Prayer is our place of connection with God. It’s relational regardless of the words spoken between us. Sometimes prayer is very silent. Sometimes we have a lot to say. Other times it seems like God is speaking directly to us. Sometimes we both are quiet and still, simply enjoying one another’s company. Or we might be excruciating frustrated with God’s silence and seeming aloofness. It’s all welcome in this relationship of love and grace.
As you pause to pray with the text this week, you might consider what helps you show up as your real self with God. What’s it like for you to allow yourself to be seen with your real needs, emotions, feelings, sorrows, regrets and longings? to show up in your physical body, just as it is?
What do you experience when you simply be yourself with God? When you tarry with God, allowing God to see you just as you are? This can be hard to do when we do not want to acknowledge how we really are. Even this not wanting can be a starting place to be seen, known and loved by God.
May you know God’s radical welcome and acceptance of you just as you are, afresh this day.
Matthew 23:1-12 The Message
Now Jesus turned to address his disciples, along with the crowd that had gathered with them. “The religion scholars and Pharisees are competent teachers in God’s Law. You won’t go wrong in following their teachings on Moses. But be careful about following them. They talk a good line, but they don’t live it. They don’t take it into their hearts and live it out in their behavior. It’s all spit-and-polish veneer.
4-7 “Instead of giving you God’s Law as food and drink by which you can banquet on God, they package it in bundles of rules, loading you down like pack animals. They seem to take pleasure in watching you stagger under these loads, and wouldn’t think of lifting a finger to help. Their lives are perpetual fashion shows, embroidered prayer shawls one day and flowery prayers the next. They love to sit at the head table at church dinners, basking in the most prominent positions, preening in the radiance of public flattery, receiving honorary degrees, and getting called ‘Doctor’ and ‘Reverend.’
8-10 “Don’t let people do that to you, put you on a pedestal like that. You all have a single Teacher, and you are all classmates. Don’t set people up as experts over your life, letting them tell you what to do. Save that authority for God; let him tell you what to do. No one else should carry the title of ‘Father’; you have only one Father, and he’s in heaven. And don’t let people maneuver you into taking charge of them. There is only one Life-Leader for you and them—Christ.
11-12 “Do you want to stand out? Then step down. Be a servant. If you puff yourself up, you’ll get the wind knocked out of you. But if you’re content to simply be yourself, your life will count for plenty.
For Reflection and Prayer:
Was there a word, a phrase, image, or feeling that ‘shimmered’ as you listened? Allow it to land in your heart. Stay with it. Savor it.
Reflect on what you heard. What effect does it have on you? What meaning does it hold for you? What does the Holy Spirit seem to be conveying to you? Talk it over in your prayer. Perhaps you want to draw or color your prayer or journal the conversation.
As the time of prayer comes to a close, share some moments of quiet with Jesus, simply resting safely in his presence.
