Author Archives: Laurel

Looking for Something to Wear

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Women deciding what to wear seems to be both humorous and irritating to just about everyone, including ourselves. It’s just that our closets are so much more complex than a man’s– and maybe that’s a reflection of our multi-faceted life in this world. Or perhaps an indication of some unstable identity issues, but it definitely makes for a lengthy decision process on a daily basis. Maybe that’s why the Church-Planter’s metaphor for how to live resonates so well with us.

Paul may have been a man, but he understands how important the right clothes are to a situation, and how serious is that early-morning consideration into picking clothes for the day. Because what you wear shows people who you are on the inside. Clothing show how you feel about yourself, what you think about life, and the direction you are heading– just ask any girl over the age of twelve. But Paul pushes right past our vanity and pride concerning all those outside issues, and challenges us to look at our inside self the way God does: “Since God chose you to be the holy people He loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.” (Colossians 3:12) Right there in the space of a sentence is an entire manual on what the well-dressed follower of Jesus should be wearing this season.

The word picture works because we do this every day: we peel off the dirty clothes and toss them in the laundry basket before we can get cleaned up and put on fresh clothes. We get laundry. We’ve done mountains of it every week; it’s one of those household chores that repeats endlessly, but no one questions its necessity. And Paul says it’s like that for us, exchanging the old life for a new one: “for you have stripped off your old sinful nature and all its wicked deeds.”  (Colossians 3:9) I need to throw away the angry words that spill out easily, and choose gentleness and mercy; I need to turn away from deceiving others with my own best interests in mind, and choose integrity instead, even when it costs me; I need to let go of this society’s standards of beauty and success and pursue the peaceful contented spirit that God delights in; I need to throw away self-sufficient independence, and choose childlike trust. Choose forgiveness. Choose surrender. Choose joy. These are repetitive, daily kinds of choices that are quite necessary, and should be part of normal life for any Christ-follower.

And it is as far away from a list of rules as you can get. It’s an appeal to common sense and to gratitude, a matter of showing on the outside what we believe on the inside, our love for the Savior shining out on our faces and in our behavior. So that when people look at us they can see the beautiful reality of our regeneration: “For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God.” ( Colossians 3:3)

To some extent, this process of constant everyday renewal comes naturally from the beautiful presence of Christ living in us– His resurrection power at work in us and our spirits awakened to respond to Him. Paul assures his readers: “And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” (2 Corinthians 3:18) But in very real ways, how I am clothed to go out into my day is up to me, too. Paul’s written instructions to the early believers are given with every expectation that they will listen and obey. The responsibility is on me to choose, even while the power to accomplish it comes from the Holy Spirit. And the more I listen to Him and let Him lead me on the inside, the more my life changes on the outside. Paul says confidently to his readers “Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like Him.” (Colossians 3:10)

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“Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him. Do everything without complaining and arguing, so that no one can criticize you. Live clean, innocent lives as children of God, shining like bright lights in a world full of crooked and perverse people.” (Philippians 2:12-15)

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“I asked her what was so scary about unmerited free grace? She replied something like this: “If I was saved by my good works — then there would be a limit to what God could ask of me or put me through. I would be like a taxpayer with rights. I would have done my duty and now I would deserve a certain quality of life. But if it is really true that I am a sinner saved by sheer grace — at God’s infinite cost — then there’s nothing he cannot ask of me.”
(Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith)

Content to Be Broken

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I got this photo, awhile back, of a Japanese bowl that has clearly been broken at some point in the past, and the pieces put back together. But instead of using crazy glue, like I would have done, in hopes that the cracks would be unnoticeable, this has been mended with gold and lacquer so that the shining veins encircle the bowl like a vine growing. I’m still trying to get my head around it.

The caption described the custom originating in the 15th century, and the legend accompanying it of the ruler (sometimes an emperor, sometimes a general) whose favorite bowl was dropped by a careless servant. But whatever mix of practicality and artistry inspired kintsukuroi, it is the philosophy behind the pottery that sticks with me. When household objects show the wear of age and use, and even when they crack right open, they are not discarded as useless. In the hands of the Japanese artists, mending makes them whole and beautiful, and stronger than before. I can appreciate that perspective, because most of my home is furnished in handed-down furniture and antiques. But when it comes to my own life, it definitely doesn’t seem it should be that way. Some days my life feels like it’s nothing but cracked refuse– shabby and worn and ordinary, and beyond usefulness. All I can see are the cracks, and if I could mend them quickly and never think about them again, I would be perfectly happy with that. Spotlight them in gold? Yeah, right.

But there is that old pottery piece in the picture, and the gold looks like a living river of light running through. I would not be the first to see the spiritual symbolism in kintsukuroi pottery. The parallel is clear between clay pottery and people, between gold and the power of the Cross, between human artists and the Creator. What takes my breath is the reasoning: that cracks and chips aren’t flaws…brokenness isn’t failure…aging and imperfections are not loss. Their marks are history and meaning and time spent. They are a visible proof of presence in this world, the result of fragile pottery impacting its environment in some small way. All these losses, the bangs and dents that I tend to mourn in life, seen as beautiful simply because they are life. “They are not something to conceal or be ashamed of because they remind us what it means to be human.” The simple caption almost makes me weep. To be human means to be flawed, and bound to break, and longing for wholeness in this very temporary life. And I know that the only reason the broken even could be beautiful is because the Creator picks up the pieces and mends it with His own hands. The cracks are an opportunity for something more than clay to enter in and change the way things are…all these flaws visibly filled in by His own shining glory.

It is exactly what Paul was talking about in his own life when he said “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities.” (2 Corinthians 12:9b-10) If you look up content in the dictionary, it does not only mean to satisfy or fulfill. It also means to hold in, to contain, to limit oneself in desires. And I can see how Paul’s joy over his brokenness has more to do with what he wants than what he has. When you can say in complete honesty “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” (Philippians 3:8) then you will treasure anything that brings Christ near, even the hard things that batter and press. Narrow down your human desires and dreams to this one thing, and it is easier to be fulfilled: “…that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and may share His sufferings, becoming like Him in his death.” (Philippians 3:10) This is the proper use for a fragile piece of pottery: to show the marks of a real and ordinary life, and all its flaws to be made beautiful by the Great Artist. I can hear Jesus promising the crowds following Him: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” (Matthew 5:6)

As one writer noted of the kintsukuroi bowl from legend: “One might almost say the true life of the bowl … began the moment it was dropped.” (Christy Bartlett, A Tearoom View of Mended Ceramics) And here I sit, the pieces of my life held up to You, with amazing grace flowing down all around.

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“We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves.” (2 Corinthians 4:7)

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“All these pieces,
Broken and scattered,
In mercy gathered,
Mended and whole.
Empty handed,
But not forsaken,
I’ve been set free,
I’ve been set free.

Amazing grace,
How sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost,
But now I’m found,
Was blind but now I see.

Oh I can see it now…
Oh I can see the love in Your eyes–
Laying Yourself down,
Raising up the broken to life…”
(Broken Vessels, Hillsong)

Faith, Hope, Love

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We chose matching Mother-Daughter necklaces the Summer before she got married. It was my pre-wedding gift to her, as a token of our special relationship through the years: a silver heart with Faith, Hope, Love engraved on it. I liked it because it captured the faith-storms we had weathered together, and the closeness we shared because of it. She liked it because she said it expressed the essence of the gospel that could transcend any cultural boundaries. Faith in Christ Jesus for salvation; the Hope of the resurrection; Love lived out to others. It surprised me at the time, because I had never thought of those three qualities in such a way, but the idea slowly took root.

I always thought it curious how Paul plucks those particular qualities out of thin air and establishes them as eternal bedrock (although he, of all people, should be qualified to see them in the Spirit’s light): “Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13) There are many worthwhile qualities to cultivate, and while these three are admirable, why are they the best? But my daughter’s observation about the gospel stirred my curiosity; what if that were the reason Paul chose those three concepts? What if he were distilling the basic principles of their faith in Christ into an easily remembered creed for the young churches? His insistence to the Galatians that since Christ has come all their debating about the merits of circumcision mean nothing, leaps off the page: “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” (Galatians 5:6) Faith in Jesus as the Way, the Truth, and the Life is the only way to salvation, and love is the proof and tangible manifestation of a person saved from sin and death. Hope for the future is implied as the motivation for their transformation. Everything else is just details.

I began to pay attention to how often Faith, Hope, and Love show up as related themes, especially in Paul’s writing, and the scrap paper I was using soon filled up. To Paul, this was clearly the essence of Christianity, and a well-recognized message in the early church. Scholars in the modern world often call these the theological virtues (as opposed to moral virtues which any man can cultivate and exercise) because they come only from God. Faith, hope, and love are purely a gift of God’s grace. To the early church they were the new guidelines for living as Christ-followers, in sharp contrast to the Law the Jews had followed for centuries.

From a practical perspective, Paul’s repeated theme reminds me of the values we often repeat in our own Church Family, the familiar phrases that call us back into focus, reinforce why we are here, help us do the hard things. We put our trust in a real and powerful God, and live out that faith with our choices in the everyday, even when it is hard and lonely. We build relationships as real people who refuse to wear masks, willing to lay up grace and kindness because God first loved us. We do this because of our hope– in the Christ who promised to come back for us, in the eternal Home that waits for us, in the resurrection of this faltering clay body. All of us wear Faith, Hope, Love around our necks and bind them to our hearts– it is what makes us who we are.

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“Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love. Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, in all, and living through all.”
(Ephesians 4:2-6)

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“You can do this thing — because you were made to do hard and holy things.
You are always enough — because You have Jesus and He is always enough.
You don’t have to get it perfect — you just have to get back up and keep going.”
(Ann VosKamo)

When Cares Abound

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Finding much encouragement and challenge in this old sermon from Charles Spurgeon, first delivered in January of 1888 from his pulpit in the Metropolitan Tabernacle. What would it have been like to listen to this sermon 127 years ago in London, from the mouth of “The Prince of Preachers” himself?

“I suppose it is true of many of us that our cares are numerous. If you are like me, once you become careful, anxious, fretful, you are never able to count your cares, even though you might count the hairs of your head. And cares are apt to multiply to those who are care-full and when you are as full of care as you think you can be, you will be sure to have another crop of cares growing up all around you. The indulgence of this evil habit of anxiety leads to its getting dominion over life, till life is not worth living by reason of the care we have about it. Cares and worries are numerous, and therefore, let your prayers be as numerous. Turn everything that is a care into a prayer. Let your cares be the raw material of your prayers and, as the alchemists hoped to turn dross into gold, so you, by a holy alchemy, actually turn what naturally would have been a care into spiritual treasure in the form of prayer! Baptize every anxiety into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit—and so make it into a blessing!” (Spurgeon, Prayer, The Cure for Care)

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“Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:6-7)

How Big Is Too Big?

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On the whiteboard in my classroom we are writing our mountains, the big rocks that only faith can move. The ones that Jesus said would pick right up, “if you have faith as small as a mustard seed.” (Matthew 17:20). The ones we might have all but given up on. The ones that we pray about because they matter, but wonder if there are really any answers out there: our young people to come to faith and stay close to God; powerful men and women to stand up and speak truth and wisdom in our society; our marriages to grow deep and healthy; the next step in ministry; bodies and minds of people we love to be made whole.

We’ve talked in small group before, about this odd rating system we have for prayers– the subconscious evaluation of what is the right-sized prayers to bring to God, and which ones might be beneath His notice or too presumptuous to ask…though why we think we are qualified to make that judgment is a mystery. Or maybe it’s just a matter of how much stress we can handle, and how much we are willing to risk. I read a youth pastor this week saying, “To have faith in God means that you need to tender your resignation….as CEO of the universe….recognize that some things are out of our control.” (Glyn Barrett) And surrendering control is risky business– even if it was only an illusion all along– because what if everything doesn’t turn out right? (But if I stay in charge everything will turn out just the way I want? There is a yawning precipice there, if you start to follow that through, logically.)

Putting our mountains down in ink is a statement of belief: a statement of Who is in control and that He is good. A commitment to believe what God says about Himself. A refusal to be satisfied with mediocrity just because it seems more attainable. A courage to step out of familiar places and into the risky unexpectedness of supernatural power.

Because we are studying the resurrection, and how Ezekiel speaks God’s Word into the dry hopeless bones of his people, and there is power that brings new life. And how Jesus’ mere touch brings healing to desperate people….power strong enough to reverse a lifetime of suffering for a desperate woman, and perspective big enough to look at our great enemy Death and call him a Pretender. We are seeing God’s depth of compassion for the brokenness of His creation, and His desire to lift the crushing weight of the consequences of our sin. In the middle of all this dirt, He weeps for our pain and our fear and the bonds of our mortality. Jesus stands here in our dirt and looks in our eyes and offers hope: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26) And we whisper a yes and write down our mountains. Putting them into words here is a commitment to see them with Jesus’ eyes, in light of the resurrection.

Paul says that “The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, He will give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within you.” (Romans 8:11) The Spirit of God has taken up residence in our flesh and blood, made Temple by His presence. And so Eternity touches and transforms us from the inside out, and the resurrection of Jesus becomes a starting place, or as Paul calls it, the “first fruits” of what is to come. “For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.” (1 Corinthians 15:21) If we can believe in the resurrection of Christ, it is just the beginning to believing in a great many other impossible things. It’s the mustard seed of faith that He can move these mountains.

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“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.” (Romans 8:18-21)

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“Saviour, he can move the mountains–
My God is mighty to save,
He is mighty to save.
Forever author of salvation,
He rose and conquered the grave;
Jesus conquered the grave.”
(Mighty to Save, Hillsong)

What Prayer Does for Me

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At its roots, prayer is evidence of our restored relationship with God. Prayer acknowledges that He is the Creator and we are the created; He is the Provider and we are the needy; He is the King before Whom everything bows, and we open our mouths to praise His name and give thanks. It is appropriate (or fitting, as they used to say) for us to turn our hearts toward Him in prayer, constantly and gladly. It is the best way to stop the painful legacy of hiding and self-sufficiency that we got from our First Parents, and clear evidence that we are being transformed into Christ-likeness. Charles Spurgeon preached it well:

“…the act of prayer teaches us our unworthiness, which is no small blessing to such proud beings as we. If God gave us mercies without constraining us to pray for them, we should never know how poor we are. A true prayer is an inventory of needs, a catalog of necessities, an exposure of secret wounds, a revelation of hidden poverty. While it is an application to divine wealth, it is also a confession of human emptiness. I believe that the most healthy state of a Christian is to be always empty, and always depending upon the Lord for supplies. It is to be always poor in self and rich in Jesus. It is to know our personal weaknesses and yet be mighty through God to do great exploits. While prayer adores God, it lays the creature where he should be—in the very dust. Prayer is in itself, apart from the answer that it brings, a great benefit to the Christian.” (The Power of Prayer in a Believer’s Life, Charles Spurgeon)

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“All of You is more than enough for
All of me, for every thirst and every need;
You satisfy me with Your love,
And all I have in You is more than enough.”
(Chris Tomlin, Enough)

Prayer is Always Called For

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In every situation we can possibly find ourselves, there is one response that is always appropriate (even necessary), and that is to pray. God gives us this command over and over again through Scripture: come to Me…call out to Me…turn your hearts to Me…over and over, because our turning away to do things on our own is part of the great Wrong that needs to be righted, the Original Sin. This aspect of relationship is so important to Him that because we could not bridge the gap, He came to find us Himself and tear down all the walls between.  And still, over and over, God tells us, “Call to Me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.” (Jeremiah 33:3) It is food for every hungry heart. It is a command that covers every circumstance.

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“Are you sick? Call unto Me, for I am the Great Physician. Are you fearful that you shall be able to provide for your family? Call unto Me! Do your children trouble you? Are your griefs little, yet painful, like small points and pricks of thorns? Call unto Me! Is your burden heavy as though it would make your back break beneath its load? Call unto Me!” “Cast your burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain you; He shall never allow the righteous to be moved.” (Psalm 55:22) In the valley, on the mountain, on the barren rock, beneath the billows in the briny sea, in the furnace when the coals are glowing, in the gates of death when the jaws of hell would shut themselves upon you—never cease to pray, for the commandment addresses you with, “Call unto Me.”
(The Power of Prayer in a Believer’s Life, Charles Spurgeon)

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“He will call on Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him.” (Psalm 91:15)

When Winter Seems to Never End

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We are still hemmed in by piles of snow, but here we are planning our weekly Lenten lunches for the community, talking about how to make Easter real for hungry souls. And we can feed them sandwiches, fill up bowls of hot soup in cupped hands, re-tell the stories of our Savior’s Passion, but Easter’s new life seems very far away to a world gripped in Winter still.

And you don’t need to look far to see the bruised and the weary, hear the prayers going up for deliverance and answers, watch the upheaval of change and the demands that stretch to breaking. You can hardly escape the relentless newscasts about hate-fueled violence, see the world reeling on its axis. A resurrection can seem like a distant improbability to the one firmly stuck in cold hard realities. And under the gray-metal skies and endless cold, a heart can begin to numb– get the life leeched right out of it even though it is still beating– forget to look up, to look ahead and hope. This is what Lent is for, to remind us of the promise that goes back to the very Beginning, and it sets up the cross in the middle of everything, with the very flesh of God suffering death and bringing life to us. The prophet Ezekiel wrote down the promise for his own people: “’Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord!…I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.'” (Ezekiel 37:4-6) Jesus repeated it to His dear friends just before He called their brother back to them: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in Me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in Me will never die.” (John 11:25-26) Lent sends our cold numb hearts to the cross and the empty tomb, bids us gaze on the proof of God’s love, let the certainty of hope run in our veins again and look forward to what He is accomplishing. Every year Spring brings that reminder of what is True and Eternal: the promise that in the end, Life wins. “.…thanks be to God, who hath given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!” ( Corinthians 15:57)

The bare-boned trees stand silently cloaked in snow, but there is resurrection coming.

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“Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert.” (Isaiah 35:6)

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 “For people who are stumbling toward ruin, the message of the Cross is nothing but a tall tale for fools by a fool. But for those of us who are already experiencing the reality of being rescued and made right, the Cross is nothing short of God’s power.”  (1 Corinthians 1:18)

If God Is for Us

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Some days when the future looms large and uncertain, this is enough:

“What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.  Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” (Romans 8:31-35)

In every loss, every hard place, every weary struggle of uncertainty, every paralyzing fear… we know this one thing for sure: that God is praying for us and with us; He loves us; He is on our side.

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“He holds the stars and He holds my heart,
With healing hands that bear the scars,
The rugged cross where He died for me–
My only hope, my everything.
Jesus, He loves me;
He loves me; He is for me.”
(Jesus Loves Me, Chris Tomlin)

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“He is mine and I am His, given to me as well as for me; I am never so much mine as when I am His, or so much lost to myself until lost in Him…”  (The Valley of Vision)

The Power in Prayer

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If prayer is opening the door of our hearts and lives to Jesus in the Everyday, and coming in His name before the throne of God the Father, it shouldn’t be surprising to discover that the third member of the Trinity is involved in prayer as well. It is while Jesus is talking to His followers about praying in His name that He first brings up the Spirit-Helper that He is sending to us. “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever,  even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive….You know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.” (John 14:16-17)  Could there be any better way for us to get to know God than by having His Spirit as Ezer, or “helper suitable”?  Jesus goes on to explain that after He returns to Heaven to sit at the Father’s right hand, this Helper will stay to communicate God’s heart, His will, His mind to our spirits, so that we can understand Him and live as His children. From the beginning then, it was understood that we would need help in praying to God, that this communication was more than our human hearts could manage. The nineteenth century world-renowned preacher, Charles Spurgeon, who was also famous for his dedication to prayer, pointed out that if prayer is just saying the right things anyone with a mouth can accomplish it; if prayer is about desiring the right things, many hearts are able to aspire to great things; but because prayer is of the human spirit and reaches up to our Creator whose Breath we were born of, we need His spiritual help to reach across the infinite distance between.

Paul says plainly that the Spirit’s purpose is to help us to pray to our heavenly Father: “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.” (Romans 8:26) How else could the limitations of human speech and mind address the Almighty, without the help of a Divine Translator to fill in the gaps? The prophet Isaiah felt his own spiritual inability keenly when he recorded his vision of the heavenly throne: “‘Woe to me!…I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.’” (Isaiah 6:5) An angel helped the prophet, cleansing his lips with fire, but in our own time of need, God Himself makes up for our weakness, cleansing us with Christ’s blood and putting acceptable words to our heart-cries. “And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.” (Romans 8:27)

We could not ask for a more loving, patient, constant Helper, and lest we slide into picturing Him as some sort of live-in companion for the elderly, let’s remember that the word Ezer comes from root words that mean “to save, come to one’s aid, to make strong” and is generally used in a military setting. The word picture is of a battle comrade who fights alongside and has your back. Appropriate, when we think of how often Paul described the Christian life in just that way, saying“…our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against… the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (Ephesians 6:12) And just a few sentences later, after detailing the armor we need for the battle, he reiterates the necessity of constant vigilant prayer for ourselves and others. There is a reason we refer to those with a powerful prayer life as Prayer Warriors. It is because of the Ezer, who is strengthening and protecting us in every moment, helping us to “live a life worthy of the Lord and please Him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God….” (Colossians 1:10)

Our part in prayer is to open the door and give all our hearts to Him, but it is the Ezer‘s presence and power that makes prayer something more than words.

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“O Lord, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.” (Psalm 139:1-4)

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“He will direct your desires to the things that you ought to seek for. He will teach you your real needs, though as yet you do not know them. He will suggest to you His promises that you may be able to plead them. In fact, He will be the Alpha and Omega to your prayer, just as He is to your salvation.” (Charles Spurgeon, The Power of Prayer in A Believer’s Life)