PRAYER in downtown

your prayer connection 4 Shady Oak Road | Hopkins MN
952.217.7908 | tuesdays 7:00 pm


come and pray...or stay where you are and pray with us at 7:00 pm

August 31, 2010

Psalm 139 I’m yours

Filed under: for starters... — Tags: , , , , , , — joel @ 3:44 pm

To be known by the Lord—how terrifying and wondrous and electrifying all together. When I sit down and rise up, when I go in and go out and lie down and even my thoughts you know before I get my lips in motion to spit them out. All is this You know, and more.

Is there anywhere that I could go where You wouldn’t know what I’m up to? Flitting across the skies as the rays of the sun get beamed up? Or sailing off to the ends of the seas? Nowhere—there is no place you cannot just reach out and tap me on the shoulder and guide me.

Molded and shaped and refined inside the womb—you’ve done all of this, so of course you are even more intimate in knowing me than I. All of the ingredients from the innermost earthly sources you know, having created them, so I am all yours, even before You fashioned me together. Nothing is “mine.”

Who could know even one inkling of your thoughts, since even a smattering of them are far beyond numbering, more than the sands of all the beaches and oceans.

But, dare I mention? If only you could spend some cycles on those who torment me—and you. They are treacherous, evil, and I despise and hate them all. Please!

But, at least take care of my own anxieties, my imperfections. You already know all there is, but investigate me thoroughly, put me through all of your diagnostics, your probing. If you see anything, anything at all offensive to you…clean me up, wash me through and through and lead me into the straight and narrow, so that I might be pleasing to You. I am completely Yours.

To be known by the Lord—how terrifying and wondrous and electrifying all at once.

August 26, 2010

Psalm 81: failure to listen

Filed under: for starters... — Tags: , , , , , , , — joel @ 2:20 pm

Sing and shout and bang and blow—make all sorts of joy-filled noises as the moon fills in once again, and the wild celebrations of rescue from bondage and of life together are rung out into the heavens. It’s this Mighty One that has done it again—continued to listen to our pleas of distress and taken away our burdens of slavery. His righteous contract is rolled out and his people are set free, just as in the freedom from a thirsty death brought about by the miraculous spring of water gurgling from a rock in the wilderness.

We get sassy and complacent, thinking we’re home free (or not even thinking or remembering at all), going off with our own thing. Clogging up our ears with junk–that’s our specialty, failing to listen to the One who demands an ongoing relationship, one which requires the ear of his people. “Hear, oh Israel,” is the simple plea that comes to us all—listen to what your Lord has said in the past and the words that He is speaking now. “Listen,” He says. How critical (life threatening, even) this is, lest the voices of other gods fill up the void. So quickly it all happens, this displacing of the Holy One for feeble and powerless gods that lead us down the road of stubbornness and further callousness.

Still, He calls again for a listen, offering another chance and advising of the advantages He brings to the table, like defense against those enemies. Something like a spurned lover who reaches out a hand once again, this merciful Lord offers fine food and honey, an upgrade from that water from the rock. After all, without Him we are surely doomed once again to the wilderness amongst the rocks. Hear his voice?

August 17, 2010

Psalm 71 young, old, or otherwise

Filed under: for starters... — Tags: , , , , , , — joel @ 2:42 pm

Sometimes we just need to stack up the prayers, one on top of the other–like in these opening verses. We need more than just a few simple petitions. We need to lay it on thick, words tripping over themselves out of our mouths. You’re my refuge, Lord, don’t fail me, hear? Rescue me, deliver me, turn your ear over this way, save me, be my rock, shout out that command to have me saved, deliver me from the evil and the wicked and the cruel. You have been my hope and confidence all the way back to my birth day, and so I will forever praise you.

We’re the ones who really need these prayers, these reminders. Enemies (real or those living up in our heads) are always in standby mode, ready to confront and to confound us, to plant a little doubt in our heads, to appeal to our instability, our sensitive natures, our faithlessness, our independence. The Lord will continue, as he has throughout our lives, to be a refuge forever, as from long ago.

Even with all this history of steady and faithful love and protection, don’t we still doubt a bit what is to come? If there isn’t some end to all of it? Especially when we get to be over-the-hill, useless to the world and to our friends and families. So we start piling it on again, starting with what seems so over-the-top: Your righteousness reaches to the skies! Wow! Despite troubles and difficulties and sin, there He is pulling us back into the fold, barely touching the reservoirs of righteousness at his right hand.

And so we continue with prayers, and with praise…reminders of what a wondrous and loving God this is, the One whose righteousness is without measure. Open up and shout it out!

August 12, 2010

Psalm 80

Filed under: for starters... — Tags: , , , — joel @ 2:12 pm

Come and save us, we demand—as if that one time mighty deed in the past has generated some standard mode of operation that we can depend on. Now we think we’ve got His grace in our back pocket, to be pulled out in an emergency, surely, but also in a long-term stretch of arrogance. Oh, how sinful we’ve learned to be from birth and onward, expecting His Highness up there to swing his face over this way once more. Isn’t that how it works?

Perhaps a reminder is in order. Tell Him all about what He did—then He’ll wake up to what He’s supposed to be all about: us, that’s who, you and me and my friends and family. Didn’t he go to extreme lengths at one time, supporting and nurturing us through many generations? Tell Him, tell Him the story—use that vine metaphor again. That vineyard business is no fly-by-night farming and He really invested a bundle in us preferred branches. Now what? Don’t we have some rights? Don’t we have enough history with Him that we can expect it all to continue as before? Haven’t we sort of “arrived” and settled down into His good graces?

Here we are being whacked at, even, horror of horrors, used as kindling for His fire—first out there on the fringes, then right down the middle of the fields. How long it takes us. How long to realize that we are nothing without Him, never were, never will be. Sitting on the edge of the ditch, full of soot, at His mercy forever, in the same shape that He found us.

Help us, Lord, we sinners, who build ourselves up with your gifts, taking them on as our own, consuming them, showing them off to the deprived, then asking for even more. Pranching about amongst our neighbors, generous gifts have become staples of existence, extravagance has become a standard of living that we shouldn’t have to be without, hesed is just another commodity that we can stop off and get refills for.

We know better, Lord, we think, but we can’t even admit that. We’re obsessed with taking on your good grace. We’re junkies, hooked on our own selves. In short, we’re lost, because we think we’re not—even that we’re trying to find some angle around.

Perhaps a peek, Lord, just a peek over this way. Have mercy once more. Please, that’s all we need.

August 5, 2010

Psalm 50

Filed under: for starters... — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — joel @ 12:34 pm

The Mighty One, the Lord of the Most High, the Lord of it all, who speaks out to the earth, making things happen—it is He who will have his way with it and all its inhabitants. The Judge enters accompanied by firestorms and winds, already raging, as he takes up His task, sending the heavens off to bring forth his subjects, the revered ones to whom he has spoken promises. “You know me? the One who made it all? the One who is intimate with it all? I need nothing…except your praises, and your cries in the midst of distress. I’m the One who made you and cares for and caresses the whole creation. Speak to me, for I am your father.”

But it’s more than words, isn’t it? It’s more than empty jingles and jangles of noise and “sacred” activities…it’s the whole being, the whole life that is before the Judge, who condemns those who abuse his word, who forget the care and justice and righteousness that even the heavens speak and rumble about in all that they are about in His world. Those who have turned away, forgotten the Maker, made their own way, are now to be ripped apart like those sacrificial goats.

Righteousness reigns down and all about, separating the faithful from the stragglers. The Mighty One gently shows the way forward to these grateful creatures, the way to deliverance. Thanksgiving is all He wants.

July 28, 2010

Psalm 107

Filed under: for starters... — Tags: , , , , , , , — joel @ 11:38 am

Your life ebbing away, like the tide that’s heading out, but this time never to return? You been stumbling about in the dark, no relief, or even hope of help, in sight? Are you approaching death, maybe even entertaining a dim desire way back there that it might come all of its own accord? Sick and tired of the peaks and valleys, a ride that has left you reeling and staggering about like one drunk puppet?

Often these distress-filled conditions seem to seep into our psyche, other times we’re arrogantly going after trouble. Whatever it’s all about, we’ve gotten ourselves into a gloomy place, trouble that we can’t pull ourselves out of.

We “good Christian men and women” don’t care to share any of these conditions with each other, many we even (foolishly) think we can keep from God, who cares for us all, who is waiting patiently with his tender love for our return. Return, not in the sense of an end to such conditions as any of these, but a return to faithfulness, to trust and hope in Him alone. Go ahead, cry out! And then, again. Cry out! Help me, Lord, for I am once again lost and forlorn. I have let my condition in this world once again overshadow my hope in you. I’ve caved in to the pressures of my time and place—pressures big or pressures small.

That’s when we need prayer big time–at the times when it’s so hard to put some words together to the Lord. “Seek me and live,” He tells us through Amos. He’s eagerly waiting to lead us back, on one of those famous straight highways through the desert into the stress-free lands he’s carved out for us.

Thanks be to God for His almighty deeds. Let us praise his holy name for rescuing us from ruin, for providing us land in which we can be a family that thrives, basking in his eternal love for us.

Let us pray. Come, Lord Jesus. Come and carry us back into your arms. Forgive us our relentless pursuit of life without you. Glory be to You–to You alone, who has provided for us always through that never-ending tender mercy and love that is beyond our understanding. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen

July 22, 2010

85th Psalm

Filed under: for starters... — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , — joel @ 11:18 am

We remember the favor that the Lord showed us–we were on his good side, we had been taken back in. We remember the lifting away, the cleansing, and the erasing of the memory banks of our sins and our failures. But, we also remember the hot and fierce anger we so deserved bearing down upon us, the kind that God could terrorize even the strongest of our troupe with, even nations, even the whole world. Yet, miraculously, he turned it all aside, showed his mercy to us and brought us back into his fold instead.

Do we never learn? As so many tell us, don’t we grow and progress and become more holy–I know, not that holy, but a little more so? Aren’t we becoming less likely to fall away again? We are gifted with his mercy–then we take advantage of it once again. And so we run through another cycle, never progressing, always tumbling back into our own stuff, our own way to go about everything. He’s proabably had it this time. He’s tired of this cycle of trust, then distrust, trust, then distrust…over and over again. Surely that anger is going to hail down upon us now.

But we pray again for respite, for another revival, for relief from our own selves and our own ways. We pray once again because we know the Lord and we know his deeds of mercy. And then–we listen, we wait for some word, some notice, some sign. Listen…how about that? Oh so busy talking and yakking and praying and liturgizing and sermonizing and planning and organizing and interviewing and scheduling and typing and phoning and texting and replying and mailing and malling and fishing and cooking and diapering and plowing and driving and phoning and exercizing and…. Drop it all, turn all the gear off, count backward from 100 by sevens, get into cool and dark places, and listen. God’s got something for you. “Show us your unfailing and never-ending love,” we ask. “Look down here with favor upon us–we who have once again become stupid. Let the earth grow your mercy right out of the ground and get all tangled up around our ankles, our arms, our minds, our hearts.”

Goodness and mercy is what the Lord brings with him to us. Let us sing!
His face lights up the way for us. Hallelujah!
Let us get on our knees and pray. “Father, forgive us.”

July 17, 2010

52nd Psalm

Filed under: for starters... — Tags: , , , , , , — joel @ 8:32 am

Like a weed (you know the type—it grows where it’s not wanted, it’s tenacious, it crowds out stuff you hope will thrive, and it returns over and over again), we’ll be yanked out of the ground, roots and all, by the One who has delivered, who protects the weak, the disgraced, the objects of scorn and evil words. We, who love to be lifted up by those on the slopes to nowhere. Look at me—not so bad as those slackers.

And so, we even boast, glorify ourselves, in our slick words. We plan our strategy, rehearse, and then hit the stage—for all the praise and adoration. “Thank you…thank you,” we dare say to the crowds who take in our beautiful performance—all at the expense of others. Our grievous words have hit their mark straight on. This power of destruction we are all capable of and are happy to revel in…until the Gardner shows up to savagely root out the evil, the untrustworthy, the deceitful, the liars.

Oh so precious life, gifted in exchange for nothing on our part, yet here we go trashing it in the land of public opinion for the trophies of self-importance. Yet here is God waiting for you, with that never-ending, un-imaginable love and kindness and mercy (hesed), so that you grow ravishingly in the garden of his Lordship. Go ahead, place your trust in his bank, nothing in your own account, for He guarantees your flourishing forever. Praise and glory be to this good and gracious Gardner, who cares so much for his creatures.

Let us pray. Thank you, Lord, for life–for air, for sunshine, for moisture, and for dirt. Let us praise your name all day long, in all that we think and say and do. Hallelu to the Lord of the universe. Amen.

July 9, 2010

Psalm 82

Filed under: for starters... — joel @ 8:25 am

Judgement is the activity of judges–but not our God. We like that compassion…we go for the loving kindness, the tender care and feeding…in short, we need a break. If He is any kind of God at all…if you can’t hope for the good from your God (times, food, family, sex, bucks, fame, and all that), why not get another god? But, to whom or where shall we go? Not in the universe of this God, the One and Only, the ultimate Judge over all of it. Oh, yeah, we say, finally waking up—sometimes after years and years of chasing around and running away from the God who loves and judges.

He’s livid at the arbitrary kind of judgments we push out—all those cases that He’s left for us gods—you’re caring for whom? the unjust? the robbers? the lawless? the unkind and the murderers? Where’s your judgment? your discernment? your discrimination of just and unjust, of My will for this creation and your selfish will? What’s up with that mind, that heart and soul that you’ve been gifted with, imaged out of my own?

Give it up folks. We won’t do it…we can’t do it…we refuse to do it. And so, we cry out to him at last: Come, You who presides. Judge it all, You who created it all. Bring forth your justice, your righteousness.

Let us pray: Lord of the heavens and the earth, help us to be in tune with your will, to follow your Son whom you sent to earth to forgive our sins, to hold us in His arms of grace as he judges, then represents us before You in the last days. We have sinned, yet through Jesus Christ, you take us back. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

June 22, 2010

the 77th Psalm: cosmic yet personal

Filed under: for starters... — Tags: , , , , — joel @ 4:31 pm

Distressed, I yell out for attention from my LORD. Where is He? It’s me, right here, right now, that’s agonizing here, churning all night in terror—in fear that He’s finally given up on me. Meditating on myself, I imagine the Lord moving on, taking his graciousness, his long-forgiving love, his looks of favor, those promises—all of it packed up.

Meandering, then fixated on points of the past I find myself in those waters, those chaotic waters, churning and overpowering and swallowing up my every breath—like they are now. Where’s the loving hand of God to the rescue?

Hey, how’d I know about that? That powerful yet gentle hand of God? It’s been here before in my life? Making things out of that chaos, embedded in the centuries, in the years, in the days, working wonders unimaginable—maybe that’s why I’ve forgotten? stuck on the channel beaming out my pitiful self. That strong arm of His does it all. How is it we forget? or deny? or minimize such power and glory?

Voltages crackling through the heavens, thunder smacking the ear drums. Where do those torrents of boiling rain end, the wild seas begin? And here’s the Lord…calmly ordering things about, making way for his little flock—even me—making us all part of his story. Praise and thanksgiving.

Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress

        Lutheran Community of Grace   952.217.7908