Run to the Father
Click below to listen to the reach:
"I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God. It changes me".
~ C.S. Lewis
It was years ago. She was the gentlest of ladies but with a powerhouse presence. She had something I knew I needed. She knew I needed it to. How do you ask for something you can’t identify, describe or even explain? Can’t buy it in the store or read it in a book…it’s just something being whispered into your soul that’s half invitation and half intimidation.
So I asked if she would mentor me. She eagerly smiled her yes. And so it began — this journey with no known destination; with only enough light for the next step ahead.
I’ve had numerous mentors through the years. Many of them are now resting, no longer breathing earth’s air, no longer just a phone call away. But each of them have left inside of me great foundational stones. None of them actually thought they were stonemasons. :) Christ is the cornerstone…foundational stones support the walls that are needed to protect a life from enemy siege and raging storms…all of these are built off the cornerstone of Christ. My list of Godly mentors is long — their rewards are ahead. They have changed my life, step by step by tear by prayer.
She would mentor me most by praying with me. She’d share her requests and ask me to be vulnerable enough to speak of mine as well. Then she would take both my hands and run to the Father with me. :) I always felt as if I was hanging on to the back of the train while she poured the coal to the engine. And we’d travel at the speed of light to the throne room. Then we’d sit at His feet and listen…and talk…and listen…and wait…and listen…and then peacefully journey back.
I asked her to help me understand how she sat beside me in her home even as it felt as if we had traveled far away. She helped me learn the art of entering the throne room of God, like a daughter of the King. She helped me understand what Oswald Chambers meant when he wrote these words:
“One of the reasons for our sense of futility in prayer is that we have lost our power to visualize. We can no longer even imagine putting ourselves deliberately before God.
It is actually more important to be broken bread and poured-out wine in the area of intercession than in our personal contact with others.
The power of visualization is what God gives a saint so that he can go beyond himself and be firmly placed into relationships he never before experienced.”
She was careful and clear as she guided me in the art of visualizing where I was and who I was reaching for. New Age thinking and eastern religious practices have confused and muddled the art of “running to the Father”. She explained, “Remove from your mind the thought of new age guidance to meditate in strange mind-emptying ways.” Instead she guided me to actually imagine the Heavenly throne-room, to visualize exactly where I wanted to go. The place of that great white Bema Seat. So I looked it up and painted a picture of it in my mind. And I found that 2 Corinthians 5:1-10 sang to my soul.
For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.
Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord.
For we live by faith, not by sight.
We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.
So I closed my eyes and imagined traveling up, high, beyond the sky, beyond the stars, into a place free and clear of universal gravity. I let my eyes long for seeing The Father seated, surrounded by holiness. I painted my own picture of what it might look like for a pure and holy God to be seated on the great white Bema throne…and I slowly began climbing the pure white marble steps I imagined surrounding the throne. I knew the exactness of the imagery was not the focus. Instead the pureness of my heart to be alone with the Father in a place apart from this world — that was my goal.
I was tiny. Picture a Polly Pocket sized girl beside the Statue of Liberty. He was/is wonderfully massive in comparison to my tininess. I love seeing Him this way, for everything rests on His great ability…not on me or my ability. I can run to Him in this great place of holiness and pour my tiny heart out to Him…and He is soundly, completely, thoroughly ABLE. I get to be tiny with Him. I get to climb my little self up to the top step and then dash across the polished white floor to the hem of His great robes. Nothing is allowed to stop me. No guard or angel or obstacle can keep me from running across the throne-room to my Father-Daddy-King-Savior-Counselor-Protector-Lord. And so I do. I run to Him. I’m allowed to temporarily leave this cluttered broken world and run to the Holy of Holies and lay myself down on His great toe or twirl around the hem of His great robes. Sometimes when I’m weeping in prayer, He lowers His massive Holy hand and scoops me up — gently laying me in His lap. I lay there and weep as He attends to everything. My need never outweighs His ability. My cries never alter His plan. My wonderings never hinder His knowing. My questions never frustrate His sovereignty.
He is soundly GOD above all
& I am safely His.
Psalm 16:1- “Keep me safe, my God. For in You I take refuge.”
Psalm 91:1 - “…dwell in the shelter of the Most High…rest in the shadow of the Almighty.”
Psalm 23:1 - “The Lord is my Shepherd…”
And so I learned the foundational truth of prayer. It’s personal. Intimate. A running-to the Highest Authority over the great and small things of life. But to truly run to Him, I leave this place, even as I sit right here in this place. There’s no emptying of the mind or meditational power involved in it. There’s a daughter running to her Father-God, using her unlimited High-Throne-room pass, gaining access to the ONE completely truthful, holy, honorable, wise, faithful, merciful KING. And then watching to see what He chooses to do with what I’ve laid in His lap.
She, my dear mentor, taught me how to “run to the Father”, fall into grace, and lay myself down in His lap, at any moment.
Then, so often, when our “conversation” is done — He scoops me up again in His great hand, breathes on me sweetly, and gently scoots me underneath His throne where no one can see me. And I dance…I dance beneath His throne surrounded by His robes…I dance.
Heaven will be sweet my friend. But until then, we will do the work here…with precious reprieves in prayer…running to the Throne-room of Grace, dancing ‘neath the mercy seat. Let’s do.
