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(This article is from the soon available eBook (LifeNotes Beginnings – An Emphasis On Prayer -by Rusty Norman)
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Have you ever had a problem with a word? I guess what I really mean is, have you ever thought you knew what a word meant, then you find that what you thought it meant and what it really means are worlds apart.
No, I don’t suppose you have. But, boy, I sure have!!!
I remember carrying a certain meaning for a word around with me for, (yes, I hate to admit it), several years. You say, “How can you think that a word means something other than what it really means for such a long period of time?” Well, if you’ve got more than a couple of minutes, I’ll try to explain.
Once upon a time . . . No, seriously; I won’t tell you the word just yet, but, I will fill you in on some of the background information.
I heard the word, or a derivation of the word, one day while listening to a conversation. Now, I thought I really had some semblance of intelligence, so, even though I did not recognize the word, I thought about it, the context in which it was used and came to conclusion of what it meant rather quickly. (Did I say conclusion or delusion?) Anyway, I thought I had pretty well figured out what it meant, so I inserted that meaning in the blank and it became the meaning of that word for me. I didn’t bother to look it up, because my brilliant mind, with its great powers of deduction and reasoning, had already told me what I needed to know. The reason I actually did not look it up was because I was too busy, at the time, and I, in my foolish pride, didn’t want to let people know that my vocabulary was so small. (Now remember, I had that ‘semblance of intelligence’ I had to uphold.)
In reality, I really did think I had a handle on the meaning of that particular word. It all sounded so logical to me. The meaning I carried around with me, and assigned to that word for such a long period of time, was totally false. Are you ready for the word now?
Okay, here it is . . . “profundity.”
That’s really not such an overwhelming word, is it? (Just wait till you hear the definition my wonderful mind convinced me it meant.) Are you ready for this? “Foolishness, or lightheartedness” (and several other words that seemed to fit quite nicely at the time); Why, it even rhymed with ‘levity’. Now, before you get your dictionary, let me tell you what it really means. It means, “profound or intellectually deep” and several other lofty words we won’t mention. (I know some of you are obviously laughing at me rather loudly at this point, aren’t you?)
When you stop and think about it, they are kind of interchangeable aren’t they? (it all depends on your point of view, I guess.) Profundity? Levity? Well, at least they end with the same three letters. (Yes, I really did think that’s what it meant, OK????)
The same holds true for other situations, too. When you are too busy to read the word (the Bible) regularly you may begin to read and think about what you’re reading with previous (or preconceived) understanding. You read much too fast and ‘think’ you understand. And then you ‘think’ you know what the word says and, before long, what you ‘think’ it says takes precedence over what it really says.
I recently had this happen to me when I was studying for writing one of these articles. I kept thinking of scriptures while I was writing and didn’t bother to look them up, I just went ahead and used them and was very excited at all the things I ‘thought’ I had in the word to back me up. Then, as I began to read what I had written and checking my statements for truthfulness along with the quotes I had used from the word, I found I had misquoted some and combined some that should never have been combined. Needless to say, I had to do a complete rewrite of the whole thing and it ended up in the trash can anyway. It was a total misconception and did not represent truthfully the scriptures at all.
I am convinced that the same thing happens to us in our prayer life. We go to prayer and we begin praying from our previous understanding. Either we pray without understanding or from a shallow understanding of what God wants to accomplish and that keeps us from being effective. Our faith for what we are praying about is not in the word of God, but, only in what we think is in the word and in what could be our false understanding of our God and His character.
In our prayer times, the one thing we need to keep clearly in view before us is our God is able to do exceedingly abundant above that which we can think or ask. Our failure many times is not our lack of prayer, but we think too small when we pray. We don’t consider the eternal enough. We’re too busy to wait for God to answer our prayers, so we try to help Him out. We “ask amiss” as the book of James says. We try to fit our prayer time into an already too busy schedule, almost saying to God, “Here are my requests. See what you can do about them by 4 o’clock today. Oh, and by the way, thank you very much, God.”
The real problem with “busy-ness” is, we’re too busy to spend the time that it takes to accomplish what needs to be accomplished. You can’t always expect great results from rushed or hurried attempts (although there are times that brevity is very effective).
Look at the people who build up their bodies by lifting weights or through physical exercise. Do you think their physical appearance changed through only a little effort and a rushed time of training? Think again! In the same way, our spiritual muscles will never grow until we take the time to develop them. We can’t rush our prayer times and ‘fit’ them into our “busy-ness” and we can’t afford to approach them with false understandings and shallowness. We must be effective and to be effective we must ‘know’ the difference between our “busy-ness” and our “business…”
See you next time . . . Rusty
© September 24, 2009 – all rights reserved
© March 15, 1993 – all rights reserved
Rusty Norman