We have been meditating on many examples of prayer. The Lord wants to cause us to walk the walk of prayer that we see Jesus afresh.

Prayer centres on the person of Jesus.

Mary Magdalene is very much misunderstood. She is sometimes seen as a prostitute that Jesus expelled 7 demons. Yet we on closer examination come to the realisation that Mary was not the prostitute. She was one who was with Jesus at every step.

In Bethany is her actions to be fully remembered. Ministering anointed perfume to His feet, He gives attention to such a simple act as being prophetic, because its implication means pain for gain, tears for joy.

Jesus makes mention that in prayer the whole painful process must be walked through. When you consider that Mary understood Jesus need of ministry from her hand, with oils of burial so she would at the cross have that same oil ministered to her own soul.

We see that these hands would also embalm the dead body of Jesus at the direction of Joseph of Arimathea. So she is ministering into the first work of Jesus in death, bringing the end of enmity.

When you consider that the life of prayer is in this example, a walk of death. We are not sure how Mary felt, we cannot imagine the questions and confusions over the missions. Whether she is conscious or not that

whoever walks in Jesus in death and all its processes will also walk in His Resurrection and His Ascension too.

And it is she who is first to go to the tomb and see angels. I believe as we take on in prayer that prayer is dying to our capacities we come into an angelic realm. We are seeing that death becomes empty and what has died in the ground of prayer comes to life in a different form.

When she saw the empty tomb, she felt loss. She weeps, and we see that Mary is a woman no stranger to bearing her soul. She sees Jesus but through her blurred and grief stricken vision .

How many times we find ourselves looking at Jesus with eyes blurred with our own grief and our own brokeness?

Yet once He speaks our name we see Him in a new life, and a new light.

And we attempt as Mary to hold Him. He admonishes us in our walk of prayer to embrace a progressive revelation, a priveleged walk that as we walked with Him faithfully in the unpleasant places of prayer so we will walk with Him in a Resurrected state. Then we must let His humanity go so that we embrace His Divinity in the Holy Spirit.

What God is revealing to me personally is two facets in our walk with God, which is largely forgotten and where we are largely ignorant. They are the fear of God, and the devotion which we give to Him. We have two fundamental principles we need to revisit , in that a new respect and knowledge of Him, and a awe of His Majesty.

In this we begin to see our part in His Eternal mission and purpose from the perspective of walking with Him in prayer. That way our ministry springs out from that lifestyle and discipline of prayer in that small actions on the earth are windows to heavenly interventions on the earth. Not by any achievement we may attain but out of our daily walk with Jesus.

That way our ministry is no longer marked by the Churches we preach at, not the messages we preached, but the encounters we have with Him in the secret places. We have to be like Mary, to see in parts of our lives become dead, unpleasant, painful as we embark on a life where we walk in heavenly processes.

Shalom!