Day5_DanielleStrickland_Offer-final

Thy Kingdom Come – God’s kingdom coming to earth. In this invitation to pray, right now, prayer is like learning the language of God’s heart. What I love about prayer the most, is not only do we have this like opportunity to come before God and give him our requests and tell him what’s on our heart and share with Him our burdens and ask Him to intercede in situations on the earth, but what I love about prayer even more than that, is that God has an opportunity to speak to us, that God has an opportunity to remind us of who He is and remind us of His presence in our life. And invite us into this partnership, into this beautiful relationship that begins to go somewhere and one of the things that always happens for me, but I don’t know about you, but when you begin to pray, like Jesus taught his disciples to pray ‘Thy Kingdom Come,’ what happens is the desire of your heart begin to desire the things that God wants for the earth. And we start this conversation with God, where we bring him our needs and He exchanges it with His heart and then we start to want to respond back to God, and when we want to respond back to God, the response is almost always like what can I do? What can I do? How can I express this amazing love that I have received and Jesus kind of made it like this formula - He said to the disciples this isn’t that complicated – ‘freely you receive, now freely give’ and that this is the recipe, this is kind of the recipe of prayer- not just in words and not just in emotions even and not just in our heart breaks for the things of God but that actually prayer is also life, prayer is also response, prayer is also action, prayer is also our willingness to say Thy Kingdom Come in me and then through me and into the world – and this is the thing that is most exciting and this is all through the scriptures - by the way – and this is an experience that is so captivating because what God is inviting us to, is He is inviting us into a life that is larger than our own prayer. He’s inviting us to live His prayer out in the world, as we offer ourselves to Him to use for His Glory and this is all over the place you know one of my favorites is Moses when he has this encounter with God, the burning bush and he has this like moment where he realises that the transcendent, powerful Yahweh - God of his ancestors - is here in this burning bush. And he takes off his shoes, and he’s like aaah- It’s Yahweh and then he says to God, and now what do I do, I've had this encounter, I have this experience I have this relationship with you, now what are we going to do? And God speaks to him and says we are going to change some things. And Moses says how are we going to change some things? And God says what is in your hand? what’s in your hand? And Moses looks down, I can kind of imagine him looking down saying Oh this - it’s a staff, I have a shepherd’s staff in my hand you know like all the shepherds have one – it’s just kind of a stick. And God says ah that’ll be perfect and God says let’s use what you have and Moses uses what he has – he is a shepherd, he’s not a king, he’s shepherd, he’s not a fighter, he’s a shepherd, he’s not a revolutionary, he’s a shepherd but God says let’s use you as shepherd, let’s use what you have. You know Hannah, a beautiful example of asking God in this relationship, saying God would you please give me a son; give me value, give me purpose, give me success in this context. Help me to be a contributor to the earth and God answers her prayer and Hannah’s response is to offer back because that’s what prayer does prayer takes something from a conversation, or a desire or a need into love – it receives things from God but then it also offers things back to God and It’s this beautiful exchange - that - if we can get into this posture- an open handed posture –here’s what the world does – it keeps it tight, it teaches you to take and to keep and to hold – and to just, it’s mine thanks very much and God, by His love and grace, softens us and we open up our hands and then we hear the words of Jesus again ‘freely you receive now, freely give’ - and as we offer to ourselves to the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords - His Kingdom Comes.