Hello, Daddy?…

Matthew 6:6-8 But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. “And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words. So do not be like them; for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. 

I admit it… I am a Prayer Warrior Wannabe! I dress up in the very serious, very grown up armor and I raise my sword and shield and I shout our battle cry that “God is good all the time!”… and then… I pretend I know what I am doing as I swat at windmills that look like the giants and I declare my foolishness in boldly proclaiming what myself or anyone else NEEDS.

Somewhere in the recesses of my imagination, I suspect that I am just a kid playing dress up with no real idea of what real world, standing in the gap, spirit battling warfare actually is. Thank God, I AM a kid… because it is only in the naive world of pretending to be giant killers that we can also be completely free to cry like a baby to our Daddy when the real world bursts our bubble and hits us with the flaming arrows that burn us to our core. The kind of arrows that make us shrink back and decide to pretend we want to be butterfly chasers instead!

Is that what encouragement and the prayers we lift up are? Butterfly nets of the Butterfly Chasers?

Instead of a Joan of Arc type Prayer Warrior, am I becoming a Pollyanna who hangs the rainbow making crystals in the windows? (Well, now we know why prayer begins in the closet, in secret, with our Daddy who will not laugh and embarrass us with Facebook pictures to prove how “cute” we looked in each costume we put on.)

I go through this all the time… just when I start to think I KNOW HOW to pray, I become a puddle of uncertainty in WHAT to pray. When people ask me to pray during these times, I just smile and nod, hoping that the Holy Spirit will fulfill my promise. I try to look forward to the training that is to come in my prayer closet, but there, before the throne of God, my game of pretending becomes a boot camp of spiritual aerobic exercise that on a good day will leave me breathless and on any other day leaves me a quivering mess.

I confess… I don’t RUN to my prayer closet often… I want to… I beg to become brave enough… but most days I’m the kid running out the door with an emergency excuse to avoid the parental training.

Lately though, I feel the tug of desire to begin to “grow up”. My friend Kay (who now LIVES WITH GOD) skips through my mind with her, “If you don’t, who will?” song.

I’m beginning to question what I want to be when I grow up… seriously question!

And the Holy Spirit whispers that God prepared that position before I was even in the womb. He’s got me… I am curious… did God fearfully and wonderfully make me to be a Prayer Warrior or a Butterfly Chaser… or both?

I begins with… “What would Jesus pray if He were here today?” OMG… He is here! Let me rephrase my question… “What DO You pray for us, Jesus?”…  John 14:14 If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.

We have His very prayer as He was preparing to fight the epic battle of all times, the defeat of death so that we might live. He knew what He was fighting for… John 17:20-24 “I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” This my friends, is the ultimate – the gates of hell cannot prevail against it – prayer.

I have spent years wondering WHAT to pray and HOW to get our needs/desires met (mine especially). I have run around and around the rabbit hole, trying to pull the magic out of the dirt of this earth.

Yes, yes, I know… Matthew 7:7-11 Ask, and it will be given to you; seek , and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened, Or what man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him! Definitely we CAN and SHOULD and MUST ask for all our needs… DAILY, as in…give us this day our daily bread.

But I am starting to see that there is the prayer that is the responsibility of the individual child and then there is the prayer of their brother/sister standing in the gap with and for them.

I don’t feel comfortable asking for my perception of your need today. Even if you give me a descriptive list of all that you want me to “agree” with, I don’t have any idea if any or all of them bear the name of Jesus Christ in His knowing, all-good, will and plan for their life. I don’t know this for my life either but I do know that God never leaves us nor forsakes us so He will deal directly with me and you on the individual answers to our daily needs.

Where do I come in on the global prayer chain? What is the encouragement I can give to myself and others? Is it… agreement… Matthew 18:19-20 Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven. For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst. AWESOME POTENTIAL POWER… but will you blame me for my agreement should things go south because we insisted on the wrong thing, thinking we know what we need? Is our encouragement the idea that God is obligated by the number of petitions He gets on each request? WHO am I bowing to and WHAT am I pledging my support for?

It’s not that I KNOW BETTER!

It is that I DON’T KNOW!

I want to pray what I DO KNOW… I want to pray for the BEST… I want to fight in the army that WINS…

Jeremiah 29:11-14 For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the LORD, and I will restore your fortunes and will gather you from all nations and from all the places where I have driven you, declares the LORD, and I will bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile. (exile, until we are willing to search for Him with all our heart).

So… my prayer… the GOLD STANDARD of all my prayers… for you and everyone I am called to stand/walk beside… is the same as our brother Paul’s prayer (Ephesians 1:17 & 3:16-19 with my plagiarized tweaks).

Hello, Daddy… God of our Lord Jesus Christ, Father of glory, (may You give to me/us) a spirit of wisdom and of revelations in the knowledge of You (would You grant us) according to the riches of Your glory, to be strengthened with power through Your Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in (our) heats through faith; and that (we) being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpassed knowledge, that (we) may be filled up to all the fullness of You.

Now THIS is prayer closet, heart pumping, sweat producing, boot camp, warrior training 101, Ministry of Encouragement weaponry… before you come out… put on your armor cause the devil ain’t going to like you now!

As for me… I think I might be starting to realize the truth about prayer that will set me free WHEN I submit myself fully to it… Prayer isn’t a “church” thing (although it happens before the throne of God)… Prayer isn’t a recipe on a recipe card we measure, mix and bake (although we have some powerful words we can use in Scripture when we don’t have any words of our own)… Prayer isn’t a mundane task to do at certain times of the day and night, in a certain room of our house (although God is always up and He always leaves the light on)…

Prayer IS… an intimate conversation with my Daddy… Abba, Father… with Jesus  our big Brother and Savior and Lord, sitting right beside Him (and maybe sometimes on the floor of the throne room “wrestling” with us).

Amen? Amen!

**All Scripture quoted comes from the “Bible Gateway” app and is the NASB  version of the Bible