Tell Me Your Vision For the World...

Tell me your vision for the world, not your vitriol against it. Please don’t explain to me how wrong your opponent’s ideas are, tell me how brilliant your ideas are. Why do we love the blame game? Because in faith, politics and relationships blaming others pays off a huge bonus to our ego.

Isaiah 58:9 says, “Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; You will cry, and He will say, ‘Here I am.’ If you remove the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness…”. We all want God to answer our prayers and respond as quickly as we can cry out. It might surprise you to know that this is what He wants too! Jesus proposed that we would always get whatever we have asked for in prayer (John 15:7). Heaven wants this more than we want it but we have too easily overlooked our culpability in the failure.

We are culpable for unanswered prayer in that we have spent our energy on blame and not progress. In the case of Isaiah’s words God is calling for a fast, not of food and drink, but of negativity that feeds the ego. The prophet’s vision is of a people who become like a spectacular garden glistening with the water of encouragement(58:11). This vision is built upon the premises of the words in verse 9. Look again;
1. Remove the yoke—the yoke of our own making! Which is…
2. Pointing the finger – externalizing the reasons why we can not make progress. A over-fed ego loves to reason why the wide world is conspiring to keep its host down.
3. And speaking wickedness – this Hebrew expression goes to the notion of describing how nothing you do matters or works. It literally means, “nothingness”, the ultimate negative energy.

New Age teachers love to talk about negative and positive energy. Avoiding these terms is surrendering them to that venue and I will not do that! It is clear that this principle is a core value of the Bible. Philippians 4:4-9 concludes with, “…whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of a good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things.” Let everything that has breath (could be translated as energy), praise the Lord (Psalm 150:6).

Blame is the ultimate negative energy and praise to God and honor for people is the ultimate positive energy. When we fast the former and furiously embrace the latter our lives will spiritually and psychologically blossom with a beautiful flourish. Blame will easily feed your ego with always being right even at the expense of truth to the contrary. You will not maintain vital connection to God and others in this spirit, however, praise and honor will heal your ego by connecting it to every outside source designed to sustain the real and only you.

Bill Johnson loves to say, “You can not go in faith where you have not gone in intimacy.” Simply put, the more profound my love for God, enthusiasm for life and passion for Kingdom Come reality in my world the more explosive my prayer life will be. If I’m routinely sour about politics, life and relationships it is likely my prayers are extensions of my unpleasant mood.

If I’m lit up through worship and love for Daddy, if I’m drinking in the glory of life all around me, if I’m energized about being a servant with solutions then my life becomes a prayer because positive living is a sacrifice worthy of the King!