ChosenRebel's Blog

I woke up with a clear thought early this morning. Clarity is never to be wasted. So, though it is 3:17 AM, I have stumbled out of bed and come here to my living room perch, overlooking the backyard that I can’t see now, but moments ago was filled with a moonlight so bright that I could have read by it. Now that light is gone, obliterated by the infernal glare of this screen that makes me write with closed eyes but, I hope, an open soul.  (O God give me clarity.)

I was dead asleep–so knocked out in sleep that my right ear seems plastered to my head. And what I want to do desperately is close this computer, crawl back to bed turn to my other side and go back to sleep. But I have learned over the years, (so many years), that moments of clarity are not be wasted. So here I am. Now I have pulled the screen down over my hands so that I have room to type but less light from the screen. I hope God will give me more light to follow the thought for which this time was appointed.

What is prayer?

Prayer is crying out to God.

It is the cry of worship.
It is the cry of agony.
It is the cry of joy,
It is the cry of despair.
It is the cry of laughter.
It is the cry of lament.
It is the cry of loneliness.
It is cry of praise.
It is the cry of abandonment.
It is the cry of betrayal experienced.
It is the cry for rescue.
It is the cry for deliverance.

But if there is no “cry,“ there is no prayer.

Prayer that is really prayer has a desperation to it.

I’m not talking about the manufactured emotion of a man or woman who has been acculturated into a atmosphere of weeping-loudness and predictable cadance and polished to perfection, not consciously perhaps, but polished nevertheless by long and familiar patterns of church associations. 

Crying out to God is desperate and it might be loud, but it is crying TO God. It is the child excited or despairing, running to God for joy or refuge and looking for the arms of a loving Father. If it is not that, it is not prayer. I don’t know what it is. But it isn’t prayer if it is not desperate.

O God, give me that every time I pray, whether I am quiet or loud, in joy or sorrow, with a face creased in agony or happiness, with tears and without. Give me a cry in my heart that wants You, and a word from You, Your presence and Your guidance. Give me a CRY TO YOU. Take away everything phoney and superficial. Teach me to pray. Teach me to cry. 

And Lord, would you give me sleep now. Please. Wake me again if you must be let me rest now.

3:57 AM.