Prayer

Prayer is one of the great mysteries of all time.  How can lowly finite humans communicate with the glorious infinite God?  Yet He says, "...when you pray I will listen.  If you look for me with all your heart, you will find me.  I will be found by you, says the Lord."(Jeremiah 29:13,14)  Imagine if, whoever is elected President said to you, "I love you and I want to help you.  I also value your opinion and I want to spend time with you.  Would you meet with me daily for intimate talks?"  Who would not jump at the chance?  Yet we have the Creator of everything that is saying basically the same thing and we let busyness, sleepiness, faithlessness and a myriad of other things keep us from what our Lord values so much and would clearly enhance our lives.

We find ourselves in bondage to so many things.  We are often held captive by sin, anxiety, fear, depression, sickness, boredom, apathy, anger, unforgiveness,  resentment, or discouragement.  But Jesus came to set us free.  He began His ministry by reading from Isaiah 61, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor,  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and freedom to the prisoners." (Luke 4:18)  Prayer is that spiritual warfare that battles those spiritual forces that would keep us as slaves to a host of negative things.  But think like this:  The Devil, created by God is against us and wants to keep us as his captives.  Now God who created the Devil and can do with him as He pleases is on our side. He came to set us free!  And prayer is the mechanism that we use to ask god to do what He promised: end our captivity and bring us home.

Home is where we are most comfortable.  It is where we can dress of undress as we please.  We can relax and have fun.  Everything feels right and can do what we really want to do.  God says he will gather us form the nations and bring us to our own home and end our captivity.  Savior is often translated, deliverer.  Jesus saves us by delivering us out of bondage.

It's God's plan and He will succeed if we, in our freedom decide to let Him deliver us.  We have the need and He has the resources.  I challenge you to spend 30 minutes a day for one week seeking intimacy with God.  At the end of that time you will find your self freed from self and more closely in touch with the One who is wholly Other.   And you will begin to see HIS Kingdom come into your life and into the lives of many people around you.  You will find yourself and others crying out to God for His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven  And it will happen!