Journal Prayer: 4.9.11

To Shine Brighter and Brighter

“But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day. The way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know over what they stumble.” – Proverbs 4:18,19

Good evening Father,

In what a blessed state I find myself. Every tree in front of me that is touched by the golden grasp of the setting sun reminds me of Your illuminating Word reaching the otherwise unseen recesses of my heart. You do not only expose me, but You make me beautiful. Anything less than gratitude is absurd for me as I recline at 7:30pm in April to feel a just-cool-enough breeze touch me, and tickle the leaves of the tree closest to my balcony. This is mercy. I don’t deserve to behold it. This is grace. To my left are the hanging moss, dripping from a tree in true Florida fashion. It is set before a very light pink and purple backdrop, resembling watercolor. Closer to me is a palm tree by his lonesome except for another tree, I don’t know what it is called, but it has light green leaves that turn red only at the very top of the tree. More directly before me is a tree so beautiful I find it hard to explain. It is round, full, and grounded. It reminds me of a full head of curly hair, happily being blown in the soft wind. I sometimes stare at it for minutes. Beyond it are a host of trees that go beyond eyesight. Right in the middle of busy streets and housing, a huge cluster of trees! You have a beautiful mind. Every phenomena I have the privilege to experience in my small corner of the world is perfectly orchestrated by Your wise decree. Not one inch of it is outside of Your control. And all of it works to give You glory.

Yet I know I am not in Eden. My nose is stuffy and my head congested. My temptation is to confuse rest in You with slothful irresponsibility. My fall is that I don’t explode with thanks always, and I’m concerned that even now I withhold parts of me that should be surrendered in complete devotion to You. And even right now I crave to take this pencil and write words, works that will immortalize my name rather than glorify Yours. But isn’t that the nature of the old me? To fall in love with art rather than the Master Artist? To make my writing a mirror rather than a telescope? To exalt creation, the medium, rather than the Creator who is forever praised?

Oh, God, even in this moment of paradise I find I am closely accompanied by my slithery opponent, and I am slightly inclined to follow him. Let it not be. I know my heart was once a stone, unwilling and unable to beat and bleed no matter what storm You hurled to drive me to my knees in desperation; no matter what perfect weather you set to drive me to my knees in thanks. No, I was a stone, impenetrable, stubborn, and cold. But You make even the rocks cry out praises. And You made this stone a real, fleshy heart, sensitive to Your arrows, Your Word, ready for incisions. But I see, I feel, I fear, I know some rocky areas still reside in me. I know I’m blameless in Your sight for Your Son bled for me. But Your redemptive work is not complete in every sense yet. I still await my new body. And I long to love You with un-sinning heart. I long to behold Your glory and have no inclination to take some of my own.

Make me more like that tree. Firmly rooted in Your love, knowing and believing You have given Your all for me. Full and mature in godly thinking, affections, and obedience. Soft and impressionable at the blast of Your wind, moving beautifully in acquiescence to the invisible, powerful leading of Your Spirit. Praising, swaying, and clapping my leaves, these hands, these words, at the very opportunity to experience Your touch. Green with life, bright with joy because I daily soak in the sun, the brightness of Your glory in the face of Jesus Christ, in the daily sun-bathing in Your gospel. Green and bright because I am well-watered by Your Word, which I know is vital even when You soak me with it in dreadful storms. Yes, make me like this tree I see, not worth one breath of man’s praise, just reflective of Your grace, Your power, Your glory.

And now the sun is hidden, and another night surrounds me. The trees in the distance are all dark green. I cannot make out their detailed shapes quite as well as I could when I began this prayer. Life is a handbreadth, quick as a day. What a praise is due to You who makes the righteous never see the darkness set in. For when we are born again we are as the rising sun, magnificent, breath-taking, yet not fully exuding the brightness and heat of a midday sun. Our sanctification is as the course of the sun: miraculously birthed in glorious splendor at regeneration, but then taken on a path that makes us warmer with love, higher in our thinking, closer to heaven’s throne, and brighter with holiness, with God’s glory, even to the point of reaching midday brightness, our glorification, when we shine with noontime brightness, the time when people cannot bear to stare with naked eye at the sun’s rays. We will be taken then, when He completes His work in us, and our course is complete. We will not be as the wicked, as we once were, stumbling in the darkness of our sin. No, we will not set at the end of our day, to be plunged into darkness, our eternal doom. We will soon be taken to that place where the Lamb is the sun, and we will appear with Him in glory.

Thank You that You will ensure my perseverance, making me shine bright as a reflection of You.

In Jesus’ name,

Amen.

Journal Prayer: 1.17.11

The Outskirts of His Ways

"Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways, and how small a whisper do we hear of him! But the thunder of his power who can understand?" Job 26:14

Father, Omnipotent,

It's as though You woke me this morning to both laugh and tremble, gasp and smile. Last night You laid my head to rest with thoughts of Your great, incomprehensible power, expressed in Your creation and expressed in Your redemption. What a mighty God You are! When I opened my eyes this morning, I could see a storm blowing the palm tree outside my balcony window, and rain drops flying before a bright gray backdrop. Had You not led me to read about Your power in Job's last response to Bildad, and in Charnock's discourse on Your attributes, I would have awakened to assume I should be dictated by the weather to feel gloomy. Instead, it's as though You whispered, "You've read a little about My power, but now watch this."

Never before had I truly considered for more than a short moment how clouds shout of Your power. Sure, they are beautiful portraits of Your creativity and wisdom. You place each cloud as a canvas in the expanse, reflecting what colors You desire to display. On warm, sunny days we often see white clouds of many different formations spread across a blue sky. At sunset You stroke Your cloud canvases with bright flashes of orange, pink, and purple. In Florida thunderstorms, faithful to come every summer afternoon, Your clouds turn an ominous gray, nearly black as they seem to frown and growl at us from above. These are truly touches of Your brilliant use of colors and shapes, these clouds, mixed in combinations and set in formations that we have not language for sometimes.

But these, Your clouds, evidences of Your infinite power? Don't we mostly picture these as fluffy, harmless and beautiful puff balls in the sky? Don't we sometimes wish to sit and skip on top of them in fantastical bliss? Yet Job marveled at what power You show in the mysterious clouds. "He binds up the waters in his thick clouds, and the cloud is not split open under them." (Job 26:8). What a wonder that the mass of water it takes to quench the thirst of the earth, filling lakes and producing life and crop for the sustainment of humans and animals, is contained in seemingly weightless vessels!

How can they seem to float there with all that weight, and not completely crash unto our weak, clay houses and bodies, destroying all of humanity? The thought of "mere" clouds falling to annihilate the earth's living bodies is humorous because it seems impossible. But these clouds carry the weight of water we swim in, we drink, we bathe in; the weight of rushing floods and tsunamis that have clearly wiped out whole cities. And there they hang over our heads, as the sharp blade of a guillotine threatening to fall on our soft necks. But You don't let them do this. You bind up these great masses of water in Your thick clouds, and You keep them resting in the sky as a garment that covers us from the bright, overwhelming radiance of Your power in the heavens, Your throne.

The air is not split under Your massive clouds, and from these clouds You drop rain, softly or hardly on our heads. Though science books can inform us of even more of the intricate details and processes of the workings and purposes of these mysterious clouds, time and language fails us to fully express all of Your power displayed in the creation and sustainment of these bottles of the sky.

Would I expound, as Elihu did, on the thunderings of Your mighty voice, the flashes of Your terrible lightning, the rain, the sleet, and snow that "seals up" our hand and forces us to stop all our daily affairs and business to seek shelter and behold Your providential doings in the weather, I could but speak one word in the infinite volume set concerning Your power alone. I could but stroke one stripe of yellow paint across a never-ending canvas that would portray Your might. And I lose my breath when considering the fact that all of Your works in creation, in all of their powerful, intricate, mysterious ways, speak not completely of the infinite power that is You, Your sheer nature. Our comprehension is not powerful enough to understand it, and even if we could (and we never will), our words are not powerful enough to proclaim it. And Your power is just one of Your many attributes, expressed not only in Your miraculous creation of the heavens and earth through Your spoken word piece, but expressed in Your justice and judgment, and expressed in Your mercy and love in redemption.

I merely pondered how one or two functions of clouds can display Your awesome power and glory. But
"Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways, and how small a whisper do we hear of him! But the thunder of his power who can understand?"
I cannot understand Your might in full, for I cannot but stutter and stammer the workings of what my naked eye sees in Your creation, much less what I do not see or know of You, Almighty.

Your gray clouds above me are still pouring out rain drops as I write. The clouds are so covering the heavens that I cannot make out their outlining; it's as though one huge cloud is covering the sky all around me like a blanket. Your thunder is rumbling over the sound of the cars on 50th Street. I can't articulate Your power even in this before me, and how small a whisper I hear of You even in this. Thanks for the reminder of Your power today.

In Jesus' name,
Amen.

Journal Prayer: 11-10-10

Good Desire "The desire of the righteous ends only in good..." (Proverbs 11:23)

Good morning Jesus,

I give You praise with this lead pointing to the sheet of blankness, ready to be awakened with words that speak life into the spine of this thick journal. Your morning light softly seeps through our opened window blinds to shower this off-white page that will now be filled with praise. Yet, who can declare Your full praise? And who knows limits to Your glory? Who can understand the power of Your voice of thunder? And You whisper hope into our ears, like Elijah in hiding who heard Your still, small voice. Your whispers are as grand orchestras playing with skill and joy. Who can fathom how You've made the sun rise again, caused the breeze to move exactly how it did? Massive mountains are Your Word's doing, and even the sparrow is not hidden from Your sight. I just want to marvel, bask in it all, Your gracious beauty that even my naked eye can behold, and ear can hear, and hands can hold, and tongue can taste. And make my great delight in You, merciful Dad, forgiving Savior, perfect lover and friend.

Open my eyes, this heart, to see Your inexhaustible wonder again: Your Word. Because I long for more as I taste just some, for Your Word reaches down into the deepest seas of my soul, to bring peace, and light, and joy-filled hope in the face of Christ. Sweeter than my favorite hot chocolate, with caramel drizzles and a salted top, Your words warm my insides, and I feel at home again.

I come by the blood of the One who holds the universe together, who humbled Himself to become the object of Your wrath in the open for all to see ... You fulfilled Your justice by crushing Christ for the loveless, to show us true love, enabling us to love You. May I delight in You, then, and consider Your bidding for me to enter into Your holiest of holies with confidence in Christ's atoning purchase of my soul, as an offer from the King to feast freely at His table of delicacies, with every spiritual blessing already granted to me. May I not take this welcome for granted. "The desire of the righteous ends only in good..." You are my desire, Lord. Satisfy me with Your likeness.

In Jesus' name,
Amen.

Journal Prayer: 11-?-10

Joy in my Hope "The hope of the righteous brings joy..." (Proverbs 10:28A)

Father, watching above,

Son, interceding,

and Spirit within me,

Lord God,

How great Thou art!

Thank you that I awake to behold the outskirts of Your ways! Cool weather tickles my bones, and I rush to warm myself by the stove with a cup of coffee to help awaken me. Revive me with Your Word, which is more valuable than gold, more treasured than this breakfast, more precious than all the temporal bliss around me. Thank You that the morning brings me message of Your unfailing love, which is more certain, more faithful than the sunrise itself. I breathe in Your air by the grace You give me today. Your mercies are renewed afresh on me again; Your compassion is truly strange.

Lord, it is amazing that true fear of You is provoked and cultivated in my wayward heart when I just consider the love You showed to sinners like me in the past. When I consider how Jesus, God in the flesh, looked with compassion on the multitude as sheep with no shepherd. When I consider Your way with blind men who everyone else rejected. When I think of Your words and actions toward the debauched woman at the well. When I consider Your patience with Your hardened disciples. When I remember how You wept over Lazarus' death, and how You raised Him in Your power. When I recall the Voice who calmed the tumultuous sea while He dwelt below... how You honored the sinful woman who wept, broken over Your feet, anointing them with tears of sorrow for sin and overwhelming joy that she had finally found everlasting hope ... how You restored Peter while he still lingered in shame and doubt ... how You gave grace to the humble centurion and healed his servant ... how You healed the son of the man who admitted the unbelief in his heart to You ... how You opened the hearts of Your disciples to teach them how all of the Law and Prophets were speaking of You ... how You promised to be with us until the end of the age ... how You saved Saul in his resolute persecution of the church, and satisfied him in all of his trials ... When I consider these things, I know it is Your mercy that makes a sinner's heart melt from its cold, stony state. It is Your love that gives me confidence to confess. It is Your grace that overwhelms me that I cannot cease my sobbing, both over the disgust of my atrocious sin that is against Your beautiful face, and over the incomprehensible declaration and promise that I am completely cleansed from all of it. Praise the Yahweh-God! Your love endures forever.

This past month has been difficult for me. [...] It is Your Word and the gospel that saved me and is now sustaining me as I write my praise to You. [...] I was a beast before You, and You had to (and still have to) break me before I completely forsook the faith to follow my fleshly passions and deceitful lusts, which will lead me straight to hell if I don't gauge out my eyes and hack off my hands for purity sake. Thank You for being faithful to discipline. [...]

Oh, Dad, You are faithful in all seasons. My prayer is that You will let my roots run deep in Your love, my heart filled with Your Word, so that the drought seasons or hurricanes will not find me believing the certainties of despair that claim that I am hopeless and lost, completely cut off from You. Fill me now with Your truth and a disdain for despair's certainties, for they are not sureties. Fix my eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of my faith, so that when my heart fails me, and I cannot praise just yet, I will proclaim, "Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise Him, my salvation and my God." Train me to trust in Your Word, so that I, like Job, will worship through tears, shaved head, and ashes...and like Job proclaim Your attributes and marvel at Your wisdom, hidden and revealed, though I struggle with despair and believing You are fair.

Thank you for the reminder this morning, that "the hope of the righteous brings joy" May I feed upon Your faithfulness today, and continually awake to open my Bible and make myself happy in Jesus.

In His name I pray,

Amen.

Journal Prayers

Piper once quoted someone (maybe John Newton...I don't remember who exactly...) as saying something to the effect of,
"Wake up, open your Bible, and make yourself happy in Jesus." 
Sometimes meditating on just one verse in Scripture, then writing out a prayer is what that looks like for me...