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.
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