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Many things keep me from coming to God in prayer. For one, I’m never sure of the tone I should carry when talking to Him. Should I be formal and cordial? It feels too cold and distant, like I’m talking to a big wig that I can’t afford to offend. Or should I speak as I would to a friend, ranting and telling Him all the trivial things. Then I’m afraid that I am rude and imprudent. A particular portion in Philip Yancey’s book Prayer helped me get over this awkwardness in prayer.

In truth, what I think and feel as I pray, rather than the words I speak, may be the real prayer, for God ‘hears’ that too. My every thought occurs in God’s presence. And as I learn to give voice to those secrets, mysteriously the power the hold over me melts away.

I know what happens in human relationships when I remain at a shallow level. With casual friends I discuss the weather, sports, forthcoming concerts and movies, all the while steering clear of what matters more: a suppressed hurt, hidden jealousy, resentment of their children’s rude behaviour, concern for their spiritual welfare. As a result, the relationship goes nowhere. On the other hand, relationships deepen as I trust my friends with secrets.

Likewise, unless I level with God – about bitterness over an unanswered prayer, grief over loss, guilt over an unforgiving spirit, a baffling sense of God’s absence – that relationship, too, will go nowhere. I may continue going to church, singing hymns and praise choruses, even addressing God politely in formal prayers, but I will never break through the intimacy barrier. ‘We must lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us,’ wrote C.S. Lewis. To put it another way, we must trust God with what God already knows.

So I decided that as much as God already knows what’s in me, I would tell Him. He will be my confidante who I confided in, never mind the tone, or the requests and petition. I just wanted to know His presence as I pray. And as I learned to pour out my feelings to God, His presence just became more real and I began to enjoy prayer more. This is all by the grace of God, of course. It’s not about a book, although I must say that I’m enjoying the book very much and it is helping me to ponder over this issue of prayer. God allows me to pursue Him because He is pursuing me. He wants me to love Him more.

Was introduced to this site through Desiring God website, which offers free downloads of an audio book every month. Downloaded Of Prayer and The Christian Life by John Calvin and All of Grace by C.H. Spurgeon last year, and this month, they have Oswald Chambers’ Abandoned to God for free download. If you would like an alternative to reading Christian literature, you could try listening instead.

‘Be still and know that I am God’: the Latin imperative for ‘be still’ is vacate. As Simon Tugwell explains, ‘God invites us to take a holiday [vacation], to stop being God for a while, and let him be God.’ Too often we think of prayer as a serious chore, something that must be scheduled around other appointments, shoe-horned in among the other pressing activities. We miss the point, says Tugwell: ‘God is inviting us to take a break, to play truant. We can stop doing all those important things we have to do in our capacity as God, and leave it to him to be God’ Prayer allows me to admit my failures, weaknesses, and limitations to One who responds to human vulnerability with infinite mercy.

Philip Yancey, Prayer, Chapter 2: View from above [19]

I wanna take a vacation. Let me play truant every day.

Everybody loves a good love story, and the book of Ruth is a great love story. It’s so gratifying to see the protagonist Ruth find redemption and love at the end of the book. She would later become the great-grandmother of the Israel king David, and of course, be in the genealogy of the Anointed One in the book of Matthew.

What’s admirable about Ruth isn’t just her loyalty to her mother-in-law Naomi, but also her faith in the God of her mother-in-law. As John MacArthur pointed out, Ruth was probably won over by the testimony of her husband’s family when she stayed with them, that she declared that Naomi’s God would be her God even though she was a foreigner (a Moabite). So when her husband died and she was given the choice by Naomi to return to her family, Ruth didn’t. She chose to stay with Naomi, venturing with her back to Israel, to the town of Bethlehem to face an unknown future. With no land and probably broke, Ruth had to feed Naomi and herself. But as providence would have it, she gleaned in the field of Boaz, a relative of her husband’s family. Boaz was probably impressed by Ruth’s faithfulness to Naomi and her integrity in gleaning to support themselves. And so he was generous with her, promising protection and giving generous room for her to glean freely.

I’m rather amused by the suggestions of MacArthur that Naomi, sensing a possible love match between Ruth and Boaz, instructed Ruth to ‘propose marriage’ to Boaz. And I thought that women aren’t suppose to take initiative in such matters!

Still, what Naomi advised Ruth to do was shockingly forward. (Even to enlightened twenty-first -century minds, it seems surprisingly plucky.) Naomi’s plan, in essence, was for Ruth to propose marriage to Boaz! She told Ruth, “Wash yourself and anoint yourself, put on your best garment and go down to the threshing floor; but do not make yourself known to the man until he has finished eating and drinking. Then it shall be, when he lies down, that you shall notice the place where he lies; and you shall go in, uncover his feet, and lie down; and he will tell you what you should do” (Ruth 3:3-4 NKJV). By the custom of the time, this would indicate Ruth’s willingness to marry Boaz.

Ruth’s proposal for marriage wasn’t just about marriage alone. To ensure that the line of her late husband would not end with his death, the one who marries Ruth would have the right and obligation to redeem the family’s inheritance. Boaz was the kinsman-redeemer. “Every kinsman-redeemer was, in effect, a living illustration of the position and work of Christ with respect to His people: He is our true Kinsman-Redeemer, who becomes our human Brother, buys us back from our bondage to evil, redeems our lives from death, and ultimately returns to us everything we lost because of sin.”

To cut the short story even shorter, Ruth and Boaz were married, and Ruth’s ending symbolises the state of every believer, redeemed and loved. What a great love story! (But of course, I’ve already said it in the beginning, but it’s worth repeating.)

God loves to use the despised of this world. 1 Corinthians 1:28-29 say, “God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.” And one of the most despised people in this world are prostitutes. Yet, prostitutes were featured in the Bible in some cases, and what’s more, in a positive light. I wonder if other scriptures have such scandalous characters… In fact, Jesus said, “”Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you [the Pharisees] “, because the Pharisees refused to believe John the Baptist, who heralded the coming of Jesus as the Messiah (anointed One). And the faith of one prostitute was mentioned in Hebrews 11: Rahab. Verse 31 says “By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies. ”

To cut the long story short, Rahab hid and saved two spies from Israel who were in the city of Jericho for a recce, so that the Israelites could take over the city afterward. There was a slight glitch though: in the process of protecting the two spies, she lied. Sure, it was for a greater good, but lying? Doesn’t God hate lying lips? How do you reconcile the wrong means and the right end? John MacArthur makes it clear that the answer is no.

He certainly could have saved Rehab and the spies without a lie. Still, that isn’t the point of Rehab’s story. There’s no need for clever rationalisation to try to justify her lie. Scripture never commends the lie. Rehab isn’t applauded for her ethics. Rehab is a positive example of faith.

Her faith was extraordinary because she was a foreigner, yet she believed in the power of God, and aided the Israelite spies to escape, not before guaranteeing her family and her own safety during the invasion.

Before the men lay down, she came up to them on the roof and said to the men, “I know that the LORD has given you the land, and that the fear of you has fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land melt away before you. For we have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you devoted to destruction. And as soon as we heard it, our hearts melted, and there was no spirit left in any man because of you, for the LORD your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath. Now then, please swear to me by the LORD that, as I have dealt kindly with you, you also will deal kindly with my father’s house, and give me a sure sign that you will save alive my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them, and deliver our lives from death.” And the men said to her, “Our life for yours even to death! If you do not tell this business of ours, then when the LORD gives us the land we will deal kindly and faithfully with you.” (Joshua 2:8-14)

Her faith was accompanied by works, a true faith-in-action. She knew what she needed to do to save her family and herself, and that lead to her legacy in the hall of faith in Hebrews 11.

God can certainly save the most unruly and undesirable creatures in His ways, and all He calls for is faith and repentance. “And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption,  so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord” (1 Cor 1:30-31). Only in Christ can there redemption and transformation so that He might be glorified. And Rehab was redeemed from her sinful life through her simple faith, and this faith led her to a radical obedience to the God she feared.