Abiding: Dwelling in God’s Spiritual Estuary
Last week I shared my morning prayer routine with you. If you missed it, go back and look: https://www.blueveilministries.com/devotions/morning-prayers
Over the next several devotions, I would like to walk through the practice and illustrate how each part engages, expands and explores my relationship with God. As you read these, consider how you engage with God and your hopes for future time spent with God.
The first thing I start with each morning is the following request: “Lord, open my heart, soul and mind this morning and abide in me as I abide in you.”
This request sets my intention to dwell with God and remain focused on God during the time of my morning prayer. While it would be nice to focus on God all day, the truth is I can’t. There is no such thing as multi-tasking. When I drive a car, make my breakfast, talk with someone, write an email, etc., I must focus on those tasks. Even though I know God is always with me, the truth is I am rarely aware of it. This brief 10-20 minutes is my time to become aware of God’s presence in my life and to actually spend time with God.
So I begin my prayers by stating my hope for God to open my heart, soul and mind. I need my heart open so that any feelings of anxiety, fear, confusion, or even excitement, joy and compassion are placed aside. There is nothing wrong with these emotions and no reason to keep them from God. But until I place them aside, I will find myself distracted by them and unable to open my awareness to God’s presence.
By stating my intent to be with God, I’m stepping into a spiritual estuary. An estuary is the place where the water from rivers meets the ocean. This area is always changing with the tide. High tide moves the salty water up into the mouth of the river and low tide draws the river out into the ocean. Both sea and land nourish one another providing a unique habitat for wildlife.
For me, entering prayer is like entering a spiritual estuary. Our daily lives are consumed with the details of work, family, emotions, thoughts and general busyness. Even when we are “resting” our minds are usually busy thinking about the show we are watching, book we are reading, or the person we are talking with. We come to God from our noisy lives and it takes intentionality to set that aside so that we can truly be present with God. Likewise, God comes to us in prayer. We know that God is beyond our imagining - like the depths of the ocean, God is a mystery too deep and wide to be imagined. But God meets us in prayer like the ocean racing up to meet a river. We join God in our spiritual estuary whenever we turn our hearts and minds over to God in prayer.
When I place my own emotions aside I can be open to God’s emotions.
- Yes, God has emotions. A quick read though the Bible will illustrate God’s overwhelming love for us, which then opens God up to all the emotions that come with love - joy, compassion, frustration, disappointment and even anger. These intense emotions are expressed throughout the Bible along with God’s deep longing to be in a loving, mutual relationship with us. At the same time, God is sometimes furious with the ways we have turned against God, turned to other gods and hurt one another in the process. The following excerpt from Jeremiah 32: 33-40 illustrates this well. In the quote below, note God’s deep disgust and dismay that the people of Israel are worshiping another gods (Baal and Molek) and literally sacrificing their children to that god. God is beside God’s self and ready to allow the Promised Land to fall into the hands of the Babylonians. Yet even in God’s anger, God promises to eventually bring back the people and deepen God’s relationship with them so that it is written on their hearts. Note the raw emotion God expresses to God’s people in conversation with the prophet Jeremiah…
They turned their backs to me and not their faces; though I taught them again and again, they would not listen or respond to discipline. They set up their vile images in the house that bears my Name and defiled it. They built high places for Baal in the Valley of Ben Hinnom to sacrifice their sons and daughters to Molek, though I never commanded—nor did it enter my mind—that they should do such a detestable thing and so make Judah sin.
You are saying about this city, ‘By the sword, famine and plague it will be given into the hands of the king of Babylon’; but this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I will surely gather them from all the lands where I banish them in my furious anger and great wrath; I will bring them back to this place and let them live in safety. They will be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them singleness of heart and action, so that they will always fear me and that all will then go well for them and for their children after them. I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me. I will rejoice in doing them good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul.
These strong words from God illustrate the depth of God’s deep love for us, God’s investment in God’s relationship with us, and God’s expectation that we love God in return as God’s people. God has fully committed to be in relationship with us, God’s people. That commitment was further expressed in the death, resurrection and return of Jesus to offer forgiveness to the very people who abandoned him in his hour of need. When it comes to our relationship with God, God is all in. In response to that astounding love, I turn my heart to God and wonder how to respond. When I finally asked that question of God, God told me to come regularly in prayer. When I asked what to pray, God gave me the prayers I’ve shared with you as a way to start. But this isn’t a one time thing. This is a relationship that continues to evolve over time.
So each morning, I say the opening worlds inviting God to abide in me and me in God as much for myself as for God. My hope is to simply sit with God in the peace and quiet of the morning - the way you may sit with a friend over coffee, both of you looking at the birds in the trees or the dance of the fire. No words are necessary, but the awareness of presence of the other is experienced in a way that is difficult to articulate. You know there are there even when you aren’t looking at them or speaking with them. This prayer shares my intention to simply sit with God - abiding in this space and time with God.
My desire stems from a longing within my soul, a longing placed there by God. When I say this opening line, I declare that I am entering a place and time where I intend to put everything else aside and simply spend time with God. I am also declaring that I expect God will show up to be with me. If I get nervous and worry that I am over stepping my bounds demanding too much of God, I remember that Jesus calls on us to abide in him just as he abides in God.
Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. (John 15:4)
With my opening line, I’m acknowledging that invitation and taking Jesus up on it.
My awareness of God and ability to interact with God has more to do with me than God. My actual experience of prayer varies by day. I’ve come to think of it like tides. When I enter into prayer, I’m walking into the estuary. Some days it is high tide and God’s spirit fills my soul, transporting my mind out of the drum of time and dwelling within my Spirit with sighs too deep for words. Other days it is low tide. During low tide, I don’t get much past this prayer without falling into distractions. Repeating this prayer pulls me back to my intention to take the 10-20 minutes and simply sit with God. Occasionally I have days where I can never move beyond this prayer. I say it, get distracted, realize I’m thinking about something else, say it again, breathe into God’s presence and immediately get distracted again. On those days when I spend the entire time pulling myself back to prayer, I am frustrated, but I give thanks anyway because I have at least shown up and sometimes that is the most I can do.
Whatever happens in our prayer lives, remember to give thanks to God for the desire to pray or even the sense that you “ought to” pray when you don’t feel like it. This longing shows you that God is indeed present - even when we can’t feel anything else. Continue to pray and wait for the tide of God’s presence to return. Meanwhile, notice the many things revealed by the low tide. What are the things distracting us? What are the emotions clouding our hearts? What happens when we stand outside of them and observe them like seaweed or shipwrecks revealed at low tide? Perhaps we will gain perspective that will help us let go when the tide returns.
