Month: February 2012

“‘They shall walk, and not faint.” — Isaiah 40:31 What! Must we come down and run and walk here on this stupid, prosaic earth after these eagle flights? Yes, precisely. The eagle flight is unto that. We go up there that we may serve down here, and we never can serve down here according to God’s thought of service, until we trace the spirals of the upper air and have learned to be alone in the silent spaces with God. It is only the man who comes down from interviews with God who can touch human lives with the power of God. . . What is the “walk”? It is the everyday of life. It is the getting breakfast, dressing the children, getting them off to school; it is going down and opening the store; it is going out and feeding the herds; it is going into the study and opening the Word of God. It is whatever our appointed task may be. It is doing this all day, in heat and cold, dull days and bright days — the common life. It is this, the everyday walk, that tests and tries. Far easier is it to gather one’s energies for a swift run sometimes than it is to walk. But we have to walk; we are made to walk. We live a common life, a life of everyday duty, plain, prosaic and unbeautiful. But we may ‘walk, and not faint’ . . . under the wear and petty vexations and frictions of everyday life, only on condition that we have been ‘waiting upon God.’ The man who does that will be a reservoir of sweetness, quietness and power.”-C.I. Scofield

This is quite an amazing and meaningful picture of the ordinary life we believers have on earth. Doing the laundry, filling my gas tank, telling my speech kids for the ten thousandth time that it’s a “spoon”, not a “‘poon”: when I see that these things are God’s appointed tasks for me, and I do them in a restful, glorifying-to-him way, the dullness and commonness do not make me faint. Instead, I am filled with the greatest purpose, the greatest joy. I am honoring my Father through the life he has given me.

Lately, I’ve been reading through the gospels and meditating on Jesus’ amazing life, death, and resurrection. After reading Scofield’s words above, it struck me that before our Savior began his public ministry, he led the very definition of a normal life. For his first 30 (!) years, Jesus was absolutely ordinary. He went to school as a boy, participated in family life, learned his father’s trade. Later, having grown, he got up in the morning and went to work and synagogue. He was a typical Jewish first-century man, albeit without a trace of sin.

Still, he walked. He was ordinary, a man “of no reputation” (Philippians 2:7). There is something sweet and sacred in recognizing that the King of Glory knows what it is like to lead “the common life”, and in knowing that he can give me the strength to do the mundane in a way that brings honor to him.

It’s nearly 1:00 in the morning and I’m only up because my cough/stuffy nose won’t let me sleep. Just a cold, but it’s keeping me awake at a time I’m usually dead to the world. So here I sit, sipping herbal tea with honey, reading Matthew, thinking.

There are those verses in chapter 6 again: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal;  but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

In other words, don’t get attached to this world and its things. As a citizen of heaven, I should not be seeking out my comfort here, but rather striving to serve my Savior. In reality, only 2 things keep me fastened to earth at this moment: gravity and the will of God. The moment he no longer has a purpose for me in being here, I will be gone. When I get too focused on the temporal at the expense of the eternal, I would do well to remember that.

Colossians 4:2 (NAS) “Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving;”

The Greek word translated “devote” in the above verse carries the meaning of “to be steadfastly attentive unto, to give unremitting care to a thing” and to “persevere and not to faint”, according to Strong’s Concordance.

Hmm. What things am I steadfastly attentive and give unremitting care to? Here is a partial list, in no particular order:

Sleep, eating, my friends, my Kindle, my money, the Philadelphia Phillies, Katie Morrison in general.

Notice what’s missing? I attend to and care for many things, but prayer is rarely something I persevere in. (Or keep alert in!)

But if you look down through human history at the people God has used greatly to his glory, from the apostles Paul (the one giving the command above certainly led by example) and James (aka “old camel knees” because of the time spent on them in prayer), to the more modern faithful ones like Hudson Taylor and George Mueller, they all have this in common: they were devoted to prayer. It wasn’t a “before meals” thing or a quick yawn at bedtime or upon rising. They persevered in it, constantly and consistently communicating with their God; bringing concerns and needs and praising him throughout their lives. As a result of their close, yielded relationship with the Savior, he used them to spread the gospel of grace throughout the world, as well as to encourage countless saints.

Where are those who are devoted to prayer today?