The Power of Prayer

...and a reminder on the saying: "be careful what you wish for..."

Yesterday, I met with two women who are friends of mine. We met for the purpose of corporate prayer. This and nothing else. Both of them are older than me, and I was honored to be invited into their circle. Really honored. When our hour ended, I felt warm and good inside, the same type of feeling that could be stirred by say eating a warm fresh slice of homemade bread. But I know such a different landscape for prayer, too. It is much like the difference between seeing the beauty of a formal garden years cultivated and the beauty of wild mountain country untouched--almost unseen--by human life. These are very appropriate analogies for the feel of these two prayerscapes I've known.

And today as I met with God in my own time and way, I sensed a message given to me regarding this broad and manifold prayer life He has given me. I read the story of Daniel in the lions' den. I read Paul's list of the outrages he endured for the sake of the ministry God put upon him, for endured such things as multiple beatings and nights spent as a piece of flotsam while shipwrecked, all this with the quiet confidence that the mission his God laid upon him was worth the cost.

Just last night I began reading a fascinating book called Arctic Homestead, the story of the last couple who received Alaskan land under the Homestead Act established back in the 1800's and ended in the 1970's. They endured incredible trials--from near death as their truck careened off the side of a mountain to near death due to (on separate occasions) both accidental and intentional shot gun firings. The woman homesteader, Norma, dreamed like we do. She dreamed many nights a recurring dream of living in a wilderness and growing vegetables and being blissfully happy. But their trek to Alaska to find her "dreamland" took literal years and much hardship to come to its fruition. Of this, she said, "God...had been directing us here all along, testing us en route to make sure we possessed the pioneer mettle to withstand the hardship before He put us in charge of one of His most delightful creations on the crust of the earth."

I feel like our own prayerscape over the past couple of years has had a similar flavor of testing en route. For example, I look back at the blog a year ago and see:
how you had premonitions of death, and cried out to God for more time;
how you had that strange night when you woke two times and thought the clock had gone backward upon your second waking, a thing so strange to you that you commented on it to me;
how a few days later, I found this story about King Hezekiah in which God heard his plea for an extension of his own life and how God answered by giving him an extra 15 years; and
how a sign was arranged to serve as confirmation of the gift of added life--the sundial would moved backward;
how I told you I thought God was using the sign of that story from long ago to address your own similar concerns in this day;
how we forgot all about that, until a few days ago, when I realized you nearly died in that car wreck--if you still doubt that it was the hand of God directing you to look up and see danger that day, you should remember the foretelling and give Him credit. (smile)

Most of all, I am reminded of God's call on our lives and the strange incomprehensibility of it. I hardly know how to pray for what He tells us He sees in our future: my own dreamland, my own Alaskan frontier.

But a quote I read even today reassured me: "God never gives a command to His children unless He makes provision for them to obey." So in my heart, I wait for Him to make provision.

And yet with the reassurance came a warning: Paul in the last parts of 2 Corinthians speaks of "the authority the Lord has given me for edification and not destruction." In fact, this idea came before me twice lately. (Below I quote Paul's first statement of this idea of authority.) Now frankly, my thoughts on this prompted me almost immediately to a derisive laugh--what authority do I have such that I would make a such a lofty statement with regards to exercising it? So I meditated on that thought. Listened for You to teach me where such bold words might be mine.

I reckoned, upon taking account, that the only authority I really have is in my prayer life. I always have choices in my prayer life. Then it hit me that this is exactly where You were taking me with this train of thought, for I have recently changed the timbre of my prayers. I read in Nehemiah how that prophet, administrator and kingdom re-builder prayed that God would remember him for good even as God remembered his enemies for their works. Lately, I've been tempted to follow in Nehemiah's footsteps, and felt an empowering and freedom in prayer-authority that was rich, but I see now a bit premature. For example, I have indeed asked that God remember the works of a few "enemies" but I think I maybe spoke the wrong ones for enemies. I could ask You remember a few nameless faceless enemies behind the legal bureaucracies that have much complicated our lives--that they be remembered for their works. But maybe You are telling me to pray more like my Lord--forgive them, for they know not what they do. Does the man in the BMV office know that his clerical error in documenting my son's proof of insurance and the ensuing stream of paper and people like weeds grown up between that little clerk and our efforts to expose his mistake--does he know it all could end in my son's loss of license, or even in his being jailed, if the law (when once it ignores and/or hides for its reputation's sake the injustice of the original clerk's mistake) is served? What would that distant clerk do differently if he only knew the power he wielded over another life in that one mis-filing? Is it right that I pray he be remembered for that work? And so many other things of the same nature, God. So many people, Lord, over whom I could--with circumstantial justification--have the authority to pray they be remembered for their works of harm toward us, but are they really actively working against You when they interrupt Your work in our lives, as were the enemies of God who drew Nehemiah's condemnatory prayer? No. These are people no more or less faulty than I am. They are blind people operating in a fallen world, where laws simply can not attain perfection, where philosophies rarely acheive even a degree of consistently acceptable justice for the poor and downtrodden of this world. If I am to pray like my Lord, then I will pray for my enemies when they are such as these. Paradoxically, I thereby distinguish myself from them, distinguish myself as His Bride. So said He in His Sermon on the Mount. So I will take greater care in how I organize my prayers over what to put before the eyes of my God, who to forgive, who to condemn. I will listen before I pray.

I met a mighty angel--an angel who bore the majestic demeanor of twin mountain peaks snowy and brilliant, aglitter as if graced by an eternal sunrise. I thanked that angel for his efforts, his diligence, his honor of God's love for humankind such as me. I apologized that more of us don't see and praise him for his gifts of service. And as I spoke to him, telling him to ready himself for even more strenuous battle, reassuring him that it would not go unnoticed, I saw myself giving him glowing golden sword for the task. And my son not long ago dreamed the family fought enemy creatures before boarding something on the order of a space ship, but it was shaped like a sword, and we as a family sat at the tip of it. We flew through space and on our journey, saw an amazing eclipse of the sun by a fast moving planet. A few days later, we went to church and the preacher spoke on the analogy of being the tip of God's sword, a metaphor he illustrated with a film clip from the movie, Pearl Harbor. I suppose if we are able to receive dreams like these, we should take care in how we pray. If I can address this angel, if I can offer him that sword, then I should realize that my authority is indeed great, for when Paul spoke of authority like this--

2Cr 10:8
For though I should boast somewhat more of our authority, which the Lord hath given us for edification, and not for your destruction...

--he did so in conclusion to a preface of this:
2Cr 10:3
For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh:
2Cr 10:4
(For the weapons of our warfare [are] not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;)
2Cr 10:5
Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;

And even though I pray quietly, demurely in circles of Christian friends, still in my private time with You, Lord, You call me to other frontiers indeed! And if my earthly authority seems like a candle flickering out; still, if I am to believe these words as much as any others in Scripture, then my authority is great after all! Greater than I ever imagined.

2Cr 4:16
For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward [man] is renewed day by day.
2Cr 4:17
For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding [and] eternal weight of glory;
2Cr 4:18
While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen [are] temporal; but the things which are not seen [are] eternal.