“And they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top [is] in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.'” Ge. 11:4 NKJV
Since Adam ate the “apple” man has been trying to finagle a way to obtain the benefits of Heaven without following God.
For a race that ate the fruit that was supposed to make us wise we sure have trouble learning the simple lesson that God’s way is best.
After the flood God commanded Noah and his sons to spread out across the face of the earth and multiply upon it (Ge. 9:1). Instead they clung together and set upon a building project to keep themselves from being “scattered”. Babel was just another attempt by mankind to show God we would forge our own way into the annals of eternity.
I suppose looking back on it all, with our sophisticated 21st century minds, we can laugh at our provincial ancestors who thought Heaven could be reached via staircase. We know better! Everyone knows God is an alien and can only be reached by a starship with warp drive.
The point is however “advanced” we have become, we still as a race haven’t learned the lesson that God’s way is best and that the only way into eternity is His way!
God doesn’t live to serve us. Jesus’ death on the cross wasn’t God signing the kingdom over to us. It was His invitation for us to rejoin His kingdom on His terms.
For instance tomorrow is the global day of prayer for the poor and suffering. http://www.prayforhope.com/events/2011/12/12-12-annual-global-day-of-prayer-for-the-poor-suffering-1/.
The church gets pooh-poohed all the time for praying about stuff. I was once told “I suppose if you have to pray about something you should pray about world peace…” The implication of course was that prayer was a fairly useless exercise unless it raised the collective consciousness about an issue.
The worldly mind’s first response to trouble is economic or legislative. The Heaven-bent mind’s first response is to pray.
I am not against giving money. The Bible tells us to give. But when our first response is to give money and our eleventh response is to pray we are only about the business of building more Babels.
I hope tomorrow you will choose to pray for the poor and suffering. It will do more good than any other activity you could think of!
Reinventing the We'll 
Praying for peace and for the poor is a good thing…but I also think we should act for stopping wars and hunger.
And I couldn’t agree more that there is a part for us to play Noel. That part starts in prayer and is directed through prayer. Only when we catch the burden in prayer can we act in a way that will bring about eternal consequences. Thanks for commenting. I hope you will be visiting more! 🙂
Thank you so much Pastor J. Yes, this is what I was sensing on that one post about giving ourselves first to Him . . .in prayer, in life. 🙂 I’ll be joining you in prayer, despite the pooh, pooh’s. Today, my daughter and I saw some friends at the grocery store. Her son has down syndrome. He had been working through school, but that place wasn’t going to keep him on, was letting him go. When the mom e-mailed me about this, we agreed in prayer, that God had something better for him. I asked and was blown away because he was working somewhere else now . . .had a great job coach, and was really liking it. 😀 Remember I told you that I was waiting for that special moment from God to see Him this Christmas? This was it. I was soooo blessed at how He works and what He does. Oh ya . . .I’ll be praying.
Praise God for this double answer! I am so glad you found your “Christmas God sighting!” THank you for joining me in prayer. Let me know how God speaks to you in this regard!
Dear friend – Yes, of course, today I will join you and Debbie in prayer.
Thank you so much. May our prayers be united in purpose as well as in time! 🙂
Count me in. May many more join us in prayer. Love Debbie’s testimony. It is so awesome how God hears and answers our prayers.
Every testimony builds the body’s faith! Thanks for joining us in prayer Deb!
Thanks for sharing, Pastor J. My heart stands in agreement from across the miles.
@ Debbie. Beautiful, heart-warming. Glad He showed up that way. Praying you will see more and more of Him as the days go by.
Blessings
ann
I sense Ann that God is on the move and more and more we will hear these testimonies about the move of God’s mighty hand on behalf of His people!
I will stand in prayer with you all. I know we don’t have any of the lasting answers to the problems we see around us and the ones we face in our own lives. I am thankful that is not the end of the story. We have a God that desires to move on behalf of our prayers and rejoices when we pray about all things.
A-men Angela. I am so blessed that when I don’t have the answer or provision in my own hand I serve a God who does have it in His! Thanks for joining us!