Prayer: Getting real
| Search me O God and know my heart Test me and know my anxious thoughts See if there is any offense way in me And lead me in the way everlasting (Psalms139:23-24) |
One of my favourite images is that prayer is like a camera. The lens is focussed and the shutter opens... The light shines in and leaves an image on the film negative. Prayer is very similar to this: We focus in on God, we open the shutters of our hearts and He shines His light in and our hearts (the film) are changed...
Psalm 139 is all about opening up to God. In the first part of the Psalm, the psalmist struggles with the almost relentless knowledge that God has of him. (Even when he tries to escape God he cannot!)
1 O LORD, you have searched me
and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar...
7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
Then he begins to realise that God loves Him with the tender love of a creator, and that he, the Psalmist, is a precious creature. His response is to give even more of himself to this tender, merciful, loving God.
13 For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
And so, where the Psalm began with the Psalmist running away from a God who knew too much, the psalm ends with the author running toward God all the while offering everything he (the Psalmist) has.
Our prayers should involve some of this: that we open our hearts to God - even the scary and ugly bits - that we stop pretending and that we stop hanging on to a false dignity. We need to turn to Him and call for His help, we need to expose ourselves to Him.
When we ask Him to scrutinise our lives like this, He shines His light and love into the whole area of our lives and we can be changed!
