December 12 I Thursday

Hosea 9-11

Revelation 3

“This, then, is how you should pray…”  —Matthew 6:9

In the life of a Christian, prayer is the vital breath.
It connects us with the heart of God and is our means of an intimate relationship with Him. Only prayer can bridge the gap between our mortal existences and the timelessness of God.

There are several different relationships expressed in the Lord’s Prayer, but the one that transcends every other is the relationship between heaven and earth as well as time and eternity. Prayer is the access point into the heavens. Jesus tells us to pray, “Our Father in heaven…” (Matthew 6:9). Here, there is a movement from earth to heaven. We pray from the finite limits of time in which we live into the infinite limits of eternity in which God lives.

We have no experience of eternity, but to some degree we can speculate from information we are given in Scripture. We know that eternity is not unending time, because time has a beginning; therefore, eternity is created. The opening of Genesis says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). There is a start to time and a start to space. Likewise, John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Right from the beginning of time, we have the Word, which is Jesus Christ, who was not only with God, but is God, co-equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Time continuously moves; the future becomes the present and the present becomes the past, but before this process of time began, there was eternity.

We measure time from minutes to hours, days to years, decades to centuries, but eternity is an entirely different reality to time. What are past, present and future to us is eternally present to God. Our prayers leave the realm of time and go into the realm of eternal present. God says, “I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come” (Isaiah 46:10). Similarly, in Revelation 22:13, He says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.”

Though we live in the restraints of time, every moment of history, every event of our past and every event yet to come is present to God who sees the end from the beginning. It is in prayer when we come closest to God with our hearts turned to Him and His heart turned to us. We are literally bridging out of time into eternity to touch the timelessness of God.

Prayer: Dear Heavenly Father, You are the Eternal One and I am greatly humbled by the incredible privilege of being in communion with You. Thank You, Lord.