As I have
continued meditating on what it means to “be
strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus,”[1]I
have been blessed with the Spirit’s reminders of the indispensable place of
prayer in giving us our strength. This has become particularly clear as I
consider that it is the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that is behind all that
God “works in us to will and to work for
his good pleasure,”[2]and
prayer is part of what we do to “work out
your own salvation with fear and trembling”[3] in
response to this gracious activity of God.
It
is in prayer that we connect with the work of God. It is in prayer that we
submit to the divine will. It is in prayer that we hear God’s voice, and learn
from him, and experience the Spirit’s work guiding us into all truth about
everything we are facing.
When
I want everything to make sense to my left-brain, and to make sense to my
reasoning mind, I rely on myself without even noticing it. Instead of just
stepping out to do God’s will because God is working something into me, my
self-will wants to know how to manage my life.
This
is because, in my world, I was trained to think my way to self-protection, and
to understand how things work so I could make them work as peacefully as
possible. My whole modus operandi was to save myself trouble by thinking, and
imagining what to do, and trying to make sure I was doing the right thing at
all times.
However,
what God wants me to see is that I have to trust someone else’s thinking. I
have to trust that my Father is thinking through what to do, and that the
things he is working into me are so well thought out that I only need to follow
him, and I will be well. I do not need to know where we are going, or what God
has in mind, because it is he who is leading the way.
When
Paul wrote the Philippians, he told them about how he remembered them, “always in every prayer of mine for you all
making my prayer with joy.”[4]This is such a loaded, complex, filled-up, packed-to-the-brim
statement. First, there is the comprehensiveness of his prayers. He prays “always… in every prayer… for you all.” Paul
could speak to people about his constancy in prayer, not only in the act of
prayer, but in remembering each of the churches in prayer. He never failed to
pray for the churches.
When
I think of how much or little this affected the churches, I realize that this
is more about the way God strengthens us by grace, rather than whether we see
things work out exactly as we ask. I believe that, in the spiritual realm, God
is doing all kinds of things to answer our prayers, working in people to will
and to work for his good pleasure, and doing so in fellowship with the prayers
of whoever is praying for them.
However,
the thing God requires of us all is that we join his work by working out our
salvation with fear and trembling. When we pray for people, this is not about
whether we see the answer worked out in someone’s life. It is not whether there
is a visible picture of God forcing someone into whatever we have prayed for.
It is that God is working in them for his good pleasure, which factors in all
the prayers of the saints for anyone whatsoever, and he requires that people
work out their salvation with fear and trembling.
This
is very encouraging. I am to see prayer as something that God is always working
to answer no matter what I do or don’t see happening in anyone’s lives. It is
the way that God strengthens us with grace. When we pray, we connect with God’s
grace so that this grace strengthens us.
This
brings me back to “my child,”[5] and “beloved children,”[6] and “treasured possession,”[7] and all the other terms of endearment God uses with his people. God
is the Shepherd and we are the sheep. He is God, and we are his servant. He is
Father, and we are his children. Everything about our relationship requires
that God does the leading, and we do the following.
When
this all comes back to the idea of joining to imitate Paul,[8] and to consider the example in the apostles and Timothies of the
church, and to keep our eyes on those who are following the apostolic lead, it
requires that we believe there is a divine will in all of this that is based on
God already thinking about everything. God’s thoughts and thinking are so
vastly superior to all our thoughts that we can rest completely in what God is
doing.
This
is why it comes back to working out with fear and trembling whatever God is
working into us for his good pleasure. We must have a real sense that God knows
what he is doing and we do not. We must have a sense of the divine will, that
it is greater than our will.
At
the same time, this is about God working these things into us, even as we
struggle with old thoughts, and process the way we once did things. This is not
about memorizing right doctrine alone, even though we must know and understand
truth. It is about a relationship with God in which he is working in us as
Lord, and we are responding to him as servants. He is working in us as our God,
and our Creator, and we respond to him as creatures receiving the leadership of
our source, of our life. God is working in us as the good Shepherd who cares
for the flock, and we must, like sheep, work out with fear and trembling the
things he is doing, the things he is working in.
What
Scripture tells me is that there is a relationship with God in which we must
experience something that is beyond Scripture. It is not different from
Scripture, but the things about which Scripture speaks. It is reading the menu
that is Scripture, and then eating the meal that Scripture has described. When
we read Scripture, we are hearing the invitation of God into an experience of
life, and then we must open our hearts to experience what Scripture has revealed.
There
are doctrines in Scripture, but we must live in experience of those doctrines.
There is no such thing as putting all our faith in a doctrine. We are not told
to put our faith in doctrine, or to put our faith in Scripture, or to put our
faith in theology. We are to put our faith in Christ. We put out faith in God.
We relate to God in faith. We follow Scripture because we trust the one it
reveals, and the one who has done the revealing.
Some
people think that, if you have a right understanding of what Scripture says,
you have arrived at the fullness of what God has given us. If we rightly
understand what something means, that is the end of the story. People come
together to discuss sound doctrine. They discuss what they believe. They
discuss theology, and positions, and interpretations.
The
whole while, the sound doctrine of Scripture speaks of a life of knowing God
that must be experienced. This is what stood out to me years ago when I was
doing a study of the names of God. I discovered so many name-descriptions of
God of which I could say I really did not know God by experience. It also was
clear that God reveals himself for us to know him, so our knowledge of his will
leads to experiences of his will. .
God’s
word says that we are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling because
there is a way that God is working in us to will and to work for your good
pleasure. That means that we must look at what he is working into us to will, and
we must let our wills embrace what he is working in us. We must look at the things
he is working in us to work, and we must take steps to work those things out,
to put them into practice.
It
is not so much about reading Scripture and deciding what to do to put something
into practice. It is more about reading Scripture and seeking to know what the
Spirit is doing in us at any given time so that we are relating to the Spirit
in what we are doing. What we do should arise from what the Spirit is doing. It
is a relationship that should feel like we are presently working out the things
that God is presently working into us.
This
means that, when we consider Paul’s example, and the things he speaks to us of
others, there is this exceptional dependence on God through prayer. It is the
way we understand how Paul was always working out his salvation with fear and
trembling because God was always working in him to will and to work for his
good pleasure.
We
cannot leave things with this understanding that God is working in us to will
and to work the same kind of praying as the apostle Paul. We must also work out
with fear and trembling the activities and experiences of prayer that Paul
describes, so that we are part of churches devoted to prayer today just as he
and others were back then.
And,
knowing that prayer is a significant way that we are strengthened by the grace
of Christ Jesus our Lord gives us added motivation to come to God with all our
weaknesses and failures in prayer, and let his grace make us strong even in
this.
© 2015 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517,
Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good
News Publishers.)
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