Passion is required when we pray to the Lord

Jabes is a character who has substance, a man who has been formed in the crucible of perhaps a lonely and painful childhood due to that spiritual weight that his mother put on him when she gave him a name that meant pain due to the painful childbirth that she had. , and did not realize that by giving this name he was like chaining his son to a life of failure.

Thank God Jabes realized in time that there was an alternative and cried out to God, and there I want to take the thread of our meditation on this occasion. Going to chapter 4 verse 10, the second verse of this little chapter that is enclosed here among these lists of anonymous characters who are descendants of Judah, says that: "Jabesh called on the God of Israel."

It is interesting that the writer speaks of Jabesh "invoking the God of Israel." It is interesting and revealing because evidently the writer wants to point out that Jabes is appealing not to anything but to a God who is Almighty, a God who already has a relationship with His people of which Jabes is a member, a God who has Power if he wants to change the situation of Jabes and grant him what He wants.

That is to say, when we invoke the Lord we have to first invoke, that means how to cry out, call to, direct ourselves in a specific way towards God. And I also believe that this idea of having a conception of a powerful God is involved, a God who has a previous relationship with us, a God who is capable of answering our prayers. This idea of the God of Israel is a key idea that means the God who attends to the needs of His children, and that is why it is so important that we make that point there, that if we cry out to God we are going to cry out to a God we believe who has the power to change our situation. We have to have faith and believe that God is willing to do what he has to do.

Another interesting thing, it says here that the way in which Jabes refers to that Almighty God of Israel, he says: "Oh, if you would give me a blessing" and that "oh" of Jabes has always captivated me, it is an intense exclamation, right ? Jabes's "oh" is powerful and also revealing about what's going on inside him.

And that invites me to think that passion is required, intensity is required when we pray to the Lord. Until we reach that level of commitment and urgency with our dreams and our passions it is very likely that we will not receive anything.

I always tell my Congregation that we cannot settle for lukewarm, half-hearted, casual prayers, but that our prayer life has to be passionate, intense, specific, focused, we have to visualize that God who wants to bless us, we have to see it almost as in three dimensions. Our prayers have to have texture, be robust and many times God waits for our prayers and our urgent needs to reach that boiling point so to speak before answering, and many times I believe that God waits for that moment to come before to answer our prayers because that means that we are already prepared, right?

Many times I have spoken in the meditations that I have shared with you, and this is something that is very important for my life, about the importance of passion, intensity because through Scripture we see that this is the type of person that God honors.

Think of the woman with the issue of blood who walks into the crowd in violation of Judaic law and takes power away from Jesus by touching the hem of His robe anonymously. Let us think of the Zirophoenician woman who when the Lord denies her request the first time she then rebuts the Lord and says: "Yes, but remember that even the dogs can eat from the crumbs that fall from the table." Let us remember the friends of the paralytic who break the roof violating the civil law and put their patient through the roof, and they present him to Jesus as putting him in his face so that He can make a healing and the Lord honors his request.

In all these cases we see that the Lord is pleased instead of being bothered by existence, he is pleased with the despair, the resolution, the urgency and the daring that these people exemplify, and thus the Bible is populated with these desperate characters; Ana, the Shunammite, so many characters right? They take Power from God because of their sense of urgency and we have to cultivate in our requests that sense of focus and passion because I believe that God honors that more than anything else.

I'm going to leave it there and then we're going to continue with this "oh" from Jabes that is so revealing for our life of faith. God bless you and we will talk to each other in our next meditation.