The Everyday Prayer

Re:Verse passage – Nehemiah 1:1-11 (day five)  

“But if you return to me and obey my commands and live by them, then even if you are exiled to the ends of the earth, I will bring you back to the place I have chosen for my name to be honored.’”

Have you wandered away from God? Feel distant? Feel spiritually weak and confused?  Maybe that’s where you find yourself now.

God’s Word gives hope and guidance to Nehemiah to us. Our task is to return to him- search, read, and obey God’s Word. Puts our focus and attention away from ourselves and on the Lord- His truths, and promises. God’s role is to do the work. “I will bring you back”.  “It is God who works in you…” -says Paul in  Philippians 2. Does that give you hope?  Does that bring a sense of calm and comfort?  He even knows the place He will bring you to “to the place I have chosen”. He knows that the process of returning,  if left entirely up to us, would be completely overwhelming. So in His loving kindness, He does the work. We return and obey. God works.

Re:Verse passage – Nehemiah 1:1-11 (day four)

One of the best ways to know that your prayers line up with the Lord’s will is to pray Scripture. That’s what Nehemiah is doing here – he is remembering the covenant God made with Moses, and believing in faith that what God had said long ago still holds true for him and his people. Nehemiah remembered that God made a promise for scattered people: if they return to the Lord, he will gather them up again into his presence.

But what does it mean to “return to the Lord”? We often convince ourselves that returning to the Lord means a long, hard journey, or that it would be like returning to a disappointed parent, ready to scold us. When this is what we imagine lying ahead of us, it feels too daunting to take a step towards the Lord. But Scripture paints a different picture. Returning to the Lord means doing just as Nehemiah did here – bowing before him in prayer, and standing on his promises. It only takes a moment to return, and in that moment, you won’t be greeted by a disappointed parent, but a good Father rejoicing over his child.

Re:Verse passage – Nehemiah 1:1-11 (day three)

“The wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates are burned with fire.”

Whatever your experience of your actual home, there’s a longing in you for a place where people welcome you, where they are patient with you because they know you and make space for you and wait for you. That longing is what lends weight to the words hometown, homecoming, homeland, homesick. Nehemiah had heard all his life of the place from where his people had come, and though he had never been to Jerusalem, that was his home. If the dream of home is shattered, the soul is cut to the quick. Have you lost your dream of home? The Savior has lived that sadness. Our Lord had no place to lay his head. He will cradle yours.

Re:Verse passage – Nehemiah 1:1-11 (day two)

‘but if you return to Me and keep My commandments and do them, though those of you who have been scattered were in the most remote part of the heavens, I will gather them from there and will bring them to the place where I have chosen to cause My name to dwell.’ Vs. 9

Isn’t this a powerful text? I love Nehemiah’s boldness as he prays. Often as we come before the Lord, the Spirit will remind us of his promises. The Prophet Nehemiah is using the promises of deliverance given by the Lord as a catalyst for repentance. The Lord surely did not need reminding, but as we pray it is always good to cleave to scripture as a signpost for where we need to be. The picture of corporate repentance is also one that we can learn from. We must daily pray for our individual walk, but we should also be a people who acknowledge sin on a larger scale. The call to turn back should indicate that we have moved away from the purposed path as a people. This picture of a repentant people is a great model for the contemporary church.

Re:Verse passage – Mark 11:22-25 (day seven)

In college I met a girl who had recently converted from Islam to Christianity. She was reading scriptures fervently. However, she took a very literal approach to Jesus’ command that we will do greater things than He.  To test this out, she went to a nearby lake and attempted to walk on water. After failing, she reported back to her mentor. Chuckling to himself, while not wanting to discourage her passion, he simply asked, “Well, did you take a towel?” She responded, “Yes!” He laughed, “Well that’s why it didn’t work!”

God makes it very clear that we have the power and authority to ask that a mountain be moved and He will move it… as long as we believe He can. However, I think a lot of us, like the girl and her towel, prepare ourselves in case God doesn’t move the mountain. We pray, but we do not expect. We bring our proverbial towels to the prayer anticipating we will get wet instead of fully believing God can and will work a miracle. God wants us to come to Him with anything and everything, with no restraints so that He can show us that He is still in the business of working miracles.

Re:Verse passage – Mark 11:22-25 (day six)

When Peter marveled at the withered fig tree, Jesus responded with, “Have faith in God.” His response was intended to affirm that God moves and acts in the world.

Generally, we tend to live day to day as if we are in a closed system, like an ant farm. If we are honest, even when we pray, we don’t often think God will actually intervene. When we tell others, “my thoughts and prayers are with you,” we believe the words themselves may provide comfort, but we rarely believe God will act.

Jesus is telling Peter, “God still acts in the world.” Whether seen or unseen God is the mover of mountains, if he so wills.

That’s the kind of God we pray to. Believe it.

Re:Verse passage – Mark 11:22-25 (day five)

Mountains have much significance throughout the Bible. Here, Jesus talks of the incredible task of asking God to throw a mountain into the sea. In a symbolic respect, we all face mountains throughout our lives. These mountains can be named whatever after whatever stands before us, blocking our way with an arduous and difficult climb: cancer, death of a loved one, lost job, difficult relationships, etc. Most of us have asked, firmly believing with all our hearts, that God move that theoretical mountain out of our way. While these requests may not seem selfish or wrongly motivated in our hearts, they may not be in line with the plan that God has in store.

So, the mountain remains, unmoved.

And herein lies our struggle. I had a brother that passed away from leukemia when he was two years old. I know my parents, their friend’s, and their church prayed diligently for Peter to be healed (the mountain moved), but God had a different plan. Looking back now 40 years later, we can see that God worked all things for His glory and our good through that time. Peter was healed and is now with the Lord, my family grew closer to God, and I was born soon after.

Faith is hard sometimes. There are times that God leaves those mountains unmoved so we can climb the mountain and grow closer to Him in the journey. We may want things (for a good or okay purpose), but what God wants is always better. When you pray that your mountains be moved, remember that He is a good God even when your mountains don’t move.

Re:Verse passage – Mark 11:22-25 (day four)

Do you enjoy the greeting time during church on Sunday? Some of us love to walk around the sanctuary shaking hands, while the introverts among us probably wish that we could just skip that part. Other church traditions refer to this time as “passing the peace,” where, just like in our congregation, the intention is that we greet one another with the peace of Christ in our hearts.

This brief moment on Sunday morning feels routine – but it’s an important part of the liturgy that is filled with significance. Before we continue on in worship, before we receive the sermon, before we take the Lord’s Supper, we actively extend peace to the members of the body of Christ that are around us. But this is hard to do when we haven’t made forgiveness a spiritual discipline in our lives.

Forgiveness is one of the hallmarks of the Christian faith, but this radical forgiveness Christ calls us to isn’t easy. It makes no sense by earthly logic, it only makes sense in light of Christ. We can forgive others because we have been forgiven first, and because the Spirit strengthens us to offer that same forgiveness to others. Here, Jesus is asking us to make this a regular occurrence in our prayer life. He’s asking us to include forgiveness in the daily liturgy of our lives.

What if we really lived out this command? What if, when we arrive at church with unforgiveness towards a fellow church member, we seek the Lord in prayer, asking the Spirit to strengthen us, so that we can pass that person genuine peace when the time comes? I believe the effects would reverberate throughout the entire sanctuary.

Re:Verse passage – Mark 11:22-25 (day three)

“All things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you.”

When a child says, “Don’t go to work,” her words request that you skip going into the office. But is that the heart of what she asks? Or is she rather saying, “Help me feel you close to me so that I know I won’t lose you?” Maybe you can take a day away from your job, maybe you can’t. But either way, you can address the request beneath the request, the heart of her longing: that you help her feel your closeness. Roger Ebert used to say, “A movie is not about what it is about, but about how it is about it.” There’s something underneath your request to God. It’s the heart of your longing. And God always attends to that.