Psalm 5:3: “In the morning, Lord, You hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly.”
For so long, I’ve always thought that prayer was simply all about one bringing him or herself to the awkward point of making contact with the unseen; the unknown. It is what it is, really; at least to the average believer who hasn’t understood what it is to know God and to have Him know you as well. I mean; this awkwardness is what results in may just blabbering routine statements with eyes closed while others just resort to avoiding the entire activity altogether – I’ve fallen under both categories and I’m still a working progress; this I can admit; we’re all here to learn.
Anyway, one of the things that caused me to start examining this issue from a different light was the Psalm of David in Psalm 5:3 as stated above. After dwelling on this one for a few weeks, I finally came to the point of understanding “expectation” in prayer. In this case, expectation (or expectancy) should always be the end-result of any prayer. Anyway; before delving deeper into expectation, we need to first get back to this initial matter: addressing the unknown.
Addressing the unknown basically involves me and you getting genuinely in touch with the unseen bit of our being or existence where God in fact resides – this is what the layman would occasionally refer to as the sixth sense. This is the inner sense that sits behind anything we get to see, hear, smell, touch or see. In this case, as we interact with things physically, God enables us to inwardly perceive the same – sight, sound, touch, smell, taste – so that we may gain an understanding of our world; not just the knowledge of it.
In this way, God is unseen – at least according to average human judgment – and yet, seen; through the intricate “primitive” patterns that run this world. The ultimate pattern is man, who has been made to mirror God; the Spirit, in the physical. The question then is, what does it take for man to mirror God?
Well, it takes man knowing God first and having God know him as well. I’m not talking about abstract knowledge; I’m talking about intimacy. Similarly, man; despite knowing what a woman is, still has to get intimate with her in order for him to truly know who she is such that the two can now be able to even become one; knowing each other perfectly.
At this, it is this knowledge that’s derived from intimacy that is able to birth reasonable fruit, i.e a child and ultimately; a family that can even grow into an entire empire – the way Adam and Eve basically brought forth the entire human race from the place of intimacy. Genuine intimacy is what brings the best out of the two of them (man and woman); a kind of collective energy exchange that gets joined into one formidable force; a common alignment in body and soul that restores Adam into his pre-Eve status; only that Adam is no longer alone (the all-in-one human spirit) but one-in-two (the human spirit existent in two lock-and-key personalities); with greater capacity for greatness that is brought about by the fact that there are two sets of brains, hearts, limbs, etc. Certainly, two are good for each other as they are able to keep warm and comfort each other (Ecclesiastes 4:9-11).
This arrangement between man and woman is what God also desires to have with man. At this, God is the source of everything good that man can ever have while man is the ultimate receiver of everything good that comes from God. Man is able to receive God’s love in its most personified way, His intellect as well as every other personal attribute of God. This arrangement then involves man prostrating himself spiritually; making himself utterly humble; not minding how the world is going to view his vulnerabilities since the world’s opinions are trash anyway. In man’s prostrated spiritual posture, God will have an easy time dealing with the man.
God is indeed the ultimate outflow of personality while man is the ultimate receiver of the same; who now gets to mirror it or put it on display. This (spiritual) intimacy between God and man then goes on to birth the ultimate fruit that can ever be obtained from such an arrangement; the fruit of the Spirit which constitutes love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, kindness, meekness and faithfulness. This is the child that man is able to birth out of his spirit after an intimate interaction with God. It is based on this interaction that man is then able to build up a home and even a nation which stands the test of time – think about God and Abraham; the father of faith.
Now getting back to expectation; expectation is all about man, just like the woman becomes expectant with child, being expectant with the fruit of God’s Spirit; the fruit against which no law exists that should keep God from servicing man with all that’s needed to nurture the fruit until it is fully grown into a mature adult – this being the image of the fullness of Christ mentioned in Ephesians 4:13. Similarly, any man who has been intimate with a woman to the point of making her expectant with child should make it his primary obligation to service this woman with all that’s needed to nurture this child until he or she is a mature adult. There’s no law that keeps the man from fulfilling this role as well.
Thus, any man who’s been intimate with God to the point of the man becoming expectant with the fruit of the Spirit should now expect God, being a responsible Father, to provide him with all the necessary things needed to make him grow in Spirit until the perfect day. Thus, if anyone should then find him or herself struggling in a certain area of life such as sleeplessness; it would be vital for them to be reminded that sleeplessness isn’t by any means the believer’s portion as God grants His beloved sweet sleep.
This should then prompt the believer to search out the specific issue which he or she hasn’t laid bare before the Lord through the process of intimacy. This can be the fact that this believer is battling with late-night meals, heavy night meals (both of these are unhealthy habits which also have grave spiritual connotations) or an inward sense of bitterness for which God is actually being merciful enough by keeping the believer from going to sleep with an unaddressed issue – this is because all unaddressed issues usually get consolidated during sleep such that they become strongholds that end up weighing down the heart in the days to come. Certainly, we should always heed to God’s merciful call through our sleeplessness (or any other form of unique inward restlessness) to address potentially life-ruining issues.
Once the believer is able to identify this struggle, he or she is then to lay bare in God’s sight so that through the process of spiritual intimacy, the believer becomes yet again expectant with the fruit of the Spirit which then affords him or her good sleep. In this simple, fulfilling way; your expectation will have been conceived and met at the place of prayer. With this expectation, request God to then ensure that He provides you with everything needed to build up your Spirit until the perfect day and He will surely do so. Let’s learn to embrace this, guys. Stay blessed, you are loved by God!
