From the desk of Steve Shultz:
What a timely and encouraging word of the Lord Tiffany Ann has written! We all go through times in our life where we wonder and ask the Lord, "Do You even hear me, God? Do You even care?" And I believe much of the Church has been in such a season, including me and my family.
But in these difficult times where we are tempted to lose heart, or maybe some already have, God is hope. Tiffany Ann gently draws our hearts back to hope in God, teaching us how to pray when we have lost heart, how to keep from losing heart, and how to keep on praying, just like Jesus illustrated with the widow and the unjust judge. I love how Tiffany Ann puts it: "We are called to simple obedience and to obey how our Master taught us to pray, and not diminish the power of persistent prayer."
I encourage you to continue reading this important and timely exhortation...and let your spirit and sight be lifted to hope in God and prayer again!
If you need more encouragement in this and other areas of your walk with the Lord, please get the resources below:
Tiffany Ann Lewis:
Praying When You've Lost Heart
Then He spoke a parable to them, that men always ought to pray and not lose heart.—Luke 18:1
When things are falling apart, it's easy to pray, but hard not to lose heart. Therefore, to me, Luke 18:1-8 is one of the most profound parables Jesus ever taught. Using a dramatic contrast of a widow and an unjust judge, our Master invites us to persistent prayer and gives us hope to help us not lose heart.
Now, God Himself is not unjust and we certainly are not widows, for our Bridegroom is very much alive. However, there is a lesson here that our Beloved wishes to impart.
For most of my life I wrestled with why we need to pray. After all, He's God and we're not. God needed to dramatically change my understanding of prayer in order for me to enter into this spiritual principle.
The English word for prayer has been translated as beg, beseech or entreat, which seems so contradictory to the idea of a loving father giving his children a loaf of bread.
However, from the Hebrew perspective, prayer, in its most basic form, is about soul searching and pouring your heart out to God whenever there is a desire or a need. But that is only the beginning. Let's dig in a little and see what the Lord is revealing.
Pray to God, Remind Him of His Words
The Hebrew word for prayer is tefillah (Strong's #8605 and is pronounced teh-FEE-lah). There are two typical understandings for this word; one is that tefillah means to judge, and the other level we'll get into a bit later. From this we can learn that prayer is a time for self-evaluation and soul-searching.
But it's even more than that; it's also a time for Divine evaluation. You see, our understanding of prayer corresponds to our understanding of God. We must look at the Creator of the universe and judge Him able and willing to fulfill all of our needs from the least up to the greatest. Two things put this in perspective for me: the universe and the Cross. The earth actually staying in orbit convinces me He is able and the Cross convinces me He is willing.
Digging deeper, we discover that the word tefillah comes from the root palal (Strong's # 6419). Palal is pronounced pah-lahl and speaks of prayer as intercession, asking someone with more power and wisdom to intervene on your behalf. This brings it to a very personal level. Once we judge Him able, we must take that leap of faith and open our mouths to ask.
There is more to be discovered in this word palal. All Hebrew letters have a pictograph that corresponds to them. A pictograph is a picture that represents a word; therefore all Hebrew letters represent something visual. Let's "look" at the spelling of this root word for prayer (palal) in Hebrew. It is spelled with three letters: pey - lamed - lamed.
Pey is a picture of a mouth symbolizing articulation.
Lamed is a picture of a staff or cattle prod. Lamed is also a letter of direction. It is used in the Hebrew alphabet as the words "to/towards."
Palal/prayer is communication and articulation between God and man. It's not talking "at" God; it is talking "to/towards" Him as if you were talking face to face, just like Moses did.
We can also see, spiritually, through the spelling of this word that when we pray/palal, we open our "mouth" (Hebrew letter "pey") "to/towards" (Hebrew letter "lamed") God and, in keeping in line with the persistent widow, we "prod" (Hebrew letter "lamed") God. Let me be very clear, we are not manipulating God in prayer but we are reminding Him, so to speak, of what He promised. This does not imply that God forgot, but rather prods God to act on His Word. As we lift up God's very own words, we are lifting them up to the One who is faithful, true, and able to accomplish them.
God Requests that We Keep On Asking Him
The Old Testament teaches us that this was a very common way to pray. Over and over we see His servants saying, "O' LORD God, remember." Moses responded similarly in Exodus 32:13 saying, "Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants, to whom You swore by Your own self, and said to them, 'I will multiply your descendants as the stars of Heaven; and all this land that I have spoken of I give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.'"
God's glory was at stake here; all Moses did was pray according to God's word. It was not a careless request, because it was grounded in the words of the One who is Faithful and True.
It's interesting to note that this root word for prayer is found in the son of Uzai, named Palal. Palal was sent to rebuild the wall in Jerusalem (see Nehemiah 3:25). The literal connection is that his name means "judge." The spiritual connection is that, in the time of Nehemiah, he was a wall builder sent to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem after it was destroyed.
Many of us feel just as destroyed as that broken down wall while the battle continues to rage on this earth. Our circumstance seems hopeless and we may be losing heart. Yet look at what God says: "I have set watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem; they shall never hold their peace day or night. You who make mention of the Lord, do not keep silent, and give Him no rest till He establishes and till He makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth" (Isaiah 62:6-7).
God is requesting us (the watchmen on the wall) who have judged Him able and willing, to continually ask Him, to give Him no rest until it has been accomplished, until He establishes His Kingdom on earth as it is in Heaven. Let us stand on the wall and give God no rest until we see His promises manifested here on earth. Let's not lose heart but continue to pray until broken hearts are healed, until blind eyes see, until deaf ears hear, until the lame walk, until prisons open and captives are set free. Halleluyah!
I haven't even begun to understand it all, nevertheless the Lord has established these principles. We are called to simple obedience and to obey how our Master taught us to pray, and not diminish the power of persistent prayer.
We see this principle again in an obscure little passage tucked away in Isaiah about the sons of God commanding the hands of God. Very boldly the King James Version of the Bible translates Isaiah 45:11: "Thus saith the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker, Ask Me of things to come concerning My sons, and concerning the work of My hands command ye Me."
We are not God, the Creator of the universe, yet Jesus taught His followers to pray with Biblical boldness, hope, and expectation. I believe this type of prayer comes with great reverence and a heart sealed in a relational covenant. This position is a paradox because it's both one of humility and one of authority. The soul knit with God knows it is but a vapor, yet it also knows that we are not widows, we are not orphans, and we are not beggars. We are sons and daughters of the Most High, the living God, and He said it was His good pleasure to give us the Kingdom. Remember, our Master taught us that even an earthly father would not deny His son/daughter a loaf of bread (see Matthew 7).
That said, I would be remiss if I didn't talk about the times when what we are hoping and praying for slips through our hands. Dazed and perplexed, many souls have lost heart and feel forgotten and unloved by God as a result of this. Beloved, nothing could be further from the truth. We all struggle to understand, but let's look to the second level of prayer so we may find hope and comfort in the arms of the One who is Faithful and True.
Prayer Bonds Us to God, Where We Can See from Eternity's Perspective
The Sages teach us that prayer/tefillah is related to a verb which means: to attach, join, or bind together. Nothing brings us closer to God than prayer; it creates a bond between ourselves and our Creator.
The point of prayer isn't just about getting our needs met, but rather about getting into His presence. Beloved, as we turn to God in prayer we connect with Him. The pain may remain, but He is there too. From this place of unity we will see from Eternity's perspective.
I would like to share how this perspective changed things for me. Many years ago, my husband and I had been praying for another child. Our prayer seemed answered, however it quickly slipped through our hands. My emotions were a mess. I blamed myself, thinking that I didn't have enough faith, yet the reality is that even when our faith falters God remains faithful. I was disappointed, depressed, and angry.
One evening while I was trying to understand it all, I had a vision of the Lord sitting on the floor. He spread His arms wide and drew me onto His lap. As I sat there, in the vision, I wept and beat my fists against His chest. He didn't push me away nor did He correct me for treating Him this way. What He did was wrap His arms around me, rubbed my back and said over and over again, "I know..I know."
It was in this place of unity with the Lord that I came to understand the Scripture about death losing its sting. As I gazed through His eternal perspective, my pain was not gone and I still suffered a loss, but the sting was softened because, at the end of it all, Jesus saved the day.
Beloved, Jesus taught us to pray always and not lose heart when things are falling apart. If we look at prayer as a way to unite ourselves with God, we will pray always and attach ourselves to Him.
It is here, in this connection of prayer, as our heart is united with God's, we can see from His perspective and not lose heart. So even though what we have hoped for has fallen through our hands and we are hurt and disappointed, we will realize that God did not disappoint because Jesus Christ rose from the dead. We will see from His perspective and realize we are held in Eternity's hand. Amen and Amen.
Tiffany Ann Lewis
Dancing with the Flame of the Lord Ministries
Email: tiffanyann@tiffanyannlewis.com
