Blessings Part Two

In light of all my thoughts about blessings, Laura Story’s new song Blessings has captured my interest.  Here are the lyrics:

We pray for blessings, we pray for peace
Comfort for family, protection while we sleep
We pray for healing, for prosperity
We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering
All the while You hear each spoken need
Yet love is way too much to give us lesser things

[chorus]
'Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears?
What if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You're near?
What if trials of this life
Are Your mercies in disguise?

We pray for wisdom, Your voice to hear
We cry in anger when we cannot feel You near
We doubt Your goodness, we doubt Your love
As if every promise from Your Word is not enough

And all the while You hear each desperate plea
And long that we'd have faith to believe

[chorus]
When friends betray us, when darkness seems to win
We know that pain reminds this heart
That this is not, this is not our home
It's not our home

[chorus]
What if my greatest disappointments
Or the aching of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst
This world can't satisfy?
And what if trials of this life
The rain, the storms, the hardest nights
Are Your mercies in disguise?

The first verse points out the difference between our American (or maybe better put, human) view of blessing and Gods view of blessing.  I love how it ends, “yet love is way too much to give us lesser things.”  Isn’t it good to know that God loves us so much that He will not let our incomplete viewpoint of life limit His ability to use us just as we are?  Isn’t it good to know that we have a God who is not afraid to give us what may look like an unanswered prayer in order to turn our attention from worldly blessing to His eternal blessing; that when we pray for what we think we “need” or what we think is “best” we have a God who will not settle for giving us less than His best for us?  I think it is!

One thing that I thought about as I first heard this song and listened to the lyrics was the way we are to pray.  It seems that today people in general feel so much more comfortable praying for things that don’t really matter then for things that do.  It is easy for us to pray when our grandmother is sick, or when we will be traveling, or when we have a big test coming up, etc; however I find that it is a lot less comfortable for us to pray about things that God cares about (not that He doesn’t care about your grandma or travels or academics), things with lasting effects.  When Jesus teaches His disciples to pray there is nothing mentioned about these non-eternal requests.  Instead it goes:

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name, Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread.  Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”  Matthew 6:9-13

          

As I explore the prayers of those in the Bible that were used by God, their prayers aren’t for comfort and peace but for strength and protection.  After Job loses everything he falls “in worship” to his God and when his wife tells him to curse God and die he replies “shall we accept good from God, and not trouble” (Job 1:20-21, 2:9-10).  How different is this attitude from our own?  Sometimes I think we get so caught up in our so desired utopian lifestyles (that don’t exist anyway) that we miss being used by God.  Ephesians 3:20 says God “is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine.”  I can’t help but think that maybe these verses suggest that God wants us to ask Him for this very thing, for Him to blow our minds, for Him to use us in His own way for His own glory so that we can accomplish so much more for Him than we could even imagine on our own.  This is how I want to pray, even if it leads to hardship and disappointment.   This is how I want to live. 

A quote that ties in with this comes from Wes Neal’s Handbook on Athletic Perfection.  As Neal talks about motivation in athletics he highlights the importance of our focus being on becoming like Christ and not on winning games.  He writes:

“It is unbiblical to drive toward such events (winning) as either your ultimate or intermediate goals.  You might be found putting your energies into something that God never wanted for your athletic career.  What a tragedy that would be.  What a waste of time in the long run.”

I think the same outcome can occur as a result of our prayers.  To apply Neal’s quote to this, it may be better written:

“It is unbiblical to pray for such outcomes (wordly blessings) as either your ultimate or intermediate requests.  You might be found putting your energies into something God never wanted for your life.  What a tragedy that would be.  What a waste of time in the long run.”

God wants to use us in ways that we cannot imagine (Ephesians 3:20), He promises us that we will do greater things that Jesus did while He lived among us (John 14:12).  He is just waiting for us to willingly ask to be used.  We cannot do that until we stop asking for “blessings” and begin to ask to be blessed and to bless others as God intends.  We must be willing to step out of our comfort zones, leave our conveniences behind and follow Him.  When we do this we will truly be blessed and we will truly be satisfied.  Laura Story writes:

“What if my greatest disappointments
Or the aching of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst
This world can't satisfy?”

Psalm 144:15 says “blessed are the people of whom this is true; blessed are the people whose God is the Lord.”  We don’t need to pray for blessings, we are blessed; we need to pray to be a blessing.  Only this can bring lasting satisfaction.

Oh Lord,

Forgive your people for the way we pray, teach us instead to pray as your son taught us so many years ago.

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name, Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread.  Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” 

Turn our focus from ourselves to Yourself, from our passions to Your passions, until these passions become one.  Give us the faith we need to follow You and accomplish Ephesians 3:20 size things.  Use us to accomplish things beyond our imagination, things that only You can do.  Teach us to embrace hardships as a way to glorify Your name and to ultimately bring people to You.  Bless us Lord in the way that You see fit, so that we can in turn bless others.  We love You Lord and we want to follow hard after You.  Thank You for Your blessing, I pray that we would manage it well.

Amen, let it be so!