Series on Prayer

How’s your prayer life?  In last month’s post I encouraged you to be intentional about deepening your prayer life…prayer being conscious relationship with God.  This relationship is a mutually revealing relationship:  God reveals himself to us. We reveal ourselves to God.  Because God is love we do not fear God in any way…unless we have been taught to fear God or have been shamed by someone in our life:  both fear and shame are very real obstacles to a loving relationship with God.  God’s love can ease fear and heal shame.  God created us and loves us no matter what.  I used to sing to my sons, “I love you when you’re happy; I love you when you’re sad; I love when you’re angry; I love you when you’re glad.  I love you when you’re dirty; I love you when you’re clean; I love you when you’re sweet as pie; I love you when you’re mean.”  If a parent can sing such a song to a child…consider the song of love God is singing to you, his beloved sons and his beloved daughters.

          The questions I’d like to take up this month are, “What does communication with God look like?  More specifically, how does God communicate with us?”  We’ll talk another time about the ways that we can communicate with God (April).

          In the church we learn that God communicates with us in various ways:  in creation, in scripture, in dreams, through messengers and the witness of a living faith in others, in prayer (April), through prophets of old and in the person and work of Jesus.

          In Hebrews 1 it is written, “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds.”  God speaks to us in and through Jesus, God with us.  The more we “know” Jesus, head knowledge and heart knowledge, the more we “know” God.  This includes Jesus’ character, his mindset, his spiritual life, his ministry, his teaching and preaching, his death, his resurrection, and his post resurrection appearances. 

          God communicated with his people through the prophets of the Old Testament.  Listen to the word given to Isaiah, “But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel; Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.”  There was a persistent and continual invitation from God through the prophets to remain faithful or to return in faith to God…the communication often took the form of a warning and always purposed restored relationship.  God gave Isaiah this word too, “…so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” God communicates through people of his choosing to speak and remind us of God’s desires for us and for the world.  There is purposeful power in God’s communications with us.

          God communicates with us in dreams.  Think of Jacob, the ladder, and the angels; think of Joseph and his dream about the sheaves that would finally signify God’s redemption of Jacob’s family.  In the New Testament remember Joseph and the 5 dreams in which God instructed him through which the birth and safety of Jesus were secured.  In Bible study recently we discussed Matthew 1 and 2 (the 5 dreams) and I asked if God or a word from God had ever come to anyone in a dream.  Several stories were shared of dreams that were gifts from God about love and assurance of love; dreams that eased fears and gave peace and clarity in difficult times.  I have my own story of God communicating with me via dreams in which I was given an experience of the hope of freedom.

          The word “angel” means messenger.  Whether heavenly or earthly, of spirit or of flesh, God often communicates by putting a messenger in our way with exactly what God desires us to hear and know at exactly the time we need to hear and know it.  Angels appear in dreams and messengers sit across the aisle from us at church or across the aisle from us at work or at school or in the grocery store or at our kitchen tables communications that lead us to all that God wants us to hear and know about himself.  They communicate God to us not only by their words, but also by their loving presence:  a touch, a smile, a nod, any loving gesture.

          God communicates with us in the scriptures as the Holy Spirit brings them to life for us…opens our heart so that God’s word can be written on our hearts that we then may be transformed, that is, moved to a response.  Take for example the prayer of assurance of the psalmist in Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want…surely [SURELY] goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”  My most moving experience of the power of this psalm came while leading a worship service at an assisted living residence in South Charlotte years ago.  There were 30+ people gathered in the great room for a service of hymns, scriptures, and prayers.  Several men and women in attendance were afflicted with Alzheimers.  Yet when we I invited everyone to join along with me as I read Psalm 23 they knew it by heart! Every word by heart.  God communicates/speaks to the heart.  The heart is the place where God’s word takes hold of us.  The scriptures convey God’s word to us as we are willing and open to receive them and permit them to take hold in our hearts.      

          God communicates with us in creation.  The words of Psalm 19 proclaim, “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.  Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge.  There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.”  And in the gospel of John it is written about the Word (Jesus), “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.”  All of creation speaks to us of God, communicates God to us!! 

          Christian mystics, in different ways and words, describe the goal of their faith and relationship with God in this way:  God’s love invites us to find God in all things.  There is that of God in all of creation and in all of life.  Take John’s words to heart.  Would we look for God in a seed?  In a breeze?  In the beauty of a mountain sunrise or a beach sunset?  In the wonder of a starry night or in the fine, meticulous work of a spider web?  In a windswept desert?  In the crashing waves against a rocky coast?  In a turkey dinner or a cup of coffee or in a loaf of bread or in a juicy ripe peach?  In the pain of a loss or in an instance of joy?    “…and without him not one thing came into being.”

          God also communicates to us through our own life experiences.  Joseph, who was sold into slavery by his brothers and eventually was given the authority by the Pharaoh to be “ruler over all of Egypt”.  At the time when Joseph’s dream came to its fulfillment and his brothers bowed before him asking for relief for their family from famine and for mercy Joseph was given the grace of seeing God’s hand in his life.  He said, “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today.” Gen. 50:20  What has God communicated to you through your life experiences?

          Next month (March) I will take up the question, “How can we pay attention and be more aware of God’s presence, his voice, his love?”    So that when God does communicate with us…we can respond.                      Peace, Carol