Week #3 – Addressing God

Invocation
O Lord of Hosts, You are Lord alone. You have made the heavens and the earth and all living things that dwell there. Your hand is the soul of every living thing. I would come before you with worship and honor this day. In the name of Christ I pray. Amen.

Read Psalm 84

Daily Scripture
Monday Luke 10:25-28
Tuesday Matthew 6:1-4
Wednesday Exodus 20:1-17
Thursday John 1:1-18
Friday Proverbs 8:22-36
Saturday Romans 5:1-11
Sunday Luke 18:9-14

Selections for Meditation

Personal Meditation

Prayer
Let at least the beginning of your prayer time this week be spent in remembering the wonder of God into whose presence you are coming.

Hymn – “O God, Our Help in Ages Past”
(Isaac Watts)

O God, our help in ages past, Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast, And our eternal home.

Under the shadow of thy throne, Still may we dwell secure;
Sufficient is thine arm alone, And our defense is sure.

Before the hills in order stood, Or earth received her frame,
From everlasting thou art God, To endless years the same.

O God, our help in ages past, Our hope for years to come,
Be thou our guide while life shall last, And our eternal home.

Benediction
Father, you clothe the sky with light and the depths of the ocean with darkness. You work wonders among the sons of men. Give me eyes to see your handiwork this day. Amen.

Selections for Meditation:
* Let us think of our prayers, yours & mine; think of the warmth, the depth and intensity of your prayer when it concerns someone you love or something which matters to your life. Then your heart is open, all your inner self is recollected in the prayer. Does it mean that God matters to you? No, it does not. It simply means that the subject matter of your prayer matters to you. For when you have made your passionate, deep, intense prayer concerning the person you love or the situation that worries you, and you turn to the next item, which does not matter so much — if you suddenly grow cold, what has changed? Has God grown cold? Has He gone? No, it means that all the elation, all the intensity in your prayer was not born of God’s presence, of your faith in Him, of your longing for Him, of your awareness of Him; it was born of nothing but your concern for him or her or it, not for God.
-From Beginning to Pray by Anthony Bloom-

* Now this general principle has its special application to prayer. Nothing could be more intensely individual than the prayers of the Bible. Nobody tries to commune with God in any one else’s way. Some pray kneeling, Like Paul (Acts 20:36); some standing, like Jeremiah (Jeremiah 18:20); some sitting, like David (2 Samuel 7:18); some prostrate, like Jesus (Matthew 26:39). Some pray silently, like Hannah (1 Samuel 1:13); some aloud, like Ezekiel (Ezekiel 11:13). Some pray in the temple (2 Kings19:14); some in bed (Psalms 63:6); in the fields (Genesis 24:11-12); on the hillside (Genesis 28:18-20); on the battlefield (1 Samuel 7:5); by a riverside (Acts 16:13); on the seashore (Acts 21:5); in the privacy of the chamber (Matthew 6:6). Moreover, all sorts of temperaments are found at prayer; practical leaders like Nehemiah, who in the silence of his spirit, seeks God’s help before he speaks to the king (Nehemiah 1:3, 5); poets, like the writer of the 27th Psalm, who love communion with God; men of melancholy mind like Jeremiah, “Hast Thou utterly rejected Judah? Hath Thy soul loathed Zion?” (Jeremiah 14:19); and men of radiant spirit like Isaiah, “Jehovah, even Jehovah is my strength and song; and he is become my salvation”(Isaiah 12:2). There are as many different ways of praying as there are different individuals.
Consider the prayer of St. Augustine: “Let my soul take refuge from the crowding turmoil of worldly thoughts beneath the shadow of thy wings; let my heart, this sea of restless waves, find peace in thee, O God.” And then in contrast, consider the prayer of Lord Ashley, before he charged the battle of Edge Hill: “O Lord, thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget thee, do not thou forget me.”
We need always to remember, therefore, that there is no one mold of prayer into which our communion with God must be run. Let each man pray as best he can.
-From The Meaning of Prayer by Harry Emerson Fosdick-

* Jesus teaches us to approach God as “Father.” In the Old Testament, God is not often spoken of as “Father”: in fact, there are only 14 places where it occurs. They refer to God as the Creator with unique relationship to Israel, his firstborn (Deuteronomy 14:1). In the prophets, there is a sharp contrast made between God’s fatherhood and human faithlessness. But it is the whole community which addresses God in this way. There is no evidence that anyone in Judaism addressed God as “My Father.” Yet this is precisely what Jesus did in all His prayers — some 21 times. Altogether we find the word Father used for God in the mouth of Jesus 170 times in the Gospels. There is only 1 prayer of Jesus, the cry from the cross, in which “My Father” is missing. Also, Jesus used the Aramaic “Abba.” Thus, in the Garden of Gethsemane he prays: “Abba, Father, all things are possible to thee; remove this cup from me; yet not what I will but what thou wilt” (Mark 14:36). “Abba” was a very familiar form of address, rather like “Daddy,” a childlike form. In the Gospels then, “Father” is the description of God. Jesus is clearly encouraging a relationship with God which is marked by childlikeness. -From True Prayer by Kenneth Leech-

* Unless we can find the right name for God, we have no free, real, joyful, open access to Him. As long as we have to call God by general terms like “The Almighty,” “The Lord God,” as long as we have to put “the” before the word to make it anonymous, to make it a generic term, we cannot use it as a personal name. But there are moments when the sacred writers, for instance, burst out with something which has the quality of a nickname, something which no one else could possibly say, which is at the limit of the possible and impossible, which is made possible only because there is a relationship. Remember the Psalm in which, after more restrained forms of expression, suddenly David bursts out, “You, my Joy!” That is the moment when the whole psalm comes to life. Saying “O Thou our Lord,” “O You are the Almighty” and the like, was stating to God facts about Him, but bursting out and saying “O You my Joy!” Was quite a different thing. And when we can say to God, “O You my Joy!” Or when you can say “O You the pain of my life, O You who are standing in the midst of it as torment, as a problem, as a stumbling block!” Or when we can address Him with violence, then we have established a relationship of prayer.
-From Beginning to Pray by Anthony Bloom-