Pray Amarillo

God expresses Himself through His living Word. Hans Urs Von Balthasar said so brilliantly in his book entitled Prayer, “God’s Word is Himself, His most vital, His most innermost self” (pg.15). The knowledge or the life of God is communicated through the Word of God. Prayer is not meant to be a monologue. It is meant to be a dialogue that utilizes as specific language: God’s language, His Word. Often we have to be quiet for a moment-shut down everything and sit and receive the Word.
This is the door, the medium, through which we converse with God and His life is opened up to us. If we do not understand the purpose of the Word, we will miss out on the life of God. Finding God through His Word coverts us into a better likeness and image of our Creator. Every word in the Bible is a divine door into the heart of God and a divine ladder that brings us into the spiritual realm to be with God where He is.

Instead of reading God’s Word casually or disconnectedly, I come to it with humility and expectation. I make a point to be intentional and engaged. And I acknowledge that Jesus is calling me to know Him as much today as He did thousands of years ago when the Word was spoken. Every time we come before the Word, the Word of God pierces us to the core. It brings down our arrogance and pride, but edifies our spirits and enlightens our minds. Most importantly, the Word of God ushers us into an encounter with the living God. That’s its purpose. If we don’t receive the Word with that paradigm, if we don’t’ expect to meet Jesus each time we open the Word, we become dry and unaffected and bored. We will only know about God; we won’t truly know Him.

Yes. Love always pines and yearns when the beloved is absent, and we-as those who love Jesus in the time between His advents-are in every way subject to such longing. Yet this brings us to a dilemma-a difficulty with a certain sting to it. The dilemma is that though our minds know He was here and then taken up to heaven-and our mouths may give testimony to being His Bride awaiting His return-the longing of our hearts for Him is disproportionate to the time we are in. The difficulty is that though we claim deep love for Jesus, the degree of our satisfaction in the way things are indicates we might be guilty of a grave error in the laws of love. Yes, we do love Jesus. But if we love Him so, shall we not also miss Him greatly in His absence? Shall we not long for His appearing because He is the one we can’t live without? The sting that we must receive comes when we put this question to ourselves: could it be that our lack of mourning for Him might be significantly tied to our lack of truly knowing Him?

The fact is that we long for proximity and despise estrangement from those we love. If we truly love another, an aching and mourning must accompany any separation from that beloved one. Otherwise, there might be good grounds for questioning if it was truly love at all or if we actually know the one we “love.”

If we are willing in humility to bring our own hearts into question, we might find that we are the ones violating love’s laws. The very thing that Jesus searches for, the very thing that He refuses to come back without, is a rare find in all the earth. It is the heart of a yearning Bride in deep affection for an absent Bridegroom and in continual longing for His appearing, not just occasional pining.

In his book, Systemic Theology, Wayne Grudem articulates this dilemma well:
Do Christians in fact eagerly long for Christ’ return? The more Christians are caught up in enjoying the good things of this life, and the more they neglect genuine Christian fellowship with Christ, the less they will long for His return…To some extent, then, the degree to which we actually long for Christ’ return is a measure of the spiritual condition of our own lives at the moment(1093).

Just something to think about.

Jesus looks for a very specific response from us as His friends during this time. He searches for hearts that mourn and long and fast for Him as an expression of our friendship and intimacy with Him. He seeks those who cannot live as though things are all right in His absence, but rather yearn continually for His second coming. This mourning for Him and longing for His coming are produced by our growing in the knowledge of Him-the antidote that turns us from the error of a scoffing, unbelieving attitude and yields us to the assurance of all His promises (2Peter3:17-18). Jesus wants the intensification of our passion and desire for Him to culminate into living blamelessly in holy love before Him. This is what He searches for even now, and this is our part to play in the great story unfolding.
Attentive to our every decision and our every word, Jesus desires friendship on earth. He looks for a collective Bride that does not just pay lip service to Him, occasionally sprinkling His name into their language or claiming belief in Him according to convenience. He looks for those who live as though things are actually as they are-as though the Bridegroom that we love and will soon marry is away right now.
Though He has given us the Holy Spirit and we know the consolation of His indwelling presence, and though He has given us His Word and we know that which He has promised and spoken to us, the actual Person is not here in the flesh. We can’t touch Him; we can’t see Him with our eyes or hear Him with His own voice. Every day is a waiting, a preparing, and an anticipating of His most longed for coming again. For things to go on as they are is not okay. John Piper states, “The Bridegroom left on a journey just before the wedding, and the Bride cannot act as if things are normal. If she loves Him, she will ache for His return”.