day twenty: raising our hands & praying BIG.

Today Brett had the opportunity to preach at Grace Community Church in Greensboro.  We went there a few years back before Brett started his internships during seminary and it's the church that I've probably felt most at home in.  It was fun being there this Sunday seeing old friends we love and also getting a taste of the amazing ways God is moving in and through them these days.  But here was one of the biggest highlights for me:

She loves to come into the service with me now and "listen to daddy preach" and she really does a great job sitting still for the most part.  It makes it hard to focus sometimes with her in there with me, but on the whole, it's been a blessing to watch her learn what it's like to corporately worship as a church.  Today, she stood like this "praising to Jesus" as she puts it, through the entirety of "It Is Well."  And she wasn't trying to be cute--it was like she knew that putting her hands up meant that she was taking worship seriously or something.

The funny thing is that she definitely doesn't get this hand raising thing from me or Brett.  Brett is so tall that if he raised his hands in worship, no one would be able to see around him.  :)  And I remember when I tried to raise my hands in worship when I first really started following Jesus and it was just awkward and distracted me pretty badly.  My grandmother has raised her hands in worship for as long as I can remember and makes it look so worshipful and so I think I imagined that it would feel the way she made it look.  But when I gave it a shot, it just didn't work.

Another funny thing about raising hands in worship is this video.  It's 2:51 of a good laugh at us church people.

But really, my heart was humbled and my eyes were opened watching my little girl stretch her hands up while we worshiped this morning thinking about this practice of lifting our hands.  All day I've had this image of her with her hands stretched all day and just knew the Lord wanted to open my eyes to praying BIG in that, so I did a little digging in an incredible book/resource on prayer called Between Heaven & Earth by Ken Gire.

Remember how I wrote that post about how I love books?  Have I proved it yet by talking about seven gazillion of them in only twenty days of posting?  In the words of all my lovely Elon friends, #sorryimnotsorry. 

The book is just a giant compilation of hundreds of different people and the many things they've said about prayer over the centuries.  There's a section about raising hands in prayer that David E. Rosage wrote that caught my attention:

"To You I stretch my hands." Psalm 88:10

"Raising our arms in prayer is an eloquent way of expressing some dispositions that are essential to sincere prayer.  In the first place, lifting our hands with our palms open and upward is a way of expressing our total offering of self to the Lord... Second, hands raised in prayer indicate our willingness to respond to whatever the Lord might ask of us... Raising our hands in prayer is also a way of breaking down many of our inhibitions. It opens us to begin expressing ourselves honestly and sincerely."

Watching Karis with her hands stretched high and then reading those words, I could sense God saying to me--"Praying BIG is coming to Me like a child.  With no inhibitions.  You don't need to use Christian-ese words.  You don't need to pray like other people.  You don't need to try to impress me.  JUST COME TO ME.  Honestly.  Humbly. Sincerely. And with no inhibitions.  And when you can have that posture--then we can do BIG things in prayer together."

"I stretch out my hands to You, my soul thirsts for You like parched land." Psalm 143:6