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The purpose of this group is to share in an adventure in prayer, to learn more about prayer, and to share what God is teaching us.
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not-so-silent night

Whoever called the night of Jesus' birth  a "silent night" did not know what they were talking about.  It was neither calm, nor silent.

 First came a long, grueling one hundred and fifty mile uphill journey of a pregnant woman and her fiancé to along a busy, bumpy road to a town she had never seen. Eventually,  they arrived at a busy caravansary, or inn on the southern road into a major urban city.  It was the First Century equivalent of a truck stop, filled with cursing men and noisy animals. It gives you a little idea of what that in must have been like, if you think that a weary woman would rather sleep with the animals outside than the people inside the in. 

Then came the shepherds,  standing over their bleating flocks, suddenly visited by an angel,  followed by a whole choir of angels. It is the only time in the Bible that anyone was visited by an army of singing angels.  It must have been like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir hovering over your back yard.  The Bible describes their utter panic and amazement. 

Once the angels left,  the shepherds went to the inn--probably with their sheep in tow.  There the met the rowdy guests at the end,  waking them up, and the whole lot of them probably descended upon the manger, which was now full of sheep, camels, donkeys, drunks,  shepherds, and who know what else.  There, in the center of their goggle-eyed attention lay a young girl and a little baby.  In the center of it all there is Mary, pondering in her heart the wonder of the miracle. 

There, as Luke records, Mary sat silent, pondering the wonder of it in her heart. 

And oh yes--she was also tired. 

Does Christmas ever get you down?  Do you ever feel that it is a lot of fuss and bother?  I do.  Maybe we ought to follow Mary's example. 

This year, do not allow the busyness of Christmas to put us off the real function of  the holiday. Christmas is a time of rest and contemplation, a holy season,  celebrated by Christians for centuries as a time to be still and ponder the miracle of the Incarnation.  It isn't a time of endless shopping and feasting, but a time for restoration, to gaze upon the glory of Christ and  ponder it in your heart.

Don’t let the parties, shopping, or even the church activities pull you away from experiencing the peace of God which passes all understanding.

is Christmas a joy or a burden? Is Christmas peace on earth to you, or push, push, push? 

The quiet coming of Christ in our hearts is  powerful and profound than all the trumpeted commercial voices.  We cannot understand how profound He is, unless we, too contemplate In quietness the  newborn King. 

This year,  don’t let the noise get to you. Take a moment to get still and ponder Him.

The Shores of Heaven

In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy,  C S Lewis wrote of the first beautiful thing he ever saw.  It was a little toy garden his brother had constructed in a cookie tin.  He put some moss and sticks in it,  and made it look like a real garden.

Lewis was taken with the little object, not, he said because it was so beautiful, but because it formed the image he always had in his mind about what heaven must be.  He imagined it as a cool, green place, where one could wander in beauty forever.

Lewis’ mind moved from a simple little cookie tin to imagine eternity. He wrote that the beauty we experience on earth, paltry though it may be, formed our images of what was to come, and helped us envision the unimaginable joys of heaven. 

Prayer is like that.  Our prayers may seem small and stumbling—certainly they are not beautiful—but they do point to something that is yet to come. Our prayer times are symbols of a communion that is not yet ours, our eternity in heaven.

When we pray—really pray, that is, not some mumbling recitation to a God we only partially imagine, but the kind of prayer that becomes real communion—we enter the outskirts of heaven. We stand on the shore and look inland, and see the peaks of a far-away mountain, more beautiful and majestic than anything we can imagine.

Let’s not just stand on the shore. Let’s pursue praise, thanksgiving,  confession and petition,  moving always inward and upward, towards the peaks of our communion with God.

No matter where we are in our prayer lives, we are the merest beginners. We have so much farther to go in Him.  Don’t stop climbing. Don’t stop worshipping, even though some days may seem dry and pointless. God’s presence is with us, and we will find Him if we seek.

God,  keep me going onward and upward in my relationship to you,  always coming to understand you better, always letting you reveal yourself to me in new ways. Thank you for taking me this far, and help me to go farther-much father—still. In Jesus’ name.  Amen. 

God Still Works Miracles

John 14:12-14 “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.  And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it. “

How we struggle with these words!  We simply cannot believe them.

We say.  “He must have just been talking to His disciples,” But that cannot be true.  Just a few verses earlier he was talking about preparing a place for us in heaven.  Was he talking about just his disciples then?

We say “He must have been talking about non-miraculous things, such as helping us find jobs or parking places.”  Undoubtedly. But how much difference in God’s eyes is there between helping us find a parking place, and raising someone from the dead.  To us, it seems huge, but to God it is very small.

We say “God doesn’t interfere with the laws of nature any more.” On the contrary, God does it all the time.  He just does it in subtle ways.  Anytime we ask anything from God, we are asking Him to interfere with the natural course of the world.  How much difference is there between a big interference and a small one?

No, God is the same.  His power is the same, His words are the same.  God does great things because it brings glory to Himself and to Jesus.

Ask big, and get big. Ask small and get small. Get big things, and get great glory for God. Ask small and receive small glory. The size of the miracle God is able to produce is not limited by God’s ability to do, but by our ability to imagine.

Let’s ask for miracles from God, and he will give them.

God help me to pray as large as your ability to give.  Do not let me be satisfied today with small miracles, but let me ask big, so I can receive big.  In Jesus’ name,  Amen.