Week four the focus is on the lifestyle God calls His house to live. Again, there is some background thoughts and verses, and then passages to meditate on. Return to these as often as you like (our suggestion is every day during this period!), dialog with the Lord about what they mean to Him, use the questions at the bottom as fuel, and then pray it: God if that’s what’s in your heart than do … in me, and do … in my city and in the nations of the earth!
Week 4: The Lifestyle of God’s House – Voluntary Weakness
PDF Handout – Week 4 – Voluntary Weakness
Background Verses: There is a lifestyle associated with the call to be “a house of prayer.” It’s an easy one (meaning simple) that God makes accessible to even the weakest, but it’s a humble and costly one that few choose. God’s house is to be defined by the fact that we are a people who get where we get and become what we become out of the weakness of our asking and God’s moving.
Matthew 7:7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. 9 Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? 11 If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him! 12 Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. 13 Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. 14 Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.”
At the heart of “who is man?” is the reality that we are those whom God visits and gives graciously to in response not to the strength of our doing but to the sincerity of our heart poured out to Him.
Psalm 8:1 O Lord, our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth, Who have set Your glory above the heavens! 2 Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have ordained strength, Because of Your enemies, That You may silence the enemy and the avenger. 3 When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained, 4 What is man that You are mindful of him, And the son of man that You visit him? 5 For You have made him a little lower than the angels, And You have crowned him with glory and honor.
We are, above all else, a people chosen for the express purpose that God could show the riches of His kindness toward us. Chosen not for our strength, but for our weakness, with one great requirement – that none should boast before Him (see also 1 Corinthians 1:26-29).
Ephesians 2:4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
God’s house is to be a living witness of the glorious boundary lines of having God and God alone – knowing that apart from Him we have no good thing, but He withholds no good thing from those who love Him. We have Him, that’s our good, and our way forward is to move the heart of God.
Psalm 16:2 O my soul, you have said to the Lord, “You are my Lord, apart from You I have no good thing.” … 5 O Lord, You are the portion of my inheritance and my cup; You maintain my lot. 6 The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; Yes, I have a good inheritance.
Psalm 84:11 For the Lord God is a sun and shield; The Lord will give grace and glory; No good thing will He withhold From those who walk uprightly.
So Jesus lays out for us in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) a lifestyle of voluntary weakness in prayer and fasting, giving and serving, choosing mercy and poverty of spirit, loving righteousness even when it’s hard to find and costly to embrace, and doing it all before the eyes of God not man. It’s a lifestyle built upon and pointing to the glory of a good Father, and the continual remembrance of life’s central truth and the key witness of God’s house: that He is mindful of us.
Matthew 6:4 …and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly.
Hebrews 11:6 But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.
Meditation Passage 1: Matthew 7:7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. 9 Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? 11 If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him! 12 Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. 13 Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. 14 Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.”
Food for Thought: What do we need to know about God to lean into a life of asking? Why does Jesus connect our living in the place of weak asking with how we treat others? Why would few find the “narrow way” of asking (what personally pulls you away from it)? What does a life of asking, seeking and knocking look like (take some time to read the Mt 5-7 from that perspective)?
Meditation Passage 2: 2 Corinthians 12:9 And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 10 Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
Food for Thought: Why would God choose to make weakness the place His strength is perfected (what statement is Jesus making)? Why does Paul choose, then, to boast in weakness? How would your life look/feel different if you could “take pleasure” in your weaknesses both internal and circumstantial? What testimony would that give to the world?