PRAY HOPE WAIT TRUST

So it was, year by year, when she went up to the house of the Lord, that [it] provoked her; therefore she wept and did not eat. 

1 Samuel 1:7

Have you every wanted something so much that not having it caused soul-deep distress? Have you wanted it so badly that you felt provoked by the people who did have it? In this sermon, we are talking about those as-yet-unanswered prayers and the (sometimes long and arduous) process of blessing. We have an extraordinary God who makes it easy for us to love Him, but that doesn't mean it's easy to wait for Him.

We open with Hannah, who exemplifies in scripture the level of desperation we experience in life. Hannah was hollowed and wearied by not having what her body, mind and soul, desperately hoped to have. Hannah had a good life, an almost full life, but there was still a prayer in her heart that had not yet been fulfilled. She cried to the point of anguish; her prayed slurred and bitter to bystanders, to her own self, but not to God. He understood clearly not just her speech but her heart.

It's sometimes funny and easy to be glib about human melodrama, but our emotions can truly cause hurt in our heart: so quickly do we determine that "not yet" actually means "no," "never" or "not at all". But actually God has a history of answering prayers in the affirmative. He also has a history of what appear to be rather delayed affirmatives... but if we look closely at scripture, God never delayed anything at all. God chooses a perfect moment, time and season to deliver blessings and sticks with it. So how to fill and even thrive in the space between asked and answered? We pray, hope, wait and trust. Simple in concept? Fairly. Simple in execution? Not exactly. Effective? Yes. 

• PRAY 

The basis of our life and relationship with God is communication. It is in fluid conversation with Him that we learn about each other's heart. Steadily as we grow with God our character develops, and as our character develops we begin to develop the cornerstone hopes for our lives. The cornerstone hopes for our lives are dreams that solidify as the pursuit and purpose of our life.

We were encouraged to pray without ceasing, 1 Thessalonians 5:17 for there is so much development that occurs while we do. The more time we spend with God, the more inspired is He to deliver blessings intricately-specific to us as individuals. God is a skilled creator in the art of blessing; constant communication with Him allows Him to know what you need better than you do, and He will put His whole heart into creating it, His full strength into delivering it, Romans 8:28. It is good to have clout with God in the business of blessing, for when the boss of blessings intercedes for you, you're sure to get some.

Yet prayer is also a space for the weariness and even hollowness that crops up as we live, praying for blessings to manifest. There are many outlets for our outpourings of distress but only productive one is God Himself. God honestly does renew and rejuvenate the broken spirits that are placed in His hands. We must be able to talk through our emotions with Him. He helps us to understand our emotions and even cope with their negative effects on our lives. He assists us in lightening and shouldering burdens in healthy and productive ways. He teaches us to dismantle the grip fear and desire can have on us, causing us to give in to temptations that only harm and derail us. Indeed prayer is a space for the weak days, when we need God to be strength for us, 2 Corinthians 12:9:10.

Prayer is also a place to claim God's promises, to remember what He has spoken to us; Isaiah 43:26. Prayer is a space to call upon God as He has encouraged us to do. So often God's children forget that option, Isaiah 43:22. God has made Himself accessible to us in the hope that we do access everything He has to offer: strength, patience, endurance, and anything we lack but need is available in His storehouses: 

And try Me now in this,”Says the Lord of hosts,

“If I will not open for you the windows of heaven

And pour out for you such blessing

That there will not be room enough to receive it.

Malachi 3:10

Ultimately we need to remember Jesus' promise on God's behalf: knock and the door will be answered; ask and it shall be given, Matthew 7:7. Did God say "ask so I can deny"? Absolutely not, so why do we live wearied as though that is what He has said? Actually there is reason to be joyful even before blessing because God as already assured us of its arrival. We must combat the pricks of desperation-born-of-hopelessness we feel with bursts of hopeful light that God has provided. We must develop skill in spiritual combat, able to deflect negative emotions that will crop up with the strength we have derived from prayer.

• HOPE 

Then Jesus called a little child to Him, set him in the midst of them,  and said, “Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 

Matthew 18:2-4 

Lack in life can cause us to be jaded in spirit. Therefore Jesus taught us to retain our youthful spirit, the one that readily hopes and is easily inspired. Adulthood can cause us to spiral into daytime nightmares where instead of dreaming as we once did, we only contemplate the depths and darkness. It pleases God when His child is able to retain the vulnerability of hope, the daring to dream. He wants us to think in color, to contemplate what could be coming rather than dwell on what might never arrive.

When we retain or reclaim our youthful spirit, we readily choose love and mercy and humility instead of their opposites, which circumstances in the world can cause. Darkness cannot get a grip on a happy spirit. There is hope able to be fulfilled in every day, not just in the future; God does not want us to pass by those ripe fruits because our spirit was too downcast to notice them. 

The apostle Paul understood the power of hope when we stated, in Romans 15:13, May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Are we right then, to wallow in hopelessness? Certainly not! We are children of the God of hope. Even though it is a truth, we must train ourselves to believe it. The human spirit is not always inclined to hope. Often feelings of lack, loneliness, depression, dejection, and other miseries are merely our forgetfulness to be hopeful. We neglect to realize that we are walking in the wrong direction, looking down not up.

God will always fill our hopeful expectations... so make that hope big. Do not allow life to lesson your faith, shrink your hope, shrivel your expectation. Once again, God wants us to become spiritual combatants against these invisible invaders.

• WAIT

Arguably the most difficult in the process of blessing is the reality of waiting. 

We have to remember that God is a creator skilled in the art of blessing, and that the process of creation is a quiet one. Focused. Determined. Sequestered. God is quietly planning, sketching, measuring, sculpting, and perfecting your blessing. The silence may seem like neglect or absence but it is actually the sound of hard work! We cannot expect to hear or see or feel the final product when it is in the development stage.

But waiting is difficult further still because we have homework during it. 1 Peter 5:10 states:

And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.

Before big blessing can come into our lives, God has to ensure we have the space and skill for it. While He plans and creates the already-assured blessing, He teaches us how to care for that blessing. But the lessons are never so on the nose obvious. Seemingly purposeless and even trying circumstances are lessons and courses in patience and mercy and generosity. God is also working on our character as though it is a masterpiece. He wants us to be well rounded, complex individuals. He wants us to be able to execute justice, discern, love, submit, lead, support, feed. 

Even though the process of character growth and spiritual discipline is not always enjoyable, it is for the purpose of ensuring that once we receive our blessing, we are able to keep it. And keep it healthy. And since it's natural that life is always going to challenge us, God wants us to be balanced. To, like Paul, be able to find contentment in every situation, Philippians 4:11. He needs us to be able to see the miracle and value and opportunity in every moment so that we waste none of them! So that we claim every blessing on the path of our lives. Because even though we may be solely focused on one specific blessing, there are quite a lot of them God wants us to claim. But we cannot do that if we are distracted by hopelessness and impatience. Impatience will cause us to reject the process of blessing and trade it for something immediate, cheap and temporary. 

We have very complex and convincing brains. We cannot allow them to convince us that we are starving. We cannot allow ourselves to develop an inner mantra of desperation. We must never believe that we have no more left to give, no strength left to wait, no inspiration left to hope. We are not starved for God will never allow a righteous soul to famish, Proverbs 10:3. The thought that you have nothing left is a lie you have allowed yourself to be convinced of not a reality. We must not give lies power; for with power lies will control our lives and obscure the hope and blessing and active presence of God that is there.

• TRUST

Waiting was "arguably" the most difficult stage in the process of blessing because it can also be argued that trust is. But if we truly do pray without ceasing, trust in God will develop naturally. Not only will it develop naturally, evidence of God's faithfulness will manifest in the  "little things" as proof of its overall truth.

In 2 Kings 6:17 the prophet Elisha trusted God emphatically... the man accompanying him did not. All the servant could see was that they were confronted by an enemy army. But because Elisha had developed trust in God, he saw the full picture: an angel army at his back. We are well covered by God and His host and their methods of protection are more advanced that our enemies skill at destruction. 

Similarly Jesus in Matthew 26:53 assured the people around him that nothing could happen to him that was not sanctioned by God: "Or do you think that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He will provide Me with more than twelve legions of angels?" When, and only when, we submit our whole selves and whole lives to God's authority, we can rely on every circumstance working out in our favor and in accordance with His will. Even loses will eventuate as gains. But trust is required! God awaits us to proclaim Him as the authority in our lives. He will not do anything in our lives we have not trusted Him with. He respects our boundaries... so when it comes to God, ensure that you don't have any.

Are you not aware that you can pray for the very same? Our enemies are not always literal soldiers or weapons. Sometimes our enemies are depression, hopelessness, failure, regret, shame, listlessness, wandering. Sometimes our enemies are people but the way to combat them is not war or weapon or word. God can train us and provide trained assistance when it comes to adeptly outmaneuvering those people and circumstances. When we feel confronted or even surrounded by fear, depression or hopelessness we must remember that angel army at our backs ensuring that despite how we feel, we will defeat it.

Trust God's love for you; the whole Bible is a love letter written to you and for you to thrive. God loves to bless you, Luke 12:32. He's asked the whole world to, if nothing else, love you, Matthew 22:39. If you can trust that God loves you, you can trust that He will bless you as though He does. In perfect time and measure. Pursue His love and let Him do the hard work of adding blessing into your life, Matthew 6:33; you do not have to work and worry to manifest things God has in control and under development. 

Finally, Jesus asks us to use our common sense:

Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? 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 good things to those who ask Him!

Matthew 7:9 

God blesses His children. He promises good things and gives good things. He listens to what we pray for and He answers in kind. We do not always receive blessings in the manner or timing that we desire but their manner and timing is always good. When we pray, hope, wait and trust in God, we come to understand and even enjoy the time it takes to get to that understanding. 

Therefore I will look to the Lord;

I will wait for the God of my salvation;

My God will hear me.

Micah 7:7 

THE DRAGON TALE

The story of Satan may be the explanation as to why we are all here. In Genesis 2:17, God cautioned Adam and Eve that if they ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they would surely die. But Adam and Eve didn't die... at least not right away, they lived a full life and so did (do) generations of their posterity (aka: humanity). Eating the forbidden fruit seems not to have changed the course of their lives, at least not in the dire way God warned. So what did their choice change and how has it effected our lives?

For this study we have to traverse the entire Bible: from Genesis (the beginning), Ezekiel (the middle), and Revelation (the end). If this Satan character is behind the big, centuries-asked question, ("Why are we here?"), then we have to read about not just his first appearance but also his beginning and how it led to his end. By doing that, we will learn how who or what he is is less important than what he represents. For it is what he represents that changed the plan God had for us. 

• THE ANOINTED CHERUB

“You were the seal of perfection,
Full of wisdom and perfect in beauty."

Ezekiel 28:12 

Satan was not the monster we think he was... at least not in outward appearance and certainly not at onset. God's description of Satan is quite a lot different from the media's portrayal of him, and not just physically. We think of Satan as an outcast rather than the blessed and beloved one he actually was.

“You were the anointed cherub who covers;

I established you;

You were on the holy mountain of God;

Ezekiel 28:14 

Not only was Satan beautiful, he had everything the storehouses of the Kingdom of God have to offer: he was wise, anointed, established. He was loved and trusted. So how did Satan become the serpent in Genesis? The dragon in Revelation? He gradually became greedy, violent and arrogant. And that is where we have to start paying attention; because the worst of Satan is more relatable to us than the best of him. After all, none of us can boast perfection in wisdom, beauty or behavior. But all of us have experienced at least a modicum of greed, violence and arrogance within ourselves. This is not to say that we are horrible people because the majority are not, but we are capable of the same character flaws that led to Satan's complete eviction from the Kingdom of God.

God's kingdom is broad and hosts a lot of life. In heaven, as it is on earth right now, God elects people to join Him in helping others. Satan was chosen as such, an overseer, a protector, by God. But the power became a drug to him and he a slave to it. He began to abuse his power and manipulate others with the wisdom he was given. He resented that he was chosen by God, a holy honor, and wanted instead to be the chooser. Yet the worst thing Satan did was to drag, connive and convince others to join him... and that is the story of Adam, Eve and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

• "YOUR EYES WILL BE OPENED" 

Eve's conversation with the serpent in Genesis is an allegory of how humanity obtained free will and consciousness as we know it today. God had designed a perfect system with the kingdom of God, represented by the Garden of Eden. He created life and cared for it. He made all of the decisions and refrained from distributed free will. Why? This is where we would play a montage of things like the widespread poverty, racism, pollution and other injustices on earth. God simply knew that we were not equipped for such responsibility. Satan disagreed; he wanted to unlock that aspect of life. 

Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Genesis 3:4 

 This is an example of the scheming Satan did when he was in the position of power as cherub. He portrayed God as a stingy authority rather than a wise Father. He slyly suggested that God's will was not the best course of action. He manipulated the truth so that it appeared that one's own will could procure glory and power and that God's will could not. Like he did with Eve, Satan made it seem like the righteous, obedient, humble way was ineffective, insufficient. 

And that is what Satan represents throughout the Bible and in our lives today. He represents that temptation within us to live by our own rule; to act and react on our emotions and desires regardless if they are good for us or others or not; to obtain influence by dubious means; to procure power by manipulating the justice system; to shirk responsibility and pursue our desires. Anger, arrogance and greed tempt us like Satan tempted Eve. They make promises that make us salivate, metaphorically speaking (usually), but they cannot keep those promises; because anything we obtain with impure intentions and corrupt machinations will not satisfy us. 

Eve gained free will, her mind expanded, but the quality of her life declined sharply. Indeed her mind expanded, but in many places she had been previously protected from. She then knew what it was to lack, to feel shame, grief, guilt and regret. The everlasting life of her soul (and ours) became subjected to life in a temporary body. Once constant and sustained, she became an aging and fragile form of life... and we all know the many traumas of that. When God told Adam and Eve that they would surely die, He meant this: life, now as we know it. Birth and death on earth, a rich but also traumatic experience. 

We study Satan as the serpent in Genesis, the proverbial King of Tyre in Ezekiel and the metaphorical dragon in Revelation, but it is crucial for us to recognize Satan he really is. Not the sly characters of the Bible or the monster depicted in movies but Satan is the impatience within us, the frustration, anger, arrogance and greed. All of that behavior was drawn out of us by him. Every time we are tempted to act on our base (ugly) emotions and desires we are Eve in the garden, allowing Satan to convince us our plan is better than God's.

• THE DRAGON TAIL DREW 

We are here because when free will was unlocked, humanity needed a place to exercise their (our) new ability. We needed a place to make the mess of trial and error, a place with consequence enough to take the task seriously, but not permanently damage. Of course death and disparity seem like permanently damage (and they are definite consequences), life on earth was designed to feel that way. But the only permanent damage that can be done can only be done by God and it is the death of a soul, not a body.

We are here because we needed a space to not just to learn the consequences of free will, but also to well, use it. Because with our free will we make decisions and those decisions add up to the inevitable decision: my way, or the highway... to heaven. Joking aside, God honestly wants us to decide. He will not force His will on people who do not want it. He preferred to love us His way, even if it meant that our love for Him was less authentic, if it also meant that we were spared the pain that transpires in life-with-free-will (life as it we know it now).

And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great, fiery red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads. His tail drew a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth.

Revelation 12:3-4 

Satan was able to convince a third of God's people buy what he was selling... and trade in all of the free "stuff" God had been providing. Life on earth is our opportunity to give it all back. We were once with God because He chose us. Today, we have the opportunity to be with God because we choose Him. 

We spoke before about permanent damage: the death of the soul. Satan has been named the son of perdition by God, in other words, his soul has been sentenced to that permanent death (Ezekiel 23:18; John 17:12; and many other places!) Satan has been sentenced to death and he doesn't want to go alone. Just like before, he is recruiting people onto his side... even though he now knows his to be the losing side. 

Of course now that life on earth is our reality, God has plans within plans for not just the whole picture but also for every individual. He has made our tale a story of redemption and purpose rather than one of punishment or subsequent consequence. And though some bad things came with free will, two really good things came too: faith and authentic love. We are now able to love God (and others) intimately; that is, love with the knowledge of the power and work and depth and complexity and strength and fragility and value of love. 

Now, when God blesses us and when others love us, we understand how precious the act of love and all that it encompasses is. And that is why out of all the history and instruction and lesson that scripture and life hold, God has chosen to emphasize love:

Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

Matthew 22:37-40 

So if the history is too complicated, and the future too difficult to grasp, we have been directed by Jesus to simply love in the present.