to know for the sake of knowing and not for the sake of using. And as I serve each one, I will know you more because I will find our hands together in the bowl from which we wash their feet. I will find my honesty and my Friend.