"Ask a sign for yourself from the Lord your God; make the request deep or make it high above." (Isaiah 7:11)
I have made my praying according to our text. I believe that much "safe praying" is an attempt to avoid disappointment or to look good, you know, the kind of general praying which no one can know if it were answered or not. The prophetic Word came to the king in an invitation to pray way beyond himself, probably because that is where our Lord Jesus Christ "abides."
Don't be timid today, or ever. Respond to our Lord Jesus Christ as our text invites us. Remember what Jesus said when Peter inquired, "Lord, if it is You, command me to come to you on the water." Jesus said, "Come." It is as though Jesus were saying, "Come to Me, Peter. Come to Me from the safety of your life. Come to Me from your predictable life style; take a chance, Peter. Don't stay where it seems 'safe.' Live life, Peter, as I do. Live in Me as I live in the Father, and so desire to live in you. I am not in the "boat of safety;" I Am in the, "deep," in the, 'high above,' away from any false sense of safety."
Isaiah 57:15 says, "I dwell in the high and holy place, with him who has a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones." "Revival" of, "the spirit...and the heart," the real place of faith-living is in, "the high and holy place," in Jesus Christ. The Bible declares that, "The world languishes and withers,..the heavens languish with the earth." This describes a desperate state. It is time for the Church, it is time for you and me to, "make the request deep or make it high above," on behalf of, well, humanity.
Father, in Jesus' Name, I hear Your call, and my heart desires to, "dwell in the high and holy place," in You. Amen.
When Peter, an 18 year old Norwegian, "heard the call to evangelize China, on that day he not only emptied his wallet into the collection plate, but included a small note with the words, 'and my life.'"
Hebrews 12:2
Hebrews 12:2
