In my last post I wrote about standing prayers. I discussed the power of holding the ropes for someone in prayer. But I found the most amazing part to be the intimate oneness you experience with the Father, literally speaking back to Him His own thoughts and mind about another. You enter a sweet fellowship with the Father as you celebrate His will and ability to perform His Life within someone else’s life. Who knew that standing for Christ to be formed in another could so engulf the one standing in such intimate union with the Father?! I always thought to stand in prayer was to get a promise or scripture and rehearse it until it came to pass. But what I found is that in praying God’s own thoughts and words for His children, I am absorbed into God’s heart for a love engagement. Just WOW!
Today I want to share the element of waiting with God as it relates to standing prayers. In our newest podcast (Episode #399, “Pleasing the Spirit” posted early for this post), we discussed setting our minds and hearts to stand. In it we said, “Daniel waited. And that waiting was a death to natural senses to enter a bigger reality.” This is what I want to discuss in this post—the process of mourning as we wait to see realized the very thing for which we are standing. It’s exactly as we described. It’s a death. It’s always a death to stand with no apparent evidence of fulfillment. But this is the price and the process of seeing His answer – mourning in the waiting.
In Daniel 10:12, Daniel set his heart. He unified his heart with the Father’s heart and vision. And from that moment, the work of God’s answering was set in motion. While Daniel stood in agreement with the Father, the angels were fighting to bring forth the answer. Twenty-one days Daniel waited, mourned and stood to see the answer, while not seeing evidence of any change. The Word says that Daniel had sorrow and pain and retained no strength in the process, but his weakness didn’t thwart the Lord’s answering. My hope is that this post will encourage the stander to hold fast, because heaven IS answering.
The thing that gives me such hope is that in standing for another, I stand in Him. Actually, God is there standing in me. We are one as I yield to His mind, His thoughts, His vision, His purpose. It’s not that I won’t hurt. Waiting, death, and mourning are painful. But the struggle of death is part of the fellowship. I don’t decrease alone! Death is not something I endure apart from Christ. In it I can be in oneness and union with my Beloved, even while experiencing the pain of waiting.
What exactly is this pain? The pain is less of me and more of Him in my committed reality. Daniel’s pain didn’t mean that he didn’t have faith. He had faith! Sometimes faith hurts because it’s the process of dying to my ability to perform and allowing Him to rise.
It’s so hard — for me, anyway, to wait on God when I don’t see any evidence; when I want to see His hand move and yes, it does hurt, but I remember the few times I was just clinging to Him and weeping . . . to tired to try or plead anymore — and you know, it was in the waiting (after some time) that, having given up to just trust – His peace came. I still don’t see what I would like to in my own life and in the lives of my family members, but it’s… Read more »
I am in it.
Thank you John. When I was young knew a man that I will probably talk about some day, that lived in that “unfruitful” waiting. Well, the fruit was something so “beyond”. This simple death just brings His Kingdom down.
May the Lord increase this prayer in His sons.
Amen!