I am going to edit my prayer-journaling into a shareable version in the hope that it will encourage someone with how to be utterly open and honest with God so he can surprise you with the blessing of hearing him speak through his word, watching him show you his work, and joining him in whatever he is doing. This morning was such an extreme contrast in how I began and ended my time with God that I am even more eager to find out who would benefit from the benefit I received.
The context for me is waking up each day with a very painful experience of grief. I have lost some people who have been family to me. It has triggered that old fear-based propensity to figure out what to do to avoid (or reverse) such rejection. God has been training me how to replace that planning and strategizing with listening and prayer. And the way he has helped me has magnified the blessing of how God speaks through his word, shows us what he is doing, and draws us to join him in his work.
One of the biggest lessons of late was in Jesus’ words to Peter, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!”[1] That turned into an application of, “If it is my will that (anything to do with anyone about anything at all), what is that to you? You follow me!” The point being, even my plans and strategies for how to win back the people who have disowned me are none of my business. Whatever his will is for them is just that, HIS will, and of no immediate concern to me until he tells me otherwise. However, he does have something he is doing with me, and he wants me to follow him without any limitations because I am busy imagining what he should do with someone else.
With all this as my morning intro, Father had a surprise for me as I came back to the passage I have been meditating on for a while now.
And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”[2]
My focus was on the unified declaration of all the angels: “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.” The sevenfold declaration resonates with the glorious symbolism of the book of Revelation. The “Amens” are as two witnesses giving parenthesis to the truthfulness of the sevenfold expression of praise to the Almighty.
And so, my focus followed the spotlight to: “Blessing… be to our God forever and ever!” The definition of the Greek word translated “blessing” is:
Blessing: blessing n. — the speech act of praying for divine favor or protection; especially with the idea that even the audience (as well as the recipient) receives a benefit from the utterance.[3]
What began to capture my mind, heart, and soul, was this reality that the things I do in the material realm somehow affect what God experiences in the spiritual realm even though I am bound by time and he is exalted in eternity. If he hears our cries, pleas, and petitions, and answers us according to his good, acceptable and perfect will, the hearing and answering are somehow mirrored in eternity as they unfold in time. And, yes, it felt good to my brain to let my mind meditate on this!
But what began to form in my mind was an amazing realization that my heavenly Father is “blessed” in blessing me. The “blessing” that is his forever and ever, that his children are constantly attaching to him in prayer for divine favor and protection, means that he is delighted in my confession of need for him.
Here is how I expressed this in my prayer-journaling:
“Father, let me rest in this, that if blessing is to be to you forever, then it is to be to you now. I am to rise up into this gracious and glorious gift of blessing your name, and trusting in you, and delighting in expressing myself to you. You do not tire of me asking you for divine favor. You do not tire of me asking you for divine protection.
“How is it that you would receive a benefit from this child asking you for your favor and protection over me and my family and my church and your kingdom throughout the world during this time of grief and sorrow? How is it that you would find something personal in me reaching up to you for help? Is it trustworthy for me to think of what it is like to be a caregiver to children?
“Father, this is my mind change today, that the act of your children blessing you, expressing your worth in seeking divine favor and protection, is of MUTUAL benefit. How wonderful is that, O God!
“Father, I am letting this sink in today. You are blessed in a way that benefits you. It is good for you. I do not know how it is that you are in eternity, unbound by time, with this moment being known to you forever, and yet you are relating to me with genuine responsiveness. It is such a wonder, O God, that this timebound child with his timebound and childish expressions to you is coming with mutual benefit to me and the Almighty because that is the way the Almighty is. I have not made you this way. I have not shaped you being the way you are. You cannot change into someone else at all or ever.
“And so, Father, I enter the benefit of this thought to me. To pray to you now for your divine favor and protection is so beneficial. To pray this in relation to the people who have disowned, rejected, and falsely accused me, and consider that it is to my benefit to pray to you like this, and it is to your benefit to receive prayers like this… it is so mindbogglingly wonderful that I am going to revel in it to the glory and praise of God! Praise be to the name of God Most High for me to be taught by the Spirit in words of ultimate and perfect wisdom and knowledge and truth and love.
“O God, right now, I could suddenly picture that the Holy Spirit is smiling on me to teach me this very truth today. “Abba! Father!” he cries, and smiles! He draws me into this ultimate good of something that is of mutual benefit.
“Father, the picture that is fleetingly shown to me of the Spirit makes me want to know you like that. I have never considered the Holy Spirit with a smile on his face, and yet it is the thing I must know. The kingdom of God is not a matter of what we eat or what we drink, or any kind of rules about anything at all. Rather it is about “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”[4] What wonders these are!
These thoughts of praise led me back to the personal and practical issues of life where I had to consider how the church of the Nicola Valley is doing, and what kind of letter Jesus would write us after the fashion of the ones he wrote to the seven churches of Revelation. What would he teach us, rebuke and reprove us, correct us, and train us in righteousness,[5] if only we would repent of losing our first love, and of allowing division and idolatry to poison the oneness of the body of Christ[6]?
However, as my mind was brought back to the angels that surround the throne of God, with the reminder that they are, “all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation,”[7] I realized that these ministering spirits would be delighting in what I know today. With fear and trepidation and reverence I allowed myself to wonder if they were reading my prayer journaling over my shoulder since they can’t read my mind?
“Is it their joy to know that I am learning something so wonderful about you, that you draw me into the blessing that is to you forever? And the Holy Spirit is smiling at me, and towards me, and with me, at the mutuality of this blessing, that the prayer for divine favor is of mutual benefit to him and to me."
This led into a prayer that expressed my desire for God give me divine favor with the very people who have wronged me. I genuinely wanted the mutual benefit with God and me to extend into a mutual benefit to and with them. I wanted God to take the things Satan had intended for harm and division to be multiplied back to us in unity and oneness in our Lord Jesus Christ.
“O God, you are pleased to have me pleased in asking you for this. It is your good pleasure to tell me today that it delights you to be blessed with prayers for your divine favor. And it is your timing today, while grief takes its hold on me so painfully, to not only tell me this in words, but to show it to me in pictures, and mutual mindstate about your goodness and grace.
“Father, this is just the beginning. Having these thoughts this morning is just the invitation. And yet, they are the invitation into what is happening right now, while showing me that you are inviting me into a lifetime of this, of knowing that you are delighted in me being delighted in you.
“Father, what a delight to me! And this must be a delight to you! And all because a word of Scripture has pierced my heart and mind so that I KNOW you are somehow experiencing something in relation to me that is right now. It is this moment. I do not know how that is in eternity. I do not know what the mind of God experiences when you know you are going to teach me this today, and you are already delighted to do so, and delighted with the outcome, and so pleased with me as your son even though it is all your work to do this, and yet it is so pure and real and personal and sincere and genuine on my part because of the wonders of how you have made us in your image and likeness!
“O God in heaven, I give my ‘Amen!’ with the angels’ ‘Amen!’ ‘Blessing… be to our God forever and ever! Amen!’ The mutual blessing of me asking for your divine favor and protection today, with your delight in your child asking for this, and my delight in you receiving my request and answering according to your will, is not only of mutual benefit to you and me, to you as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit together, and to me as your born-again son, but you have shown me that the angels are delighted to look into these things with pleasure that what they know about you is being received and granted to me as they minister to my spirit in the spiritual realm, O God.
“What joy you give me this morning, and I want to bless others with it, and to bless you in my sharing it with others, and to bless and honor you as I leave it in your hands how you choose to show me your favor and protection.
“I ask for this blessing now for the whole body of Christ in the Nicola Valley, that you would show us divine favor in experiencing the fullest possible measure of revival and restoration. Make us one, Father, no matter how much reviving-or-removing you must do to anyone. You are God, and you have a will, and all I want is for you to do whatever it takes today to pour out your blessing on your church in the Nicola Valley and turn every heart of every child of God back to first love in Jesus’ glorious and wonderful name!”
And now that God and I are delighted with this mutual interchange of blessing, I head into today with anticipation that God will show me what else he has in mind by turning me from the grief and strategizing that joined me as I met with him, to blessing others with the blessing I enjoy with God simply because I attached to him in his word and prayer.
“Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
© 2022 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K
1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles,
a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)
[1] John 21:22 (context:
John 21:20-25)
[2] Revelation 7:11-12
[3] Bible Sense Lexicon
[4] Romans 14:17
[5] As per II Timothy
3:16-17
[6] Summarizing some of
the issues Jesus presented in the seven letters to the churches in Revelation 2
and 3. It also includes a reference to Jesus’ High Priestly prayer in John 17
where it is so clear that being “one” is a non-negotiable, and anyone
who deliberately causes division in the church is guilty of direct defiance of Jesus’
own prayer. Yes, it is that serious.
[7] Hebrews 1:14
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