Ruined Houses

My alarm rings at 5:00 in the morning. My hands anxiously search for the mobile phone all over the bed. I find it either under my pillow or under the bed. I thank the creator of the snooze button and go back to sleep. It rings again at 5:15 am and then at 5:30. From now on, it is no longer an alarm to my ears…. its music.

A loud bang rings… this time it is not the alarm, but my head, and I wake up with a start. I stare at the clock glaring at my face. It is 7:00 am; I’ll just have time to finish my morning routine. I jump out of the bed….

I mumble a careless prayer, that hardly lasts for 3 minutes and read my bible portion in a glance, and then I hurry my way to work.

I’m sitting on a bus and I can’t remember a thing…just what did I read today morning? ….no clue!! So, I take my bible from my bag to help me recollect. I try to memorize a few verses, so that I can meditate through the day. The chill breeze blows on my face…and puts me to sleep. With the bible in my hands, I close my eyes.  I finally awake, when it’s just time to get off the bus.

My day is almost over, and I realized that I’ve exceeded my clock hours. I walk out of the building and am on the way to the bus stop. My ears are plugged with my ipod, blaring loudly my favorite Christian Rap. I suddenly realize that I don’t remember what I read in the Bible today morning.

After a rather unpleasant ordeal, I finally find a place to sit in the bus. My ipod is still plugged in my ears. I have every intention to take my bible and read, but my eyes are too tired. I had a stressful day after all. Besides, I need some diversion. I continue listening to Toby Mac. And when he sings, “I need some time with God, and a mental vacation”, I cringe in guilt.  I promise myself to spend some quiet time with God the moment I reach home.

I am finally at home. I pounce at food. If you look at me eating dinner, you’d think I’ve been starving. While I am eating, I need some diversion. I browse through my facebook page, lazily looking at the photos of my friends. (My eyes are not tired now!!)

I’m done with food now, and every single cell in my body starts crying out in exhaustion. I need sleep. What about my quiet time? Hey, c’mon you can’t pray and listen to the Master’s voice when you are tired; you’ll doze off. Its better I get some sleep and postpone my quiet time for tomorrow morning.

I set the alarm for 5:00 am.

You don’t have to be a prophet to tell what would happen tomorrow.

There were people like me in Bible times too. People like me, who resolved to rebuild the temple of God, as soon as they returned to Jerusalem. They were determined to return to God his rightful place in their lives.

But shortly after their arrival in Jerusalem, things changed. They laid the foundations for the new temple. But the Persian king ordered the work on the temple to cease.

Later the barriers were lifted by another king. But even then, the people lapsed into spiritual lethargy. They were not idolaters, but they had lost their early passion for the worship of the living God.

And just like me, their excuse was, ‘The time has not yet come for the LORD’s house to be built.’ (Haggai 1:2)

While they didn’t have time to build God’s house, they had all the money and the resources, to build homes that rivaled that of the kings. And God asked them, “Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house(God’s House) remains a ruin?” (Haggai 1:4 emphasis added)

God asked me this question too.

When we say that we are the temple of God. It does not stop with God just staying in us, sitting in our hearts and looking around. It means that God considers our lives to be a source of His comfort. He wants to confide with us. He has a heart that He wants to share. But we are usually caught up with our own priorities, building our own houses, decorating our own imagination, and living our own fantasy.

Today we do too many things at once. We’re running everyday, working against time and we’re infact not living, but racing our lives. Quiet times, have become a thing of the past. When we read the works of great men and women of God, we shrug and say, “They have no clue about life today”. To add to our slothfulness, we now have Christian leaders, proposing 2 minute devotions and quick prayers for busy people. Pitiful indeed.

God’s message to the Israelites was, “Consider your ways!” I guess, that’s the same message to us as well. Most of our habits and activities make no sense to God, and we’d slowly realize that all our preoccupations finally take us nowhere.

“You have planted much, but have harvested little.

You eat, but never have enough.

You drink, but never have your fill.

You put on clothes, but are not warm.

You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.” (Haggai 1:6)

Today, we have many attractive man-made principles of faith. Principles that have the audacity to limit the powerful works of an awesome God to some repetitive utterances assumed to be “authority from God”. But our Savior proclaimed the only true principle central to our faith.

“But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you” (Matthew 6:33)

We don’t need quiet times to win God’s favor. God does not evaluate our lives by the lengths of our prayer or scripture reading portion. But He longs to make Himself known to us through these quiet times. Quiet times are for us to know God and understand His voice.

The more, I denied myself some time alone with God. The more I felt miserable. It was then that I realized, that spending some private time with God, enables me to see more of Him and less of myself in every situation that arises through the day.

Most of the times, we don’t move away from God because of some shameful sin. We just starve our hearts without Scripture and prayer and ruin God’s house.  Spiritual lethargy is how we get separated. Consequently, the sweetest communion of all gets wrecked.

“Oh the pure delight, of a single hour

That before, thy throne I spend

When I kneel in prayer

And with thee my Lord,

I commune as friend in friend”

God did not reconcile with man, through His paramount sacrifice on the cross, so that He can manage to have 5 minutes in our busy schedule.

God sacrificed everything so that He can live in me and reach out through me.

Will my sacrifices be any harder?

Have we left His house in ruin ?

A difficult prayer

(An unorganized random thought)

I think that the greatest satisfaction, one can get in life is to know that you are fulfilling the purposes of God. Though God gets those lives submitted to Him to complete His perfect intentions, somehow the assurance that we are doing God’s purposes occur to us very rarely. Atleast that’s how it has been for me.

We were not created just to exist. God said that He had plans for us before creating us therefore HE created us only because HE had a reason for that.God has an assignment that He intends to finish through us.

The design of our character, our family circumstances, our finances, our resources, our skills,our friends and personality have been greatly influenced by the plans God has for your life.Plans for your life and plans for theirs.

So if you are looking at somebody else and wondering why you are not having theirs or wondering why they are not having yours, it is simply because our purposes are different.

I think that one of the deceitful strategies of the devil is to make you feel that what you have is no good.To make you feel that your talents, and resources can in no way help you accomplish anything.We therefore get distracted looking at others and instead of using our precious times with the Master, to get closer to His purposes, we pray hard asking for something that we have modeled based on somebody else’s life and then attach a meaningless. “if it is your will” tag at the end of it.

God is not bothered about the words, it is the attitude and the heart that matters to Him.

The purposes of God is a complicated thing for me. The apparent purposes are not the implied purposes.Though I long every day to just a get a glimpse of what is in His mind, I guess I still have a very long way to go. However I wont give up.

I believe that God is more eager than me to tell me the things in His mind. But HE knows that I wont understand it, in my present state. So He works on my heart everyday neither slumbering nor sleeping, striving hard to saturate my mind and heart and entire being with His attitude and mind so that I can begin to understand the real purposes of God.

So instead of praying to hear God give his mission statement for me. I need to pray to make me more like Him everyday.

A difficult prayer indeed.

The Leper’s prayer

Recently I began to evaluate my personal prayer pattern.My prayers were long, emotional and sometimes even teary eyed. But somehow I didn’t feel connected to the heart of my Master.

I was trying to figure out what was wrong. My prayers, my talks with God were of high priority now ,I needed Him to guide me, strengthen me and encourage me. It was not the ‘making-a-melody’ prayer neither was I narrating mundane events to Him. I was desperately needing God so much. But…

No sign of the Master’s voice.

So I put my dead prayers in the post-mortem table.And I began to see the different stages of my prayer.

*…….the first stage of setting the stage and the person of focus.

“God I need this, I want this, I’d love to do this, You know what my desire is. You know what I long for. You placed a calling in my life. “

*……and the second stage of victorious declarations.

“God you are All Powerful, you are able to do more than what I can ask or imagine, you give me only the best, I can do all things through you, I am more than a conqueror because of you, You love me with an everlasting love, Oh God! you alone are able to do wonders in my life”

*…..and the final closing remarks.

“I surrender to your will God “

*…..Amen

Okay!! What you just saw was not just my prayer pattern, but my attitude.

My!! things come first.

I use God’s power to endorse it…

And because I have no choice, and because my prayer has to sound ‘spiritual’ I say, “I surrender to your will God” as a concluding remark.

It was then that a leper from the Bible taught me a valuable lesson.

Luke 5:12 (Amplified Bible)

While He was in one of the towns, there came a man full of (covered with) leprosy; and when he saw Jesus, he fell on his face and implored Him, saying, Lord, if You are willing, You are able to cure me and make me clean.

Let me make myself clear, I am not trying to create a prayer formula here. I am just sharing a little attitude check that the Holy Spirit made in my life in the last few days.

What struck me, was this guy’s way of asking Jesus to cure him, “ Lord, if You are willing, You are able to cure me and make me clean.”

In spite of the physical pain,distress and humiliation that he was going through, he gave priority to the will of Jesus . What he wanted, and his desire to be healed came last. The will of Jesus was his primary concern.

I usually used to think of God’s will as His plan, His agenda, His flowchart and what He wants to do. And our life takes shape according to the course of actions that He’s planned before hand. But there is something more to God’s will that I failed to look at.

The Greek word for “willing” used in the above Scripture is, “thelo”. “Thelo” actually means desire, fond of doing, delight, pleasure. The nearest word in English for this is ‘will’.

What we usually attribute ‘will’ to is just a strict strategy of God,and nothing more. But God’s will is not just His agenda but something that He is fond of doing, something that He delights in, and something that His heart longs after.

When I surrender to the ‘will’ of God. I’m not just executing His plan, but I am constantly doing that which He delights and pleasures in.

Isn’t that a privilege that God should choose me to do what He is fond of doing?

The Greek word for “able to do” used in the above Scripture is, “dunamai”, which means capable, strong, powerful.

Whatever God delights to do, He is capable and powerful enough to accomplish it. So I when I surrender to do His pleasure; By His might He will enable me to succeed in it.

What God wills to do, He is able to do, but, what I desire to do I am not able to do.

The Holy Spirit made me realize that my attitude towards God’s will was not right.

I thought I was sacrificing my own dreams and desires to surrender to God’s will. But I was terribly wrong. Living for my dreams would only mean suicide because I don’t have the capacity to fulfill them. But living for God’s vision and plan is rewarding and complete, because He has the strength and power to fulfill His dream through my life.

I won’t deny that sometimes its hard to accept God’s will for our life. Even Jesus found it terribly agonizing.

“And going a little farther, He threw Himself upon the ground on His face and prayed saying, My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass away from Me; nevertheless, not what I will [not what I desire], but as You will and desire.” Matthew 26:39

Jesus surrendered to the perfect will of our Father. Because He knew that what His Father desired to do, He is able to complete. And just the same way, our Father enabled Jesus to a glorious ressurection, the defeat of the grave and the victory over death.

Today you and I enjoy access to the Father because of God’s pleasure to invite us and the Son’s obedience to submit to the Father’s perfect pleasing will.

I am getting back to my Master’s heart.

“Master, not that I desire but as You will and desire.”

I can already feel His sweet embrace.….

Unanswered..Unasked!!

With just a few days more for my examinations, I feel suffocated. Maybe, I’m not all worked up but the weight is on my head and it is kinda haunting. There is this one particularly hard subject called Digital Signal Processing, which is giving me the goosebumps.

In seasons like this I just wish if there was some kind of pen drive that I could use to stuff the gargantuan formulas in my head, unfortunately or fortunately God did not make provisions for any external drives in our bodies.

The only best break I can give myself is to loiter around this special space that I’ve made for myself on the web.

And I have something very special to share about my Master too..

How many times have we really prayed for something and never got the answer that we expected? Or let me put it this way, How many times have we felt disappointed by God?

Well, I am not yet spiritual enough to say that I’ve always considered it pure joy whenever I felt that every prayer of mine reached the ceiling and then bounced back on my own head.“Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds,[James 1:1]”

I’ve felt disappointed, neglected and sometimes even cheated…….by God.“How long, O LORD ? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?[Psalm 13:1]”

What an audacity must I have to say this about the Creator King ??

But that’s the truth.. When God introduced Himself to me for the first time, I didn’t really see Him as God, in His holiness and splendour. I just saw Him as a friend, a loving saviour who would make me a perfect candidate to heaven and give me the best life on earth.

Slowly, in each step of my journey with Him did I realize His greatness, His holiness, His majesty, and His power.”…—God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever [1 Timothy 6:15-16]”

Then I saw how unworthy I was to even call upon His name, only then I understood His grace and I still cannot comprehend his Love.I also saw that the journey was not going to be as ritzy as I imagined.

“See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. [1 John 3:1]”

Despite these realizations, when prayers seem unanswered for a long time; my inner person becomes like a deflated balloon.

“My soul is in anguish.

How long, O LORD, how long?

I am worn out from groaning;

all night long I flood my bed with weeping

and drench my couch with tears.[Psalm 6:3,6]”

Many prayers of mine have not yet been answered. And I am not keeping count either.But we cannot talk a ‘one size fits all’ strategy for dealing with unanswered prayers.

I think that if we can understand the category our unanswered prayer falls in, it would be easier to deal with it. These are just some of the categories that I have identified in my really small number of years as a Christian

1) When I clearly do not pray God’s will, nothing will happen.

2)When I hold something against someone or are unforgiving then too will God not consider my requests.

3)When God wants to deepen my characters, He delays the answers.

4)When He wants to give me a double recompense he will allow me to go through pain and distress.

5)Sometimes, He just wants me to rely on His grace, and not on the answer to the prayer.

I started off, wanting to write about my unanswered prayers and what I need to do about it but I guess I’m going to wind up talking about unasked prayers.

I’ve heard numerous testimonies of how God has heard prayers and given miraculous answers.But somehow, I’ve never been bright enough to ask for the thing that is good enough for me. So God doesn’t give me what I ask (fortunately!!!) but gives me what He thinks is best.”As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.[Isaiah 55:9]”

Not to forget the numerous accidents that I’ve escaped, the deadly diseases that don’t come near me, the lovely family that’s still bonded to together, the scrumptious food that I eat everyday, the friends who love me in spite of my craziness, the resources that I have access to, the talents that I have…. I never really prayed to receive any of these things. But my Master has carefully designed each of the minutest details, even though I never asked.“...With thankful hearts offer up your prayers and requests to God.[Philipians 4:6]”

I’ll end this note with the verse that I consider is the mantra of my life (atleast at the moment!!!)

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us [Ephesians 3:20]”

The Contemporary English Version Bible puts it like this,“… His power at work in us can do far more than we dare ask or imagine”

You bet!! we wont even dare ask for the things that He has in mind for us. That is the heart of my Master.Only the best for His children-no compromises on that!!

I complained about the things I asked and never got, what about the thousands of miracles that happen everyday in my life., without me never asking for it?

Have I forgotten about that?