Open the Eyes of My Heart, Lord

James 4:1-3—What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

Words are powerful.  When we speak something out loud, we place energy into the universe with the power of our intention.  Our mindset, hearts, and desires, then, are more significant than we can even understand.  Our culture here in the United States teaches self-reliance and encourages people not to trust each other.  It brutally condemns failures and only respects those who can alone pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.  Success in this country is measured in terms of wealth and accumulation of power.  All of these values are contrary to God’s ways, though.  He wants us to be reliant on Him and to know our impotence to do anything without His divine intervention.  He wants us to be in relationship with each other and to love one another without passing judgment on each other.  But the reality is we come to God each day with a worldly mindset that is hard to escape.  The prayers we lift up emanate from bodies that live in this world, and it is difficult to escape our humanity.  That is why it is so important to listen to God and pray for him to shift our spirits so that we may see what He sees.  We must continually seek to be more like Him and allow Him to come alive in us. 

Today as you pray and meditate on His Word, consider your habits of prayer.  Set aside any personal wants, and take a moment to listen to Michael W. Smith’s “Open the Eyes of My Heart.” Make this song your prayer today.  Ask God to speak to you and reveal His perfect Will for your life.  Rejoice in His Name and lift up praise to Him.

Hi God, It's Me!

Luke 6:12—One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God.

Do you ever wonder what it would have been like to hear Jesus praying?  What might He have said out loud during these prayers that lasted all night?  As God Himself, He was all-knowing and all-powerful, so He really didn’t need to pray to God in the same way that we as weak humans need to pray to God.  Yet, He diligently prayed, constantly prayed—He fasted and prayed throughout His life.  Of course, He was modeling the prayer-life He wanted us to have.  But I think it was more than just that.  Even though Jesus didn’t need anything from God, He still wanted to be in relationship and communicating with Him.  Jesus’ prayer-life is not so different than our relationships with each other.  Just like we might get the urge to call a friend when something wonderful happens, or when some tragedy strikes, or when we just want to check in and see how the other person is doing, Jesus wanted to be talking to God.  At times, I think our prayer-life can get into a rut where we only ask God to fulfill our earthly dreams and desires.  We spend a lot of time talking, and not so much time listening.  And our talking is really more about asking for things—not so much just being in a conversation.  Think about how long you would want to be in relationship with a person who only ever called when in need.  Those needy friends are taxing and we tend to keep them at a distance.  Fortunately for us, God wants to be in relationship with us, and He asks us to throw our needs onto Him.  Imagine, though, how close we could be to Him if every once in a while we prayed just to check in and not to ask for something else.

Today as you pray and meditate on His Word, praise God for the gift of relationship with Him.  Lift up a prayer of connection by saying “Hi God, it’s me.  You are on my mind, and I just wanted to tell You how much I love You.”  Today, don’t ask God for anything—just praise His Name and rejoice in His presence.

Be Blessed

Matthew 5:7-10—“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.  Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God.  Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.  Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

God sees each of us in a way that no other human is capable of seeing us.  He sees our inner thoughts, He understands our hearts, and He knows what motivates our every move.  As followers of Christ, we are called to be loving, merciful, pure, and peaceful—because that is the example Jesus laid out for us.  When we follow God, when we pursue righteousness, there will be times when the world condemns us, when the world won’t understand our actions.  The world’s rejection may hurt us, and it may cause us to be afraid.  But God promises to bless us with the kingdom of heaven.  He will fill us up and reveal Himself when we pursue Him above all else.

Today as you pray and meditate on His Word, praise God for loving you enough to know the real you.  Open your heart to Him and ask Him to flood you with His merciful Spirit.  Pray that you would be a peacemaker in this angry world.  Thank God for His promise to love you and reveal Himself to you.

Space to be Blessed

Matthew 5:4-6—“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”

In Matthew Chapter 5, Jesus details numerous blessings and the types of people who are positioned to inherit those blessings.  His characterization of bless-worthy individuals is the polar opposite of what most people would think.  As humans, we do not desire mourning, we do not respect the meek, and we tend to only care about righteousness if it doesn’t require any effort on our part.  Each of these conditions, though, creates space within us as humans, and space is exactly how God gets inside to unite with us.  Think about how you feel when you have lost someone or something—often, people will say, I feel so empty inside.  In a different way, the meek create space by never being controlled their own selfish desires—they are humble and not egocentric or self-centered.  Similarly, those who are hungry and thirsty for righteousness are putting others first and risking their own comforts and desires to achieve a higher good.  By creating space within themselves, these types of individuals are in a position to receive the blessing of more intimate relationship with God.  As this happens, a level of loneliness can arise with regard to other humans because, frankly, other humans aren’t going to understand why you are not more self-centered.  Fortunately, the blessing of relationship with God is so great that it never feels empty or lonely (like human relationships so often do). 

Today as you pray and meditate on His Word, thank God for the gift of relationship with Him.  Pray that He would guide you in creating space to receive the full blessing He is waiting to rain down on you.  Praise Him for His infinite wisdom and unlimited love for you.

God's Blessing: Can you Handle That?

Matthew 5:3—“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Have you ever thought about whether you really want to be blessed? I mean, are you ready to handle the blessings God has for you?  Blessings on God’s terms are quite different than blessings on human terms.  To be blessed doesn’t mean you necessarily get the new car, or the raise at work, or the recognition for a job well-done.  By human measure, blessings don’t necessarily give us the life we think we want, filled with modern conveniences and lots of stuff.  Blessings on God’s terms mean we can enjoy a closer relationship with Him. To be poor in spirit means to be empty of selfish, worldly desires.  It means that because worldly wealth, prosperity, and success are not the focus of your desire, you have made room to be filled by the Holy Spirit. You don’t have anything distracting you from being consumed in God’s love.  In God’s love, we experience His Kingdom and find peace.  His love lifts us above the fray of this world so we can no longer be affected by what happens around us.

Today as you pray and meditate on this passage, reconsider your concept of blessings.  Praise God for His Work in your life and the blessing of relationship with Him.  Open yourself to deeper relationship with Him by praying to be emptied of worldly desires.  Ask God to reveal His will for your life so that you might seek Him more each day.

God is in Control

Ecclesiastes 5:8—If you see in a province the oppression of the poor and the violation of justice and right, do not be amazed at the matter; for the high official is watched by a higher, and there are yet higher ones over them.

We don’t have to look far to see oppression and injustice.  It lives in our backyards, down the street, across our nation, and around the world.  Sometimes we feel subjected to the oppression and injustice, and other times we feel powerless to stop it.  It might seem natural to question God and ask where He is in all of this or how He can allow such injustice and oppression to occur.  Or perhaps we don’t see God in it at all and we begin to believe that humans have the power to control everything that happens.  At all times, we must remember that God brings all things together for good, but it does not mean that he never allows a bad thing to happen.  After all, humans have free will, and we are imperfect.  We make lots of mistakes, which proves we really aren’t in control after all.  God who loves us is always in control—He has a greater plan than any of us could possibly imagine.  For that plan to be revealed though, we must trust in Him and pray constantly for it to be revealed.  Our faith must abide deeply and our prayers must flow beyond just our personal selfish interests – we must pray for those in the world who do not know how to pray for themselves.

Today as you pray and meditate on His Word, declare to God that you trust Him completely.  Praise Him for His perfect and knowing plan, even in those times when you don’t understand everything that is happening.  Pray for those in this world that lead campaigns for oppression and injustice that their human plans would be foiled and their hearts would be changed.  Pray for those who fight against oppression and injustice that they would be filled with wisdom and empowered by the Holy Spirit to accomplish God’s Will for His Creation.

Word!

2 Timothy 2:14-17—Remind them of this, and warn them before God that they are to avoid wrangling over words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening. Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth. Avoid profane chatter, for it will lead people into more and more impiety, and their talk will spread like gangrene.

God has given us the gift of His Holy Word which has existed since the Beginning.  As Christians, God expects us to study His Word so that we gain a better understanding of who He is and the plan He has crafted for our lives. We are not supposed to get caught up in mundane arguments about translations and specific word choices—those conversations are counterproductive and actually tend to pull us away from God.  The only way to know and understand God is by reading and studying the Bible for ourselves because He speaks to us through His Word.  We certainly need teachers, mentors, and fellow Christians who we can trust to guide us and study with us.  But we shouldn’t ever allow human arguments over word choices interfere with God’s Divine direction.

Today as you pray and meditate, praise God for blessing us with the gift of His Divine Word. Offer yourself to Him as a student hungry for the treasure of knowledge tucked away in each page.  Pray that God would reveal Himself to you as you study His Word so that you never doubt who He is.