by Gail Gritts
Lamentations 3:41 “Let us lift up our hearts with our hands unto God in the heavens.”
Most of us pray with a sense of God being above us, in the heavens. Some pray with the awareness of the presence of God in the very room. Prayer is a very personal thing. As I meditated, read, and came before the Lord today, he brought some truths to my remembrance and some shame to my heart.
The verse speaks of lifting up our hearts and hands to the Lord, no doubt, in supplication for our needs. But how many times are we guilty of trying to fix things ourselves instead of bringing them to God? There is a place for our effort. We are to be actively obeying, providing for our families, and serving with all our love and might. However, the same Lord encourages us to wait upon him, to be still, and to look for his hand to move.
We can also be guilty of looking to others. Yes, God says he uses men to give to our need (Luke 6:38). But men are not the source of the blessing. God is. If we aren’t careful, we allow those instruments of God to block our view. We fail to see the hand of God in all things.
Whatever concerns us, we must be taking it to the throne. God attends us personally. He does not send a deputy! He is a God who is very near. No matter what we face, “The Lord is there” (Ezekiel 48:35). He is a good, good Father who cares for his children. It is a parental relationship we have entered. We needn’t stop at considering ourselves a disciple; we must move on to recognizing we are a child of God. In that, we must keep the relationship vibrant by lifting up our hearts and hands to the Father for our every need. Nothing is too small.
I am too often aware of my keeping God at a distance. I fail to see my needs as pressing or that God has bigger things to deal with than my petty complaints. But I am reminded today that just as I would want to know any concern of my own child, God, my Father, desires me to bring any and all concerns to him.
Rev S Martin wrote, “So that the things which you look upon as trivial, have been subjects of eternal thought, and of eternal purpose…God cannot be almighty, He cannot have full control of His creation, unless He foreknow and foresee all things—things both great and small. And if it be so that the Lord does reign in our circumstances, and over them, then we owe an appeal to the throne of God on whatever concerns us.” (p 167-168)
Did you catch that? Every trivial thing has been the subject of eternal thought and has an eternal purpose? We will never understand the depth of the knowledge of God or how he works it all together, but we can find comfort and assurance that just as he knows every thought we think and every word we say, he has a purpose in it all. Nothing is too small, so take it to the throne today!