When you pray for something big, and you pound on the door of heaven day after day, you begin to see God as aloof and uncaring, while you are the good-hearted, needy petitioner.
Surprise: God sees it differently. For example, about 600 B.C., He is explaining to Ezekiel why He is soon going to destroy the nation, deporting them to Babylon as captives. He catalogs their callousness and evil, then gives this shocking revelation:
When I looked among them for a man who would build up the wall, and stand in the gap before me in defense of the land, to prevent my destroying it, I found no one. So I will pour out my wrath upon them.
-- Ezekiel 22:30-31
If that isn't a tragedy, I don't know what is. In the whole nation of Judah, the all-seeing Yahweh couldn't find even one intercessor with the backbone to stand up to Him and say, No, Lord! Spare your people! This just cannot be!
Yes, the Lord actually adores fighters who will take Him on, wrestling tenaciously like Jacob with the Angel of the Lord (Genesis 32). The new saints understand God's highest desires, and they're willing to fight tooth and nail, with fiery passion, to make sure He doesn't settle for anything less.
It's like painting your kitchen. You want to do it, but you also want to spend the weekend goofing off. [That's where a skillful spouse can appeal to your higher purposes without making you angry.]
Now, God is as complex as you are. He has conflicts that He wants us to help resolve, like destroying Judah versus not. He wants you to speak in His ear and remind Him about why He should be compassionate and patient instead of giving us what we well deserve.
In extreme cases He wants you to engage Him in something analogous to hand-to-hand combat if that's what it takes.
God wants you to take joint responsibility for what happens in this perilous world. He doesn't want you to mumble a polite prayer, shrug your shoulders, and say, "Well, it's out of our hands now."....
----from MegaShift, by James Rutz
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