The True Potency Of Prayer
In the 7th Grade Physical Science class, I re-discovered sound waves — how they function in order to produce the sound that we hear in our everyday interaction with our world. It did not take me long to realize a startling aspect of sound. They require a medium to produce the waves in order for sound to be heard. In different types of media, the sound can produce different waves depending on the density of the medium & the strength or frequency of the sound. The reason for this is quite elementary & at the same time the very reason for our ignorance — the very molecules in the air that are invisible to the naked eye is the reason why sound is produced or heard. In other words, the vibration from sound collide with molecules in the air forming a wave that move from the direction of the sound to our ears. Without such molecules in the air there would be no sound; only silence. Isn’t it incredible how often we take for granted the littlest things in life!
In very much the same way that sound waves are produced in order for sound to be heard, is the very real Presence of the Holy Spirit in our Prayers. Based on this illustration it is not so much that the Holy Spirit helps us in our prayers — that is true — it is the most important & only means by which we can communicate to an infinite, eternal, & omnipotent God. Thus, without His Agency, there would be no communication whatsoever — not distortion but silence. God would not be able to hear us when we pray or even what we say if the Agency & Power of the Holy Spirit is not present. This is what the Christ means when He spoke :
Luke 11:13
If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him
What is the very best of Heaven that the Father can give to His Children of Light? The Holy Spirit. It seems when we pray we forget Him in our prayers. And it makes sense that we do. We do not neglect Him on purpose nor are we ignorant of His presence. No, rather, we do not ask for Him nor desire to include Him in our prayers — seeking His Agency as we pray; asking for His words that we can use; knocking for His appearing because we long to see Him. In such ways, the Holy Spirit functions as the very Intercessor that the Lord Christ promised & it is precisely this role as Intercessor that we know Him best.
And it is as Intercessor that prayer is made potent for us.
1 Timothy 2:1
First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people
At first glance, it seems as though the Apostle Paul is saying the same thing four (4) times — I urge that prayers, prayers, prayers, & prayers be made for all people. You can even argue that the Apostle is saying it four times in increasing volume! The problem with that analysis however, is the word choice in the original Greek language — the four words not only mean differently but also there is a certain grammatical stress on the third word — intercessions. That word, intercessions, provides the context & strengthens the first two words — supplications & prayers. In other words, the first three words — supplications, prayers, & intercessions — must be viewed like a chain that are interwoven & interconnected with one another in such a fashion that no supplication nor prayer can be possible without intercession — without the intercession between us & God; and at the same time without their intercession between them & God. The Apostle is saying that no prayer can be possible without intercession.
There is a mystery of how all of this is worked out in our daily prayers to Him — the interweaving of our prayers with the Holy Spirit interceding before the Father. And yet, our focus should not be on how it is worked out but that it is worked out for our benefit in the way we communicate with God — we pray for people in much the same way that the Holy Spirit & Christ pray for us before the Father. As we intercede, they intercede on our behalf. This knowledge of the truth of Prayer should enliven us to better pray for others with respect to ourselves & enable us to pray even for those enemies that desire our harm.
Supplication means entreaty : we desire that God hears our prayers with fervent longing. It is a type of fervent longing — it asks the question, what is it that I desire most longingly concerning myself & the Lord God?
Prayer, in this context, means requests that only God could answer : we desire with such passion & interest in the advancement of God’s agenda because it is the foremost & best object that only God Himself can rectify — it asks the question, what is the best & foremost longing of God’s own passion that should be mine as well?
Intercession means interconnectedness between two persons or objects — in this case, the interweaving between whomever we pray for & ourselves to God as well as the interweaving of ourselves to God by the Agency of the Holy Spirit. It is the child-like aspiration of our hearts to God to desire that He listen as well as hear our prayers. And at the same time, no requests of any kind could be complete without His direct knowledge & supervision.
Thanksgiving means giving thanks to God : it answers the question, what is the most glorious & praiseworthy object that I should give Him thanks?
May our object be upon the Christ & direct all of our hearts longing for Him such that whenever we pray we will behold the Face of God in our mind’s eye. If we so forget as we so often do; due to our nature’s sin & our nature’s love toward all things physical, that the Lord Christ would communicate Himself & intrude upon our lives such that He may never be forgotten!
The Great Commission
Galatians 2:20
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
This passage always reminds me that I am a changed & renewed person in the light of Christ. But that change & renewed person that stares me in the face when I look at myself in the mirror. Oftentimes, I neglect to realize that changed & renewed person that other people see — do they see the change & the renewal of the light of Christ; or is that just my own perspective? And if it is JUST my own perspective of that change & renewal, am I okay with others not knowing or finding out?
A few years, I came face to face with that startling reality — startling only because I did not expect to come face to face with that perspective in the setting that was thrust upon me. After several years working as an aide at an upper-middle class suburban middle school, my co-workers knew very scant information about me — my name, my ethnicity, where I lived, & my marital status. But they did not know anything else. This was partly my fault because I wanted to go about my work almost invisible. And the work allowed me that degree of anonymity. To certain outside observers, the very people that you should be anonymous with would be your boss, which in my case, would be the Principal & Assistant Principal. Yet that was never my strategy to hide anything from them — including my religious background.
How does it feel when all eyes are on you & some are expecting you to fail? How does it feel when the level of expectation rises to the point where failure seems like the only option? These were some of questions I had to encounter when one of my trusted colleagues at the Middle School found out that I was a Pastor. He said rather bluntly that it was not so wise of me to tell my “superiors” that I was a Pastor because that is the type of information I should keep to myself. I explained that I did that on purpose because I wanted those eyes on me. He explained, perhaps maybe, that is not the type of eyes that I should be wanting to have — in other words, a lot of times, greater scrutiny comes when someone reveals that they are a Pastor — To be a man above reproach that wears the cloth.
Can you imagine that level of scrutiny upon yourself? Can you even fathom the pressure that one must live as if they are piece of marble — seems you cannot make a little mistake? This was what my colleague was talking about — he was concerned for welfare; that I would crack or they would crack me under that intense glare. And you know what happened? The very exact opposite. Rather than more pressure & intense glare, there was a level of trust that developed between the Administrators & myself. And they saw a man, regardless of the title of Pastor, who did his job faithfully & was committed to the same goals as they were. Why was that? Was it because the title of Pastor made some kind of change in my person or was it because the title of Pastor validated & confirmed everything that the Administrators saw about me from the first day I stepped into the school.
No one likes scrutiny; we all desire anonymity — it allows us to act freely without feeling like we have to walk on egg shells to get through the day. Yet, what does the Apostle Paul mean when he wrote — I have been crucified with Christ & it is I who no longer live but Christ who lives in me. I believe he means that this life you’re living is no longer yours to be living; as if you have taken possession of this life before you met Christ. If that was your assumption, then the Apostle just threw a wrench into that thought. The life you had before Christ was a dead one, needing resuscitation of a life-giving Spirit of Life. And that life can only be found when we so desire to be crucified with Christ. Then & only then will our lives comingle with His life & the vision & essence of life becomes our reality.
For “the life I now live in the flesh, I live by Faith in the Son of God, who loved me & gave Himself for me” — this now is my new reality in the flesh. Not the flesh of the Old Man that needs to be put away & destroyed. That life had no meaning & purpose for me & you — a dead life is a dead purpose & meaning leading only to condemnation. But the true reality of purpose comes to its fullness when the Spirit of Christ moves us to live by Faith in Christ. This means our lives will be an exhibit — it will be a light unto this bitter darkness. Light must be seen & light must be shown. And yes, sadly, it comes with scrutiny. It means we will be put on exhibition & displayed as fools for following Christ; it means that our Faith may come across as weakness to some; it means that our Faith may at times cross paths with other people that disagree with as much force & passion. But in ever-increasing scale of maturity & weight of Glory, our Faith is not empty nor singularly ours to do whatever it is we want to do with it. Not at all, my friends! Our Faith is IN CHRIST! We are never bedevilled by the circumstances that surround us nor the darkness that seem to overwhem us.
For, as Matthew 28:20B says — “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
The Lesson Of The Fig Tree
There are many farming metaphors in Scripture, which The Christ uses on purpose to explain heavenly & spiritual & eternal things — things that cannot otherwise be understand by contemporary minds. At the time of The Christ, most people, even though Jews, were not all literate. That does not mean they were not smart nor intelligent; it just meant that someone as highly intelligent as The Christ would need to use pictures & images through the spoken word — story-telling — in order to get His point across.
We, in our modern contemporary setting, sometimes trivialize these images & pictures by attempting to synthesize all these metaphors into some type of cohesive one-ness. In the end, what we come up with is a confused mass of misunderstanding & sometimes foolish harmony that does not do justice to what The Christ is in fact trying to say. Exhibit A, is this Lesson of the Fig Tree :
Matthew 17:20
He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”
Matthew 21:21
And Jesus answered them, “Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen.
In both metaphors, The Christ is speaking of Faith. But I highlighted the two differences in each passage. Notice, that one is a mustard seed and the other is the fig tree. Are both the same metaphor and is The Christ talking about the same thing? This is where the confusion lies — The Christ is speaking about the same thing but using two different types of imagery giving us two distinct perspectives about the same heavenly, spiritual, and eternal object — Faith. In Matthew 17:20, the mustard seed imagery is likened to Faith, in that, Faith is neither dependent on the size nor quantity but the maturity or the quality of Faith. Because the quality of Faith is a heavenly, spiritual, and eternal object connected to The Christ, this Faith is nevertheless powerful despite the appearance of weakness — namely, that The Christ, whom our Faith depends, will suffer and die on the cross in order to fulfill the powerful quality of essential Righteousness that the Believers require.
In Matthew 21:21, the imagery The Christ uses, is a fig tree. Why? This is why context matters especially when The Christ speaks and uses metaphors —
Matthew 21:18-19
In the morning, as The Christ was returning to the city, The Christ became hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, The Christ went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And The Christ said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once.
Why does The Christ use a fig tree? Was He simply hungry and lashed out at the fig tree for not having any fruit to give? Or does this scene represent something far deeper? Why is a fig tree called a ‘fig tree’? Because the tree, by its very nature bears figs — not apples and not oranges. Also, it is supposed to bear figs — not nothing. A tree that does not produce what it is supposed to produce is not only an unproductive tree, it is a useless tree. And a useless tree must be destroyed. Thus, The Christ curses the fig tree for its distinct uselessness.
But there is a second much deeper meaning — that the fig tree is the very antithesis of The Christ. Because the fig tree did not bear the fruit that it was supposed to bear, whose fault is it? Is it the fault of the fruit or the fig tree? This is a rhetorical question, we all know that the fault lies squarely with the fig tree — something is deathly wrong with this tree that it cannot bear figs. Not one of us would blame the fruit — that would be both nonsense and illogical. Therefore, in the same way, whose fault would it be if the Faith that is supposed to inhabit the life-blood of Believers is based on the fallacy of Christ? In other words, if Faith is the fruit of Believers and The Christ is the fig tree, what happens to us if The Christ is not who He says He is? Or the promises and words of The Christ do not come to fulfillment? Then, The Christ is a liar and no more useful than that of the cursed fig tree.
John 15:4
Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me
To abide means to remain or specifically, to remain where we are. In other words, if we posses this Faith In Christ, if we believe in our hearts that Jesus is Lord — that He died, that He resurrected on the 3rd Day, that He remains in the hearts of the Faithful through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, then The Christ calls us to remain in the very place where we belong — in Him. There is no other place we would rather be; to remain in Him, all communion of the Heavenly places dwell with us; the Fellowship that Christ enjoys with the Triune Godhead, we too, commune in the Spirit. Thus we stand in accord with the Father in much the same way as Christ, for whom is it that the Holy Spirit desires to transform His Believers — The Christ, our True Fig Tree.
The Enormity Of The Burden We Bear
Oppression comes in three (3) main forms :
From other people
From ourselves
From circumstances