“The Prayer of Pain”
by thebaileydrink
MERRY MONDAY by Parris
1 Chronicles 4:10 – Oh that thou wouldest bless me indeed!
William Cowper says:—
“The path of sorrow, and that path alone,
Leads to the place where sorrow is unknown.”
To a great extent we find that we must sow in tears before we can reap in joy. It’s in the storm where prayer is birthed and molded into the impossible. We honor God when our prayer is shaped into the glory of God. Jabez whose mother named him pain learned that out of life experiences we can either be swallowed up in them or rise to the eternal perspective. Out of 500 names in the fourth chapter of 1 Chronicles Jabez emerges out of the pages roaring like a lion.
“Oh bless me for your names sake and for your glory!” He was saying enough of carrying the rags of my past that try to swallow me up.
God breathed prayer literally becomes who I am, lines up with my identity; rolls out of my mouth in song and directs my whole life ahead. When you allow the spirit within to groan; he alone shapes the prayer that flows into this present dimension changing everything around it. In fact prayer colors our world with the unseen grace of God. Yes we see through a filter of a God shaped life. The one that breaks their alabaster box upon the feet of Jesus. We forever live enlarging our territory for the glory of his name avoiding the antichrist spirit that speaks in the children of disobedience.
Spurgeon says; “Let the grace of God prompt it, let the choice of God appoint it, let the bounty of God confer it, and then the endowment shall be something godlike indeed; something worthy of the lips that pronounce the benediction, and verily to be craved by every one who seeks honor that is substantial and enduring. “Oh that thou wouldest bless me indeed!”
Jabez was directed by God to supernaturally step into another dimension where he hadn’t been. He wanted to enlarge his territory for he had an eternal perspective. What is our life’s work you may ask? Passionately Spurgeon says, “Establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.” If we are not builders in an established church, it is of little use to try at all. What God establishes will stand, but what men build without his establishment will certainly come to nought. He adds. “Anything that we do reaches into eternity, with a preparation for the world to come, anything that we can carry across the river, the holy joy that is to blossom in those fields beyond the swelling flood, the pure cloudless love of the brotherhood which is to be the atmosphere of truth for ever—anything of this kind that has the eternal broad arrow on it—the immutable mark—is a blessing indeed.”
Allow your pain to turn into a God breathed prayer!