The Prayer Closet

I need to listen a whole lot to what God says, more than I do everything else.  The solution is to regularly use "the prayer closet."  When I listen to anything else there isn't as much bigness for Christ to tell me who He says that I am.  It means that even when someone throws something as gritty as judgment at me, I excuse myself politely and say I've gotta go. I've gotta have a prayer closet where I go spend some time and I come out afterward victorious... cleansed of whatever wasn't quite in alignment or affirmed that I was already on the right path... or whatever God discerns that needs to be discerned.

It's a miracle to see God do this in a Christian's life.  After a continuous experience in the prayer closet Christians care very little with whether they have been abandoned to some expectation because Christ has met that emotional panic inside their heart.  Have you seen Christians who come out of a prayer closet?  What do they look like?

We ought to receive discipling-judgment from other Christians, because their voice often is one and the same Spirit; God.  However without that prayer closet, it can cause a believer stalemate.  Christians can overtake Christians with their Christian judgments which are actually true from His Word.  These judgments are the tool that God wants to use, but it quickly should become God using them, after we first receive them from the Body of believers who know us.  Why?  There are several reasons why this is important.  First, whether or not we attain victory over our failings is on the line.  Second, our Savior wants to use these truths in a mentoring way.  Christians are not always capable of imitating the mentoring, advocating grace of Christ.  Most importantly He wants the glory for our having been mentored.

Paul was a figure in the early Corinthian church upon which the congregation was deciding if he was the choicest orator of doctrine.  It could have crimped his confidence.  1 Cor. 4:3-4,

But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by a human court.  In fact, I do not even judge myself.  For I know of nothing against myself, yet I am not justified by this; but He who judges me is the Lord.

For Paul, their odd use of him as a role model caused him to write back to the church about the spiritual mind of Christ.  He was given this message to write to the church after first being set free in the prayer closet.

I have seen Christians come out of the prayer closet who passively admit to their Body of people who know them, any variety of evils with a smile on their face because they recognize that they are forgiven.  It's no longer a part of their lives because Christ has told them in the prayer closet that that unconformity is no longer a part of who they're seen as.

But that's in the case where there is actual sin and I don't know for sure what God will bring out to me in the prayer closet.  Sometimes the prayer closet is an experience where He acquits me, and the joy and power of the Holy Spirit only gets more incredible because He explains that I have an opportunity to share Him with them.  Think Job at the end of that Book and how he advocated in the end for his critics.

I desire that when my heart receives someone else's opinion, my heart is already full of God's voice. Man's judgment either adds or subtracts only a little as it passes through the prayer closet. I want this for myself today, this morning, at this moment.

I love the story of Hezekiah in 2 Kings chapter 19.  Criticism has come against him and Jerusalem in 2 Kings 18:19-25,

Say now to Hezekiah, ‘Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: “What confidence is this in which you trust?  You speak of having plans and power for war; but they are mere words. And in whom do you trust, that you rebel against me?  Now look! You are trusting in the staff of this broken reed, Egypt, on which if a man leans, it will go into his hand and pierce it. So is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him.  But if you say to me, ‘We trust in the Lord our God,’ is it not He whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah has taken away, and said to Judah and Jerusalem, ‘You shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem’?”’  Now therefore, I urge you, give a pledge to my master the king of Assyria, and I will give you two thousand horses—if you are able on your part to put riders on them!  How then will you repel one captain of the least of my master’s servants, and put your trust in Egypt for chariots and horsemen?  Have I now come up without the Lord against this place to destroy it? The Lord said to me, ‘Go up against this land, and destroy it.’”

Hezekiah tore his clothes.  To say it too simply, he was upset.  He might have trusted in the chariots of Egypt but to do so would not have been singular trust in God alone.  He took the letter of criticism and literally spread it out in the house of God.  2 Kings 19:14-16,

And Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers, and read it; and Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord, and spread it before the Lord.  Then Hezekiah prayed before the Lord, and said: “O Lord God of Israel, the One who dwells between the cherubim, You are God, You alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth.  Incline Your ear, O Lord, and hear; open Your eyes, O Lord, and see; and hear the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to reproach the living God.  ... Now therefore, O Lord our God, I pray, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You are the Lord God, You alone. 

In Your Prayer Closet

We believers have got to pour out the whole story before God.  Literally spread it out on your bed, or whatever.  Ask Him to look on those words said to you.  Ask Him to speak to you about your heart in it.  If you've ever experienced a moment where Christ sets you free so powerfully, it gets addictive and I'm sure that you've had a moment like this in times past, but today I want a rush of His opinions toward us to overtake us... because God is so much better of an Advocate than any man aspires to be.  Including the closest friend in your life.  Or a Christian you respect.  Or a spouse.  Or a crisis or confusion.  Our low moments when we're judged means only "a little" in the hand of a God who prepared in advance good works that we should walk in them.

coming out of the closet

Don't let anyone have too much of the judgment seat in your heart before He does.

My Daughter, Grace, Sept 2012

Grace has now started attending middle school!  It has been an amazing transition for all of us this summer.  She no longer has to wear uniforms to school, and we have had fun shopping for things that are just her style.  There was a camp for incoming sixth graders a couple weeks before school started where she got to see her classrooms and see where her locker was going to be, and she learned how to open a combination.  All of her girlfriends are traveling on with her from elementary school.  They are the "nerdy girl" lunch table as of last year's experience of fifth grade.  Grace has at least one of these girlfriends in every single class she's got this year (seven classes total).  What a comfort!  And she has been excited that her home economics teacher will be a familiar face from Salem First B.!

Grace, age 11

Her favorite subject is reading, and her favorite books are fantasy and mysteries.  For a long time she has wanted to be an agent for the FBI when she grows up, just like her grandfather (my dad).  Last year according to test scores she told me she's "the fifth smartest girl at school."  I don't know for sure what that means, but I am happy that she has great grades and does her homework most often without being told.

Last year at the end of school there was a final concert for band and orchestra students.  Grace won the "most improved" award for 5th grade band, an honor which only 4 other students received!  Here's her story about the trumpet: she had started the year with it and from September till November she kept trying to make all the notes correctly, could not do it, and was beginning to fall behind even though she never gave up.  Her teacher said, "would you like to try another instrument?"  The flute was suggested and she got very excited.  She borrowed a flute and her teacher said, "She learned in three days what the other kids took a month to learn."  She is very proud of her accomplishments - and the band teacher said that the entire class is very talented when it comes to having a sense for musicality - Grace was included in that acknowledgement.  Amazing, Grace!

Grace has also been on leadership for the last two years of elementary school.  Teachers select students for the privilege of leadership.  At the beginning of last year the staff met with the ten students who are in leadership and asked them this question: "What can we do to serve our community?"  Grace came home and we began to discuss potential ideas.  We considered how our church (Salem First B.) in the previous year had gone to Marion & Polk County Food Share to help organize food distribution to the poor.  She loved that idea especially since the facility is right across the Parkway from the school.  The teachers selected Grace's suggestion!  They were in the Keizer Times, with a photograph as they served the M&PCFS.  Amazing, Grace!

Grace is blossoming in her relationship with the LORD.  A couple years ago we discovered that Grace was suffering with some substantial doubt that God is really real.  Rather than seeing information as the missing piece to her knowing God, because she already knew the Bible so well, we took another route. We began with Jeremiah 29:13 which says,

And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.

I began reading to all the children at bedtime a chapter or two from the bible.  We started in Genesis 12 with the story of Abraham, and now we are half way through Exodus (we get into seasons where we don't read at night because the kids use it for advancing naughtiness).  Through it all we have seen the power of God and how He promised to do things hundreds of years before they happened.  We have seen how God is the one who holds all the burden of seeing a covenant come to pass.  We have seen how transformative it can be to put our faith in Him.

I have waited to see where her heartbeat really lies in her life, and she has shared both good and burdensome things.  Recently she took a spiritual gifts test and discovered her gifts are evangelism and compassion.  Her number one sense of crisis that causes her to want to trust God to help her is with anxiety.  I regret that I might have passed on a bad example to her because she somehow feels responsible for a lot....  But when she does notice things that make her uncomfortable, she prays about it.  Then afterward she says "it went away!" and we praise God.  Amazing, Grace!

Every once in a great while I ask Grace "Do you know that you are saved?  What if you just know the scriptures and you have not really trusted in Him to save you?  How do you know?"  Her answer after a moment of reflection is to totally dismiss my inquiry and she says, "I know that I am saved... because when I prayed to him, I told Him that I didn't want to be at the far end of the table away from Him, at the fellowship dinner.  I want to be able to see Him and be near Him.  And, Mom, He gave me so much joy!  I can't tell you how awesome it feels!  I just felt so good.  I just felt so happy thinking about Him."  She laughs out loud when she tells me this because it so overwhelms her voice and face, that she can't even put words on it.  Amazing, Grace!  Romans 15:13,

Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Grace has been longing to share the truth with a couple of girls her age, all summer long.  Most especially her cousin.  She has deployed herself to share how awesome it is to believe in Jesus and know Him with her cousin, and then she comes back to me and we debrief how it went.  Her cousin was possibly deflecting the conversation of Christ, and Grace came back confused.  I suggested she ask her cousin straightforwardly if she wanted to talk about Christ only because Grace wanted to talk about it or was she sincerely interested herself?  Grace came back and reported another discouraging moment: the cousin was in fact not interested in much beyond going to heaven.  I kind of left Grace with no response for a couple weeks on that, because I mean, I feel the same way, lost, when I come to a dead end, too.  But I prayed about it and talked to Grace again.  I explained how we are meant to share the gospel with those who listen to us, not just the people we love the most.  And I suggested Psalm 1 as a way for her to bring closure to her cousin and her choice.  She felt a lot better after that.

But there was a day, in the car, where Grace really experienced an epiphany of the Spirit.  She wouldn't stop talking about God, to me, and ask me questions about what God is like and how He engages Himself.  I stopped answering her questions very quickly.  Instead, I asked her to answer her own questions.  What does she perceive is going on?  Then for what she said that was true, I quoted scripture after scripture to her to verify by His Word that she was right on track.  It kind of amplified her as she continued.  For a couple of hours on and off in the evening hours, she began sobbing.  She wanted so much for her cousin to know the love and joy of God.  She didn't understand how to manage the thought that her cousin didn't have God as she had known Him.  Again, for awhile I didn't know how to answer her.  All I could think about is how I felt like that so much, before.  I prayed again, and explained from the wisdom He gave me in that moment, that trusting Him would help.  "As you entrust your cousin to God, the burden in your heart will fall on Him.  And He will not disappoint you.  He will give you encouragement, every once in awhile, that He is going to take care of your cousin.  He is going to do it.  Pray!  Tell Him what you are telling me."  She did.  She still wept a bit.  But, she felt better; she acted relieved.

Lizzy had been in the backseat during this most emotional moment, and was quiet the whole time.  In the silence afterward Lizzy slipped a drawing forward and gave it to Grace.  There was a picture of two girls together and a sentence:

When I grow up I want to be just like Grace.