[8-24-05, the 12th
Wednesday]
TT
XII
More Gold
ach Wednesday noon at Tremont
Temple, we
begin by asking God to give us the prayers He would have us pray,
and teach us how to pray. He is. Last week, He taught us how to not pray. How to not say or
do or even think anything – just share silence with Him. For if He
was there – and we all
sensed that He was – then we need not articulate what He already
knew was in our hearts.
Silence could be golden. . . .
Funny how quickly we can forget something so simple – and so
profound.
We opened, praying for the burdens He
had placed on our hearts.
Greg prayed for Him to stir up the
spirits of those laboring in the marketplace.
Kris prayed for God’s holy, perfect
will to be done in the Statehouse.
Jeff prayed for the students on the
many campuses in the metro area.
Shelli prayed for the homeless.
Basil prayed for the prayer groups,
old and new, that they not become weary of well-doing, as God was about
to do a new thing – the
very thing they had been hoping and praying for.
Then Alex softly spoke a word that few heard:
Be
still, and know that I am your God. I desire you to enter into the
Sabbaoth rest of
silence, so that I might lift you higher and higher, to see
things few have ever seen before.
We fell silent. Around my face and hands I
felt the slightest movement of air. Air-conditioning? It wasn’t on.
And I’d felt this once before, a long time ago – when I’d first
discovered God was real. It was more than His presence; it was His
Spirit.
Five minutes passed. . . ten. . . but as the silence grew
protracted, my mind grew restless. Shouldn’t we be doing something?
I began to pester Him: Should I pray for the revival? For our
soldiers in Iraq? The imprisoned
Christians in the Sudan?
Into my mind came the first line of an
old hymn – “Abide with me, fast falls the eventide. . .” He was
telling me to just abide – but, as that was not what I wanted to do,
I misread the signal. Looking up the hymn in the hymnal Tremont
used, I called out its number and started us singing. Two or three
voices joined in.
Half-way through the first verse, I
knew it was a mistake. This was not what God wanted. To save face,
however, I kept it going, starting the second verse and then the
third. Without an anointing, it was flying like a wounded bird.
Mercifully I let it die, not starting the fourth verse.
Burying my face in my hands, I could feel its
heat. How could I have done that? Ruined the silence, when all I
wanted was what He wanted.
My children, you have asked me to teach you how to pray.
I am teaching you how to rest in
me and abide in me.
Come to me with a broken and
contrite heart.
Come to me with a tender and
yielded spirit.
Come to me with your lost and
needy,
and I will heal them all.
For this will be move of healing
–
of
hearts and minds and souls and spirits, for my
glory.
