The Principles of Prayer XLVII

Jeremiah 29:13, “And you will search for Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.”

God wants your heart more than He wants your money. Truth be told, your money doesn’t interest God in the least. Men have taken the principle of giving and twisted it to fuel their greed when in reality, there are plenty of people whose heart belongs to mammon, yet give of their money to various causes and concerns as though they were the epitome of righteousness if a set dollar amount translated into righteousness.

For the sake of argument, however, let’s extrapolate the doctrine of the tithe beyond the monetary and apply it to time. Of all the things man has, time is his most precious resource. It’s not something you can purchase more of, barter for, or trade for. My days are numbered as are yours, and there is nothing anyone can do, no amount of money they can spend, and no prominence they can attain that can extend their time by one second beyond what God has established.

It would be foolhardy to think that although God demands a tithe of one’s paycheck, He does not demand a tithe of their time as well. When we give God our time, we give Him the most valuable commodity we possess, and He receives it as a sweet-smelling sacrifice. There is nothing in this life we can substitute for time spent with God, nor anything that will build our faith so robustly as being in His presence consistently.

You cannot consecrate anything unless you yourself are first consecrated. Whether a house, an altar, a length of time, or a place of worship, whatever we desire to consecrate to God must be done so by one who is themselves consecrated to Him.

For many, it is difficult to set aside and consecrate thirty minutes every morning to spend time with God, because they themselves have yet to be consecrated to Him. As such, there is always something more pressing, seemingly more important to do on a given day, than come before Him in prayer and supplication.

When our hearts are right before God, and they belong to Him, the choices we make will reflect it. Because my singular desire is to be in His presence and spend time with Him, every choice I make will flow from that purity of purpose and lead to that desired result.

Consistent prayer is a matter of discipline. Discipline takes root and grows when we are willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of one thing, and that singular thing we desire above all else becomes preeminent.

There are things some people do that I can’t understand, but nevertheless respect. Whether it’s training to run a marathon or enter a bodybuilding competition, the discipline required for such endeavors is monumental and worthy of one’s consideration. You don’t wake up on a given morning and decide to run 26 miles and change. Nor do you wake up one morning and decide to stand before a crowd in posing trunks at less than seven percent body fat. It takes focus, discipline, diligence, and a willingness to embrace pain and privation for extended periods, leading up to that one day when your endurance is at its peak, or your physical form is at its most impressive.

I can’t say I’ve wanted to complete a marathon badly enough to wake up every morning and run a little more each day for months on end to have a shot at finishing twenty-six miles, but I respect those who do. When it comes to prayer, we must possess the same attitude and mindset.

First, you define your goal; second, you identify your purpose, or why you want to achieve said goal. Third, you determine what is required for you to reach it; and fourth, you devote yourself fully to it until you do. If the goal is spiritual growth and maturing, a deeper and more profound understanding of God, and a well-rooted, reciprocal relationship with Him, the only way to achieve these things is through prayer and time spent in His presence. We have the what, we have the how, now the only thing that remains is to implement the how in order to achieve the what.

With discipline, dedication, and determination, we work toward the goal day by day, understanding that progress is incremental but also exponential. It may be difficult to see the change from one day to the next, but as one brick is placed upon another until a wall is formed, six months, or a year from now you will look back on where you started, and where you are, and be in awe at how far you’ve come.

In an age where men promise you’ll lose fifty pounds in three days if you order their plan, losing two pounds per week, week in and week out, doesn’t seem like a lot. Do it consistently, however, and in one year’s time, you will have lost over a hundred pounds, rather than gained another ten, because the three-day master course on losing fifty pounds in three days didn’t work, and you spiraled into worse eating habits than before.

Prayer is the defining element of a healthy, vibrant, and animated spiritual life; without it, we are cut off from communing with and fellowshipping with God. Without a means and a clear line of communication, we can receive neither instruction, direction, correction, encouragement, or warning.

God engages with His children. He communicates with them. He fellowships with them. He comforts them, instructs them, and yes, corrects them, and prayer is the singularly proven means by which we enter into discourse and fellowship with Him. To forfeit prayer is to forfeit communing with the Creator of all that is, and the God who so loved the world that He sent His only begotten son to reconcile mankind unto Himself.

That we would dismiss, diminish, cheapen, or devalue such a grace as this, while still insisting we are His chosen, His elect, His sons and daughters, and ambassadors of the Kingdom to come, goes beyond tragic, and into the realm of disquieting and off-putting.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Finally Together

 

The Principles of Prayer XLVI

 Decisive and purposeful prayer is what makes for effective prayer. We’ve all heard the adage that those who fail to plan, plan to fail, and this is likewise true when it comes to building up our prayer lives and being disciplined regarding the time we allot to this great and transformative endeavor.

Whether you have two or twenty children, and yes, I know families with twenty children, so it’s not outside the realm of possibility, you will have noticed that they all follow the same path from infancy, to the toddler stages and beyond. Every parent gets excited about that first step, that first time when they stand up on wobbly legs. Whether holding onto something or with hands outstretched as though they were walking an invisible high wire, they gingerly and cautiously take that first step.

It’s one of those momentous occasions that most parents want to capture and immortalize. Soon enough, their focus shifts to baby-proofing the house and ensuring that nothing that can shatter is within arm’s reach of a smiling, giggling bundle of joy that's discovering a whole new world to explore.

We all begin our journey to becoming men and women of prayer tentatively, cautiously, hesitantly, crawling, then trying to get comfortable enough with standing before taking our first steps, but the goal is to make progress daily, and grow in both the quantity and quality of time we spend with God, maturing our spiritual man and discovering the wonder that is fellowship with Him.

It’s true that you have to walk before you run, and you have to crawl before you walk; each stage requires time and perseverance. Prayer warriors are not forged overnight, and there is nothing one can do to bypass the growing stages that lead to the confidence only maturity can bring about.

I know God hears me when I pray. I’ve always known it, at least I knew that He could, but what was a theoretical concept I had no practical, personal experience or understanding of, became a reality, as true as anything I could touch or feel over time. It’s one thing to be told that fire burns. It’s another to stick one’s finger into the flame and watch the hair on your knuckles burn and singe.

Thinking God hears you, hoping He hears you, and knowing without equivocation or shadow of doubt that He hears you are three very distinct mindsets. When we reach full maturity, we no longer think or hope, but we know that when we come before God, He is there, and when we pour our hearts out to Him, He hears.

Most people are quick to leave God a negative Yelp review, insisting that He doesn’t engage, He doesn’t hear, or He doesn’t respond, when they never bothered to cry out to Him, entreat Him, or make time for Him. I will phrase the following as delicately as I can: without a consistent life of prayer, your Christian walk is a self-imposed illusion. We can’t say we serve a God to whom we never speak, or with whom we never spend any time. We can’t say we know the depths of divine wisdom itself when we ignore and avoid the source of all wisdom as though being in His presence were an inconvenience.

We prefer entertainment over stillness, the bombastic over the still, small voice, because it stirs the flesh and compels an emotional reaction. Deep down, we know that were we to come before God in prayer, there may be chastening, reproof, or correction, and you get none of those things lip-singing Hillsong, now do you?

Do you desire to be what God wants you to be, or do you desire to remain unchanged while God cosigns every bad decision, foolish choice, and crooked path your feet take you down? If we never come before God with brokenness and sincerity of heart, if we never approach Him in prayer, we can fool ourselves into believing He is validating our poor choices because, well, He never said anything about it, now did He?

We justify spiritual atrophy because we are unwilling to submit and surrender our all to Him, attempting to avoid the pruning process we know is necessary in order for us to live vibrant, obedient, and faithful spiritual lives. It’s like getting a report card and refusing to hand it over to your parents, knowing that there’s something there they may not be very happy with, so you conveniently leave the envelope at the bottom of your backpack for weeks on end. Then, when the parent-teacher conference rolls around and your teacher asks your parents how they feel about your progress or lack thereof, their only answer is a blank stare.

You don’t have to show God your report card. He already knows everything. You can’t avoid correction by not coming before Him in prayer because that will only exacerbate the problem and make the situation worse. Rather than attempting to play games with God, humble yourself in the sight of the Lord, come before Him with a repentant heart, and He will forgive and restore.

God knows you’re not perfect. He never said only perfect people can come before Him in prayer. The only prerequisite is a humble and contrite spirit that acknowledges the flaws and imperfections and cries out to Him to create in them a clean heart. That’s the caveat, though: you must desire a clean heart, you must desire true fellowship, you must desire His presence and not just some form of fire insurance.

Psalm 51:10-12, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from Your presence, and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, and uphold me by Your generous Spirit.”

If that’s the cry of your heart, do not delay in going before Him, spending time with Him, and crying out to Him. No man can avoid God forever. Whether in this life or when we stand before the throne of judgment, we will all give an account. Better that we repent now, better that we submit now, better that we surrender now, that we might hear the glorious words, “well done, good and faithful servant.”

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

The Principles of Prayer XLV

 Jesus went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day because it was His custom to do so. You come before God with prayer and supplication because it is something you’ve grown through consistency, not only to gain strength from and interact with God through, but because you likewise understand its importance in your spiritual walk. An individual without a prayer life is spiritually stunted. It isn’t an elective, it’s mandatory.

With the advent of the new school year, my eldest daughter will have the option of electives. It’s a new experience for her, and we’ve been poring over the different classes her school offers, from creative writing to a course on C.S. Lewis to pottery, painting, and a handful of other things she is keen to try her hand at. During our discussion of which two classes would best suit her creativity, she pointed out that it would be a lot more fun if her entire school day could be made up of electives, rather than history or math, because the electives seemed more fun. They may well be more fun, but none are as necessary as the fundamentals of mathematics or understanding history, so as not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Learning how to weave wicker bowls is all well and good, but if you find yourself working at a coffee shop and can’t make change for a two-dollar cup of coffee from a five-dollar bill, you’ll wish you’d learned to add and subtract when the opportunity presented itself. As is often the case with many things in life, you will never truly understand the benefits of prayer until you come to the point of having to rely on it for your spiritual strength and endurance.

Jesus knew. He understood and, therefore, made it a priority to take time to fellowship with the Father. It’s not as though His schedule was light or there weren’t a thousand other things He could have been doing, but because He knew the value of time spent alone with God, He made it a priority.

Mark 1:35, “Now in the morning, having risen a long while before daylight, He went out and departed to a solitary place; and there He prayed.”

That Jesus took the time to pray should tell us everything we need to know about the importance of prayer. The first thing Jesus did to start His day was to pray. He chose when, He chose where, and He chose the length of time He would spend in prayer, but whether or not He would do it was never in question. Jesus did not see prayer as optional.

A long while before daylight, Jesus went out and departed to a place He knew He wouldn’t be bothered, a solitary place, away from prying eyes or whispering tongues, and there He prayed.

We cannot know exactly how long before daylight Jesus rose, but the wording of Scripture, which insists that it was a long while before, suggests that it wasn’t a handful of minutes. Another relevant truth that jumped out at me while contemplating this verse is that Jesus didn’t attempt to pray while lying abed, but physically went out and departed. Is it mandatory? No, but it's something worth noting, especially for those who are halfway hoping to get back to sleep and use prayer as their version of counting sheep.

There was purposeful intentionality to Christ’s actions, and the purpose was to be alone with God and pray. He didn’t use prayer as a foil or as a means to achieve a different end, but as the purpose of His action.

Depending on one’s constitution, being still can be the most difficult thing you’ll ever have to do. My wife is one of those individuals who runs full throttle from the moment she wakes, to the moment she drags herself wearily to bed. There’s always something to do and a dozen things that haven’t gotten done, and to her, there’s no such thing as warming up the engine or letting it idle. It’s neutral to sixth gear, bypassing the other five, pedal to the metal, and off we go.

After twenty-five years of marriage, I’ve managed to tame her all-go, no-slow attitude if only slightly, and since I’m the opposite of her, wherein I like my routine, especially in the morning, she’s managed to rub off on me as well.

There are the types of people who consider that if they don’t return from a vacation more exhausted than when they left, it was wasted money; then there are others, like me, who just want to sleep in, sit in the shade, and watch the world go by. More often than not, we’ll meet somewhere in the middle, and usually, I don’t get back home more exhausted than when I left, but as exhausted as when I left.

Stillness, being alone with God, tuning out everything and everyone else, and focusing solely on fellowship with Him, is more powerful than most realize today, because they’ve never had the experience. There’s always something to distract, there’s always something to vie for their attention, there’s always some sound, some ring, some ding, some robotic, nasally voice informing you that you’ve got mail, or that you’re of an age where you should really consider a prostate check just to make sure everything’s honky dory.

Sometimes even an unexpected noise somewhere in the house is enough to break our focus and concentration, and rather than consciously continuing to pray and seek God’s face, our mind begins to wander, thinking about what the sound might have been, what it could mean, and although it never happened in the long years you’ve been living in the same home, begin to consider that someone has broken in, not realizing you have nothing worth stealing unless a colorful wool blanket you bought at a sale for twenty bucks is the thing they’re after.

There will always be something that will try to keep you from spending time with God, and it is our duty to make sure that nothing interferes or takes away from the time we set aside to fellowship with Him.

Psalm 27:14, “Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart; wait, I say, on the Lord!”

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

The Principles of Prayer XLIV

 Luke 18:1, “Then He spoke a parable to them, that men always ought to pray and not lose heart.”

There is enough evidence within Christendom to confirm that the cessation of prayer leads to all manner of ruin, among them losing heart. Throughout this journey called life, there are bound to be hills and valleys, there is bound to be rough terrain, there are bound to be obstacles and setbacks, and without a consistent and robust prayer life, losing heart becomes an ever-present possibility.

The longer one spends away from the presence of God, the longer they fail to pray, the possible becomes probable, the probable becomes likely, and the likely becomes inevitable. It may take a while to come to the point of depletion, absent joy, peace, or guidance, but once the lines of communication between us and God have been severed, if they are not reconnected, it’s only a matter of time.

Like brushing your teeth or combing your hair, prayer isn’t one of those things you do once and then move on with life, never to revisit it. It’s not the polio vaccine; it’s a daily practice that is beneficial beyond words for your spiritual man. Somehow, we always find the time to do the things we want to do, and find excuses for not doing the things we know we ought to be doing instead.

I didn’t go to the gym today because it felt like rain, and I didn’t want to get wet. The day before, I thought I was coming down with something, and I didn’t want to pass it on to anyone in case I was. The day before that, the tires on my car felt a bit flat, and you know what they say: better safe than sorry when it comes to such things.

How’d you get to the game without a car? The same individual who is making excuses for not going to the gym is asked. Well, I took three buses, hitched a ride, and walked the rest of the way. I wouldn’t have missed that game for the world.

It’s either we do everything we can to facilitate spending time in God’s presence, or we don’t. We either make time for Him or relegate him to household chores, wherein we’ll put it off to tomorrow for so many tomorrows that the dirty dishes in the sink start to grow their own ecosystem.

Well, I’ve always been of the mind that if God wants to say anything to me, He’ll reach out. That’s not the way it works. If you’re waiting for God to reach out without having established a relationship with Him, learned to hear His voice, and practiced the discipline of prayer, you’ll be waiting for a long time.

We always tend to point to the exceptions and not the rules, but they’re exceptions because they are extremely rare, whether the thief on the cross, or Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, wherein he was blinded by the light and heard the voice of the One he was persecuting.

If you’re waiting for God to come and take your hand and say, “Would you like to spend some time with Me?” you’ll be waiting for a long time. It is our duty to knock, then He will open. It is our duty to ask, then He will give. It is our duty to desire more of Him, and He will make Himself available to us. Discipline is our responsibility. It is something we have agency over and something we can nurture and foster in our daily lives.

Luke 4:16, “So He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read.”

A custom is something you do repetitively and consistently. For something to become a custom to you, you must be disciplined in your actions and purposeful in implementing the schedule you set for yourself. Whether that’s carving out a non-negotiable hour every morning to spend time with God, or the twenty minutes it takes you to drive into work. It’s one thing to have a plan, it’s another to execute it.

Most people have plans to do all manner of things when the time is right. They plan on getting fit, they plan on getting healthy, they plan on cutting out the second helping of pecan pie, but they never get around to implementing their plans. Something always comes up. They’re too tired to go for a walk, they need to finish all the junk food in the cupboard before they clean up their diet, or they justify eating the whole pie in one sitting because wasting food is wrong and sinful, and they can’t bring themselves to be so irresponsible as to throw away a perfectly good pie.

For plans to be effective, they require action. If we’re waiting on the perfect time to start pursuing a life of prayer, where there is no job to go to, no bills to pay, no chores to do, and no distractions to be had, all we’ll be doing is waiting until we’re so close to death as to have family and friends come and say their final goodbyes, and even then the constant visitors will be what’s keeping us from going before God and spending time with Him.

The longer we put off the discipline of prayer, the more excuses we’re bound to come up with to delay it even further. It’s something the flesh fights, and finds ways for us to put off because it knows that the stronger our spiritual man becomes, the weaker its sway and influence over our daily actions will likewise become. The flesh isn’t looking out for your best interest; it’s looking out for its own interest. It doesn’t want to die, it doesn’t want to be mortified, and it doesn’t want to give up the reins. It will fight tooth and nail to retain what little influence it has over us because that is the nature of flesh.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Twenty Five Years Today and Counting!

 

The Principles of Prayer XLIII

 When you need to get from point A to point B, a five-hundred-dollar beater with a full tank of gas will win out over a hundred-thousand-dollar car with an empty gas tank. Sure, the expensive car is nice to look at, but it lacks the functionality of doing what it was intended to do, which is to transport you from where you are to where you want to go. Aesthetics may draw the eye, but dependability is what anyone who’s sat on the side of the road waiting for a tow would prefer when their spiffy new ride decides it needs a nap, and after sounding like a slot machine that just hit the jackpot, warning of catastrophic software failure, it simply dies.

Prayer is dependable because prayer works. There is nothing else we can pursue in terms of spiritual growth that comes close to spending time in prayer and in the presence of God. Are there things that seem more attractive to the eye? Most assuredly, but window dressing won’t get you far, and more often than not, those who insist this new thing is better than the old way of doing things never experienced the power of the old way, nor did they have any interest in doing so.

You can’t really monetize a workshop on prayer the way you can a workshop on the secret mysteries of binding and loosing. If ever anyone tried, it would be a very short workshop. Thank you for coming. Take your seats, and we will begin. Just pray! Be consistent, be intentional, be honest, and be open. That concludes our workshop. By this point, at least half of your attendees would avail themselves of the money-back guarantee if one were offered, and if it wasn’t, the requests would be plentiful.

The reason so few focus on prayer is that it’s such a simple concept that it’s impossible to make merchandise of it. Their purpose isn’t to spiritually grow and mature those in attendance, it’s whether or not they can eek out a profit, and there is no profit in prayer save to the individual who devotes himself to it. It also takes away from the aura of indispensability that some individuals wrap themselves in. You don’t need someone holding your hand when it comes to prayer. You don’t need them to guide you, nor do you require their input when it comes to being alone with God.

When Christ’s disciples asked Him to teach them to pray, the entirety of His instruction can be comfortably read in less than two minutes. It’s a weeklong seminar. What are we supposed to do with the other six days, twenty-three hours, and fifty-eight minutes? The power of prayer resides not in the theory, but in the practice of it.

Lord, teach us to pray. “Get alone with God, and do it.” But there’s got to be more. Some shortcut, some hack, some special incantation that no one else is privy to. “There isn’t. Don’t be a hypocrite about it, don’t pray so others might hear, just find somewhere to be alone and pray.”

Anyone showing up to a course on prayer nowadays would likely leave an unfavorable Yelp review if they showed up and that’s all they got for their $249.99.

From the beginning, God’s intention was to have fellowship with His creation. Ever since Adam and Eve were in the garden and God walked among His creation in the cool of the day, His purpose was not to be an absentee landlord as some proffer, but to commune, have dialogue, and make His presence known.

If you seek Him, you will find Him. If you humble yourself before Him and entreat Him in prayer, He will make His presence known to you. The simplicity of prayer has remained as such because complicating it adds no benefit. The only time men attempt to complicate prayer is when they have something to gain by claiming they can unravel its mystery, thereby projecting an image of authority they do not possess.

It’s like offering someone a six-week immersive course on how to boil an egg. In order to get someone to bite, you must first convince them that they’ve been doing it wrong all their life. Water, fire, egg, and six minutes on the boil? Is that how you’ve been doing it? Well, let me tell you you’ve been doing it all wrong. If you want to do it the right way, of the eight odd billion people roaming the planet, I alone know the right way to boil an egg, and for a small fee, you can know it too.

But why do you charge for the secret of how to boil an egg the right way? Because otherwise, there would be no perceived value to my wisdom; therefore, it’s not about the fifty bucks that made their way into my PayPal account, it’s about you seeing the value of what I have to teach. I’m doing you a favor by charging you money for something so simple and intuitive that a five-year-old can do it blindfolded.

The following may be a letdown for those who are looking for an edge or for a way to game the system, but there is nothing you can do to bypass spending time in the presence of God and still achieve the same results. If that’s what we’re angling for, our hearts aren’t in the right place to begin with, and before we can grow in God, the heart condition must be dealt with first.

Prayer places us in a position where we feel the presence of God. Nothing else does that. If that was the only thing you knew about prayer, it should be enough to make it a priority and the focal point of your spiritual walk. It has been said that prayer is the highest calling, and given that it’s the only way by which we can have intimacy and fellowship with God one-on-one, I tend to agree.

The only cost to you is time. You don’t need a workbook, a spreadsheet, a pie chart, or a starter kit. Make time for God, for it is time well spent, and the greatest investment you can make in your spiritual growth.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.