A Meditation on Prayer

“O that we might only cleave more too God and our Saviour in inward and heartfelt prayer, and devote this opportunity for the purpose of heartily entreating God, that in order to this, he would grant us his grace and Spirit! It is by omitting prayer that we go astray from our hearts and at the same time from God; and the further we go from God, the further do we depart from our peace. O soul, consider therefore what belongs to thy peace! If we loved prayer more and practiced it more, my dear friends, we should become capable of experiencing the peace of the precious love of Jesus in our interior, in our center, and become more closely united to him. Jesus is so near us, the precious Saviour, ought we not therefore to draw near unto him and withdraw our hearts from all created things, from all distraction, from all multiplicity of thoughts concerning outwardly and earthly things, and with all the devotion of our hearts and our affections retire into Jesus in our inmost souls? By the continual drawing near to Jesus in our hearts, by a believing adherence to him, in which consists the true prayer of the heart, we attain too an ever closer union with him and peace becomes great in our souls; yea, it becomes at length an invincible peace which nothing can take away. O what Peace! How every burden and difficulty then falls away! And although we may not attain to so high a degree of union as that which many souls by divine grace attain in this life, yet still, the soul that loves prayer and inward retirement, that abides much with God in the heart, will be conscious of such a secret well-being and such a tranquility as it never can find or possess in the world or created things.

Let us consider what belongs to our peace, in order that we may have peace when we must pass over into an endless eternity.”

(Gerhard Tersteegen, Spiritual Crumbs from the Masters Table, p.18, 1837)

The Spirit and The Bride

'And the Spirit and the bride say, “Come!”’

Lord, work in me that my voice would be found in this chorus!

Revelation 22:17 shows us the Spirit and the bride together as one seeking the Person, the presence, and involvement of the Lord Jesus Christ. This verse placed at the Revelation’s end and at the end of our bibles summarizes the condition of those swept up in God’s redemptive work and history which opens itself to us in Genesis. Lord, if I claim participation in Your salvation, but my heart and lips fail to cry for You, lead me by Your Spirit back into these pages that I might hear You, see You, know You, and come to cherish You beyond all else that I could ever know or desire. Something is in the way. May nothing stand that causes me to not hear the Spirit’s voice and that keeps me from voicing my own cry for You.

The Spirit and the bride know and agree on who Jesus is and what He is about. The Spirit has known this from eternity. The bride knows all this now. The bride understands and is fully convinced of all the Spirit has revealed and brought to life in her. She is complete. She is prepared. She lives the truth that Jesus Christ loves, purifies, and cleanses her in preparation of bringing her to their wedding day and to Himself. The Spirit has brought to earth that heavenly life and nurtured it along the way by evidencing Christ, Who in turn reveals the Father. The church’s relationship to Christ Jesus is her primary thought while in this world, and from it she looks to Him and sees beyond mere human history into life as His story. Additionally, the Spirit and the bride understand, welcome, and work with the means whereby Jesus Christ is set upon to prepare her for that day. Such an understanding would have governed the primitive church that received John’s writing and would have fortified their thinking and faith against pressures from the earthly powers that were against them and sought their destruction, and it would have anchored the early church’s mind and heart on the sovereign Lord of all Who rules over all. Finally, the verse reveals to us the place and role of “desire,” the oft overlooked but foundational and essential element to the inner essence of the Christian life. The Spirit and the bride passionately want to be with the Bridegroom, the Husband, the Head, and they desire all such union entails and where it leads.

Oh Holy Spirit of God, you come before any life or utterance the bride sounds! The Spirit is positioned first. The Spirit’s primary task as revealed in the New Testament is to bring to life and completion the redemptive work of Christ and God the Father, where what has been eternally ordained through and for the Son reaches completion in the Father’s presence. The Spirit’s action is a bringing together the two—One from Heaven to earth and back to Heaven; One from earth to Heaven—and it summarizes the Spirit’s entire ministry. The Spirit, being the life and breath of the bride, moves her collective (and thus every member’s) mind, affections, and will to passionately single out, see, hear, know, long and cry out for, then pursue her Head and Husband above all else. The Spirit brought to her the heavenly life in the beginning, enlightens, empowers and drives the bride toward her Husband, labors to purify her from false lovers, and the Spirit does all this in a way that the bride’s will is not discounted, dismissed, disengaged or overridden, but it is instead influenced in a manner where the brides’ wants and affections so latch on to Christ as the choicest of any object of desire that her will follows hard after those desires and moves passionately steadily toward Christ above all else.

God does not crush and bypass the human will, certainly not that of His Son’s bride. She is no forced marriage! As the Shulamite so longed for her beloved, whose banner over her was love, so does the bride of Christ only long for Him, and only through this experience of longing for Him does she know both herself and Him. To glorify Himself, thus triumphing over all sin and evil, God works through the will by means of His love relation to her. Courting her she gains true understanding of Him: experiencing His goodness and power, His light dispelling darkness; that transformation being undeniably real, His goodness and purity capturing her gaze, as if stealing it from seeing (thus knowing) nothing but darkness and sin to seeing all things, thereby breaking through her as if newly born or created and seeing for the very first time her Creator, Who loving her she loves, Who seeing her she sees, Who wanting her she solely wants. Their eyes meet, and forever she has affections for no other. Dawn has broken to her, and it occurred within her. His look is for Her. He isolates it and gives it to her only. He is faithful to her, and He looks not this way at any other.

This divine gaze changes the one looked upon. Certainly, such a bride will not cry and shout for a return to that darkened womb of the world from which she came! She dare not, or her Husband to be—the Great Shepherd of the sheep—will alter her path toward Him and allow her to feel again that pointed and trying way she only knew before He set His love on her. This He may do, as God, to glorify Himself and purify her affections and desires, through repentance, in preparation of being with Him upon their marriage forever. She is to dwell in the Father’s house, in His presence, and the Son—above all others—knows those preparations required to fit the church for the eternity of that experience.

Recall, my friend, the virgins as they waited for their day. (Matt 25:1-10) Must we not go through our wait and maintain our own want, if He delays a bit longer? Should we not also know the fruit found in delay? Must we not realize the divine work that attends a humble trust and quite patience? Furthermore, would it not be essential and foundational to our Christian maturity to recognize the Lord Jesus’ actual presence during the time of “apparent “delay? What does this notion of delay do with you? Have your affections for the One with whom you will spend eternity grown dim with the world’s dirt and ungodliness? Are we stained? Or, have our desires to be with Christ only grown with fervor and intensity, as we have with increased passion pursued our Head and Husband, the one Whose’ love was set upon us and redeemed us from sin and destruction? Where are you my friend?

God’s love and grace experienced by an individual Christian, and the totality of Christ’s body, enlightened with knowledge and infused with ultimate desire, anchors on the God from which these come, so that the Christian, and the body as one, longs above all else to be with the Source of Life from which these flow. If we have truly tasted of that river of life from above, what fount of apparent and false life could tempt and appear to satisfy us from here below? All we need do is examine our own lives to see the collection of things we have more affection and desire for than the Lord Jesus Christ. What do you see? Could you today participate in the chorus, “Come Lord Jesus! Come!” If not, examine your desires. Recall the role of the Spirit in bringing you that heavenly life, testifying of Christ, and cleansing you of ungodliness. Pursue through faith and repentance what God offers you to prepare you for life with Him.

For 2012

“Everybody wants to be a Christ-worshipper; no one wants to follow Him. However, real worshippers and Christ-lovers also follow. He who loves Christ also loves His holy life’s pattern: His humility, meekness, and patience; His cross, shame, and contempt. And even though in our present weakness we cannot perfectly imitate Christ’s holy, exalted life, we are still to love it and to yearn to imitate it more fully. Then do we dwell in Christ and He in us. But the world now holds it better to gain knowledge about all things than to get understanding about His love, which is better than all knowledge. No one loves Christ who does not follow His holy life. There are many—a majority—who are ashamed of His holy example, of His meekness and lowliness. Now Christians demand an imposing Christ—magnificent, rich, conformed to the world! No one wants to imitate a poor, meek, despised, lowly Christ.”

“O my heavenly Physician! I bring Thee a dead soul; revive it! I bring Thee a sick soul; cure it! I bring Thee a heart empty of all basic virtue; fill it with Thy Spirit, with Thy love, with Thy humility, and with Thy wonderful patience! Amen”

“Ordinarily the soul rises to perfection [completion, or that end to which it was designed or made] by passing through three states. First of all, it gets free from sin by penance and mortification; then it forms inner virtues by prayer and imitation of Christ; and lastly, it advances in the love of God until it reaches habitual union with him. It is for us to enter that path of perfection and to traverse its stages more or less quickly.”

(John Arndt, 1555 – 1621)

My friend, these words and ideas or concepts, even truths, expressed by John Arndt require me to evaluate my own heart and my very life to see and acknowledge who Jesus Christ is to me and ask what of my love for Him? Has it been some time since you asked God to show you what it means to be a Christian? If you ask, also petition Him and trust Him to lead you in the way. Rely on the Author of that life, not on self.

An “ordinary” Christian you and I dare not be. This world loves ordinary Christians. They lack devotion to the Lord of the universe, therefore, they lack power. These are blind to sin in their lives and to the world’s sin; thus, one could conclude, they are truly blind to God. They do not see His holiness and love seeing them, so they do not themselves see with holiness and love. They manifest nothing of the life God’s Spirit, but only manifest godlessness. Godlessness need not be just those gross sins or unrighteous displays. It can be understood as a framework of life which stems from self, serves self, instead of that which originates from a hearty trust and confidence in God; one sourced by that which is tied to heaven and feeds the new life Christians know is most true, and which lives in and through them, and that can only be attributed to as divine.

The Christian does not lay claim to this treasure, but humbly permits its dictates and impressions to fashion one’s life in place of the self’s natural and earthly inclinations, thereby preferring what is holy over that which is not of God. Ongoing self-reflection in God’s presence, confession, faith and repentance grounded in true forgiveness are living necessities for such a Christian.

And what of loves work in my heart? Does not Christ make much to do about the love of God, his love for the Father, and his desire that those who have been reconciled to the Father through him would be remade and transformed by the unfolding and experiential ministry of divine love poured out into the heart of people? Dear God, where am I to be found in this prayer of Your Son recorded for my benefit and Your glory in John 17? Can I testify that I do see the fruit of His prayer and Your answer to his request manifest in my life? Dear God, if I cannot attest to this reality of love, do not let me rest till we have met in that ministry of Your Word, Your Spirit and my soul and the darkness of my mind and heart are burned away by the brightness of Your glorious love and truth! The brand of my fallen heart runs deep! Would you my Father run the brand of Your love even deeper! In the pain from that pressing into my flesh I’ll feel, Your Son will be revealed, and I will understand and then live more for the pleasure of Your holy will as did he commit even more so to You as the pain pressed deeper into His holy flesh. God, to pray such things and know the true condition of my own heart! Faith moves me to pray such, because I know all is guided by Your love.

As I enter the year 2012, my framework for this year’s meditations and reflections is the reality described by John 1:4: “In Him was life, and this life was the light of men.” Do you know, my friend, what this verse reveals? I pray that over the next twelve months, I will understand and live these truths. I pray your soul will be watered. We are all imperfect. This we know, thus we forgive freely and we encourage along the way. We anchor in Him, not in ourselves.

God’s Best,

Carl