The Principles of Prayer LVI

 Prayer is a journey. The starting point of this journey may differ from day to day, but the destination is always the same. Where you begin the journey is irrelevant. You can be in your prayer closet, your car, chopping carrots in the kitchen, or tending to a long-ignored lawn. The start can be tentative, or direct, whispered, or groaned from a heart spilling over with grief, tears of joy, or tears of sorrow may be present or none at all, but in the end, the presence of God is the destination we all have in mind. It’s about entering into fellowship with God and being in His presence, feeling His touch, and knowing true intimacy.

Although your geographical location is irrelevant when you begin a journey of prayer, where you are spiritually is of the utmost importance. The closer you are to the source of life, joy, and peace, the quicker and easier it will be to come into His presence and have communion with Him. Some have a difficult time entering into God’s presence because they wandered so far from Him that when they do decide to say a prayer, it seems as though He’s light-years away.

If this happens to be the case, remember, God is where you left Him. The expectation that God will accompany us as we wander off the path is dangerous and unbiblical. This is the reason the much-ignored practice of repentance is in need of a renaissance, so that many who have strayed can get back to walking humbly with Him, keeping to the path of righteousness that He laid out, and submitting to His will in their lives.

If by my choices I discover I am walking in rebellion, I cannot rightly say I’m still walking in His will, holding His hand, and feeling His presence, because by its definition, rebellion is the active resistance of God’s authority.

The objective isn’t to speak a handful of words hoping they make it past the ceiling; it is to reach that point where we are praying in the Spirit, where we’ve transcended the realm of the physical into the land of the spiritual, and experiencing something beyond what the mind of flesh can attain.

Using the Old Testament as both a foundation and a springboard, Jesus weaves the parable of the unjust judge into a teaching for the ages, one that is layered in wisdom and insight to the point of humbling anyone who thinks himself wise in his own eyes. 

Zechariah 7:9-12, “Thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘Execute true justice, show mercy and compassion everyone to his brother. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor. Let none of you plan evil in his heart against his brother.’ But they refused to heed, shrugged their shoulders, and stopped their ears so that they could not hear. Yes, they made their hearts like flint, refusing to hear the law and the words which the Lord of hosts had sent by His spirit through the former prophets. Thus great wrath came from the Lord of hosts.”

It doesn’t matter who it is; when true justice is not executed by someone in authority, or someone whose duty is to implement it rightly, it’s both off-putting and glaringly obvious. An unjust judge will pervert the law, ignore it, or twist it to turn it into a weapon of oppression, and because he feels himself above the law, which he is duty-bound to execute, he justifies his rulings to the point that his judgments contravene the law itself.

You don’t have to look hard to find unspeakable horrors done in the name of the law when those in power use justice as a means of achieving their ends, rather than showing mercy and compassion to their contemporaries.

In the eyes of the system, every Christian who was beaten, tortured, sent to labor camps, or snatched up in the middle of the night never to be seen again was breaking the law, and their punishment was justified by the rules currently in place. Those with a semblance of humanity would later admit that what they’d done was vile and reprobate, while those whose humanity had long since shriveled to nothing would insist that they were just following orders.

There is the letter of the law, then there is the spirit of the law. An unjust judge will point to the letter to justify and validate their judgment, while one who executes true justice will allow the spirit thereof to determine their proclamations.

The judge Jesus describes in His parable was a man who was indifferent to justice, right or wrong, and lacked compassion of any kind. He neither feared God nor regarded man, seeing himself as the final authority and arbiter of all that was within his sphere of influence.

The widow before him, however, didn’t come asking for special treatment, nor was she asking to be exempted from the law; her only request was that she get justice against her adversary. It wasn’t that she was in the wrong or had done something unlawful that would prohibit the judge from giving her justice; he just couldn’t be bothered and didn’t care for her plight or her situation.

The judge knew the truth of it. There was no ambiguity in the case brought before him; there was no reasonable doubt, yet, for a while, he would not give the widow justice.

The pride and arrogance of men will often impede mercy and compassion. Rather than execute true justice, they choose to pervert it to make themselves appear more powerful or authoritative than they are. We see this play out over and over again, not realizing that when men know that they ought to do good yet choose to do evil, it’s only a matter of time before the wrath of God is poured out.

This applies not only to nations, but to all who make their heart like flint and refuse to heed the words which the Lord of hosts had sent by His spirit through the former prophets, whether they be institutions, churches, or individuals.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

The Principles of Prayer LV

 No one has ever had to guess at why Jesus spoke the parable of the widow and the unjust judge. He didn’t bury the lead or leave its purpose unsaid. He did not allow for an individual to draw their own conclusion as to why He spoke this parable, or insist that they guess at its meaning. He spoke the parable to them that men always ought to pray and not lose heart. That was its purpose, that was its goal, and given how quick man is to interpret every dot and tittle at the drop of a hat, Jesus made sure that everyone understood the intent behind the parable that was being spoken.

Jesus was so direct about the purpose of this parable due to the importance of prayer in our daily lives, giving specific instructions and insisting that prayer isn’t optional for a child of God, but a necessity as existential as breathing oxygen is for the physical man. The one other practice He went out of His way to insist and expound upon to such an extent is that of fasting.

That these two above all others are so demeaned, minimized, and ignored by much of the contemporary church should give enough insight into the spiritual health of the modern-day church. No matter how opulent, decadent, and filled with every modern convenience one could think of a sanctuary might be, if prayer and fasting are absent, it’s still just a building, absent life, filled with ambulatory corpses that go through the motions week in and week out without experiencing the true presence and power of God.

We do our best to manufacture excitement, to create an experience, replete with screeching vocalists and flashing lights that will likely send one prone to them into epileptic fits, but as far as the presence of God is concerned, that cannot be manufactured, copied, or counterfeited.

The best way I can describe it is that there is a weight to the presence of God that human efforts cannot replicate. Once you feel it, you know that you’ve experienced the divine, something outside of yourself, and the hunger and desire for more of His presence becomes a constant, driving us evermore to be in fellowship with Him.

Feeling the presence of God and being in fellowship with Him is akin to someone who’s been color blind all their life seeing color for the first time, or someone who is deaf suddenly hearing a symphony. You can’t help but be in awe. You can’t help but be enraptured. You can’t help but react to something so wondrous as knowing that you are in communion with the eternal God and creator of all that is seen and unseen.

That the God of the universe would make Himself available to one such as I day or night, without limitations or a specific number of minutes, is still something I’m humbled by every morning during my quiet time. It is a grace and an honor I’ve done nothing to deserve, and there is nothing I can do, were I given ten lifetimes, to feel entitled to it.

It’s not as though God is trying to ingratiate Himself with me, or has some ulterior motive for making Himself available. It’s not as though He’s just humoring me until He gets something He wants from me. His only desire is an authentic and sincere relationship with His creation, and He goes out of His way to make it a reality every day.

It’s an odd thing to consider that some feel put out by the few minutes they spend in prayer every morning, while the One who keeps the universe orderly is more than willing to meet them where they are and have fellowship with them. We each have the same access to God, and no one jumps to the head of the line based on pedigree, reputation, or ethnicity. If you knock, He will open. If you ask, He will give. If the desire of your heart is to know Him more, He will make Himself available to you, and you will know Him in all His wondrous love and mercy.

To those who still insist that prayer is wasted effort, doesn’t work, and that all the experiences others have had with God during their time of worship were merely anecdotal, all I can say is that just because you’ve never experienced something personally, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, or is not a reality for countless others.

Perhaps it’s pride, or a superiority complex that allows some to conclude that if they haven’t experienced something no one else could, but whatever the reason, the root cause is still rebellion and an unwillingness to obey God’s dictates.

It can’t be real for anyone else, because it’s never been real for me. But why? Have you ever pondered that all-important question? Why has it never been real for you, when it has been real for so many others? Is it perhaps because you never committed to prayer the way you ought? Is it perhaps because when you did pray, it was within the context of trying to get some selfish want to materialize?

If Jesus went out of His way to insist upon prayer, then by that fact alone, we can conclude that prayer is not a futile endeavor or something that bears no fruit. Even when it feels like hope is slipping through your fingers, even when everything seems to be going the opposite of right, even when you’re hanging on by a thread, Jesus said you ought always to pray and not lose heart.

It would be a cruel thing indeed for Jesus to have spoken these words knowing that they were no more than window dressing, empty, vapid, and without an anchor. It would even go so far as to call His love into question, given that false hope is more destructive in the long run than no hope at all.

We know, however, that this is not the case. Jesus demonstrated His love for us by going to Calvary and giving His life that we might have life. We know that if He told us to pray and not lose heart, it was for a purpose, and not merely because it sounded good at the time. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Do as He commands, and you will know His presence. Spend time with Him, and know what it is to have life and life more abundantly.         

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

The Principles of Prayer LIV

 What one does consistently, over time, determines the outcome of their endeavor. Even the Great Wall of China started with one stone being placed upon another. Small beginnings are not to be discounted. The Word itself tells us not to despise small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin. If all you have is five minutes to start, it is better that you take those five minutes and come before the Lord in prayer and supplication than if you hadn’t.

More often than not, telling ourselves we are waiting for the perfect time to come before God, or waiting for a few hours of uninterrupted solitude when we can really press in, is veiled procrastination on our part. Unless you live on a mountaintop with all your needs tended to by others, with no children, no pets, no job, and no external pressures, there will never be a perfect time. There will never be a day when something isn’t pressing, when things don’t need to get done, or when life is so carefree and absent distraction that prayer is all you have on your mind.

If we keep putting off being in God’s presence and spending time in prayer until the perfect moment arrives, we’ll be spinning our wheels for a long time, and likely until we breathe our last. The ideal moment is now. Even with the laughing children, the neighbor making all kinds of racket on his riding mower, the smoke detector beeping, letting you know it’s running out of battery, the perfect moment is still now.

If you want to keep a fire burning, it must be tended to consistently. If once the fire is ignited, nothing is done, eventually it will turn to embers, then smoke, then fizzle out altogether. Given that there are multiple warnings within Scripture about the fire of our first love being in danger of fizzling out and no longer being what it once was, it is incumbent upon us as individuals to make sure that it is being fed and nurtured to the point that it continues to burn bright no matter what circumstances we may be confronted with day to day.

Is today cloudy and overcast? Tend to the fire. Is today bright and sunny? Tend to the fire. Is it dark with no stars in sight? Tend to the fire. The fire will keep you warm. The fire will keep the wolves at bay. The fire will be that place of permanence where you know you will find comfort, peace, and joy.

Some days will be easier than others to keep the fire burning. Some days it will seem downright impossible, and the pull of everyday life will be so strong as to almost convince you that nothing untoward will happen if you leave the fire untended for a day or two. Then, two days turn into ten, and by the time you get around to checking on the fire, it’s all but embers, barely giving off any heat, and all but out.

The further one draws away from the fire, the easier and more probable it becomes that they will stumble and fall, trip on an upturned stone or an unseen root. The less bright the fire burns, the bolder the predators and wolves will become because it was the fire that kept them away, and not your intimidating stature.

Some men have convinced themselves that it’s their own strength that is keeping the enemy at bay. They’ve talked themselves into believing that they are what the enemy fears and not the presence of God in them. As such, they have no qualms about placing other endeavors ahead of ensuring that their relationship with God is vibrant and active, and once that spiral reaches its final iteration, they discover that in and of themselves, they have no strength to speak of, and the enemy they believed feared them doesn’t.

It is impossible to claim the authority of God while walking in rebellion and disobedience to Him. It is an illusion, if not an outright delusion, and though men may convince themselves that they can blaze their own trail, make their own way, and circumvent God’s commands, it is only for a season. Eventually, the truth will out. Eventually, the mask will slip, the weakness will be evident, and the syrupy words they spoke in their attempt to convince the masses that they were spiritual juggernauts will be seen by all to be a self-serving lie.

The reason some choose to feign obedience rather than obey is because true obedience presupposes total surrender, and that is something they cannot abide. It’s hard for men with dreams and aspirations, delusions of grandeur, and the belief that they are the singular individual through whom all spiritual knowledge flows, to humble themselves and submit to God in all things.

Where God sends you may not be where your flesh wants to go. What God tasks you with may be deemed beneath your abilities by your inner monologue. If your purpose, however, is obedience, then you will do as God commands, go where He leads, and put your hand to the plow whether the sun is shining or the rain is pouring.

Be unconcerned with whether your obedience will be noticed by your contemporaries, be unconcerned whether or not doing as God commands will garner you the praise of men, or if it will somehow elevate you. Obey God in all things because it is your duty as a son or daughter to do so. Be humble enough to do the menial tasks others scoff at, knowing that it is the act of obedience itself that God remembers, and your reward will not be small.

The less time we spend in God’s presence, the easier it becomes to stray from obedience in all things. The less time we spend in prayer and communion with Him, the easier it becomes for the whispers to creep in and trouble our spirit, keeping us from pursuing the excellency of knowing Christ in all His wonder and glory.   

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

The Principles of Prayer LIII

 We’ve all heard the overused saying that God has a plan for your life, and although it is so overused it has become cliché, it nevertheless remains an absolute truth. God does have a plan for your life, but it’s His plan, and you must submit to it. Too often, we make our own plans and expect God to cosign them. When His plan is revealed, we balk at it and kick against the goads because it’s not as glamorous as we would have hoped, and the McMansion our plan had envisioned within five years is nowhere in sight.

Lord, I know you have a plan for my life, but I’ve come up with a few ideas myself. I know this is where you’re leading me, but the road seems rocky and uneven, an uphill climb on the best of days, and I was thinking more along the lines of palm trees swaying in the breeze and some white sand I could curl my toes in.

We either submit to His plan or try to wedge our own plan into His, pretending as though we are fully submitting to Him. Don’t get me wrong, Lord, your plan is great and all, but I have some ideas. Just a few tweaks here and there, and it would make it more palatable.

I’m sure Joseph would have preferred not to be betrayed by his brothers and sold into slavery, jump to the head of the line, and be made governor of Egypt without the thirteen years of suffering in between. The suffering, however, made him, molded him, and refined him into the man he needed to become in order to fulfill the duties foisted upon him once the fullness of God’s plan was made manifest.

Sometimes it’s hard to wrap our minds around the reality that our present suffering is a stepping stone to future glory. In the midst of it, all we know is the pain, the privation, the loss, the lack, the feeling of unease, and the reality of the walls closing in on us. Although we may not see it in the moment, we must nevertheless cling to the truth that God has a plan, and in His time, He will make all things beautiful.

Our faith must persevere and be strong enough to carry us from where we are presently to where He will lead us eventually. There is no circumventing the season of pruning, molding, sculpting, and sanctifying. The flesh would prefer to skip those chapters because only in this way can the flesh remain the flesh, in its current iteration, unimpeded, unhampered, and unchanged.

It is in the midst of trials that our spiritual man grows both in strength, ability, and understanding. It is in those seasons of life we look back on and have no rational clue as to how we made it through that, in hindsight, we are able to see the hand of God, the mercy of God, and the grace of God keeping us, guiding us, and carrying us.

The strength, understanding, and spiritual growth of each individual experience build upon the other until we become what God intended us to be all along, and the only thing incumbent upon us as individuals is to not give up, surrender, or capitulate. If you keep putting one foot in front of the other, all the while clinging to God, eventually you will walk through the fire you are currently in, and it will become a stone of remembrance recalling what God took you through rather than your permanent state.

Rather than cling to the life preserver until we are safely on the ship, covered in a blanket with a hot cocoa to hand, many of us cling to it long enough to catch our breath, then let go, thinking we can swim to shore on our own strength. You can’t. None of us can. No matter how strong we may think ourselves to be, no matter how close the shore looks, clinging to God is the only way to make it through the storm.

Prayer allows us to know that God is there, present, and engaged. We don’t have to guess at it, wonder about it, or doubt His presence if every morning upon waking and every night before laying our head on a pillow, we commune with Him, have fellowship with Him, and engage with Him.

Rather than waste our days wondering if He is truly there, if He would listen when we cried out, why not take the time to engage? Why not take the time to cry out? Why not take the time to come before Him in humility and desire, and unburden your heart before Him?

There are also a myriad of souls that will not come before God in prayer because they fear what He will say. They know their walk has stagnated, their hearts are unrepentant, they’ve allowed the whispers of the world to outshine the voice of God, and they’d rather convince themselves they’re fine just the way they are than come before God and be told they need to repent and rekindle the fire of their first love.

That they avoid being chastened does not change the reality of their predicament. Just because everyone I come across doesn’t tell me I’m fat, or I lock myself in my basement, avoiding everyone so they don’t have the opportunity to say it, doesn’t mean I’m thin. It just means I’m finding inventive ways of having what I know to be true not be confirmed by everyone else.

Those who ignore prayer because they fear being chastened already know there are areas of their lives that must be shored up and dealt with. Not having it confirmed by the almighty doesn’t change the reality of the situation. It just keeps them in the same stagnant, joyless, powerless, purposeless environment that brought them to the point of no longer having fellowship with God in the first place.

Micah 6:8, “He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?”

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

The Principles of Prayer LII

 Farmers plant seeds to obtain a harvest. Beekeepers go through the labor of keeping a beehive to obtain honey. Individuals the world over go on diets to shed a few pounds. Young people go to medical school to become doctors. These are not abstract notions, nor are they ill-defined, but specific and purposeful, as to dispel any ambiguity or confusion. You don’t go to medical school to become a mechanic, and you don’t plant corn to harvest broccoli.

I know why I wake up every morning and pray. I know why I wake up every morning and study the Word. My purpose is clear, and knowing what my end goal is allows me to see the progress, incremental as it may seem day to day.

There is a well-defined and specific purpose as to why certain people do certain things, and what they hope to achieve or obtain by doing them, and defining terms when it comes to prayer, being absolute in our intent, and what we desire to get out of it is likewise necessary for us as individuals. What is your stated goal? What do you hope to achieve by dedicating yourself to prayer consistently and faithfully?

Every journey must begin with a destination in mind, otherwise you’ll be circling the block until you get blisters on the soles of your feet or pass out from dehydration. Define the goal clearly and succinctly, and determine what you desire to achieve at the end of your journey.

If what you hope to achieve is tethered to the material, then the time you put in reciting the laundry list of things you think you need in order to be fulfilled will not reap much reward. If, however, what you hope to achieve is tethered to the spiritual, and your singular desire is more of God’s presence in your life, then the return on your investment of time will be light years beyond what you hoped or envisioned.

When men complain that the time they spend in prayer reaps no reward and seems wasted, it’s usually because the things they’ve been praying for have nothing to do with the presence of God and everything to do with their selfish desires. They prayed once, twice, five times, or ten, and no Ferrari showed up in their driveway. As it has been said before, God is not a genie in a bottle we rub whenever we want something. He is the Alpha and Omega, the Creator of all that is seen and unseen, and to want anything other than Him demeans who He is.

Given vision, consistency, and enough time, men took a hunk of rock, a hammer, and a chisel, and fashioned them into such wondrous statues and works of art as to stand the test of time and be remarked upon hundreds and thousands of years later.

Each started with a piece of stone, no experience, and desire. For everyone who succeeded in creating a work of art, there are likely thousands who gave up along the way, who are not remembered by history, and who thought that making something beautiful out of a hunk of rock was an impossible task. What separated those who succeeded from those who failed was persistence and consistency, not giving up at the first sign of resistance, not surrendering at the first roadblock, but pressing on, being diligent, and putting in the time.

What separates those with robust, powerful, and effective prayer lives from those who’ve seen no results and given up on the practice thereof is that some persisted, having the anecdotal evidence of those who came before them as confirmation that prayer works, while others capitulated because they deemed it too taxing.

All men fall into one of these two camps. Either they set their sights on a genuine, lasting, and reciprocal relationship with God and pursue it with such abandon that nothing stands in the way of their stated goal, or they find reasons to put off spending time in prayer, then pointing to their stale spiritual walk insisting that nothing they could have done would have made any difference.

Well, diet and exercise don’t work for me. Have you tried dieting and exercising? No, I haven’t, but I just know it won’t work. That’s how some respond when asked if they’ve truly ever pursued a prayer life, in order to see the benefits thereof. They never personally tried it, but they just know that even if they did, it would produce no results.

The selfsame people who insist prayer doesn’t work for them, and therefore can’t work for anyone else, fail to address or adequately explain away why the Son of God would not only insist upon but Himself practice something that has no quantifiable result or benefit.

Not only did Jesus pray consistently, but He also went out of His way to highlight the importance of prayer and extol its virtues in various ways at various times. Why would Jesus encourage His followers to pursue something of no value? If there were anything more beneficial to their spiritual man than prayer, why would He not insist upon that?

Was He holding back? Was He trying to keep true knowledge away from those for whom He would later lay down His own life? Not only doesn’t that make any logical sense, it would go against His nature of wanting to see those who would deny themselves, pick up their crosses and follow after Him walk in the authority rightly theirs.

Prayer works. It may not work in the timeframe you desire it, in the manner in which you think it should, and oftentimes the response to the thing we’ve been asking is a resounding no, but it does not take away from the reality that every sincere heart who came before the throne of grace with a burning desire to know more of the God they worship was not turned away empty handed, or absent the feeling of intimacy that can only come about in His presence. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.