St. Patrick

Psalm 23: 1 – 3

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul; He guides me in the paths of righteousness For His name’s sake.

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!!  I decided to donate today’s devotional to Saint Patrick. Did you know St. Patrick was a shepherd? His story reminds me  of David who was also a shepherd boy. Patrick was abducted from his home in England and sold into slavery to an Irish land holder. There, much like David, he spent his youth tending sheep.

I wrote to you recently about feeling alone. I said you are never really alone because God is always there with you. There is a big difference between solitude and loneliness. These two lads, David and Patrick, spent much time with only the company of God and sheep. In that solitude with God, their faith was forged. They learned how to be by themselves without ever truly being alone. In their shepherding, they met THE shepherd, the great shepherd. In this famous psalm, David portrays, beautifully, the characteristics and manner of the shepherding God.

Patrick said that in his solitude, he grew closer and closer to God. The time he spent watching sheep was also spent in prayer. The more he prayed, he said, the more the Spirit grew in him. He was not bothered by cold temperatures nor was he plagued by fear.

As I ponder these two shepherd boys who grew to be giants of faith, I realize how little quiet and solitude most of us enjoy. Sometimes I feel we are a lost generation. We are either too busy, filling our days with every kind of distraction, or we are lost in loneliness when we should be reveling in time with our beloved. How is it that neither Patrick nor David fell into despair in the night watches?

Do you long to know Jesus as they did? Do you hunger for the kind of confidence in God they knew? It is for all of us, but there is a price. We must spend time in prayer and in seeking. What did their prayer look like? They were out in the fields for days and weeks. Did they pray like we have been taught, or did it take on the tone of conversation? Did they praise and worship God?

We have an opportunity to never be lonely again and to grow in the strength and confidence of the Lord. It takes humility, which I understand, can be a stumbling block. None the less, we can know what Patrick’s development looked like if we would begin our own journey in prayer. It begins with opening your heart and then your mouth to God. Begin to speak to Him. When we have spoken with Him for hours, then we shall find it possible to pray for days.

Did you ever wonder why the great shepherd leads us beside quiet waters? I think we have found the answer.

From Glory to Glory

Luke 6: 12

And it was at this time that He went off to the mountain to pray, and He spent the whole night in prayer to God.

If it was good enough for Jesus, then it is good enough for me. That is a slogan we could all well adopt and frankly it is the way most of us approach situations now even if we don’t articulate it that way. Specifically, I am talking about two things that I glean from this passage.

First of all, note that Jesus went off by himself at times. He isolated himself from all distractions so that he could spend quality time with Dad. When all of the weight of the world is pressing on you, and you have about a hundred things on your “to do” list running through your mind, it is very difficult to have quality time with the Lord. Sometimes you simply need to get away to a quiet spot where there are fewer distractions. You need to turn off your telephones and televisions and let some peace enter your space. It is challenging to hear God speak to you when you have constant noise in your mind and your environment.

Secondly, Jesus found it necessary to pray all night long. Isn’t that something? You would think that the Son of God wouldn’t have to work so hard. So many people think that Jesus got his power and his holiness by birth, but they would be wrong. He got his humanity from his birth. His holiness he got from committing his time and effort to communing with the Almighty. He treated our Father with honor by dedicating time with Him. He needed that closeness. But then we all do. If we truly want to walk as Jesus walked; if we really want a high calling on our lives and deeply desire to do the work that the Lord has called us to, then we are going to have to get committed to spending time with our God and Father. We need the Word of God sown into our lives and we need prayer time. Every once in a while, it wouldn’t hurt any of us to take a whole day, or all night as Jesus did, to pray to the Father. Only when we finally dedicate ourselves to a devoted walk with the Father are we going to finally see His glory manifest in our lives.