Father, it is our desire to worship and then to obey. To come into your presence and to be reminded of who you are and to sing and to think and to be changed by your reality. We come into your presence this morning, God, not as people who are putting in time, punching a clock, or just doing the religious thing. We're coming because we want to meet you and we worship you. We worship you today because you are the God and Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Triune God, who is revealed in Scripture and who has been revealed in nature and preeminently in Jesus Christ. We come knowing so much about you from your Word and through what you have made, through what you have made, Lord, we know that you are omnipotent, that you are infinitely creative, that you have all of the resources of incredible power at your disposal to make what you have made. We see the order and the beauty of the world, and we recognize that the only thing that is messed up is what man has touched. So we worship you for your perfections. We worship you for your knowledge and your grace and your kindness. Not only are you powerful, but you've established a relationship with us and you want to know us. And so we meet you here and not on our own merit, but because of Jesus. We come recognizing, Lord, today, that you are holy and that there is nothing, nothing that we could do to ever walk into your presence and imagine that we are good in standing there except for Jesus who was our substitute and who is our elder brother and is the one in whom we have faith for the forgiveness of our sins. And so we stand before you today. We come to this place for given and loved and held on to because we are your children. And Lord, as we confess our sins, we are grateful that you have made that provision. And we want to start out a new week, fresh, thinking about you and touch with you, truly. We do want to, not the reality of the world to fade away, but its impact, Lord. We want your impact to be more real in our lives. So we bow here asking that you would meet us, that you would touch our minds and touch our hearts and then touch the way we live, and that Lord, it wouldn't be a game, but it would be real. Lord, you know the ones that are here, you know every one of us and we are not here by chance. We are here because you are a sovereign God who calls us and Lord, you know each one of us and you are not surprised by the difficulties and the challenges. Lord, you know the one who is grateful to have a new baby in the home, the one struggling because of a job that might not be there tomorrow. Those still suffering great guilt over the loss of a loved one, they don't know what to do. Major business transitions in the lives and people who just feel overloaded, Lord, you know each one of us. We all bring it here and put it in front of you. We ask that you would meet us and somehow by your spirit today and the only way that you can touch us and renew us. Help us to hold on to you and to not let go until we are different. As we look now into your word, we pray for the one who stands in front of your people that you would use one who is a sinner and finite to open your infinite truth so that we could meet you. And now Lord, receive these gifts that we do give. Thank you that you have given us everything that we have that is good and we give back some of it now that others could know in this ministry go forward. We pray in Jesus' name. Augustine said that we only find our rest when we find it in the that that that lays the foundation for what we are going to be talking about this morning. So kids, you may be dismissed for children's church. And those of you who have your Bibles, we have turned to Genesis back into the dusty pages of the Old Testament. Genesis chapter 32, thank you worship team for leading us in worship this morning and require and we look forward to looking now into God's word. Modern mystics, you say what's that? We are beginning a new series this morning. Last week we concluded a, what was it, 18, 19, 20 weeks as we studied in the book of Revelation together. And this morning we began a much shorter series entitled The Modern Mystics and if you see this logo up there, you will see that this really shows a Christian standing in front of God, receiving from the dove representative of the Holy Spirit, an olive branch representing peace. This is a very old picture in the history of the church representing the Christian who is living at peace with God. The Christian whose heart is at rest. The Christian who is okay, even in spite of all that's going on around them, the one who has learned to get in touch with God and in a sense this picture really appreciates Chuck the growth finding these things for me, you know. This guy knows how to get on the internet, he knows how to find this stuff. I know how to turn on a computer. I can get to AOL but I can't stay there very long but Chuck manages to find these great images that illustrate for us the idea of our relationship with the Lord and hear. This picture is really kind of a mystical relationship that we ought to be having with God, that we ought to connect with God. Some of the mystics in the early church come to mind and all down through history. We think of the mystics, well even in the middle ages, mystics like St. Francis the CC, a young man from a very rich family who took all that his father gave him and gave it away. He walked around barefoot, teaching and preaching and leading people into a personal relationship with God. The mystics of the church, and there are many others, we think of St. Teresa of Abel Atomas the campus, Bernard of Clare Vaud, there are many others, but with these mystics we think of people who really enjoyed God. They understood that this dimension was that we are to glorify God and enjoy it forever. But the mystics of the church seemed to enjoy God. They not only enjoyed doing for God, but they enjoyed the being with God. And it occurred to me as we studied this whole stuff on Revelation, as we got to the end of that and I started thinking ahead, that sure there is so much that's going to happen, so much that we need to do is Christians in this world, so many realities of what we got to do, but it's important that we learn to be with Him. We're going to be spending eternity with Him. We're going to be spending heaven with Him. I mean, how crucial it is that we learn to be with Him now and not just do otherwise we'll get to heaven, so what can I do for you? And there isn't going to be anything that we'll need to do for Him, but we will be able to be with Him. And so I think it makes sense for us as very activistic Americans, and I'm there. That's me. I love to do. You know, it's hard for me to pray. One reason is because it's hard for me to sit. And I like to read and sit when I'm reading, but then I like to go. It's hard for me to pray because I want to get up and do something. And yet I've been learning some things about sitting and prayer, about waiting and being there. And I want to share some of those things with you. And I think that we as Christians are going to be with God and have a need to learn to be with God here. We still don't know a lot about heaven. Joanne Johnson told me about the bumper sticker that said, if they don't have chocolate and heaven, I ain't going. Pastor Don Cole on the radio was asked, sir, will my dog be in heaven with me? And he said, son, I don't know when you get there whistle and see if he shows up. There's a lot of things I don't know about. Why shouldn't there be animals in heaven? There are indications there will be. Why not chocolate? But that won't be the best part. The best part will be God himself. And we ought to get on to that now and learn to develop the relationship. Now, but it's hard living in this culture to be, and to end it hard, to think about God, to pray about God, to think about heaven. It is so hard, and Professor Craig M. Gay in his book titled, The Way of the Modern World, or Why It's Tempting to Live as if God doesn't exist, tells us why it is very tempting for you and me to live as though God doesn't exist, why it's so easy for us as Americans to be activistic instead of a little mystical in our relationship with him. He says, number one, our political aspirations lead us to be tempted to live as though God doesn't exist. What do I mean? It means that we still put our hope in political leaders way too much. We're still looking for the political leader to end all political leaders to make sure the economy keeps on the way it is. Everywhere I travel, you would not believe, there's building here, you think the roads here are bad, there's roads everywhere, they're building everywhere because there's money now. And government officials are saying, well, we got the money, let's spend it. And so our political, we're looking to our leaders to use the money to make it happen. And our technological society, secondly, he says, is one reason why we're tempted to live as though God doesn't exist, there's gadgets everywhere, I'm wearing a gadget right now. I love gadgets, microcoset recorders, cell phones, laptop computers, you like gadgets, I do. And all of the conveniences of our world, our technological society leads us, tempts us to live as though God doesn't exist, you got all these technological gadgets who needs God. And then he says that modern life is intrinsically secular, that we have built a life, our modern life in America is intrinsically devoid of God, we still need Him, we don't think about Him, God is at the periphery of everything we do. And so, and I wrestle with this, I want you to know as a pastor, I wrestle with this because my job is building the kingdom of God on earth, in a sense, to be a part of that, not doing it, but being a part of that. And I wrestle with the being part, the enjoying God, the relating to God, I do, I struggle with this, it would be easy for me to just get up and do and teach, and maybe you struggle with that too. And so we've got to avoid the extremes, we've got to avoid the extreme of being so involved in the world, and the activity of the world that we don't have anything for the kingdom of God. But then we've got to avoid the extreme of being so wrapped up in the kingdom of God, that we don't have any time to be wrapped up with God. And then we've got to avoid the extreme of being so wrapped up with God that we don't do anything for the kingdom of God. You understand that? There's a balance between the being and the doing Jesus said in John 434, he said, my meat, my food is to do God's will. So that's what gets me up in the morning, that's what gets me going, it satisfies me. But what else did he do? He took off and he prayed in the early day time in the morning, and at night he spent huge chunks of time with God alone, and so it's possible to get so wrapped up in the world, it's so easy to get wrapped up in the church that we forget the relationship. To deny the nine feeling inside that something isn't right, to deny the creeping loneliness in our lives, to not deal with the issues that are really there, the sins that we've let go for too long, the relationships that we have not reconciled, to not spend time with him long enough that we meet him. Those who spend time with God long enough become a little mystical because they have learned to see a reality behind the reality of the world. So we want to look at a text this morning that will lead us to see the reality behind the reality. Now we'll look at a guy by the name of Jacob, many of you know him, and we're going to read Genesis 32, but I've got to give you some background first. I know this is a long introduction, don't go to sleep, stay with me. But I've got to give you some background with Jacob about Jacob because some of you know about him and some of you don't. Jacob had a mother and father, his father was Isaac, his mother was Rebecca, his twin brother fraternal twin brother didn't look anything alike, his fraternal twin brother was Esau, and this is as nice as I can say it about Jacob, he was a mama's boy. He liked to spend time in the kitchen and Rebecca thought he was wonderful. Esau was a man's man, he was the guy that liked to fish and hunt and sweat, and Isaac thought that Esau was the best. Jacob was sneaky, his name means supplanter. He was the guy who was raised with a sneaky mom as we'll see in a minute. He himself bought into the hole that he was sneaky and he got his sneakyness from his mom. Esau was arrogant and cocky and restless and physical, presumably he got it from his father. Where else do men get those kinds of traits? Esau would have been on the cover of GQ and Jacob on the cover of Good Housekeeping. Well there came a day when Isaac was going to pass on the family blessing to his first born. Esau was the first born, he came out and there were twins, but he came out first. According to Hebrew culture and custom, it was Esau who would receive the family blessing which included the blessing of God, and this included getting the larger part of the inheritance. I mean they didn't know anything about splitting up the inheritance equally back then. You want to talk about family squabbles, but Esau was supposed to get it all, and on the day that Isaac was going to pass on the family blessing to Esau, Rebecca had an idea. She hatched a plot and she said, Jacob, I don't know how you can get the blessing. Jacob said, ow, so Rebecca came up with the plot, Jacob pulled it off, and this is what it was. Well, the meal, the sacred meal was being prepared before the blessing bestowed, while Esau was out hunting for Isaac's favorite dish. Well Rebecca was cooking it up, and Jacob was finding some old skins that were dirty and sweaty and smelled like his brother, and he put those on. The meal was ready, Jacob brought it in, and said, I'm here, I'm your son, his father was old, and he couldn't see well, he couldn't hear very well, it says, it didn't sound like you, he saw, no, it's me, trust me, and so Isaac bought into it, and he gave him the blessing, he prayed for him, and then Jacob went out, and then Esau came in, and he found out what had happened. He was so mad, not only could he spit, but he was ready to kill, and he could have done it, and Rebecca knew it, and she said, Jacob, you've got to run for your life, and so Jacob took off, and he left the homeland of Canaan, and he went to the land of his mother's family, and he went, and he was gone for 20 years, 20 years. And God finally says to him, after acquiring several wives and several kids, he says, you go back to Canaan, and Jacob had a crisis, the biggest crisis in his sneaky, controlling life, and that was that he had to face Esau, he had to go back to Canaan, and he's a lot like us, we can all relate to it, have you ever gotten in relational hot water? Not me, I mean, have you ever tried to control, no examples, please out loud, have you ever tried to control something so much, and you thought, this thing's going to work, it's going to come out, I've got all the angles worked out, and it didn't happen, and Jacob was that way, he tried to control things, he got into relational problems, and he had incredible fears about the future, can you imagine, after 20 years coming back to face Arnold Schwarzenegger, who's bad, so what it was like, and God had blessed him incredibly in the meantime, I love this, God had blessed this sneaky guy all these years, and he was very wealthy, and Jacob came back, he had a plan, this was his plan, he's always thinking about the angles, right, and so he's thinking, how can I get Esau to not be ticked at me, this is what I'll do, so he split up his flocks, that was how you determined wealth in his day, all these animals, and he split him up into little groups, and put some of his servants with these groups of animals, and said, you go on ahead, the word had gone ahead already, that Jacob was coming to meet his brother Esau, and Esau with 400 men on horses was coming to meet his brother, Jacob do it, his cholesterol was very high, and his heart beat even higher, and he said to each one of his servants, he gave them the exact words, he didn't say, just tell that these are gifts, he gave them the exact words, he said, tell Esau's men, and tell Esau that these are gifts from his servant, Jacob, he said, tell them those exact words, send them on ahead, maybe when he sees all of these gifts, his anger will be sways and mitigated, and he won't tear my head off, and that was his plan, and now after all that planning, what does he do? Finally, he prays, just like you and me, you know, plan it all out, and then pray and say, God, would you bless this, God please bless this, if you don't bless this I'm dead, if you own plan I come up with God, you got to figure this out, and so let's turn in our Bible, Genesis 32, 9 through 12, look at his prayer, better later than never, right, better late than never, Genesis 32, 9, then Jacob prayed, oh God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac, O Lord, who said to me, go back to your country and your relatives, and I will make you prosper, I am unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness you have shown your servant, I had only my staff when I crossed this Jordan, but now I have become two groups, save me, I pray from the hand of my brother Esau, for I am afraid he will come and attack me, and also the mothers with their children, but you have said I will surely make you prosper and will make your descendants like the sand of the sea which cannot be counted, now look at the contents of his prayer which shows how he sort of connected with God in a level that might lead to more of that deeper mystical relationship with the father, notice in verse 9 that he reminds God that God was the one who told him to go out and do this thing, in verse 9 he says God, you're the one who told me to go back, you said you said you'd blessed me if I did everything you told me to do, he reminded God of God's promises, have you ever done that? Have you ever, and it's a good thing to do, it's not a bad thing to do it, have you done it kind of little angry sometimes? I have, God you, I can't tell you the number of times in the early days of this church, but I said God you promised, because I prayed and I thought I heard your voice, if we planted this church it would happen, and the money, I still do this, say God you promised, that you would build your church, and you know it's not bad to remind God of his covenantal promises to us, it's biblical, it's biblical to say what God has said he will do, and say God you promised you would do this, and I asked you to do it, and it's not an a sense of trying to twist the arm of God as it is reminding God which will build your own faith of the covenantal promises that he is made to you, then in verse 10, to his credit, Jacob expresses the real moral unworthiness of his own life, he says I know I'm sneaky, I know I've calved and calculated, I know I don't deserve any of this stuff, and you have blessed me, and he was incredibly rich by his standards in the day, but the father had blessed his deceitful and sneaky son, you heard the story of the fourth grade boy who broke every rule in his fourth grade class that day, had detention after school, came home with the dreaded note, kids you remember the dreaded note, my parents were both teachers, and I don't think there was a month that went by that I didn't come home with the dreaded note, and so when he came home his dad read the note, he said son you go to your room and you're going to miss supper, and so the little boy went upstairs, and then the father eventually came in, brought him his supper, and then a little bit after that he said son come with me and they went out and got ice cream, and he decided he wanted to teach him some theology, and he said to him son you did not deserve any dinner, that's justice, that I brought you dinner as mercy, and that's a reading ice cream right now, it's pure grace, and that's what the father does for us, he gives us what we don't deserve when we have been awful, just like you did, just like you did Jacob, and you've been sneaky too, and controlling, and yet he gives us incredible grace, and I love it how Jacob understands that God has blessed a bit of verse 11, Jacob gets real with God, he gets real finally, and he says God I'm scared to death, I am scared, he tells of why he's scared, and he asks that God would protect him, and after all this control, after all this controlling, he is brought to a point, he is brought to a point where he can't control the situation, where are you right now in your life, do you have any situations in your life that you cannot control, that's good, have you come to a point in your life where you feel empty, and your mouth is dry, and you don't know what to say, and you don't know what to do, and you come to God and you say I just don't know how to handle this, that's good, that's where God had to bring his, and the father does bring us to these points in our lives where we simply cannot control things, and he asks us to take risks, someone said, you know it's really hard to be on the cutting edge, it hurts, it is, hard to be on the cutting edge of risk, Andre Geig said you cannot discover new lands unless you leave sure for a very long time, if God has brought you to the end of your self, that's good, but then in verse 12 we come back at the end of this prayer, and look at it, he says, at the end of this prayer he comes back and he says, but you have said I will surely make you prosper, and will make your descendants like the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted, he said, but you have said I will make you prosper and make your descendants like the sand of the sea, it's kind of like he gets to the end of his prayer, and he comes back to what he already reminded God of his covenant promises, and he gets back and he says, God remember what you said you do, it's kind of like he comes, I feel like when I read this prayer that Jacob has gotten to the end of the situation, the end of his prayer, and he's still in that many peace, he's still front of his mind, God you be faithful, you said that you would make me a blessing, and I'd get the sense at the end of this prayer that Jacob is still miserable, have you ever prayed about something very significant, got to the end of it, and you still felt miserable, and you laid it out, you prayed acts, adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication, and you still felt miserable, you still felt the burden in your heart, you still felt awful about the situation, you prayed, but nothing seemed to happen inside, that happens a lot with Christians, and I think it's important as we think of prayer for the modern mystic to understand that we ought to really connect in prayer, that our prayer needs to go beneath the level of speaking the words to the condition of our heart, I think the mystics really did have a joy in Jesus because they stayed long enough with Jesus, and I think oftentimes our prayers are worrying on our knees, and you can tell that by when you get up off your knees, if you're still have got a pit in your stomach, and but the great thing is the Father's not done with Jacob, that night still young and Jacob had a visitor, look at Genesis 32, 24, because I don't think that Jacob was at that point where he was saying, if God before us, who can be against us, Genesis 32, so Jacob was left alone, I love this, this is one of my favorite passages in the Old Testament, Jacob was left alone, he said everybody across the river, his wife and kids and everything, they went out first, this guy said his wife and kids ahead of himself, gosh, he was brave, Genesis 32, so Jacob was left alone and a man wrestled with him until daybreak, when the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip, so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man, then the man said, let me go for it is daybreak, but Jacob replied, I will not let you go unless you bless me, the man said him, what is your name? Jacob he answered, then the man said, your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome, Jacob said, please tell me your name, but he replied, why do you ask my name? Then he blessed him there, so Jacob called the place Peniel saying it is because I saw God face to face and yet my life was spared, the sun rose above him as he passed Peniel and he was limping because of his hip, therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the tendon attached to the socket of the hip, because the socket of Jacob's hip was touched near the tendon. Jacob is prayed, he gets up and he is sitting around the campfire as dark and all he can do is think and plan and plan and plan, he is still uptight and somebody comes into his campsite and starts attacking him, he is wrestling with him, he up to understand Jacob was no ninja, he was a good cook, a pretty good businessman, but he was no Jeffie Ventura, but he did some pretty good moves, he hung in there, he had tenacity and he hung in there and wrestled with his guy, and you know the interesting thing is here, it is like this, a sailant obviously had more power, but he wouldn't take Jacob out, he could have pinned him and pounded three on the mat, but he did not, it is got like when I arm wrestled with Jeffie and my boys too, they left, I can say this and you will not tell them, you know I act like it is a big deal and then I take him out, but the reality is, he wrestled and this is sailing was obviously stronger, obviously so much stronger and then finally he knocks Jacob on the hip, boom, out of the sock, must have hurt, like crazy, imagine that, of course he would be limping and the sailant says let go, Jacob says no way, I am not letting go and there is one thing I have learned in the middle of the night, I am not letting go, I know you are a divine figure, probably thought he was an angel, but he said I am not letting go until you blessed me. I agree with the old commentator W. H. Griffith Thomas who said that in this night and battle it wasn't an angel, it was God who met him, God who wrestled with him, that is why I wanted to know his name and why God didn't have to tell him his name, Jacob knew, but he had hung in there and he had little sleep but he had still fought with God, God had wrestled with Jacob and Jacob had wrestled with God and God brought Jacob to the end of himself and that is where we need to be to actually pray. We need to get to the end of our self, we need to do all that we do, we need to do all of our striving and then we need to say I can't do this or if you have been brought to the end of yourself, maybe it is a relationship, maybe it is a relationship you have tried but you can't put it right. Maybe it is a habit you can't break, maybe it is a lust, you can't overcome, maybe it is something that I thought that keeps coming back up and you keep trying to nail it and you keep trying to say Lord don't ever let this come into my mind again but it does, God has got to bring us to the end of ourselves and the mystic isn't afraid of that, the Christian isn't afraid of that because he knows that God is far more powerful and it is okay if we don't have the answer. Calvin Miller said it well when he said becoming is indeed hard work for it is the work of being poured out. Guys, if we are going to become the kind of people who really enjoy God, we have got to get to the end of ourselves and let him pour ourselves out and say out of anything else and of the answers and I need you more than I can say. I like the story of the man who was in the choir and he had a bad voice in the choir complaint, week after week, finally they went to the pastor, the director went to the pastor and said you got to get this guy out of the choir, you don't get him out, I resign, the whole choir will resign. So the pastor finally went over and talked to the man, he said you know there are probably a lot of ministries that you could do in this church, I think you got to think of other places to minister and the man said why do you want to get me out of the choir? He said well five or six people have said you can't sing. He said there's no big deal, 50 or 60 people have told me that you can't preach. The truth is very hard to face for whoever you are against saying you can't preach. Whenever the words I can't come to our lips we falter because instinctively we want to say I can't and God loves it when we say I can't because in the midst of our weakness then he comes in and makes a strong, the honesty of the man who said what will I do when they find out that I'm me? The reality is God knows all that we are and nobody is we're more concerned with other people think of us we need to understand that God understands all of our weakness. Winston Churchill one time was speaking to a group of people and one lady said Mr. Prime Minister you're drunk and he was and he said madam you're ugly and tomorrow I'll be sober. It was it was some of you can use that at work tomorrow. Leo DeRosier a woman yelled out to Leo DeRosier the old baseball coach. He said if I was your wife I'd give you poison. He said madam if I was your husband I'd drink it. The problem most of what the time that we have are with people because we want to impress them and they say things to us that hurt. We want to lash back instead of just saying you know you're right. I don't drink the poison but God understands us and he accepts us and he loves us anyway and the reality is is that he holds on to us very tightly and we need like Jacob to come to the end of ourself. That's why Jacob is an example of the art of not letting go. Holding on in prayer because prayer is one of the major disciplines that we need. We desperately need if we're going to be mystics and be in touch with him. Now look at the results for Jacob quickly as we wrap this up. Verse 27 says that he got a new name. His name was Supplanter. Now his name means God's prince. That's a trade-off. I'd take. Now he would be a real leader of God's people and preserve them the messianic line down to the Messiah and you have to understand that in his Hebrew mind a new name meant a new character. So no longer was he going to be a sneaky person. He was a man who spent time with God and he was changed. Here's a truth for you. The way to get changed is to spend a lot of time with God. You can read the Bible and you can pray but unless you spend time meditating on it and spending time with him you'll never be changed but the more you're around and the more he'll change you. I know that sounds mystical, doesn't it? But when you're in the presence of God you will be transformed by God. He got a new name. Second Corinthians 3, 18 proves this and we who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory are being transformed into his likeness with ever increasing glory which comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. You spend time with him and he'll change you. Jacob not only got a new name and a character he got a new power. I think for once he was at rest. I sense that as he started out the next day he was at rest and then Jacob got a new experience. He had a new experience. He had met God. Have you ever spent enough time with God that you can look back and say that you wrestled with God for a period of time. Maybe it was all night in prayer. Until you finally got that sense of release. You agonized. You complained. You cried. You said I can't do it and then you got release. Relinquishment. You gave it to him and you actually broke through to peace. I think Jacob got it. He started out the next day to become a modern mystic is to come to the end of yourself. Guys, don't be afraid of coming to the end of yourself. Look at it. You understand God. I don't either. You don't understand why something happened in the past to you, why he allowed it in his sovereignty. I don't either. Come to the end of yourself. That's where he wants us. Don't let your suffering make you bitter. Don't just pray and acrostic. I have to tell you, I love this acrostic. I pray that almost every one of my pastoral prayers, every Sunday, is that if you look beneath it, it's based on the Lord's prayer. So pray that. That's good. But you have to break beyond that when you've got a real issue in your life. If you want to get in touch, if you want to get to the point where your heart has met God. And I've done that, but not enough. But more and more, that's the kind of prayer I want. P.T. Forsythe in his book, Let the Soul of Prayer said, to feed the soul, we must toil at prayer. And what a labor it is. He prayed in an agony, and we must pray even to tears, if need be. Hans Stinzel said, prayer must be the oxygen of the spiritual life of the Christian leader. That's true not just for the leader. It's true for all of us. It is our oxygen. And then again, Forsythe said, the chief failure prayer is its cessation. We quit too soon, too often. Become a mystic. Get a toga. In the morning, get your Bible. Get your Bible out, get on your knees, light a candle. No, I'm not suggesting you become Roman Catholic.
What does it take for you to begin to get to the end of yourself and to understand that God is really there. And you're going to stay there until he calms your heart. A five-year-old said, grace at family dinner one night, she said, dear God, thank you for these pancakes. And after the prayer was finished, the mother and dad said, honey, why did you pray for pancakes when we're having chicken? And she said, well, I just wanted to see if God was paying attention tonight. Somehow, the heresy of children is excusable. Of course, it hears us. Every time. That's not the problem. The problem is, do we know that he hears us? And does it mean anything to us? We're in from Jacob. The art of not letting go. We take it to heart. Let's pray. Father, this week in the struggle of the being and the doing, help us if we need it to err on the side of being.
For some of us, this is going to be a great adventure, Lord, to wait until our hearts have been touched by you. Some of us are going to be too afraid to do it. But, Lord, I pray that you would meet us, that you would exceed our expectations. And, Lord, take our cognitive faith and make it an emotive faith as well. Take our heading faith and make it an experiential faith. May we weep the tears of sadness in your presence and the tears of joy because we've met you. And may this begin a whole new way of relating to you until Jesus comes again as we pray in his holy name. Amen.