The Watchman

My Dad served in the Navy during World War Two. After basic training, he was assigned to patrol the beaches of California at night. Japanese submarines were known to be off the coast. Consequently, diligence and alertness were required of those on Shore Patrol. One of his additional duties was to guard a checkpoint on a Naval Base in San Diego. As a Seaman second-class, he had the authority to refuse to let anyone (no matter their rank) without proper documentation through his gate. One day an officer tried to get through the checkpoint without his ID. Even though the officer threatened my Dad with court-martial, he refused to let him enter. My Father had to draw his weapon. The highly agitated officer did not want to comply with the command of his subordinate. The incident was investigated, and my Dad was fully exonerated.

Seaman second-class Sparks (who later became first-class} was later assigned to The USS Lexington aircraft carrier in the Pacific. One of his jobs on his ship was as a night watchman. And on one particular night, he saw a Bible on a table open to Isaiah chapter 21. Below are some of the verses from the chapter:

“For thus the Lord said to me:
“Go, set a watchman;
let him announce what he sees…” (Isaiah 21:6 ESV)

“Then he who saw cried out:
“Upon a watchtower I stand, O Lord,
continually by day,
and at my post I am stationed
whole nights.” (Isaiah 21:8 ESV)

“…Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night?
The watchman said, The morning cometh, and also the night: if ye will enquire, enquire ye: return, come.” (Isiah 21: 11-12 KJV)

While reading the Bible, my Dad realized that he was a watchman that night.

As followers of Jesus, he calls us to “watch and pray” (Matthew 26:40.) God has given us much more spiritual authority than most of us realize. We should never let fear back us down from our assignment as prayer warriors.

“And I sought for a man among them who should build up the wall and stand in the breach before me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found none.” – Ezekial 22:30

A spiritual Watchman watches out for the welfare of others through intercessory prayer. Just like a military sentry, we must remain at our post in prayer – spiritually alert on behalf of others. When a person, Church, or nation starts drifting away from God, we become vulnerable to the enemy’s attack. A Watchmen’s call is to warn those we are spiritually responsible for and to pray for revival.

God calls some to stand watch over Nations, geographical regions, cities, and Churches. We all have different assignments. But the Lord expects all of us to pray for those in positions of authority(1 Timothy 2:1-4.) Those who watch and pray sometimes receive revelation or spiritual insights before conflict arises. Such spiritually sensitive people should be accountable to elders in a local Church. It’s important to share with leadership what you believe the Lord is revealing to you. Then leave it to the elders to pray over. It’s their responsibility to accept or reject your guidance.

As we engage in intercessory prayer, we become sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s leading. And God may reveal to us the schemes of the devil (Ephesians 6:11.) I believe God gives us insight so that we can pray God’s kingdom into the situation. As a person of prayer, you can influence the culture around you – if you are diligent and refuse to give up. God is sovereign, but there are some things he will not do until we ask him ( James 4:2-3.)

Our goal is to become discerning, not suspicious. And discernment comes from time spent with God in prayer. Knowing and obeying Scripture is essential to our roles as prayer warriors. We must embrace a wartime mentality while realizing that we are at war with spiritual entities, not people. Philosophies and ideologies that contradict God’s truth are weapons that the adversary uses to destroy societies.

No matter the sphere of spiritual influence that God assigns you, know that your prayers on behalf of others will make a difference.

Four Prayers For Bible Reading

When we open our Bibles to read, we’re never alone. The Holy Spirit hovers over and in the words of God, ready to stir our hearts, illumine our minds, and redirect our lives, all for the glory of Christ (John 16:14). The Spirit is the X factor in Bible reading, making an otherwise ordinary routine supernatural — and making it utterly foolish to read and study without praying for our eyes, minds, and hearts.

Prayer is a conversation, but not one we start. God speaks first. His voice sounds in the Scriptures and climactically in the person and work of his Son. Then, wonder of all wonders, he stops, he stoops, he bends his ear to listen to us. Prayer is almost too good to be true. With our eyes on God’s words, he gives us his ear, too.

How then should we pray over our Bibles? Here are four verses you might pray as you open God’s word.

1. Psalm 119:18: Open My Eyes to Wonder

“Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law” (Psalm 119:18). We ask God to open our spiritual eyes to show us the glimpses of glory we cannot see by ourselves. Without his help, we are simply “natural” persons with natural eyes. “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand [see] them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14–15).
“Seeing they do not” was Jesus’s phrase for those who saw him and his teaching only with natural eyes, without the illumining work of the Spirit (Matthew 13:13). This is why Paul prays for Christians, “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened” (Ephesians 1:17–18).

Join the psalmist in praying not just for the gift of spiritual sight, but for the gift of seeing wondrous things in God’s word. Wonder is a great antidote for wandering. Those who cultivate awe keep their hearts warm and soft, and resist the temptations to grow cold and fall away.

2. Luke 18:38: Have Mercy on Me

Pray, like the blind man begging roadside, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” For as long as we are in this life, sin encumbers every encounter with God in his word. We fail friends and family daily — and even more, we fail God. So it is fitting to accompany our opening of God’s word with the humble, broken, poor plea of the redeemed: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Luke 18:13).
Bible reading is a daily prompt to own our failures, newly repent, and freshly cast ourselves on his grace all over again. Prayer is the path to staying fascinated with his grace and cultivating a spirit of true humility.

3. James 1:22: Make Me a Doer of Your Word

Pray that God, having opened your eyes to wonder and reminded you of the sufficiency of his grace, would produce genuine change in your life. Ask him to allow the seeds from Scripture to bear real, noticeable fruit in tangible acts of sacrificial love for others. “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (James 1:22). You need not artificially capture one, specific point of application from every passage, but pray that his word would shape and inform and direct your practical living.

Ask that he would make you more manifestly loving, not less, because of the time invested alone in reading and studying his word.

4. Luke 24:45: Open My Eyes to Jesus

This is another way of praying that God would open our eyes to wonder, just with more specificity. The works of God stand as marvelous mountain ranges in the Bible, but the highest peak, and the most majestic vista, is the person and work of his Son.

As Jesus himself taught after his resurrection, he is the Bible’s closest thing to a skeleton key for unlocking the meaning of every text — every book, every plot twist, the whole story. First, “he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27), then he taught his disciples that “everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled” (Luke 24:44). And in doing so, “he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures” (Luke 24:45).

The great goal of Bible reading and study is this: knowing and enjoying Jesus. This is a taste now of heaven’s coming delights. “This is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). This gives direction, focus, and purpose to our study. “Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD” (Hosea 6:3). This forms great yearning and passion in our souls: “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8).

Keep both eyes peeled for Jesus. Until we see how the passage at hand relates to Jesus’s person and work, we haven’t yet finished the single most important aspect of our reading.
We are desperate for God’s ongoing help to see, and so we pray. - David Mathis

A Prayer Life That Nourishes Your Relationship To God by Tim Keller

This post was copied from the Redeemer Presbyterian Church website www.redeemer.com

"Every year I look forward to the slower pace of the summer months because of the opportunity it gives me to re-invigorate my prayer life. It's not that I don't pray during the year, but rarely, in the press of hectic scheduling, am I able to consistently devote the hours necessary to reawaken the intimacy with God that not only I crave, but which is my only defense against burnout.

Just as the old discussion of quality time versus quantity time with your family is a red herring (there IS no quality time, except that which occurs in the midst of a large quantity of time), so with God. The richness of my experience of God in prayer only occurs in the midst of much time set aside to be with him. That said, there are several other things I do which might be helpful to some of you who also will have increased flexibility of time in the coming months, and who want to connect with God in a deeper way.

The main way I do this is to seek an increase in the amount of my meditation. It is no accident that the first two Psalms in the Psalter are not prayers per se, but rather meditations. In fact the very first Psalm, the doorway into the prayer book of the Bible, is a meditation on meditation. Why? We are being taught that while it is certainly possible for deep experiences of the presence and power of God to hap pen in innumerable ways, the ordinary way for 'going deeper' spiritually is through meditation. It is in meditation that we get into deeper self-surrender, then into higher, clearer faith-sights of his beauty, and finally into powerful, dynamic prayer for the world.

What is meditation?

In most Protestant traditions, the 'personal devotional' life consists of two parts: Bible study and prayer. But meditation is neither and both. The Puritan Richard Baxter wrote: "Solemn or stated meditation is distinguished from the study of the word, wherein our principle aim is to learn the truth; and also from prayer, whereof God himself is the immediate object. But meditation is the affecting of our own hearts and minds with love, delight, and humility toward the things contained [in the Word]."

An example of meditation is found in Psalm 103:1-2: "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits." Notice that this is not the same thing as prayer. He is not speaking directly to God, though it is clear that David is extremely aware of being in the presence of God. The object of the meditation is his own heart. David is 'talking to himself' - to his soul. But the subject of the meditation is truth about God - "forget not all his benefits."

Obviously, David has not intellectually forgotten that God has forgiven his sins, redeemed his life, and so on (Ps.103:2ff.) Rather, he is taking Biblical truths and driving them into his own heart until it is affected, delighted, and changed by them. Peter Toon has written that meditation is the descent of the mind with Biblical truth into the inmost heart until the whole being yearns for God.

The kind of meditation we see in the Psalms is neither the anti-rational 'spirituality' of New Age religion, nor is it the over-rational 'spirituality' of much modern evangelical religion. On the one hand, New Age religion takes its cues from Eastern philosophy and thinks of meditation as a calm, serene emptying of the mind of all rational thought. David's meditation, however, is furiously rational. "Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me?" he says in Psalm 42, literally arguing and reasoning with his heart. On the other hand, much evangelical religion is afraid of any mystical, experiential element. It conceives of a 'devotional life' as only the study of the Bible and then prayer for the strength to practice it. David's meditation, however, is deeply mystical. "One thing I seek - to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord" (Ps.27:4). He is looking for a transformation of the affections of his heart as he prays.

Jonathan Edwards speaks of this very thing in his own practice of meditation. "In reading [the Scripture] I seemed often to see so much light, that I could not get along in reading - almost every sentence seemed to be full of wonders....I...found, from time to time, an inward sweetness, that used, as it were, to carry me away in my contemplations. I felt alone... sweetly conversing with Christ, and wrapped and swallowed up in God. The sense I had of divine things, would often of a sudden as it were, kindle up a sweet burning in my heart; an ardor of my soul, that I know not how to express..." Notice how his meditation ("contemplations") on the Word led into a deep sense of intimacy in prayer. That is why a Psalm on meditation begins the Biblical book on prayer.

How to meditate

Of course, the best way to learn to do anything is to watch a "master" at work. If you read Psalms 1, 42, 77, 103, and 119 you get this very thing. However, we all need to begin as beginners. There is no better 'Beginner's Guide to Meditation' than the model that Martin Luther gave in his letter "A Simple Way to Pray" written to his barber, Peter Beskendorf, in 1535. Luther directed that we should "warm the heart up" through meditation before we prayed. Based on Luther's insights, I use the following outline for a short (30 minutes or less) time of Bible reading, meditation, and prayer. After reading a portion of the Bible slowly, and choosing one or two things or insights that especially helped me, I take each insight and ask the following questions:

1.Adoration - How can I love and praise God on the basis of this? What do I see here that I can praise him for?

2.Repentance - How do I fail to realize this in my life? What wrong behavior, harmful emotions or attitudes result when I forget this?

3.Gospel Thanks - How can I thank Jesus as the ultimate revelation of this attribute of God (#1) and the ultimate answer to this sin or need of mine (#2)?

4.Aspiration- How does this show me what I should or can be and do? How would I be different if this truth were powerfully real to me?
After I have thought out and at least sketchily written out answers to each question, then I proceed to pray my praises, confessions, and supplications to God directly. Often, as you are meditating, or as you are praying, you may feel your heart warm or even melt with a spiritual sense of the reality of God. Sometimes, of course, nothing happens at all! And very rarely, you can have life-changing experiences of the presence of God that you never forget. The number and power of these encounters are completely out of your control. The Spirit blows wherever he pleases (Jn 3:8). But it has only been with the practice of meditation that my own experience of God's reality has become at all regular and progressively deeper.

"Blessed is the man [whose] delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night." (Psalm 1:1,3)"

Biblical Prayer Topics

In John Piper’s excellent book, “Let the Nations be Glad”, he provides a list of Biblical prayer topics. I have found these very helpful as pointers for my own prayer life, and I typed it up a while ago so I could print it out and refer to it. If you find your prayers tend to get stuck in a rut and are lacking in a bigger kingdom perspective, then I recommend you try making use of this list:

Call on God…

To exalt his name in the world (Matt 6:9)
To extend his kingdom in the world (Matt 6:10)
That the Gospel would run and triumph (1 Thess 3:1)
For the fullness of the Holy Spirit (Luke 11:13; Eph 3:19)
To vindicate his people in their cause (Luke 18:7)
To save unbelievers (Rom 10:1)
To direct the use of the sword (Eph 6:17-18)
For boldness in proclamation (Eph 6:18-19, Acts 4:29)
For signs and wonders (Acts 4:30; James 5:17-18)
For healing of wounded comrades (James 5:14-15)
For the healing of unbelievers (Acts 28:8)
For the casting out of demons (Mark 9:29)
For miraculous deliverances (Acts 12:5,12; 16:25-26)
For the raising of the dead (Acts 9:40)
To supply his troops with necessities (Matt 6:11)
For strategic wisdom (James 1:5)
To establish leadership in the outposts (Acts 14:23)
To send out reinforcements (Matt 9:38, Acts 13:2-3)
For the success of other missionaries (Rom 15:30-31)
For unity and harmony in the ranks (John 17:20-21)
For the encouragement of togetherness (1 Thess 3:10)
For a mind of discernment (Phil 1:9-10)
For a knowledge of his will (Col 1:9)
To know him better (Col 1:10; Eph 1:17)
For power to comprehend the love of Christ (Eph 3:14,18)
For a deeper sense of assured hope (Eph 1:16,18)
For strength and endurance (Col 1:11, Eph 3:16)
For a deeper sense of God’s power within (Eph 1:16,19)
That our faith not be destroyed (Luke 22:32; 21:36)
For greater faith (Mark 9:24; Eph 3:17)
That we might not fall into temptation (Matt 6:13; Matt 26:41)
That he would complete our resolves (2 Thess 1:11)
That we would do good works (Col 1:10)
For the forgiveness of our sins (Matt 6:12)
For protection from the evil one (Matt 6:13)

(Written by Mark Heath from his Word and Spirit blog)