INTRODUCTION
ISAIAH 35:1-10
Isaiah 35 1-10 are powerful verses describing how Judah faced judgement from the Assyrian empire but also describing the glorious salvation that lay ahead in the future. These short verses use picture language to describe how life is like now but affirm that this is not what life should be like and they paint a glorious picture of the future. Our prayer lives may feel barren and unfruitful but the Lord’s intention is that streams would flow in our desert places. The Lord has led me to Isaiah 35 as an inspiration for this January 2014 devotional
The October 2013 devotional looked at the life of Wesley as an inspiration for praying for ‘national revival’. In January 2014 this blog will encourage the reading of the whole New Testament in 30 days and will include a daily devotional aimed to stimulate ‘personal revival’ in our prayer lives.
•Isaiah 35 describes the ‘Way of holiness’ and the first followers of Jesus were called followers of ‘The Way’. Lord, we pray that you would lead us personally on that way of holiness. Lord, bring revival to us and to our nation in 2014 we pray.
• DAY 1
BIBLE READING
Matthew 1-8
• DAY 1
PRAYER DEVOTIONAL
Isaiah 35:1
THE DESERT – DO YOU HAVE A BARREN PRAYER LIFE?
Gordon Macdonald author of ‘Ordering your private world’ wrote of the barrenness of the busy life….In todays busy life many of us struggle when it comes to prayer. He asks ‘Why do we struggle so much?’ Why are our personal private prayer lives so barren, as we live lives so preoccupied with other things?
He makes a suggestion as to the reason why worship and intercession seem to be unnatural acts today. We know that men and women were originally created to desire communion with God. Maybe sin turned a natural activity into an unnatural function. Our original physical appetites and desires may be actually undiminished and our instinctive preoccupations with food sexual pleasure and security may probably be close to the original level. However it may be helpful to speculate that man in his sinless nature once probably had as great , if not greater desire for communion with the Creator as he has for the satisfaction of the natural and very real appetites and instincts that we live with today. But the spiritual hunger once undoubtedly powerful, has been terribly dulled by the power of sin. So worship and prayer have become a difficult challenge.
How do you see your prayer time? Do you see it chiefly as an obligation or duty … as a means of maintaining your own Christian life? In his book ‘With Christ in the School of Prayer’, Andrew Murray says that as long as we look upon prayer chiefly as a means of maintaining our own Christian life, we shall not know what it is meant to be. But when we learn to regard it as the highest part of the work entrusted to us, the root and strength of all other work, we shall see that there is nothing that we so need to study and practice as the art of praying aright.
Let’s cry out to God, in that barren place that we find ourselves in ….let that spiritual desert or that dry routine and sense of duty that we may are trapped in …. Let it stimulate our thirst and hunger for spiritual life. In Song of Songs 1:4 we read of the heart desire of the bride for the bridegroom. ‘Draw me, we will run after thee… The King hath brought me into His chambers’ The essential prayer ‘Draw me relates to our spiritual hunger. Hunger is basic to all life and finds satisfaction in many forms. Our spiritual hunger is part of this. It must overcome and rise above all of the natural urges that are deep within us, and motivate our actions in relation to our self-life. As we lift our desire for the Lord above all other desires and preoccupations and determine that he alone will feed and satisfy this hunger, we are truly ready to be brought into his chambers… ready to be brought from that desert place … to an oasis.
• Lord , you are the source of my life. At the beginning of this 30 day season I confess my prayerlessness. Where my prayer life has been dry and routine and where I have been preoccupied with other things, draw me back to you Lord. Teach me to pray . to see prayer as the highest part of the work entrusted to me Draw me…. Come into my life… and cultivate in me that spiritual thirst and hunger that I lack. I have been dulled by the power of sin in my life. Wake me up out of my lethargy! Revive me! Let the desert and the parched land in me…be glad!
MacdDonald, G Ordering Your Private World 156,157
Murray, A With Christ in the School of Prayer 9,10
Taylor, W Morning Star Journal Vol 12, no.4, 48
No comments:
Post a Comment