When we confront people with what the Lord Yeshua taught they run for cover behind the prophets, sometimes even a contemporary phony one, and even a New Testament writer who is a known contortionist.   When people are exposed for having a kindergarten prayer life they say God speaks to them audibly saying things that can’t be checked. Prayer, as taught and modeled by God’s Son, is a rare communication phenomenon, because the throne room thinder has been hijacked and turned into a merchandising enterprise resembling bordello exercises.

When a prayer, offered on behalf of a congretation, gets answered we can rest assured that God does not exclude the congregation when he answers.

Typically we do not pray to get announcements. We pray for answers to the situations beyond our control. We pray, just for the record, even when we know that the answer is in the works. If the prayer – the exchange of thoughts- is like a department store transaction no believer should get excited about someone asked to pray decreeing the things he requested.

Prayers are not applications for permission to decree. Practically though, does anyone ask permission to love one’s neigjbour? Who asks for permission to heal the sick, raise the dead, or cleanse lepers? Does a chiid of God need permission to announce what God’s answers to prayer are without evidence of the answers?

There is one instance where the thunderous utterance from the throne is secret, private for the one hearing it (Rev. 10:4). If prayer is not being abused the voice of God puts the solutions we seek into motion, or shows the solutions in progress as is the case for the utterances from God’s throne. Shall we say that things sought in prayer in Christ’s are due for a factual yea and amen? Where God has not spoken we tend to prostitute the prayer and everything else.

The times of adversity have a date with relief as surely as day follows night.  We are often most uncomfortable when the times are actually changing. We need to up our game on the basis of the daily dawn transition and the assurance that chastening has a ringside seat in the arena where anger and love merge.

12. Blessed is the man whom You chasten, O Lord, And whom You teach out of Your law; 13. That You may grant him relief from the days of adversity, Until a pit is dug for the wicked.

Psalms 94:12-13

We cannot say we do not relish the fate of the wicked

For the choir director,  a maskil of the sons of Korah, Psalm 44 is a surprising song.  It opens as though it is a historical summary, but gives an overview of early events with a healthy personal testimony and a few surprising allegations.

O God, we have heard with our ears, Our fathers have told us The work that You did in their days, In the days of old. Psalms 44:1

Possession of Canaan – the planting

You with Your own hand drove out the nations; Then You planted them; You afflicted the peoples, Then You spread them abroad.

Psalms 44:2

The divine content Psalms 44:3

Testimony

For by their own sword they did not possess the land, And their own arm did not save them, But Your right hand and Your arm and the light of Your presence, For You favored them.

Psalm 44:3

Confessing God as king is extremely multifaceted.  The king in Israel is a storm waiting to happen.  The road to having a king is adorned with upheavals affecting the promises,  redirecting the priesthood, and putting Yahweh on the side.  The road with kings is a major embarrassment.  The kings showed themselves incapable of bringing the nation to fulfillment.  A host of prophets and wise persons were equally unsuccessful.

You are my King, O God; Command victories for Jacob.

Psalms 44:4

God is also reported to have stopped going out with Israel’s armies, so verse 5 is another example of fact seeping through to draw attention to God’s perseverance in spite of determined resistance.

Throughout You we will push back our adversaries; Through Your name we will trample down those who rise up against us.

The two sides of the fortune coin

Psalms 44:9

Yet You have rejected us and brought us to dishonor, And do not go out with our armies.

Psalms 44:13

You make us a reproach to our neighbors, A scoffing and a derision to those around us.

A prayerful approach is always helpful

Psalms 44:4 asks for help; victories are scarce.

You are my King, O God; Command victories for Jacob.

Allegations unbecoming

Far be it from me to argue with the record.   Synchronizing life with the law and covenants has never gotten a passing grade.  No fable can change the facts.  Yahweh never sleeps,  he does not reject a  people he foreknew, and he knows how many times the people have forgotten him and when the covenant became a casualty of a resistant mindset.

Psalms 44:23

Arouse Yourself, why do You sleep, O Lord? Awake, do not reject us forever.

Psalms 44:12

You sell Your people cheaply, And have not profited by their sale.

Psalms 44:17

All this has come upon us, but we have not forgotten You, And we have not dealt falsely with Your covenant.

Obviously false claims can enter the songbook and we do not know how many people actually bought into these unfounded allegations. Let’s not join the crowd, singing songs just because they exist.

Work and duty have caused a lot of crashes yet they are as popular as ever.  They are so easy to duplicate or fake.  If we told a group of Christians to stop coveting (there is no point in asking humans never to offend God since everyone offends Him) some would choose to lock themselves in an empty room, plug their ears, cover their eyes, and report that they have stopped coveting. 

A much better way

The catalogue of my deeds

The opinion that no one is saved until they get their new bodies is full of fear and unbelief.   There is little love for God and what he has done it all humanity in that sentiment.  After believing and confessing one is told “now you need God’s righteous commands”.  They call that holiness (the setting apart of the believer) your lifelong pursuit.   Along with that they introduce you to the kingdom diet – a regime that does not exist – for if the flesh of bulls and goats is no longer good food for sustaining life Christ is misleading us with “man lives by food and God’s word”. 

Many Christians are wallowing in a compliance mud pit.   The deeds we need to COMPLETE are OUR WARFARE – that is what “having done” means –  and it is not to diligence over food, drink and the shadows of things to come.

Cowardly and Busy Noisemakers

It is obvious that putting on God’s armour has an expected end.  In fact there are two aims.  The first is resistance [withstanding] in the evil day.  The second comes after the combatant “has done all”, and this second end is also an [up]standing.  It is the list of things to do that causes the crashes.  What exactly are we expected to do so we can ultimately stand?  It is the fight, the blows to Satan’s head, the exposure of the lies by which the father of lies has trapped millions of believers; lies so outrageous that the term believers does not fit any more.

Solutions abound in the books of our contemporaries and these answers leave us in the doldrums.  They leave us trying to bring about the very condition that equips us (a) to take up (put on) the armour, (b) do a full job,  and (c) stand in the final stage of our pilgrimage. 

• It is because one is saved that one can put on the armour
• (1) Taking up the armour and (2) doing all are both verbs compounded with kata.
• Katalambano = fully take up
• Katergazomai = fully work out, completely absorb

If our interest is to run interference then we might tell the believer that his standing will take a lifetime, instead of affirming that the full package of working everything down to the bone is not a question of adding anything to the load that the Holy Spirit disperses.   We may attach  our work as nothing  cooperation with the Spirit’s fruit and gifts.  The gifts in which the believer is intended to excel are immediately evident.   So are the fruit.   All half-hearted motions in the realm of gifts or fruit are insulting to the Saviour.  If we could claim to be in love (be patient, kind and faithful etc.) with God without the Holy Spirit’s help or the Christ Event we would, and that is the textbook definition of fearing the lifeboat.  The message of the armour points to a sobering reality.  Taking and using the armour is warfare.

Putting on a face

We cannot say we do not know how disturbing religious posturing is to God.  People have a tendency to say “Yes, yes, yes” loudly and openly when pressed then whisper “What a load of utter rot!” to their neighbours. We complain and murmur.  Historic hypocrisy is rooted in the fog over loving God and fearing Him.  Neither can be faked or manufactured. God has to build and guard the house.

If fearing God is where wisdom begins love will never find its wings

• Loving from God’s perspective means pulling out all the stops
• Fearing God means keeping one’s distance (unless one is ready to die)
• Believing in one God insults polytheists
• Keeping commands as proof of love is an empty shell when the only neighbours one knows are one’s siblings

Thinking of all the denominations that have risen, all the nations that have been staking out identity as moral standard bearers, we are convinced that the triumph of sham,  pomp, and predatory power is over.  We have sniffed out the pretenders and the news cycle is hard to summarize.  One cannot fear God so much that caring for one’s neighbour or donkey is not attractive. Duck! There is a woe ready as long as pretentious love is tower in which we find refuge.