Lately, I have been thinking a lot about prayer. I have always thought highly of the so-called "prayer warriors" and think often of the life of prayer, the life that lives inside the prayers that our Lord hears.
My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers is my favorite devotion. I keep going back to it year after year. If you've never read it consistently, I highly recommend it for its concise yet thought-provoking messages each day. The past few days the devotions have been about prayer, so I wanted to share my thoughts on what Chambers wrote. He begins by writing on our circumstances and how they are not by chance but that "God brings you to places, among people, and into certain conditions to accomplish a definite purpose through the intercession of the Spirit in you." He goes on to write, "Your part in intercessory prayer is not to agonize over how to intercede, but to use the everyday circumstances and people God puts around you by His providence to bring them before His throne, and to allow the Spirit in you the opportunity to intercede for them" (November 7). I have been in this agonizing situation many, many times. I not only agonize over how I should act physically, but also over how I should pray and what I should pray for.
While God is uncannily complex and our comprehension of him is minuscule, his directives for us are always simple. The Lord has been dealing with me lately about my heart toward my husband. I catch myself agonizing over how I should pray for him or how I should act on his behalf or what I should say or do to get him to do something I want. Usually my desires are good things, Godly things, but the way in which I want these things to be accomplished is selfish and manipulative, namely because it is my way of making it happen. It is possible sometimes to manipulate other people, but it is not possible to manipulate God.
So, when I think about how I try to manipulate my husband (really, we all do it), I think this haunting question: What kind of wife am I? Negative phrases pop into my mind: nagging, takes control too much (making a budget without consulting him), bothered by silly, unimportant things (bottle incident from two posts ago), doesn't see my husband for who he is now as opposed to who I want him to be. Obviously this last thing is the most dangerous. My greatest flaw is that I hold many people in my life to impossibly high standards, including myself. Now, the Lord has done MUCH in my life to heal me of this behavior, but at times I do still struggle with it. We hurt the ones we love the most, right? So for me that would be Chaz. He gets the brunt of bad moods and the leftovers of my sinful behavior. He really does see all the nasty stuff about me, which makes me grateful that he still chooses to love me.
The Lord had to take me down a notch this past week (and don't we all love it when that happens?). I had been brandishing my sword of self-righteousness atop my horse named Pride when a Godly woman showed me where I had strayed in my thinking on a certain issue regarding my husband. There are too many times that I believe I have the right answer for the ones I love. I know what God wants to do for them (Yes, it's okay to point and gasp at the crazy woman). You see, I have to be reminded that I am not the arbiter of right and wrong or the dispenser of God's word for others. I am not. He is.
If I believe, truly believe, that God's vision for my loved ones and for myself is good, then I will trust him to make things happen--and these are not necessarily the things I want but what God wants. I will bring my concerns to him, lay them at the cross, and take comfort in knowing that "the Spirit himself makes intercession for [me] with groanings which cannot be uttered" (Romans 8:26). If I can keep my mind clear of that sin which so dominates my thought life, the sin of control, then I can rest in the knowledge that my God just has it. He has the people and the circumstances that I don't. When I give up my death-grip to him, he can free my hands to acts of love and service toward others, including my husband. When my grip is loosened, my heart is free to love without the boundaries I put up--the Holy Spirit acting through me. And it is really just about love, isn't it?
If there is anything you take away from this post, I hope that you ask God who or what you are keeping under a death-grip. Who is it that the Lord is calling you to release into his care? Who is it that you could love so much more freely if the worry over your relationship was gone? What amazing leap of faith could the Lord call you to take if your heart was no longer anxious over a certain situation? Remind yourself that God has it, so leave it with him.
