Thoughts on prayer

Yesterday was a sleepy day here in Boone, NC. For most of the day, I had the office, which is also where I live (in an upstairs apartment – not in my office itself), to myself. There seemed to be nothing going on in such a small town during summer and late in the afternoon, there were no summer-school students walking around either. As I sat by in a chair by the window switching between a book I’ve been reading and my Bible, I yawned. It wasn’t a huge yawn, nor did anything funny happen. Just a yawn on a sleepy day full of reading.

The Great Yawn of Yesterday got me thinking however. I knew that if I didn’t call Kelly, my lovely fiancee well before my bedtime, I would be so tired that I wouldn’t be able to carry on a good conversation with her. More than likely I would probably end up getting frustrated with her due to my exhaustion, or she with me. One way or the other, I knew that if I wanted to respect the time she would be taking to talk to me – probably the only time of the day – then I would have to do some better planning and go out of my way to use our time better.

We typically call each other before bed as we are two hours apart, to catch up on our days and say goodnight. I also try to pray before I go to sleep. Usually after I call Kelly. If you already imagined what my conversation would be like with her that late at night, can you imagine what my prayer life is like some nights? Not so good. I felt bad because I never really spent much time thinking about how it made Kelly feel when I would make calling her something to check off my list rather than looking at it as a time of communication and as a relationship builder.

That’s the way I see prayer. It is a time of communication, both talking and listening, to God. It’s a relationship builder. If I find myself putting Kelly on the back burner so that I can concentrate more on what I feel like I want to do, it hurts our relationship. And how much more so between me and God? I get chills just thinking about what my relationship with God will be like when I have spent some real time going out of my way to spend it with God, actively seeking to grow my relationship. That would be way better than falling asleep praying a bogus prayer.

Re-thinking my theological worldview

Whether we realize it or not, we all have some kind of embedded worldview – a way of interpreting what happens around us everyday. For some of us this worldview stems from one or more religions, for others it comes from science, while others may derive their worldview from politics or even what they are told by anyone, there are any number of places we go to when subconsciously piecing together our worldviews.

Mine comes from religion – specifically Christianity. I grew up in a particular denomination that has its own way of interpreting life and the events that we see on the news every day. Just like so many other people, those outside of my denomination and even religion, I had no apparent reason to ask the small, yet increasingly large question, “Why?” I learned that my way of seeing things was right, so why would I ask otherwise? If my way of interpreting the world at large was incorrect, why would I believe it in the first place? That even sounds like a good argument at first glace.

It just occurred to me that maybe it isn’t the best idea to cultivate only my way of thinking about things, whether it be current events, TV shows or movies, or even the Bible. I set out with some resolve to learn more about what I believe and to ask the dreaded question, “Why?” a whole lot more. It tends to be difficult to dig into something that you already disagree with, but at the same time, it is only fair. As a general example, I’ve been reading some practical theology about how God works in the world – the purpose of which is to is to hopefully learn how to better interact with him. Joyfully I began to read a book by a theologian that I agree with on nearly everything but to be fair, I decided it would only be right to give a different theologian a shot. It was painful at times. I really didn’t like doing it. But it did help.

I ended up in the book of Job. As the traditional “God does whatever he wants, even to the best of the best, and all we can do about it is rest in God’s grace for still being alive” book of the Bible (that sounds a little harsh – sorry) it carries some heavy connotations, as my subtitle for it might betray. Typically when I think of Job, I think of injustice being renamed justice, I think of difficulty and I think of paradox. Today, reading a chapter from that favorable theologian’s book, he suggested that we read Job in a different light. Throughout Job we find him, stricken with undeserved greif, wondering aloud how God could be “attacking” him, “assailing” him, “choking” him. He calls God his “opponent” and accuses God of treating him “without pity” rushing at him “like a warrior.” What is that about? How can I read this book and not get a picture of God that is just downright wrong? Is this really what God is like?

Absolutely not.

We know that: a) God is not doing this evil to him, that it is the satan that is doing it, and b) Job is in such anguish, he is falling back on his theology (a bad, faulty theology) to explain his predicament. I have never heard of this line of thought before. It would be easy to take anything negative Job says about God or the way he works in the world out of context and use it as a weapon in some other theological battle, but it would be inappropriate. There is however a happy ending to the story – or at least a good point to the story: God confronts him for spending chapter after chapter badmouthing him and sets him straight – then comes the good part. Job says:

“Surely I spoke of theings I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know . . .
Therefore I despise myself and repent in the dust and ashes.” (42:3, 6 NIV)

Job realized with the help of God that he has not understood the situation – his worldview was based on bad theology and he was caught in the downward spiral of utter depression and anger. For me, it was hard to read those passages and say, nope, that’s not the right way to talk about God. My upbringing told me to take it as the book says it and don’t question it. But by questioning it and being willing to look at these passages differently, I’ve been able to re-frame the way I look at the world theologically.

While it may be difficult at times to change the way you look at something, or intentionally step out of your comfort zone and reinterpret something, it can do a world of good in the long run. It may even change the way you look at things on the grander scale. Even if it doesn’t it pays to have a fuller grasp on the spectrum of viewpoints.

Divine Intervention

I would wager to say that we have all heard the phrase “divine intervention” used at some point in our lives. I know that I’ve heard it, but it was more of a joke than any real explanation of something that really occured. And t0 tell you the truth, I never really put much stock in that kind of thing. I don’t really believe that the Lord steps in and takes over very often. I firmly believe that he can very well do it if he pleases, but all the same, it’s not something that happens twice a week or anything like that.

It happened. To me. Go figure.

Let me paint the picture. We BCMers were on the road to UNC for Midwinter and we were looking to make a dinner-time stop at Cracker Barrel. We all made a hasty exit from the interstate and when I looked up, the car in our convoy ahead of me was completely stopped. I knew I had time to make a quick stop; the kind where all of the people in my car, the people in the car ahead and the people in the car behind me would know that I was not paying very good attention and nearly wrecked, but nonetheless, one where we would be safe. Well, that didn’t happen. It had been raining and the roads were a bit damp, so my brakes locked and I began to slide. Then, I slammed into the back of that next car. It was enough to make Kelly, my fiancee in the seat beside me, slam her knees into the dashboard and the guys in the back nearly slam into mine and Kelly’s seats. It was bad but not devastating.

But the motor in the car never turned off. And the airbags never deployed. And when the car drove off the ramp, it was perfectly fine. We followed our friends off to the next parking lot and we all got out to figure out what happened. Our cars had no scratches of any kind. No one was hurt. We were just shaken up a little bit. Part of me still doesn’t believe that it happened. I checked both of the cars and we couldn’t believe that there was no damage, that nothing had fallen off or anything like that.

There is no explanation. I am totally convinced that what we hit was not the car in front of us, but rather the hand of God. I can’t say why exactly, but I do know that there is no way to explain this apart from the intervention of God himself.

God is good.

Godlessness

*Disclaimer* – This is not a rant against any political/religious/”liberal” etc. party. I do not seek to talk down about any person(s). I do not seek to condemn anyone with this post, nor do I believe that it is my duty as a follower of Jesus to do any of this condemning business.

I think we’re clear on that, right?

Now, I’ll back up and start from a good beginning point. This past week leading up to the weekend has been crazy and hectic. BCM has been a busy campus ministry as we have been going through the process of nominating, interviewing and electing new student team leaders who will serve for the next school year as ministry leaders. This is a big deal for us as it affects the way the ministry will be handled so needless to say, we have been putting some real time into this. And after that was all over, starting Friday we left for UNC Chapel Hill for our yearly Mid-Winter retreat. It is always an amazing time and for me, this year was just as awesome as last year, though in very different ways.

I may blog a little more about Mid-winter later on, but just keep in mind that in preparing to co-lead the retreat with Josh Littlejohn, I spent large amounts of time in the Word asking God to give me the message that I needed to speak about. As I was reading all over the New Testament, God pointed out some really impacting things to me. These are too many to list, but I kept opening to old passages and I kept feeling that God was speaking to me through them, some in very new ways.

While this weekend was an awesome weekend and one where God has moved in big ways, I can safely say that satan was involved as well. As the Lord was speaking to so many students, satan was whispering into many ears, trying to negate or discredit what the Lord was saying. Through all of that, I realized how necessary it is for me to lean on the Lord. Some of the time I would call out to God and ask for some extra juice, something to keep me going a bit longer, which he would give me. Other times, I spent an hour just sitting in a room alone, searching the scriptures, writing and singing with my iPod to him and I would feel next to nothing for a while. Some of that was tough, but I got through it. The Lord was there the whole time, whether I felt like it or not.

Since then, I’ve been going back through the scriptures searching for a word from God and I’ve found one. Something that I’ve never seen before.

II Timothy 2:16a – “Avoid godless chatter . . . ” (NIV)

I’ve never thought about that one too much before. I’ve always thought that it meant that we shouldn’t talk about magic and immorality and getting drunk and anything else that seems “godless”. I’m sure that’s an OK way of reading that verse, but I had this revelation when I re-read it. It occured to me that not only should we be avoiding conversation about godless things, but we should be having conversations about godly things. How often do I talk to people about any random thing and never try to bring God into the conversation? The answer would be astounding. At Mid-winter, my first message that I taught revolved around God – his attributes, his characteristics and the ways that he is revealed through Jesus. It was an AWESOME conversation and everyone seemed to leave in a thoughful frame of mind. What if we all, as followers of Christ decided to have more conversations about God intentionally? How awesome would that be? I plan to bring God up much more frequently. He has changed my life forever, so why should I hold back from talking about it?

Pray about ways that you can bring up God in a discussion/conversation that you will have soon. God is too good to be kept as a secret.

Ministry

It is good to serve the Lord.

Yesterday I had a realization. It was rather broad and it was more of a wave of joy, rather than some kind of expressible thing. That may sound really weird. That’s the best I can do.

Something within me clicked, snapped, activated, whatever. I have been doing a more careful reading of Romans over the past week or so, and through this study, the Lord has shown me lots of different things I’ve missed up until now. Most of them have been small connections or cross references to different passages in the Word, but I have been blessed with an even greater thirst for the Word of God.

I am reminded as I bask in how good it is to serve the Lord, of what Paul said in his second letter to the church in Corinth, “Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart.” (II Cor. 4:1) I have heard it said that none of us will ever deserve our ministry. I am thankful for mine and I continually ask the Lord for the strength to carry it out in a way that is pleasing to him.

Perceptions

I’ve been reading this book called, as you might guess, unChristian. It’s written by David Kinnaman (of the Barna group) and Dave Lyons. Let me go ahead and tell you, this book is currently blowing me away. I knew that Christians were getting a bad rap and I knew that it was for far more than one single reason. But as it turns out, a large portion of Christians (a name by which I occasionally don’t like to be called) has been digging themselves into a hole. This book is based on research. Cold, hard researched statistical facts. As followers of Christ, we are being faced with a bleak situation. We are not wanted in many places. Just as we have made the mistake of stereotyping categories of sinners based on their sin (as if the Bible makes any distinction between sin apart from idolatry/blasphemy), so have unbelievers stereotyped us. The sad thing about stereotypes is that there must be some hard truth to them if they are to stand for long. We have created a bad name for ourselves, especially amongst outsiders – and those are the people that we should be taking care to reach out to rather than turn away.

As I said, I’ve been blown away and I’m not even finished with the book yet. I’m talking one third of the way into the book here. If you care about reaching “lost”, “unbelievers”, “outsiders”, “missing persons”, or whatever you may call them, then you need to take a look at this book with a prayerful attitude and ask God to change your heart where it needs to be changed. I had my preconceived notions of what outsiders thought of my faith and the way that I share about it, but as it turns out, I along with so many others have been terribly mistaken.

Lord, change my heart and my mind and transform them to see others the way that you do. Burden me more and more for those that don’t know your love and compassion. Forgive me for the times that I am not faithful in sharing the way that you’ve changed my life. Make clear to me the directions that you have for me and Lord I ask that you send me at least one outsider tomorrow so that I can tell them the good news of how you changed my life and how you can change theirs just as easily.

Amen

The beginnings of a missionary journey

I’ve been encouraged in many ways today. The Lord has been renewing me continually. Having heard Dr. Hammond (the President of NAMB) speak in worship twice today, I have been prayerfully trying to refocus my ministry as a whole. As my first post would inform you, I get caught up pretty quickly in the Christian realm. It is a good place to be, but it doesn’t really benefit the Kingdom of God very much. Dr. Hammond reminded us that our job is to sow down the gospel – meaning, share the love of Christ any chance we get.

At some level, that can be exciting yet also intimidating for many. I’ve been thinking that thought all day. But when I came back into my hotel room for the night, there was a gift bag on my bed addressed to me, but also generally addressed to “Missionaries Chosen by God – commissioned by the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention” presented by, “Coastal Empire Churches and the Savannah Baptist Association”.  The reverse side of the card was printed with this passage of scripture, “I took you from the ends of the earth, from its farthest corneds I called you. I said, ‘You are my servant’; I have chosen you and have not rejected you. So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” Isaiah 41:9-10

How about that?

And if that’s not enough to think about, along side of the contents of the gift bag were two cards; the first of which reads, “Greetings, I believe you are walking in the same foot prints as our Lord’s ‘12′. How blessed you are to have heard His voice.” And the second reads, “Remember, He who believes in me will live, even though he dies. I thank you and pray for you. You are never alone.” God bless, Sister in Christ, Joan.

Wow, right?

That was sobering yet uplifting. I needed that.

Thanks Lord.

Prayer

Prayer is something that we are supposed to do. I personally have been encouraged to pray since way before I can even remember anything. Praying is talking to God, but I get the overwhelming feeling that there is a large mass of people who feel like they are just a little crazy talking out loud to no one, or thinking words to themselves and no one else. I have always struggled with the notion of prayer. I’ve always believed that it was my way of talking to God, but for some reason, it never seemed very real or tangible to me. I knew that it was important, but because it didn’t feel very real, I never put much time into it. I’ve had a lot of conversations of with other believers and I don’t seem to be the only one experiencing these feelings.

Somehow I found myself in a stretch of ministry where I was surrounded by believers. I was leading prayer meetings, Bible studies, discipling students, writing prayer cards etc. The majority of my time was being spent around believers. So needless to say, I didn’t have to rely on prayer to get me through my ministry. It was a breeze actually. But then I realized that somehow I was surrounded by believer and not by folks who have yet to experience the joy of a relationship with Jesus. That is my call. I enjoy being surrounded by the latter. I’ve been spending some regular time now at Lees-McRae College where I am beginning to do some college ministry.

While I was spending time on that campus, I was struck by how much time I needed to spend praying through my visits to LMC, as well as pre and post visits. The Lord laid it on my heart to start digging in the Word right there at the student center, and that’s just what I did. I spent 4 hours poring over scripture, reflecting and praying through it. I needed that time. Next week when I go back up there, I’ll be sure to pray intently.

God is faithful and just.

Fun side note on the power of prayer: I was blessed to have been able to take part in some ministry to ASU’s Pagan Student Assoc. (a school club for pagan students to gather and fellowship together and learn from one another) with one of the BCM leaders and the first night I attended, he and I picked 3 people that we felt led to pray for each day. Of my 3 students, we have seen one of them (a former Satanist) come to Christ, and another (a Wiccan witch) trust Christ as well! I had heard updates about the first student, but this other girl was a huge surprise. She disappeared after the first meeting for most of the semester and I only got to speak to her on that first night. She is now a professing follower of Christ!

Hot-diggity-dog!

I’ve got the JOY

As I’ve been living my life, I’ve been thinking about things. Surprise, huh? Well mostly what I think about has something to do with living a “Christ-life” (as I’m writing this, it’s kind of late so excuse the silly terminology). What I mean by “Christ-life” has nothing to do with being God. That would be ridiculous. What it does mean is that as a Christian, or Believer or Follower or whatever you’d like to call it means living a life that is as Christ-like as possible. The kinds of things I’m talking specifically about here are things like loving people before you even have a reason to love them. That’s a huge one. There were a bunch of times in the Gospels that we’re told that Jesus saw a group of people (or a single person) and before he did anything, loved that person. I have as much trouble doing that as anyone else on this planet. The thing is, I’m not God. Thankfully. I will always be incapable of pretty much everything Jesus ever did. But the real deal is that I am always going to be trying to be as Christ-like as I possibly can.

As I’ve been thinking about this sort of thing over the past few weeks, I knew I needed to write it out as a means of getting my thoughts straightened out. Just tonight as I was calming down for the night, I picked up my Greek NT and lex. and started trying to read through some sections in Mark and John. Since I don’t really know Greek very well at all, what I’ve been doing is working with some of the sections I know very well and trying to pick up what the Greek is actually saying. It’s been working pretty well so far. As I have been looking up different words in the lexicon I’ve been doing my own miniature word studies. I’ll read all of the entries for a word I’m looking up, find any cognates, opposites and anything generally related to it. It’s really been helping me develop my vocabulary again. Not to mention it’s really cool to dig a little deeper.

As I’ve been doing this for the past few days, I’ve been finding some interesting words and ideas that have been swimming in my head. I’ve been spending most of my time in John 1, 2, & 21. Doing so has brought three words to my attention.

Zoa (pronounced – Zoway) – meaning: life (zoo-ology)
Thanatos (Thon-a-toss) – meaning: death
Metanoia (like it looks) – meaning: repentance, change of mind

Zoa & Thanatos can both be words literally meaning life and death, animate and inanimate etc. but they usually have a more figurative meaning to them. Typically Thanatos means something to the effect of misery of death due to sin, and Zoa typically means something along the lines of absolute fullness of life, or the grace of God evident in life. Of course those are not the exact words you would use to translate the Greek words. That would be ridiculous and unfitting. But that gets the thought across. Metanoia on the other hand is even more interesting, and it also happens to be the focus of this whole entry. Metanoia usually means repentance or some form of that word, depending on case and declension and all that good stuff. The coolest part of that whole thing is the idea of a change of mind. Anyone who has been around Christianity for a while knows that repenting is a big deal in evangelism. You repent and put your faith in Christ. That’s how it works. The faith this is simple and complex (like nearly everything else in Christianity for that matter) but it’s also for another time. Metanoia means that you realize your sin, and you feel bad about it and want to make changes. It is both inward and outward. It’s a feeling deep down within you, but at the same time it has huge effects on your outward expression. This is how you can figure out your conversion point. You trace back to when you realized that you weren’t doing things right and you knew you needed to change things. This is the turning point, the point where you changed your mind, where you repented, where you made decisions differently, etc. This is how you know your conversion was legitimate. With repentance and conversion comes change. It’s built in to these words, but so many people don’t even realize that. This is why it’s dangerous to say,
“Welp, I’m a Christian now, I’ll be in heaven when I die. So I’ll just keep robbing banks and smoking crack and beating up children and old ladies until I die, and when I die, like I said, I’ll be in heaven.”

That’s the world’s biggest cop-out. If you decide to follow Jesus, then there has got to be some change. Now that’s not to say that if an alcoholic or drug addict decides to follow Christ that he/she will instantly be cured through faith. That’s just silly. It’s going to be hard as hell for them to quit, but all the same, they’re going to want to and so they’re going to work for it.

I’m actually less worried about the alcoholics and drug addicts turned Believer than I am about the Believers who don’t even realize that they are falling short and not only are they unaware of it, they think they’re doing OK. That’s super-vague. Here’s what pisses me off so much more than a Believer accidentally strung out on heroin, a Believer who lives life as a pessimist. This oh-so-typical person is down about everything. It makes me sad to think that someone can live life as a follower of Christ and yet still live in a “sad world”. This doesn’t say much for sacrifice that Christ made for us. I have a hard time understanding how someone could believe that they are made new in Christ yet still complain about every little thing. Where is the joy of Christ?

I’m not perfect. I’m not even close. I never will be. But the thing is, if I screw everything else up, at least I have this inescapable joy in my life everyday. And to clarify, this joy I’m talking about has nothing to do with being happy everyday about everything, natural disasters and death included. That’s ridiculous. Everyone has rainy days once in a while. But the rainy days help us to grow. The joy I’m talking about is knowing that, even though things might not be “right” or OK at the moment, Christ still gave his live for us. That right there gives me this hope and joy that there is something behind it all.

“Consider it all JOY”

Living intentionally

“Father, make of me a crisis man. Bring those I contact to decision. Let me not be milepost on a single road; make me a fork, that men must turn one way or another when they face Christ in me.”
Jim Elliot,
missionary who was martyred by the
Auca Indians in Ecuador, 1956.

Part of me wants to read Jim’s diaries. Part of me doesn’t. I know that I could learn a heck of a lot from reading them, but at the same time I know without a doubt that I would feel like a failure to Christ. If you don’t know anything about Jim Elliot, I would definitely challenge you to look into his life. Jim and his team had some of the deepest and most well-grounded principles and faith that I’ve ever heard of. His ministry as a cross-cultural missionary was to unreached people groups of the Amazon jungle in South America. I really can’t think of any more intimidating ministry setting. The peoples he tried, and did reach had never seen anyone with white skin. They had never progressed out of the stone age. There are still at least 250-300 unreached people groups in the same place that are still living a totally closed stone-age life. In spite of this scary situation, Jim and his wife and his team all knew that they could do nothing else but try to reach these people. Their lives were totally and completely surrendered to God. What I wonder these days is what percentage of Believers are surrendered in the way that Jim and the rest were. They were happy to lay down their lives for the gospel. In fact, when Jim and the men with him were killed, their wives continued on trying to minister to the people who killed their husbands. . . Think about that.

A few nights ago I just happened to stumble onto a verse that I had never noticed before. I’m adopting it as my life goal, even though now I still fulfill it poorly.

“He must become greater; I must become less.”
John 3:30 (TNIV)

Of all the verses in the Bible, I would bet that John 3:30 was way up there for Jim and his team. Living that verse to its fullest potential could very well look just like Jim’s life. That doesn’t necessarily mean that all Believers are called into the jungle to die for the gospel, but it does mean that we should be living our lives to intentionally
glorify God. As we honestly do that, things will begin to change. The longer we live that verse, the more our thoughts will begin to resemble Jim’s. It’s scary, but it’s exciting too. You can bet that Jim nor his group or any of their wives were ever sorry that they followed God’s call.

I plan to read his diaries as soon as I can. I’m also planning on being pretty broken down because of it.