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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Tyler Staton
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April 8 - June 30, 2024
Relationship is God’s end game, but empowerment is his plan for getting there.
He hears us. He actually listens and actually cares. He responds.
God is a relational being to know, not a formula to master.
“You are greater in God’s eyes than Moses because you carry Jesus’ authority when you pray.”
The Bible is not a book to tell us how other people used to relate to God; it’s a historical record of God’s interaction with his people that should set the foundation and expectation for God’s interaction with
He does not pretend he is answering our prayer when he is only doing what he was going to do anyway.
Our requests really do make a difference in what God does or does not do.”20
Our faith will be rocked when we see people praying with greater devotion to a false god than we pray to the one true God.
Contemplation, though, understood biblically, is not about emptying but about being filled—blessed by the Father, clothed in Christ, filled with the Spirit.
God’s action doesn’t depend on our initiative.
God has freely chosen to act almost exclusively in partnership with people. When we pray, we both participate in God’s action and benefit from God’s action. We join God.
In prayer, Jesus invites us back into the relationship we knew in Eden at first and then lost in that first tragic act of deception.
Rather, the aim of prayer is to get us in on what God is doing, become aware of it, join it, and enjoy the fruit of participation. Prayer is the recovery of our role in God’s created order, the recovery of our true identity and the relationship that defines that identity to us.
I want to cooperate with God’s work in me, inviting his formation of my desires, thoughts, emotions, and actions, all of them hopelessly disordered by the fallen lineage of which I’m a part.
I want the Spirit of God to rework me from within, like an expert mechanic to a classic car, getting me running according to design.
With that angelic appearance, the life Mary had been piecing together, the future plan she had been anticipating, seemed to be demolished, shattered into countless tiny shards. And what’s her response? “I am the Lord’s servant. May your word to me be fulfilled.” That’s a resilience I don’t have, but I want it.
It should be noted, then, that prayer is a risky business. In my experience, God has a habit of employing us in response to our own prayers.
But fruit comes from intimacy. Fruitfulness comes because we love Jesus and want to be with him.
Prayer is the furnace that fuels mission.
Our lives are about intimacy. Fruitfulness is the collateral gain of that intimacy.
Yet I am the Lord’s servant. I belong to the King of kings and serve in the kingdom that outlasts all the others. There is no voice, no force, no condemnation that can make me any less than his.
This means water is the costliest offering Elijah could bring.
He is offering God the most lavish sacrifice he can possibly bring.
new life springs up in a depressed place.
A church on fire is the vehicle that gets us moving toward God’s true longing—a city reborn.
It’s the secret labor of prayer, not the public spectacle of fire, we are told to imitate.
Prayer is a journey that starts with need and ends in relationship.
Need first drives us to our knees, but relationship keeps us there.
Biblically speaking, knock prompts the imagery of table fellowship.
To share a table was the greatest affirmation of their character and the truest and deepest form of intimacy.
The greatest illustration of prayer Jesus gave is the one he lived—the Infinite Other, the Alpha and Omega, the Holy and Infallible, welcomes us to his table.
He does not simply tolerate our company or benevolently entertain our requests; he affirms our person, chooses our company, and delights in our presence.
Prayer—in any form, by anybody—is God’s invitation to pull up a chair to the table and enjoy restful, intimate, unbroken conversation with the triune God.
“In prayer we persistently, faithfully, trustingly come before God, submitting ourselves to his sovereignty, confident that he is acting, right now, on our behalf.”
God has treasured up every prayer we’ve ever uttered, even the ones we’ve forgotten, and he’s still weaving their fulfillment, bending history in the direction of a great yes to you and me.
Every prayer in the end is an answered prayer. Some are still awaiting that yes, but it’s coming.
Every tear of ours that falls to the ground will grow the fruit of redemption.
Our persistence in prayer comes from the promise that we don’t pray to a reluctant, half-interested, can’t-be-bothered judge, but to an unfathomably loving Father who collects our prayers like love letters and our tears like fine wine.
We are all going to face painful disorientation at some point, and the challenging invitation is to trust even in the darkness.”
But I can trust the God who is revealed in Jesus—the God who has never looked down on suffering from a lofty throne but has always looked into the eyes of the suffering from level ground.
I can trust the God who refuses to offer platitudes from a safe distance, the God who descends into the mess with me.
Before prayer is about power or outcomes or heavenly armies and a righteous uprising, it’s about love.
The modern church has forgotten the rhythm of prayer needed to nourish the spiritual life because we’ve bought into the illusion that spontaneous, memorably experiential prayer is the only authentic variety.
The memorable moments of spontaneous prayer emerge from a rooted, disciplined life of prayer.
it was about a Savior who defends people when they’re covered in shame, stands them up on their feet, looks them in the eye, and says, “Then neither do I condemn you.”34
It is the Son’s great passion to see his atoning work become our current experience and the Father’s deep joy to say an unhesitating yes to the Son’s intercession.
Even now, as your eyes scan over these words, Jesus is applying the finished work of the cross to you. He’s lavishing you in the Father’s love, assuring you of your forgiveness, binding up your wounds, and breathing courage into your lungs.
Spiritual knowledge has to be inhabited, experienced, lived.
