{"id":7052,"date":"2021-04-05T17:57:25","date_gmt":"2021-04-05T07:57:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/?p=7052"},"modified":"2021-04-05T17:57:26","modified_gmt":"2021-04-05T07:57:26","slug":"standing-before-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/standing-before-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Standing Before God"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Standing Before God<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adapted from a sermon<\/a> by Fr Mark Basily<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Passage Luke 1<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are presented with the opening of the gospel of St Luke. Each character is introduced by St Luke with an underlying tension; a problem personally applicable to each one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He starts with Zacharias; \u201cThere was in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the division of Abijah. His wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and they were both well advanced in years<\/em>.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What an amazing way to be described, and yet, they had no child. Elizabeth was barren and they were both advanced in years. This is a real problem. You would think that living a righteous and blameless life would lead to blessings, especially a priest. This would be a real point of hurt for them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The gospel begins with this tension. This same tension is\nlived in many of our lives. We carry very similar questions; \u201cI am doing all that\nI can do, I\u2019m praying, I\u2019m coming to church- why does this problem exist?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI asked God to help, but I heard nothing. I\u2019m praying, I\u2019m\ntrying my best but I feel I\u2019m going nowhere.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zacharias and his wife, Elizabeth\u2019s story unfolds with this tension. \u201c<\/sup><\/strong>So it was, that while he was serving as priest before God in the order of his division,\u00a09\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>according to the custom of the priesthood,\u00a0his lot fell\u00a0to burn incense when he went into the temple of the Lord.\u00a010\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>And the whole multitude of the people was praying outside at the hour of incense.\u00a011\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing on the right side of\u00a0the altar of incense.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then Zacharias receives news that his wife, Elizabeth will have a son. If we look back upon the context under which this tension was released, we note some key points of resolution to the tension they faced for so long. It was Zacharias\u2019 first time in the altar burning incense. He had the opportunity to present himself before God. The first clue is that tension is released when we stand before God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fr Dawood Lamey once said when addressing priests and asked, \u201cDo you know why God chose you to be a priest? For your own salvation, so that you can stand before God at the altar, not because you are not here to save, but so that you may be saved before the altar.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first thing that released Zacharias from the tension was\nstanding before God. And who was behind him? The whole multitude of people\nwere praying outside the altar at the time of the raising of incense.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I once asked for Fr Yacoub\u2019s guidance during a matter that someone\nhad come to me about. His response was that we make a canon of prayer. I\nfigured it must for the person to pray, but he meant the seven priests. Perhaps\nwe pray the midnight prayer every night and a certain number of liturgies\nthroughout the week for this purpose. And make sure that the person doesn\u2019t\nknow that we are doing this. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The whole multitude was standing behind in prayer. There is so much power in this. In that context, resolution begins to take place to ease the tension in Zacharias\u2019 life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd\nthe people waited for Zacharias, and marveled that he lingered so long in the\ntemple.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes we rush prayer, we can\u2019t wait to get out and get to sleep, as quickly as possible. What if we linger? An extra psalm, an extra matania, more time with the Lord. I don\u2019t want to leave just yet. The Agpia helps us to spend more time, and to linger with God. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One time, I was praying with Fr Augustinos and he pulled the\nmost mangled Agpia I had ever seen. Held by three elastics and a missing front cover.\nSuch an overused prayer book. What\u2019s the condition of my Agpia? Let us to learn\nto mangle our Agpia by lingering more with God. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Psalm 73, King David says, \u201cI am a beast, presented to\nthe Lord. I was like a beast before You, nevertheless I am continually with\nYou, You hold me by my right hand. You will guide me with Your counsel and\nafterward receive me to glory.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the same psalm, after calling himself a beast, it was too\npainful to understand until I entered into the sanctuary of the Lord. Only\nthen, could I understand. The solution to any tension in our life is found in\nthe sanctuary of the Lord. It is found by presenting ourselves to the Lord as a\nbeast. Insufficient faith, insufficient knowledge, but then I begin to\nunderstand. Then my tension is resolved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Full sermon available here <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Standing Before God Adapted from a sermon by Fr Mark Basily Passage Luke 1 We are presented with the opening of the gospel of St Luke. Each character is introduced by St Luke with an underlying tension; a problem personally applicable to each one. He starts with Zacharias; \u201cThere was in the days of Herod, … Continue reading “Standing Before God”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7053,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7052"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7054,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7052\/revisions\/7054"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}