Have you ever seen the movie War Room? Excellent movie - 10 out of 10 recommend! In fact, if you're looking for a wholesome movie night with family or friends, or even just by yourself, I would encourage this to be the next one you watch.
The whole goal of the movie is to get us to see that we don't know how to fight. What do I mean by that? Well it seems like nowadays there is always thing after thing placed in our laps, and none of it seems easy to deal with it - and I think many of us are just tired with dealing with it and hearing all the negativity and everything going on in the world with the pandemic, politics and not to mention the ordinary struggles we deal with everyday - none of which by any means, are easy. We seem to be in this constant battle, and some days we may not even know what to pray for. We feel like we are in survival mode, just trying to keep our heads above water. "To win the fight, you've got to have the right strategy and the right resources, because victories don't come by accident" ~Miss Clara from War Room When we are in survival mode, and sometimes we just go through the motions and all we can do sometimes is look at God and shrug because we don't even know what to pray, all we have the energy for is to keep moving forward to fight/live another day. But here's where we are going to flip it around - even though we feel like we don't have that energy to keep fighting, I want to tell you that when we fight our everyday battle with God instead of by ourselves, He will give you the grace and the energy and everything you need to keep moving forward. "You need to plead with God to do only what He can do. And then you need to get out of the way and let Him do it" Before you continue, I'm going to encourage you to watch this clip from the movie: War Room Scene: Lukewarm Coffee Miss Clara is very persistent isn't she? She makes me laugh and her words definitely call me out! I'll raise my hand now and admit my prayer life and relationship with God isn't always hot - many times it is lukewarm and I think I can get by just with that. But in order to continue fighting the battles we do everyday - big or small - we need the right strategy. We need to pray. "Everyone's always trying to leave Jesus out, which is one reason we're in the mess we're in." The rest of today's blog post is inspiration not from me, but credit goes to a good friend, Fr. Mike Brennan who shared the words of St. Augustine in correlation to the Office of Readings from last week. These words can remind us how we can refocus our prayer, to continue fighting in the right way, and letting God do what He does: Lord, what shall we pray for? In this morning's Office of Readings, St. Augustine weighs in... From a letter to Proba by Saint Augustine, bishop (Ep. 130, 14, 25-26: CSEL 44, 68-71) We do not know what it is right to pray for You may still want to ask why the Apostle said: We do not know what it is right to pray for, because, surely, we cannot believe that either he or those to whom he wrote did not know the Lord’s Prayer. He showed that he himself shared this uncertainty. Did he know what it was right to pray for when he was given a thorn in the flesh, an angel of Satan to bruise him, so that he might not be puffed up by the greatness of what was revealed to him? Three times he asked the Lord to take it away from him, which showed that he did not know what he should ask for in prayer. At last, he heard the Lord’s answer, explaining why the prayer of so great a man was not granted, and why it was not expedient for it to be granted: My grace is sufficient for you, for power shines forth more perfectly in weakness. In the kind of affliction, then, which can bring either good or ill, we do not know what it is right to pray for; yet, because it is difficult, troublesome and against the grain for us, weak as we are, we do what every human would do, we pray that it may be taken away from us. We owe, however, at least this much in our duty to God: if he does not take it away, we must not imagine that we are being forgotten by him but because of our loving endurance of evil, must await greater blessings in its place. In this way, power shines forth more perfectly in weakness. These words are written to prevent us from having too great an opinion of ourselves if our prayer is granted, when we are impatient in asking for something that it would be better not to receive; and to prevent us from being dejected, and distrustful of God’s mercy toward us, if our prayer is not granted, when we ask for something that would bring us greater affliction, or completely ruin us through the corrupting influence of prosperity. In these cases we do not know what is right to ask for in prayer. Therefore, if something happens that we did not pray for, we must have no doubt at all that what God wants is more expedient than what we wanted ourselves. Our great Mediator gave us an example of this. After he had said: Father, if it is possible, let this cup be taken away from me, he immediately added, Yet not what I will, but what you will, Father, so transforming the human will that was his through his taking a human nature. As a consequence, and rightly so, through the obedience of one man the many are made righteous.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |