Picture ID Required

S - Daniel 9:2-3, 18-19 (NIV): "in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood from the Scriptures, according to the word of the LORD given to Jeremiah the prophet, that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years. So I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and petition … Give ear, O God, and hear; open your eyes and see the desolation of the city that bears your Name. We do not make requests of you because we are righteous, but because of your great mercy. O Lord, listen! O Lord, forgive! O Lord, hear and act! For your sake, O my God, do not delay, because your city and your people bear your Name."

O - These are the concluding lines of Daniel's prayer, inspired by the discovery via Jeremiah that 70 years was the period assigned to Israel's consequence. This prayer is prayed about a year before Cyrus gave the order for the Jews to return (i.e. it's year 69 of 70). Bluntly, with or without Daniel's prayer Cyrus will give the order and the return will begin. Culture (religious theology and secular history) wants to present this petition as a pleading for God to do what he's already said he would rather than an agreement for what God has already promised to do. And herein lies a huge problem; one so immense and pervasive it will take the arrival of Jesus (who is the message from heaven) to confront and contradict it.  The prayer as petition presents a God who is distant, disinterested and stingy. The prayer as agreement presents a God who is near and vitally interested. Daniel's "pleading" comes from the depth of what he is feeling not the person or character of the God to whom he prays.  Jesus tells us that God and his kingdom are not far away (if I should die before I wake …) but very near.  Surrounded by the Roman Empire at its worst Jesus says (Luke 12:6-7) "Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows."

A - Jesus wants me (and all) to change the way I/we think, speak, pray, act and love; to literally repent. He says “When a man believes in me, he does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me. When he looks at me, he sees the one who sent me." If my picture of the Father is not identical to the picture of Jesus I have the wrong the picture.  The Father of Jesus and the Father of Religious Thought are NOT the same person. It's a confrontation Jesus had with the religious leaders and people of his day and it's one still in process. Today, and every day, I'll believe Jesus and pursue the thinking, living, speaking he identifies and examples. He instructs (Luke 6:35-36): "But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful."  I will follow, pray to, serve, believe and love the God and Father of Jesus who is kind, generous and near! 

P - Father of Jesus and Father of me,

Thank you for wanting to be my Father and me to be your child.  Thank you for sending Jesus who is both your message to the world and the exact representation of your person.  I welcome you and all you already intended do, all you're already doing on earth like in heaven.  I choose to repent, to refuse a picture of you which is not identical to Jesus.  Thank you for wanting us at our worst. I need, accept and want to be a conveyor of your relentless love, defiant mercy, overwhelming grace and transforming power. I yield to your awesome brilliance, limitless power and extreme goodness.

In Jesus' name,

Steve