His Hand is on the Door

Dangerous responses to barrenness in prayer…

January 30th, 2007

I want to share some thoughts this morning on a subject I talked about at the leadership conference this past weekend. These ideas are in the notes and I expand on them in the messages we’ll be posting tomorrow, but I want to discuss them here as well. I shared these with those who lead prayer ministries because it is critical that true shepherds after God’s heart arise in these last days to help believers navigate the deadly pitfalls of barrenness of heart in the place of prayer. We are, by nature, a prayerless people. The difficulties of the reach of prayer when we lack the internal capacity and strength in our spirit man to engage with God are often painful to encounter. Good men turn away from the place of prayer on a daily basis because they come into a surprising and frustrating boredom.

Our fallen nature and deceitful heart demand a wrestling with God in the place of prayer in which we set ourselves to fight and war to cling to the hope of the little breakthroughs that come over time. These bursts of grace to the heart “strengthen us with might through His Spirit in the inner man”, that we might have a greater capacity to stay in the place of prayer and engagement with God for a much longer time. I want, from God, more endurance and grace for tenacity in the place of prayer. It is becoming more and more enjoyable for me as my internal hunger and desires are being transformed by grace. But still I fight. I hit the wall of barrenness and boredom in the place of prayer hard, daily. Often I give in, and engage in more satisfying short-term pursuits. Often I settle for the horrible dullness that takes my heart and shrouds it in a cloud of unfeeling numbness.

There are worse places to go in the battle of barrenness. They are deadly.

I woke up on Saturday morning with this phrase burning on my heart: “The weakness of prayer is an offense block to the proud.” The self-sufficient, independent, prideful heart longs to be known as strong. Gifted. Able. The last thing we want is to be weak, broken, and needy - desperately needy, actually. Only the spiritually poor come into true mourning and pain, yet boldly seek God until they find Him. They have no option, no other place to go for sustenance. Yet I find sustenance in the unsatisfying things of the world all the time. I settle for the short-term bursts of pleasure that come from worldly offerings that help me forget for a moment that I am barren, broken, and in great need of encounter with the Living God on the inside.

Waiting in weakness is the most helpless, dry, frustrating place. The second wave that strikes our heart follows the first - “the weakness of prayer is a stumbling block for unbelief.” There are other responses - all subtle and deadly to our life in God:

(1) Depression – Desire to feel sorry for yourself in the place of self-pity rather than continue to believe and contend for a breakthrough that God desires more than you do. Many believe that they want the internal and external breakthrough of God more than He wants to express Himself in our life and thus become soured in the waiting. Depression settles in when unbelief convinces the believer that this is the way it will always be and tomorrow will be no different. Eternity and the return of Christ are not an internal reality truly grasped and the pain of today seems greater than the promise of tomorrow. This is sin and must be dealt with forcefully – the answer for the believer is true spiritual violence that will fight the fight of faith and not quit.

(2) Compromise – Desire to make peace with our barrenness and surrender to a lesser than place of function and life before God. The pain of delay and contending for the fullness becomes too great – and settling into a place of helpfulness and productivity serves as an appealing compromise to the daily pain of short term “failure” to engage with God on the inside. Productivity and a servant appearance work to form a mask that hides deep boredom and dissatisfaction. This is not true servant-heartedness that flows from true tenderness.

(3) Cynicism – Desire for short term satisfaction at the expense of the long-term marathon pace of a lifestyle of prayer and voluntary weakness; this can often be expressed in church culture as a desire for anything which interrupts boredom – whether it be the activism and busy activity or a pursuit of the subjective experience with spiritual language that props up our soul and hides the truth of our barrenness. This is not true life in the Spirit (power encounters with the living God) that flows from righteousness (Sermon on the Mount obedience in the mundane), peace (the heart settled in confident trust in the leadership of Jesus in the end-times), and joy (the tender heart flowing in love from the place of enjoying God’s affections).

This last one is so deadly, so deceptive - and I believe so pervasive today in the body of Christ. The many multi-faceted ways we prop up our heart in the place of barrenness - the things we hide behind - only lead to disillusionment. You can avoid your need to truly encounter God for so long until the life you have built for yourself in avoidance collapses into a torrent of disillusionment. The sourness and bitterness of the heart in that day is so deadly. How many have become disillusioned because of “encounters” with God that were more cultural than spiritual? How many have become disillusioned because of godly activities (that are done for the purpose of hiding from our barrenness) that produce so little fruit and change after years of labor?

All that we do to try to make our life exciting, worthwhile - spicing it up with “variety” while on the constant search for the new thing. This can even be “variety” in the form of exaggerated, trumped up, or even false spiritual encounters. The end of that journey is painfully, devastatingly disappointing. Our life in this age, like it or not, will be mostly mundane. The externals were never meant to solve this. God’s solution for the mundane predictability and patterns of life was never supposed to be various activities in the externals. God desired and purposed that we would seek an internal solution. He desired that in the midst of the mundane, our heart would be a bonfire in the place of prayer. He purposed that we would be content in any and every circumstance because we are connecting with Him on the inside.

Only when you come to the realization that, long-term, there is no other solution will you stop what you are doing and wait in the place of prayer until something changes in your soul. When there is no place else to go, you won’t stop or quit. When you are convinced that prayer is the only answer, you won’t leave that posture and you’ll come back again to the place of prayer daily, until.

God, help us in our unbelief. Help us stay with this until something moves on the inside. Help us kindle a flame that becomes a bonfire. We need a life in You that anchors us in faith, hope, and love. Amen.

David

Entry Filed under: life at ihop-kc, life in the spirit, prayer, sermon on the mount