Do you think God ever becomes overwhelmed by our prayers? That He finds our specific requests too greedy or as a sign of ungratefulness for all He’s already done? Do you think we trust Him with enough of them? NO!

I realized awhile back that I was generalizing my prayer requests to the Lord and not trusting Him enough with the specifics. It’s almost as if I didn’t want to be let down in the event that He didn’t grant a specific answer. My prayers were very unimaginative and looked something like this “Lord, would you bring me a friend”… “God, help me find a job”… “Father, will you take away this pain”. And God spoke back “Don’t you trust me to handle the specific desires of your heart?”

This was a really hard thing for me grasp. I had been let down by many men in my life and quite honestly, much of it stemmed from my earthly father. I started to understand that I was projecting this pain unto my heavenly father and holding my prayers hostage in the specifics to protect my heart from being let down, if God decided not to deliver. Whew! That was a lot to comprehend.

So I mustered up the audacity to get specific. Prayer after prayer, I began to add more details as I witnessed His faithfulness. I started to document the day I started praying for something and the moment He answered. There are times in spiritual growth, my heart’s desire shifts and the prayer changes. Sometimes it takes years of persistent prayer, other times months, days or minutes. But what I do know is that God answers!

Here’s a recent example. June 4, 2013 “Lord, would you bring me a friend… an accountability partner… to work out with at the gym… the one I work out at in my neighborhood… during the times I work out. God, would you also bless me with someone in my profession whom I can connect with in my career… a woman of faith… a friend in a similar place in life as me… someone who enjoys good food but lives on a budget… someone to take fun trips with and whom we can praise your goodness together.”

Following that prayer, I dined with many new girlfriends and could feel God’s love supporting me in new friendships (thank God for girlfriends!), but I was looking for someone more specific. Many times we settle for the good and give up hope for the great. I kept praying for my specific.

Weeks went by and I received an email “Hi, Trisha. I’m a month late doing this, but I found your card on my desk and wanted to reach out. We met at the PRSA meeting last month. I’d love to grab lunch or dinner in the next couple of weeks if you’re interested.”

We went to dinner and here’s who I found sitting across the table from me… a woman of faith who has found herself newly single, works in my career profession just a couple minutes my job, lives near my neighborhood, runs along the same trail I do… during the same time that I do, works out at my gym on the only day, at the only time, during the only class that I do… in the exact same corner that I stand! For the last two months, she had been standing in front of me and passing by me. As I prayed up a storm for my specific friend, God had delivered on time… I just needed to step up and step out in faith knowing He had already done it!

August 7, 2013 “You are the Almighty Provider and once again you have heard the cry in my heart and delivered. May the sound of this praise and testimony declare your goodness so that you get all the glory and others may believe.”

This last year God has been stretching, let me emphasize on stretching my faith. And I’m so thankful for it! What a small view of such an Almighty God I have sometimes. If you’re looking for a specific answer… get specific in your prayer requests. While God knows the desires of your heart, He still wants to be asked, and then trusted with it.

(Excerpt from a study by Beth Moore)

17:5-8 (NET): The LORD says, “I will put a curse on people who trust in mere human beings, who depend on mere flesh and blood for their strength, and whose hearts have turned away from the LORD. They will be like a shrub in the desert. They will not experience good things even when they happen. It will be as though they were growing in the desert, in a salt land where no one can live. My blessing is on those people who trust in me, who put their confidence in me. They will be like a tree planted near a stream whose roots spread out toward the water. It has nothing to fear when the heat comes. Its leaves are always green. It has no need to be concerned in a year of drought. It does not stop bearing fruit.”

If you’re familiar with the passage, you are probably more accustomed to wording like the NIV: “Cursed is the one who trusts in man.” The fact that the NET makes God the one “putting” the curse on man makes us squirm. Before we let it tie us in a knot and throw us in a lake of fear, we have to remind ourselves of our position in Christ. We have the glorious benefit of living this side of the completed work of the Cross and resurrection.

Galatians 3:13 says to our great relief: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us – for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.’”

Jeremiah 17:5 is still tremendously relevant to us because it unfolds the misery of counting on mere flesh and blood. I wonder if the “curse” talked about in this verse is of the same ilk as the one in Genesis 3 that came directly from God to man after the fall in the Garden. If Adam and Eve were doing anything at all when they ate from that tree, they were shifting their trust from God to themselves – mere flesh and blood – by attempting to be God-like. Though the Cross of Christ bore the curse for us, we can still endure the desolation that invariably results from placing our trust and confidence in people rather than God. This gets us where we’re going in our post today. Look back at Jeremiah 17:6 because this is the part that totally captivated me.

“They will be like a shrub in the desert. They will not experience good things even when they happen.”

Read it again if you need to but don’t proceed until you’ve tried to absorb that second sentence. Have you ever been right in the middle of something good happening and yet missed the full experience and joyful impact of it? Surely you’ve said silently to yourself as I’ve said to myself, “I should really be happy right now. What is wrong with me??” You know the feeling. You’re in a celebration or service of some kind or a holiday gathering and yet you almost feel detached from it. You’re there. But you are somehow disconnected from experiencing it. You know “it” (the positive thing presently happening) but you can’t feel it. It’s a good thing but you don’t feel good about it…or in it. What on earth is that about?

Jeremiah would suggest that the experience of good can be disconnected from the good because we are in a season of shifted trust from God to man. When we’ve set our hopes for happiness in how well all our people are doing…getting along…flourishing…affirming us…satisfying us…and all-around-generally-blessing us, and we even get a glimmer of it, we can’t experience the good because we know down deep that we can’t hold onto it. As much as we love all our people, we know that, ultimately, they are not going to come through for us. One shoe will drop. Then the other. The disappointment will come. And the harmony we feel for this moment with our fellow humans could at any second flip upside down into complete mayhem.

Notice the part that says “they will be like a shrub in the desert.” Isn’t it ironic that the more we depend on flesh and blood to come through for us and to fulfill us, the more isolated we become? You’d think that numbers alone would insure company and community. In other words, why derive our strengths and confidences from one God when we could get infinitely more out of all these people? Out of all these communities? Out of all our fellow church members? Out of all our Facebook friends? Our fellow tweeters? Company is one click away.

But it never works that way, does it? We never can let down our guard completely and find any shred of real security from flesh and blood. The person obsessed with us today can turn on us tomorrow and we know it. The person who makes life worth living for us today could die on us tomorrow and we know it. I don’t mean to be morose. I just mean to point out the emotional tightrope we’re walking. Being vastly people-oriented rather than God-oriented always ends up taking us to a place of isolation because they’re invariably busy when we want to play, invariably distracted when we want attention, and invariably more taken with themselves than with us. And so, there we sit, with our trust and confidence in mere flesh and blood and we end up feeling like a shrub in a desert.  Just as Jeremiah 17:6 says, “It will be as though [we] are growing in the desert, in a salt land where no one can live.”

Trust in man can seem a great place to visit but no one can really live there and come out calling it living.

It’s so odd to me that the more drawn I feel to God and the more taken I become with His Presence, the freer I am to love other people and the less I hold them responsible for me. Community with God increases our “experience” of good in a community of people. It is its own paradox.

My blessing is on those people who trust in Me, who put their confidence in Me. Jeremiah 17:7 The NET Bible

And what earthly difference would that make? Well, let’s see…

“They will be like a tree planted near a stream whose roots spread out toward the water. It has nothing to fear when the heat comes. Its leaves are always green. It has no need to be concerned in a year of drought. It does not stop bearing fruit.”

Notice a very intriguing contrast hidden in Jeremiah 17:8 – “It has nothing to fear when the heat comes.”

Reflect back on 17:6b – “They will not experience good things even when [good things] happen.”

When we place our confidence in mere flesh and blood, we are shortchanged even when good things happen. When we place our confidence in God, the Immortal Invisible, we have nothing to fear even when hard things happen. The former leaves us a dry shrub. The latter makes us a fruit-bearing tree.

We never get this lesson learned once and for all, do we? Or maybe it’s just me. I still get so tempted to put my confidence in people and to think that, if all my loved ones were safe, well, and flourishing, I could be so happy. The truth of it is, I do want those things for my loved ones but God alone can come through for them and for me. Anyway, at the end of the day, I could have everything this world could offer and all the good that man could possibly do me and still sit back and think, “Why doesn’t it feel better than this?”

My blessing is on those people who trust in Me, who put their confidence in Me.

Have you ever tried to do a keyword search for the term ‘happiness’ and ‘Jesus’ together in scripture? It doesn’t exist. And it won’t matter what version of the bible you’re using, I checked them all. Yet, if you listen closely, most of what people are speaking and singing about, even striving for today is this word ‘happy’. Are we happy? Yes, No? If not, why not? What do we need to do to be ‘happy’? Deception starts to creep in through doubt and we make up a pleasant story that God would want us all to be ‘happy’. So we alter our actions to align with this new found theology, aiming for a cheap imitation of the true call Jesus did use… ‘joy’.

If we examined the full body of ‘joy’, we’d find a description more like hardships, pain, trials and tears coupled with stability, serenity and comfort. I like how the dictionary describes ‘joy’ as treasure. Quite honestly, I think most of us settle for a word like ‘happiness’ out of laziness. Anything authentic costs more and consequently has more value; it requires more time and effort than its counterfeit.

I noticed in the dictionary ‘joy’ was also described as ‘greater happiness’. Joy has depth. A person must dig below the surface of happiness to reach the richness of what Jesus was talking about. For the most part, we weren’t all called to strap on some sandals and walk the sands of the earth in search of joy. Instead, we’re left to learn how to live in the ‘in between’; in the pain and conflicts, sometimes in the suffering while experiencing purpose, stability, comfort and contentment.

I can think of no better example than what Hebrews notes as the deeper ‘joy’ Jesus had in His heart, that carried Him to the cross. Isn’t it amazing that if we’re experiencing joy, the real riches of joy, we could actually suffer willingly for the sake of someone else and still be content? That’s something happiness could never do because it’s centered around pleasing oneself.

Hebrews 12:1-3 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

What the world has to offer is only a rip off of what God can give. So next time you’re tempted to alter your lifestyle around the lyrics and language society says should ‘please’ you, I pray you won’t settle on the surface or short term, but that you’ll dig a little deeper, stay in there a little longer to uncover the livelihood Jesus’s lips spoke of…  the authentic life of ‘joy’.