And the four living creatures, each one of them having six wings, are full of eyes around and within; and day and night they do not cease to say, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God, Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come. Revelation 4:8
Over the last six months the Lord has been pressing upon me the need to spend more time in prayer. At the same time, it seems as though the prayer requests coming from the group of guys in our accountability group have also been increasing. We are all dealing with issues affecting our marriages, kids, school, work (or lack thereof), health, and so forth. In addition, my wife is experiencing issues with her health, work has been incredibly busy and riddled with pressure. In essence, there is no shortage of reasons to go to the Lord in prayer. However, why would the Lord continue to impress upon me the need for more prayer? After all, I was already spending a considerable amount of time praying for most, if not all, of the needs I just mentioned.
Recently, I was spending time with a friend discussing some challenges in his life. We ended up talking about our need to trust in God. However, we felt it was important to meditate on the God described in Isaiah 6 and Revelation 4. We encouraged one another by meditating on our magnificent, almighty, sovereign, powerful, all-knowing God. Then, it dawned on me, “…and day and night they do not cease to say, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God, Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come.” After I spent some time meditating on that one portion of the verse, I felt strongly convicted in the following two areas:
First, a cursory review of my motives for prayer revealed I was being very selfish. The attitude behind my prayer life revolved around physical healing, more money for bills, restoration of strained relationships (to reduce stress in my friend’s life; therefore, reducing stress in my own life), spiritual growth for my wife and kids (because they needed it the most), etc. While I am aware that I should be motivated by gain, I discovered that my motives were focused on temporal gain, personal comfort and immediate prosperity. My heart was in the wrong place and with the wrong intentions. Instead, I began to focus praising God for his sovereignty, and continued to pray for His will to be done in my life and in those around me. Shortly after the change in my focus, I began to notice it was easier for me to render sincere appreciation for ALL of his works in my life. It was amazing to see how God was working in my life, and the lives of friends and family by demonstrating that He is the “One forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity.”
Second, God began to work in my heart in a powerful way in that my prayer time with Him seemed short, quick, and insufficient. The more I thanked him for my circumstances, the more I noticed time slip by without noticing. Slowly the Lord began showing me how to pray by reading His word and our time together became an essential component of my day. Quite honestly, prior to work of God in my prayer life I seriously could not understand how I would be able to worship the Lord day and night without end. Seriously, how could these four living creatures that the Apostle John describes afford to worship God day and night without ceasing? Through the grace of God, we can be given a glimpse of this worship when we make God our true focus. A focus that is based on the eternal and not the temporal. Perhaps this is why the Apostle Paul commands us to “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing and in everything give thanks.”
(I Thessalonians 5:16-18a)
If our time on this earth is truly the seedtime for eternity, then we are best served by making God the one and only focus in our lives.
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