We had a prayer day in San An this week, where between Charlie, Danny, Lydie and I, we cover 12 hours of prayer. As part of my time, I was sat on the steps by sunset strip, watching the waves and mulling over some Scripture.
I began to pray for God’s best for San An, for many people to come to know Him personally and choose to accept the life He offers. I asked God – what would it take to see this place transformed to be what You intended it to be? And then I asked – what would it look like if this place and community came to know You as I know You?
And then it felt like God quietly said, ‘Currently, not much different’.
It was one of those moments where prayer moves quite quickly from speaking to listening – it felt like I was given a lead to follow. It did not feel like a critique, but more of an invitation and a bit of a wake-up call. As I began to think on this and wait, I felt reminded of a few verses in Psalm 24:
Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? 4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully. 5 He will receive blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation. 6 Such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob.
I’m not saying this is true, although maybe it is, but imagine if God merited out transformation and salvation in a broader sense, in relation to the purity and righteousness of His people within that community? Imagine if we only saw God at work to the measure of how much we let Him work in our own lives?
Perhaps for many Christians, this would be a glorious prospect for their community, but I’m not sure I could claim that in regards to myself. I began to pray the very opposite – God, do not limit the bringing of Your presence and the work of Your power, to the measure that I have let You in my own life. Let my devotion to You and my capacity to follow You not be the measure that You give to others.
It takes clean hands – right living, seeking justice, purity, holiness – and a pure heart – undivided devotion to Jesus and His way of life, dying to selfishness – to be able to experience a fullness of God, ‘to receive blessing from the Lord’.
I think it just drove home to me (again) that God is requiring me to take Him more seriously than I have done before – to not get side-tracked with faddish nonsense, vain ambition and time-wasting activities, but to take the plunge of relentless discipleship and walk the wobbly path of faith.
Imagine if our lives were really transformed – if we only bought products that we knew had been sustainably and ethically sourced? If we trained our tongues so that not a word of gossip, bitterness, malice came out but only what built each other up? What if we forgave every time we were wronged, even in the slightest way? What if we honoured the image of God in each man and woman, refusing to allow sexism, abuse, degradation to dominate our language and unspoken societal norms? What if we trained ourselves to listen to God daily?
This could easily turn into trying to be good and keep rules – that’s not what stirred in my heart yesterday – its about so much more than effort and rule keeping. Rather, I felt challenged and inspired, as we move through Easter, to allow the love of God to soften the hardness in who I am and challenge the parts of my life that are resistant to change – to fundamentally change my priorities and help me to live accordingly.
We all want to see the world changed and many of us want to see our communities come to know Jesus – the challenge for me as I pray for this is to allow God to start with me.
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