God encircles us, cares for us, and keeps us as the apple of his eye, like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, that spreads its wings to catch them and carries them on its pinions (Deuteronomy 32:11).
Sojourner Truth was a slave who was separated from her family when she was about nine. Sometimes she’d ask God “if he thought it was right.”*
Do ever ask Him that when your life is hard?
*Gary D. Schmidt, So Tall Within, p.10.
God told Moses, “Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them (Numbers 20:12).” When they neared the land, Moses pleaded with the Lord, “Let me go over and see the good land beyond the Jordan (from Deuteronomy 3:23-25).”
The Lord said, “Enough from you; do not speak to me of this matter again (Deuteronomy 3:26).
Stop asking when you know God’s answer.
God is not a man, that he should lie,
nor a son of man, that he should change his mind.
Does he speak and then not act?
Does he promise and not fulfill? (Numbers 23:19).
The God we trust is worthy of praise-filled prayer.
They spoke against God and Moses. Their consequence was death. Those still living confessed, “We have sinned; we spoke against the Lord and against you. Pray for us.” So Moses prayed and God told him how to help (from Numbers 21:5-9).
And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life (John 3:14-15).
Sin, consequence and confession are part of every salvation story.
Before Jesus offered himself for us, there was “the law of the burnt offering, grain offering, sin offering, guilt offering, ordination offering, and peace offering (Leviticus 7:37).”
“But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. . . . By a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified (Hebrews 10:12-14).”
“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain (Revelation 5:12).”
Before Jesus died for our sins, burnt offerings made by God’s people were “a pleasing aroma to the Lord (Leviticus 1:13,17; 2:2).”
After Jesus died for our sins, it is the prayers of God’s people that fill “golden bowls full of incense (see Revelation 5:8).”
May these prayers be a pleasing aroma to our Lord.
Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God.
Moses spoke, and God answered him (Exodus 19:19).
Your time of prayer is a meeting with God.
“Plead with the Lord, for there has been enough of God’s thunder and hail.
I will stretch out my hands to the Lord. The thunder will cease, and there will be no more hail, so that you may know that the earth is the Lord’s (Exodus 9:27-29).”
When they heard that the Lord “had seen their affliction, they bowed their heads and worshiped (Exodus 4:31).”
Worship the God who sees.
A Blog on Prayer 