Come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord our maker, for he is our God. We are the people he watches over, the flock under his care. If only you would listen to his voice today! [Psalm 95:6-7 (NLT)]
Looking like a cross between a heron and an ibis, the limpkin (Aramus guarauna) is common along Florida’s fresh water canals, wetlands, and swamps. While they’re lovely to look at, they’re not lovely to hear. Often referred to as the wailing or crying bird, limpkins have a loud piercing “banshee” scream that usually is heard at night, dawn, and dusk. During courtship, a male limpkin makes repetitive long, loud, rattling calls while a female replies with slightly lower (but still disturbing) screams.
It’s mating season and, as the limpkins establish their territory and seek their mates around our lakes, the male limpkins are wailing away. On this morning’s walk, I encountered three of these screamers high in trees near the water. Although they continually called out, they never seemed to pause long enough from their wailing to hear an answer. While the three males continued their haunting screams, I encountered a female limpkin quietly walking along the shoreline. I wondered if she simply was waiting for the men to quiet down long enough so she could return their call.
My family is doing a seven-day prayer study which began with the statement, “Prayer is conversation with God.” As we shared our prayer habits via email, one person wrote that some days he simply asks God, “What’s your will for me today?” He added, “The hard part of any conversation is being willing to listen and be receptive to what is being said.” As I thought of his words, I realized our similarity to the screeching limpkins—how we often call out to God without pausing to listen for His response. We ask what to do or where to go but don’t listen for His answer (perhaps because we’re not that anxious to obey).
While there is no rigid format either to prayer or conversation, there are guidelines to a good conversation which also apply to prayer. Conversation and prayer are about building a relationship and both require a balance between talking and listening. It’s neither prayer nor conversation when we come only to talk. Moreover, there’s a big difference between actively listening and simply waiting until we can speak again. We must listen with the intention of understanding and, when we ask questions, we’re supposed to wait for the answers! My mother often reminded me that God gave us two ears and only one mouth because we were to listen twice as much as we spoke.
Just as there’s no need to impress others with big words scattered throughout the conversation, we don’t need a special vocabulary to speak with God. He knows what we mean and, when we can’t find the right words, the Spirit fills in for us. In the same way, just as unnecessary details and long explanations can bog down a conversation, they can bog down our prayers. Since God is all-knowing, He already knows the details! A good conversation is one where we are honest and God expects nothing less than complete honesty in prayer, as well.
We may be guarded in conversation but there are no secrets with God. While we should be prudent about revealing personal information in conversation, we can be totally vulnerable and open in prayer. Scripture shows people expressing the whole range of emotions in their prayers—everything from anger, outrage, disappointment, confusion, sadness, and fear to joy, confidence, awe, delight, acceptance, and gratitude.
No president, royalty, pope, prime minister, or Nobel Prize winner has ever welcomed me into a conversation. People like Bill Gates, Greta Thunberg, Max Lucado, Volodymyr Zelensky, Taylor Swift, Tom Hanks, Simone Biles and Joyce Meyer haven’t asked me to give them a call. While I may not be on speaking terms with the rich, powerful, or famous, I am with God—the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe! He invites all of us to call any time and He’s never too busy to take our call. As for those well-known and influential people, if we ever did speak with one of them, we probably would listen carefully to what they had to say. Can we do any less when we converse with God?
To have God speak to the heart is a majestic experience, an experience that people may miss if they monopolize the conversation and never pause to hear God’s responses. [Charles Stanley]
Back when I did weight training, I’d often find myself struggling with my last few reps. When I thought I couldn’t get the dumbbell up another inch and was about to give up, my trainer often gave me a little help so I could finish the rep. Disappointed that I couldn’t do it on my own, he’d remind me, “There’s nothing wrong with a little assisted lifting!”
When writing about pride earlier this week, I remembered the Bible’s stories of proud men who got their comeuppance. 2 Chronicles 26 tells of Uzziah who, as long as he “sought guidance from the Lord, God gave him success.” His mighty army defeated the Philistines, Arabians, and Meunites (who then paid him an annual tribute) and, under his rule, Jerusalem’s walls were fortified, wilderness forts were established, water cisterns were dug, and something like catapults were erected on the walls to defend the city. With Uzziah as king, Judah prospered and the powerful king’s fame spread “far and wide.” Sadly, along with prosperity, power, and fame came pride. Believing he was above the law, the proud king entered the sanctuary and usurped the high priest’s role by offering incense. When priests warned him about his sacrilege, the proud king raged at them and immediately was stricken with leprosy—a disease that meant the “unclean” man lived the rest of his life in isolation and never again could enter the Temple. All the blessings, accomplishments, and prosperity of his reign were overshadowed by Uzziah’s one act of pride, insolence, and arrogance.
While both Kings and Chronicles relate the history of the Israelite monarchies and cover much of the same time period, they are quite different because they relate more than events—they relate Israel’s relationship with God. Continuing the nation’s history begun in Samuel, Kings was written for the captives during their exile in Babylon. Completed around 560 BC, the author shuttles between the kings of Israel and Judah until Israel’s captivity. Judah’s history continues to the Babylonian conquest and Jerusalem’s destruction; its history ends with Jehoiachin’s release from prison during captivity. Kings’ purpose was to explain how and why God’s children ended up in exile by showing how their kings failed to follow the law as written in Deuteronomy. They’d built shrines, worshiped in “high places,” made sacrifices away from the temple, defiled the Temple with idols, and rejected God’s prophets while embracing false ones. Reflecting the author’s decidedly negative viewpoint of both kingdoms’ leadership, only four of the thirty-nine kings following Solomon (all from Judah) got good reviews with another five kings getting mixed ones. Of the remainder—all “did what was evil in the Lord’s sight.” The book of Kings clearly answered the people’s question of why they were suffering in exile
Because we know little about the geography or politics of Jesus’ time, we sometimes miss subtleties in the gospel accounts. We know Jesus was from Galilee but what do we know of Galilee? Located north of Judea with the province of Samaria separating them, Galilee originally was settled by the tribes of Naphtali, Asher, Issachar, and Zebulun—all of whom failed to drive out the Canaanites. King Solomon gave twenty towns in the northern part of Galilee to King Hiram of Tyre either as payment for the cedar, cypress, and gold Hiram provided for the Temple’s construction or as collateral to cover later payments. In any case, Hiram later returned the cities to Solomon who then settled Israelites in them. When the kingdom divided, this region became part of the northern kingdom of Israel.
While pondering an important decision, I realized I was trying to figure it out on my own rather than taking it to God. Relying on my own perception and trusting in my wisdom, however, is what got me into my dilemma in the first place. Based on some of the truly stupid choices I’ve made when leaning on my own understanding, it’s only through God’s grace that my life is not a total disaster.
Devotions of the Heart 