A 2016 CALL TO PRAYER-He Is The Be All And End All

God Morning Family,

This morning I went to the Lord with no agenda but to pray that we would all allow God to search our hearts and to listen for His voice.

He showed me something that is difficult to express in words but I will try.

I saw what looked like a man trying to break out of rubber, or a dark, slime like substance.  The substance covering him was so thick I could not see the mans features.  I could only see his form through the rubber. His outline was one of a runner pressing towards the finish line. My sense was the elasticity of the rubber was so strong it was trying to snap him back but he was using all his strength to break out.

Then a word came to me that summed all this up.

STRAIN

meaning force (a part of one's body or oneself) to make a strenuous or unusually great effort 

Two scriptures come to mind.

And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. Jer 29:13

And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength. Mark 12:30

God wants our effort.  He wants fervency in our hearts and fire in our words.  He wants that we strain against the complacency, the apathy, the deadness of our souls and reach for

HIM.

Prayer begins and ends with a desire to know God. He is the Prize.  Our intercession must be rooted in this.  Our cries for His help must be seated in the realization that we our His and He can do as He pleases with us.  Even our fire to do His will must be tempered with the fact that only He can bring the increase.  Whatever the outcome of our obedience God is the be all and end all.

God wants us to be His ministers of flame.  But it is our worship of Him before anything else that brings Him pleasure.

“I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot.
Rev 3:15
The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. James 5:16