After spending the past week or so in the Prodigal Son story from Luke 15, I've come to this prayer.
That I might be as bold and audacious in prayer as the younger son without the rebellion. And that I might be as obedient and faithful as the older son without the self-righteousness that walls me off from entering into the joy of knowing the Father.
Showing posts with label prayer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label prayer. Show all posts
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Thursday, December 02, 2010
The Best Prayer Ever Prayed For Me
Two years ago this time I was in the midst of a moderate personal crisis. I had just started my sabbatical after I super-over-reacted to a really hard fall on campus.
My wonderful former church, All Saints, gave us a great gift during Advent. During the Sunday school hour they did a 'soaking prayer' service. Quiet music in the background, candles, silence and prayer with prayer ministers circling the room, praying over the circle of eight to fifteen of us who showed up.
Every so often the prayer ministers would stop and pray for one of us specifically--laying hands on our shoulders and praying silently. If they sensed that God spoke a word to them for us, they would write that on a note card and lay it on our lap.
Two years later, I still have three of those note cards from my two weeks of soaking prayer. They have regularly spoken words of truth and grace to me in the midst of various circumstances.
But one of them stands out as probably the best prayer anyone has ever prayed over me. It was extremely pertinent two years ago in the midst of my re-finding my security and peace in the Lord. It continues to speak to me in its simplicity and clarity:
"Alex, float in my river. You can relax. I will carry you where I want you to go."
Floating in the great River of the Spirit of God for an occasionally over-amped guy like me is an invitation to pure and holy repentance and a more faithful trust in the Lord. It has led me into the peace of Christ again and again.
May it bless some of you out there who might resonate with my struggle.
My wonderful former church, All Saints, gave us a great gift during Advent. During the Sunday school hour they did a 'soaking prayer' service. Quiet music in the background, candles, silence and prayer with prayer ministers circling the room, praying over the circle of eight to fifteen of us who showed up.
Every so often the prayer ministers would stop and pray for one of us specifically--laying hands on our shoulders and praying silently. If they sensed that God spoke a word to them for us, they would write that on a note card and lay it on our lap.
Two years later, I still have three of those note cards from my two weeks of soaking prayer. They have regularly spoken words of truth and grace to me in the midst of various circumstances.
But one of them stands out as probably the best prayer anyone has ever prayed over me. It was extremely pertinent two years ago in the midst of my re-finding my security and peace in the Lord. It continues to speak to me in its simplicity and clarity:
"Alex, float in my river. You can relax. I will carry you where I want you to go."
Floating in the great River of the Spirit of God for an occasionally over-amped guy like me is an invitation to pure and holy repentance and a more faithful trust in the Lord. It has led me into the peace of Christ again and again.
May it bless some of you out there who might resonate with my struggle.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
What About Prayer that Doesn't "Work?"
While all the world has been riveted to the mine rescue down in Chile, Mark Galli has some excellent reflections on the role of prayer--what about when God doesn't come to the rescue?Here's an excerpt:
When this sort of thing happens, I feel like I'm being set up. If prayer never "worked," I could deal with it sensibly. I could just give it up. Or give up one type of prayer—intercession. Just stop praying that God would do this or that, change this or that. Prayer could just be communing with God. But when God answers prayer like this, it sets up this god-awful expectation that God gives to those who ask.To read the rest of the article, click here.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Why I Don't Believe in Prayer
So prayer doesn't really "work." It's not like a magic potion that you wave over your situation to make it instantaneously better. I don't believe in the power of prayer.
This is important to establish because of what I talked about earlier in the week from Nehemiah regarding prayer. There I said that prayer establishes a boundary around the power of something to define us. It helps us to remember that God is God and he's over the situation, which puts a limit around the opposition or situation that we're facing.
But the reality is that simply praying doesn't do this. There's some ways that we pray that actually leave us worse off than when we started.
Prayer goes bad in a couple of different ways.
Sometimes in our prayers we are spending time simply reciting or re-hashing how right we are and how wrong the other person is. This is part of Jesus' point when he tells the story of two pray-ers: the religious guy who stands proud before God and declares aloud how glad he is that God did not make him like a common sinner and the tax-collector who humbles himself before and asks for mercy and forgiveness.
When we pray simply as an excuse to self-justify before God and to rehearse our own righteousness to ourselves, we sin. We would be better off in some cases to not have prayed at all--except that God who is rich in power and mercy can sometimes cut through even our praying in arrogance.
Another way that prayer goes wrong is when we pray as functional atheists. We sort of feel compelled to pray about a situation but we don't genuinely believe that God is the third-party active who can or who would do anything about the situation.
Prayer in this case is simply worrying out loud, to borrow Dallas Willard's wonderful phrase. Not much power or freedom or release there, either. In fact, it's just making things worse.
It seems to me that the key to prayer is in the word "submission." We submit our requests to God.
Not in the same way that we submit an order at the drive-thru with the expectation that we'll get what we ordered. But in a way that recognizes a couple of realities: God is God, he is active and alive; we might be wrong or at the very least in need of some level of correction ourselves; and what God's up to in any given situation might not be what we expect or desire at this point in time.
And we do this boldly. Submitting our requests to God means neither the drive-thru experience NOR the "let me try to give God the right answer" experience. We speak our minds and our hearts with an earnest outpouring of what's truly there. And then we recognize that God is God, and we give it over to him--we submit those minds and hearts and desires and dreams and all that we would will to happen to the God who is Lord over us. This is what Jesus does in the Garden, before his execution.
When we genuinely come before God as we are and then submit ourselves and the situations that we're facing to the God of the universe, then we're finally praying.
And then, my friends, we have established the boundary around the circumstances of our lives to define us. God defines us. We have given our circumstances over to the higher power so that I might see me and my situation in light of a larger story that re-casts what appears to be true in light of the larger realities of what we know to be true.
"I don't believe in prayer," my systematic theology prof once said, "I believe in the God who is Lord over prayer."
Yep, that's it.
This is important to establish because of what I talked about earlier in the week from Nehemiah regarding prayer. There I said that prayer establishes a boundary around the power of something to define us. It helps us to remember that God is God and he's over the situation, which puts a limit around the opposition or situation that we're facing.
But the reality is that simply praying doesn't do this. There's some ways that we pray that actually leave us worse off than when we started.
Prayer goes bad in a couple of different ways.
Sometimes in our prayers we are spending time simply reciting or re-hashing how right we are and how wrong the other person is. This is part of Jesus' point when he tells the story of two pray-ers: the religious guy who stands proud before God and declares aloud how glad he is that God did not make him like a common sinner and the tax-collector who humbles himself before and asks for mercy and forgiveness.
When we pray simply as an excuse to self-justify before God and to rehearse our own righteousness to ourselves, we sin. We would be better off in some cases to not have prayed at all--except that God who is rich in power and mercy can sometimes cut through even our praying in arrogance.
Another way that prayer goes wrong is when we pray as functional atheists. We sort of feel compelled to pray about a situation but we don't genuinely believe that God is the third-party active who can or who would do anything about the situation.
Prayer in this case is simply worrying out loud, to borrow Dallas Willard's wonderful phrase. Not much power or freedom or release there, either. In fact, it's just making things worse.
It seems to me that the key to prayer is in the word "submission." We submit our requests to God.
Not in the same way that we submit an order at the drive-thru with the expectation that we'll get what we ordered. But in a way that recognizes a couple of realities: God is God, he is active and alive; we might be wrong or at the very least in need of some level of correction ourselves; and what God's up to in any given situation might not be what we expect or desire at this point in time.
And we do this boldly. Submitting our requests to God means neither the drive-thru experience NOR the "let me try to give God the right answer" experience. We speak our minds and our hearts with an earnest outpouring of what's truly there. And then we recognize that God is God, and we give it over to him--we submit those minds and hearts and desires and dreams and all that we would will to happen to the God who is Lord over us. This is what Jesus does in the Garden, before his execution.
When we genuinely come before God as we are and then submit ourselves and the situations that we're facing to the God of the universe, then we're finally praying.
And then, my friends, we have established the boundary around the circumstances of our lives to define us. God defines us. We have given our circumstances over to the higher power so that I might see me and my situation in light of a larger story that re-casts what appears to be true in light of the larger realities of what we know to be true.
"I don't believe in prayer," my systematic theology prof once said, "I believe in the God who is Lord over prayer."
Yep, that's it.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Re-Framing My Life By Questioning My Stories
Last week I was talking with my nun about how transition was kicking up old issues of anxiety and fear and people-pleasing and finding my identity based on how well I perform in any given situation.
He suggested that transition is a good gift to help us find our weak spots if we'll allow it to do its' work. And he gave me two great questions that I've written down and put in my Bible as a way to direct my prayers:
1. What story am I living out of?
This sounds bit fuzzy until you drill down into it. And often, the tip-off is what makes you angry, anxious, or something you just can't bring yourself to do.
For example, is it hard for you to be generous? You're living out of the story of scarcity. Resources are scarce and it's up to you to secure all the resources you possibly could to ensure your own safety and survival.
What story are you living out of?
2. What is the story of the gospel that Jesus invites us into?
If it's hard for me to be generous, I need to look to Jesus. He became poor for my sake so that out of his poverty I might become rich. He is my provider. If my life is all about my provision for myself my life is built on sinking sand.
Jesus has secured my life and my lot. He is my trust, not the digits in my bank account. He provides for me more than all I need.
And so I am freed up from the tyranny of anxiety about money and I'm free to be generous because I am rooted in Christ and his story of provision rather than the story of my self-provision that ends up enslaving me.
What's the story that I'm living in currently?
What is the story of the gospel that Jesus invites me to enter into?
Some good questions for me to ponder this week as I enter into a good week of work.
He suggested that transition is a good gift to help us find our weak spots if we'll allow it to do its' work. And he gave me two great questions that I've written down and put in my Bible as a way to direct my prayers:
1. What story am I living out of?
This sounds bit fuzzy until you drill down into it. And often, the tip-off is what makes you angry, anxious, or something you just can't bring yourself to do.
For example, is it hard for you to be generous? You're living out of the story of scarcity. Resources are scarce and it's up to you to secure all the resources you possibly could to ensure your own safety and survival.
What story are you living out of?
2. What is the story of the gospel that Jesus invites us into?
If it's hard for me to be generous, I need to look to Jesus. He became poor for my sake so that out of his poverty I might become rich. He is my provider. If my life is all about my provision for myself my life is built on sinking sand.
Jesus has secured my life and my lot. He is my trust, not the digits in my bank account. He provides for me more than all I need.
And so I am freed up from the tyranny of anxiety about money and I'm free to be generous because I am rooted in Christ and his story of provision rather than the story of my self-provision that ends up enslaving me.
What's the story that I'm living in currently?
What is the story of the gospel that Jesus invites me to enter into?
Some good questions for me to ponder this week as I enter into a good week of work.
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
Life Changing Questions Part 2: The Macro Question to Get Past Fuming and Ranting
Yesterday I talked about my quest to find life-changing questions, and shared the great question that was shared with me last week by one of my mentors: "what do other people experience in your presence?"
I've got one "macro" question that has been with me for several years and one "right now" question that's helping me as I wade through my job transition. Macro today, micro tomorrow.
The macro question comes from Scripture and it's one that I've shared here before. In John chapter 1, the first recorded words from Jesus are directed to two guys who just left John the Baptist and have followed him. He asks a very simple question: "what do you want?"
This question has done serious redemptive work in my soul. Many of my hardest days, when I'm praying ranting-type prayers, the Spirit will whisper this question to me in the midst of my fuming: "what do you want?"
The first time around, I think I know what I want. I rail on about circumstances or disappointments or heartaches. But then the question often comes back to me again: "No, Alex, what do you want?"
The second time often helps me to pause and think a little bit deeper about the issues at hand. Maybe there's something beneath the disappointment or circumstantial issue that's going on here. This time around, I'm a bit calmer, beginning to press through the noise in my head to the heart issue at hand.
"What do you want?" often comes a third time. Often by this point, I'm at a deeper, more rested, more contented place. I recognize that my true needs and truest wants are met in Christ.
I repent of being overly-defined by my circumstances. I find the footing to repent of my anxiety and fears, to talk honestly about my disappointments or frustrations without fixing myself more deeply into them.
I find that round three of the question "what do you want?" gets me to the place where I am both honest about where I am and submissive, quieted, glad to be in the presence of my Father who genuinely wants to know "what do you want?" and will not stop asking me until I get to the place of being a real "me."
In the end, we remain a mystery even to ourselves. Only our maker truly knows us.
So much of what I think of as the real me is just a shadow, a small part of me skimming along the surface of life. When that part of me gets offended, it bellows loudly. But that's not what defines me, really.
It's the deeper, more true places that life is found and where life springs from. "What do you want?" three times through helps me to stumble my way into that more expansive, more powerful, more thoughtful place so that I might meet the Lord of my life there. It is the only way that I find out who I really am--and more importantly, who the Lord really is.
"What do you want?" My life question.
I've got one "macro" question that has been with me for several years and one "right now" question that's helping me as I wade through my job transition. Macro today, micro tomorrow.
The macro question comes from Scripture and it's one that I've shared here before. In John chapter 1, the first recorded words from Jesus are directed to two guys who just left John the Baptist and have followed him. He asks a very simple question: "what do you want?"
This question has done serious redemptive work in my soul. Many of my hardest days, when I'm praying ranting-type prayers, the Spirit will whisper this question to me in the midst of my fuming: "what do you want?"
The first time around, I think I know what I want. I rail on about circumstances or disappointments or heartaches. But then the question often comes back to me again: "No, Alex, what do you want?"
The second time often helps me to pause and think a little bit deeper about the issues at hand. Maybe there's something beneath the disappointment or circumstantial issue that's going on here. This time around, I'm a bit calmer, beginning to press through the noise in my head to the heart issue at hand.
"What do you want?" often comes a third time. Often by this point, I'm at a deeper, more rested, more contented place. I recognize that my true needs and truest wants are met in Christ.
I repent of being overly-defined by my circumstances. I find the footing to repent of my anxiety and fears, to talk honestly about my disappointments or frustrations without fixing myself more deeply into them.
I find that round three of the question "what do you want?" gets me to the place where I am both honest about where I am and submissive, quieted, glad to be in the presence of my Father who genuinely wants to know "what do you want?" and will not stop asking me until I get to the place of being a real "me."
In the end, we remain a mystery even to ourselves. Only our maker truly knows us.
So much of what I think of as the real me is just a shadow, a small part of me skimming along the surface of life. When that part of me gets offended, it bellows loudly. But that's not what defines me, really.
It's the deeper, more true places that life is found and where life springs from. "What do you want?" three times through helps me to stumble my way into that more expansive, more powerful, more thoughtful place so that I might meet the Lord of my life there. It is the only way that I find out who I really am--and more importantly, who the Lord really is.
"What do you want?" My life question.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
A Prayer
My good friend (and former VCU IV student) Tim is one of my most frequent commenters/occasional sparring partners here on my blog. He's my vocal Catholic--and I'm grateful for the perspective he brings to these posts.
Last week as I was flailing around about communion, he sent me a great prayer that I've come back to several times over the past several days. It's rich with complexity and simplicity and truth. I thought I'd share it with you...enjoy:
Stay with me Lord, it is necessary to have you present so that I do not forget you. You know how easily I abandon you.
Stay with me Lord, because I am weak and I need your strength that I may not fall so often.
Stay with me Lord, because you are my life, and without I am without fervor.
Stay with me Lord, because you are my light, and without you I am in darkness.
Stay with me Lord to show me your will.
Stay with me Lord so that I hear your voice and follow you.
Stay with me Lord, because I desire to love you very much and be always in your company.
Stay with me Lord, if you wish me to be faithful to you.
Stay with me Lord, as poor as my soul is I wish it to be a place of consolation for you, a nest of love.
Stay with me Jesus, because it is getting late, and the day is coming to a close and life passes. Death, judgment and eternity approaches. It is necessary to renew my strength so that I do not stop along the way, and for that I need you. It is getting late and death approaches. I fear the darkness, the temptations, the dryness, the cross, the sorrows. Oh, how I need you, my Jesus, in this night of exile.
Stay with me tonight, Jesus, in life with all its dangers I need you.
Let me recognize you as your disciples did in the breaking of the bread, that the Eucharistic communion be the light which disperses the darkness, the force which sustains me, the unique joy of my heart.
Stay with me Lord, because at the hour of my death I wish to remain united to you, if not by communion, at least by grace and love.
Stay with me Lord, because it is you alone I look for: your love, your grace, your will, your heart, your spirit, because I love you and ask no other reward but to love you more and more.
With a firm love I will love you with all my heart while on earth, and continue to love you perfectly during all eternity.
Amen.
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
Last week as I was flailing around about communion, he sent me a great prayer that I've come back to several times over the past several days. It's rich with complexity and simplicity and truth. I thought I'd share it with you...enjoy:
Stay with me Lord, it is necessary to have you present so that I do not forget you. You know how easily I abandon you.
Stay with me Lord, because I am weak and I need your strength that I may not fall so often.
Stay with me Lord, because you are my life, and without I am without fervor.
Stay with me Lord, because you are my light, and without you I am in darkness.
Stay with me Lord to show me your will.
Stay with me Lord so that I hear your voice and follow you.
Stay with me Lord, because I desire to love you very much and be always in your company.
Stay with me Lord, if you wish me to be faithful to you.
Stay with me Lord, as poor as my soul is I wish it to be a place of consolation for you, a nest of love.
Stay with me Jesus, because it is getting late, and the day is coming to a close and life passes. Death, judgment and eternity approaches. It is necessary to renew my strength so that I do not stop along the way, and for that I need you. It is getting late and death approaches. I fear the darkness, the temptations, the dryness, the cross, the sorrows. Oh, how I need you, my Jesus, in this night of exile.
Stay with me tonight, Jesus, in life with all its dangers I need you.
Let me recognize you as your disciples did in the breaking of the bread, that the Eucharistic communion be the light which disperses the darkness, the force which sustains me, the unique joy of my heart.
Stay with me Lord, because at the hour of my death I wish to remain united to you, if not by communion, at least by grace and love.
Stay with me Lord, because it is you alone I look for: your love, your grace, your will, your heart, your spirit, because I love you and ask no other reward but to love you more and more.
With a firm love I will love you with all my heart while on earth, and continue to love you perfectly during all eternity.
Amen.
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
Overcoming Prayer Shame and Scripture Befuddlement: Praying the Scriptures
So my job means that I talk about religious stuff with people. A lot. And when it comes to prayer, what I find is nearly universal shame: no one thinks that they pray enough or that they pray well.
And when it comes to reading the Scriptures, there's nearly universal befuddlement. Few are reading the Scriptures as regularly as they feel that they should, no one feels like they get as much out of it as they could. Many languish trying to figure out what to read and more importantly how to apply it to their lives.
Over the past several weeks I've re-discovered a discipline that has re-energized my time in Scripture and my prayer life: praying the Scriptures.
The basic premise is simple: as you read, you are open to something that seems significant in the passage or at least significant to you about the passage. This could be a word, a phrase, or an idea.
Then, as a part of sinking roots deep into this word, phrase or idea, you take that portion of Scripture and use it as the lens through which you pray for people you love, situations you're involved in, and whatever else you'd normally pray/think/worry about.
For example, I'm reading through Proverbs right now. One morning last week I came across this phrase: whoever pursues righteousness and kindness will find life and honor.
First, I need to make sure I understand the passage. Proverbs isn't a book about hard and fast promises. It's about general principles. I'm not cashing in an "if-then" promise. Proverbs is giving me an education in the goal of life and basic ideas about how to get there, what kind of person God desires for me to be.
So, I'm intrigued by finding life and honor--these are recurring words throughout the book that describe having found "it." And so I back up: pursuing righteousness and kindness often bears this kind of fruit.
So I pray through the lens of pursuing righteousness and kindness. First, I pray for myself, that the pursuit of righteousness and kindness would mark my character, my husbanding and fathering, and ministry and friendships.
Then I pray for my kids--that their lives might be marked by pursuing righteousness and kindness. That I'd be faithful to live out and articulate the values of both righteousness and kindness.
I pray that my kids will be surrounded by friends who also do this at every stage of their lives--peers and community are so critical for healthy spirituality. And I pray that they'd one day marry someone who also is marked by the pursuit of righteousness and kindness.
Then I go on--praying for the pursuit of righteousness and kindness and the fruit that comes with it to make and mark my co-workers, students leaders, our InterVarsity community.
And finally I pray for those on campus who don't know Jesus, that all the pursuits that shape the lives of students now might be replaced by this pursuit of righteousness and kindness--that in the end they would know the life and honor found in Jesus Christ.
And ultimately, all praying the Scriptures points back to this: that Jesus is the fulfillment of all the Scriptures. Righteousness and kindness aren't disembodied ideas--they have put on flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. All righteousness and kindness is found in him.
Ultimately in praying the Scriptures, I'm running all the threads of my various prayers through the needle's-eye of Jesus Christ. In him is all the fullness of all the blessings offered to us in the Scriptures.
If you're someone who struggles with praying and/or Scripture-reading, I'd encourage you to give this a shot. It's helped me to drill down deeper both into the Scriptures and into prayer...relieving shame and befuddlement in one fell swoop!
And when it comes to reading the Scriptures, there's nearly universal befuddlement. Few are reading the Scriptures as regularly as they feel that they should, no one feels like they get as much out of it as they could. Many languish trying to figure out what to read and more importantly how to apply it to their lives.
Over the past several weeks I've re-discovered a discipline that has re-energized my time in Scripture and my prayer life: praying the Scriptures.
The basic premise is simple: as you read, you are open to something that seems significant in the passage or at least significant to you about the passage. This could be a word, a phrase, or an idea.
Then, as a part of sinking roots deep into this word, phrase or idea, you take that portion of Scripture and use it as the lens through which you pray for people you love, situations you're involved in, and whatever else you'd normally pray/think/worry about.
For example, I'm reading through Proverbs right now. One morning last week I came across this phrase: whoever pursues righteousness and kindness will find life and honor.
First, I need to make sure I understand the passage. Proverbs isn't a book about hard and fast promises. It's about general principles. I'm not cashing in an "if-then" promise. Proverbs is giving me an education in the goal of life and basic ideas about how to get there, what kind of person God desires for me to be.
So, I'm intrigued by finding life and honor--these are recurring words throughout the book that describe having found "it." And so I back up: pursuing righteousness and kindness often bears this kind of fruit.
So I pray through the lens of pursuing righteousness and kindness. First, I pray for myself, that the pursuit of righteousness and kindness would mark my character, my husbanding and fathering, and ministry and friendships.
Then I pray for my kids--that their lives might be marked by pursuing righteousness and kindness. That I'd be faithful to live out and articulate the values of both righteousness and kindness.
I pray that my kids will be surrounded by friends who also do this at every stage of their lives--peers and community are so critical for healthy spirituality. And I pray that they'd one day marry someone who also is marked by the pursuit of righteousness and kindness.
Then I go on--praying for the pursuit of righteousness and kindness and the fruit that comes with it to make and mark my co-workers, students leaders, our InterVarsity community.
And finally I pray for those on campus who don't know Jesus, that all the pursuits that shape the lives of students now might be replaced by this pursuit of righteousness and kindness--that in the end they would know the life and honor found in Jesus Christ.
And ultimately, all praying the Scriptures points back to this: that Jesus is the fulfillment of all the Scriptures. Righteousness and kindness aren't disembodied ideas--they have put on flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. All righteousness and kindness is found in him.
Ultimately in praying the Scriptures, I'm running all the threads of my various prayers through the needle's-eye of Jesus Christ. In him is all the fullness of all the blessings offered to us in the Scriptures.
If you're someone who struggles with praying and/or Scripture-reading, I'd encourage you to give this a shot. It's helped me to drill down deeper both into the Scriptures and into prayer...relieving shame and befuddlement in one fell swoop!
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Squashing Fisherman II: Prayer & The Spice Girls
Anytime you read some Scripture that makes you think of the Spice Girls, it's worth meditating on for a while.
So yesterday we talked about how the disciples still don't get it, even as Jesus is getting ready to leave them. Jesus is talking about the Kingdom of God, the disciples are asking about the Kingdom of Israel--and by that, meaning a geo-political-military establishment.
From my vantage point now, I'm a bit incredulous: they're still clueless? After all this time?
But if I step back and consider all this, it's an extremely short trip from the disciples requests to many of the things that I've prayed for over my life. How many things have I asked for along the way that I look back on now with a mixture of horror at the request and relief that it was not granted?
How many things am I currently praying for that I'll look back on in five or ten years and think the same things?
Jesus, in his patience and love, invites us to ask with reckless abandon. To quote the great prophets, The Spice Girls: tell me what you want, what you really, really want.
Ask your Father, he says, he'll provide for you. This authentic, genuine asking is part of what it means to have the faith of a little child. A child asks for what she or he wants without pretense and without qualifying or hedging too much.
And so we are invited to ask for the things that we want. But not all requests are created equal.
And there's a call for us to grow up into Christ. Part of that growing up means that we always stay playful as a child in approaching our good Father.
And part of that growing up means that as we submit our requests to God in the fullest sense of the word. We submit our hearts' desires to God, and in the process he is not only considering those requests, he's also shaping our hearts to desire his will.
It's a process that's never done, but it's essential to growing up in Christ-likeness.
So we shouldn't be too hard on the disciples and some of us need to embrace the Spice Girls-exhortation to tell God what we really, really want. And we should all be glad that he doesn't always give it to us.
So yesterday we talked about how the disciples still don't get it, even as Jesus is getting ready to leave them. Jesus is talking about the Kingdom of God, the disciples are asking about the Kingdom of Israel--and by that, meaning a geo-political-military establishment.
From my vantage point now, I'm a bit incredulous: they're still clueless? After all this time?
But if I step back and consider all this, it's an extremely short trip from the disciples requests to many of the things that I've prayed for over my life. How many things have I asked for along the way that I look back on now with a mixture of horror at the request and relief that it was not granted?
How many things am I currently praying for that I'll look back on in five or ten years and think the same things?
Jesus, in his patience and love, invites us to ask with reckless abandon. To quote the great prophets, The Spice Girls: tell me what you want, what you really, really want.
Ask your Father, he says, he'll provide for you. This authentic, genuine asking is part of what it means to have the faith of a little child. A child asks for what she or he wants without pretense and without qualifying or hedging too much.
And so we are invited to ask for the things that we want. But not all requests are created equal.
And there's a call for us to grow up into Christ. Part of that growing up means that we always stay playful as a child in approaching our good Father.
And part of that growing up means that as we submit our requests to God in the fullest sense of the word. We submit our hearts' desires to God, and in the process he is not only considering those requests, he's also shaping our hearts to desire his will.
It's a process that's never done, but it's essential to growing up in Christ-likeness.
So we shouldn't be too hard on the disciples and some of us need to embrace the Spice Girls-exhortation to tell God what we really, really want. And we should all be glad that he doesn't always give it to us.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Praying With Paul & David (Not In Lah-Lah Land)
Thinking more today about the prayer life of Paul and the exuberant fount of prayers that we find in the Psalms. It seems that there are a few key underlying platforms that help us move past lame "pray for my Aunt Marge's big toe" prayers to prayers that actually do holy damage in our lives and in our world.
First, is a sense of the wonder of God, the love of God, and a faith in God to be God...even when all the circumstantial evidence seem to weigh in against such a thing/person/being even existing. This faith in God to be God even when (from our perspective) he seems to be making a mess of everything keeps David coming back in the Psalms.
Second, and certainly connected, is holy imagination. Some of us don't have very active imaginations, others of us have over-active imaginations, or imaginations that latch onto just about anything except what is holy and good.
But apart from cultivating holy imagination, we will always be limited in our understanding of the breadth and wonder of God's love and his Kingdom as it is coming, as it could possibly come, as we might long for it to come.
This is not living in lah-lah land. This is being caught up in the vision of God's work going forth in our own lives, conquering all the pain and death and brokenness in this world, and leaning our prayer life into this certain and sure future.
The cultivating of holy imagination is one of the most under-discussed spiritual disciplines in the church. But apart from holy imagination, we cannot enter into the wonder and mystery of God that Paul speaks about and delights in so richly throughout his letters. Apart from cultivating holy imagination, we will never learn to pray.
Finally, urgency is a fantastic driver for prayer. Plenty of us who stink at prayer suddenly find motivation when something is pressing; when a dream or hope or family member is on the line we find fresh energy for prayer.
For Paul, the gospel going forth is a matter of great urgency. It matters if Greeks and barbarians do not hear the gospel. It is a matter of life or death.
This does not play well in my context. The sophisticated, educated, academic culture where I minister would prefer me to think that nothing much matters except that people get educated enough to blunt their religious passions.
But urgency is part of what drives genuine prayer. And there is plenty that is urgent to address, particularly the very real fact that thousands on my campus are apart from Christ and therefore are not actually alive yet.
I think that we can enter into a vibrant and healthy and active prayer life if at least one of these things is in play. When all of them are on the sidelines (which happens to me from time to time) my prayer life probably needs to shift back to the very basic question that the disciples asked of Jesus: "Lord, teach me to pray..."
First, is a sense of the wonder of God, the love of God, and a faith in God to be God...even when all the circumstantial evidence seem to weigh in against such a thing/person/being even existing. This faith in God to be God even when (from our perspective) he seems to be making a mess of everything keeps David coming back in the Psalms.
Second, and certainly connected, is holy imagination. Some of us don't have very active imaginations, others of us have over-active imaginations, or imaginations that latch onto just about anything except what is holy and good.
But apart from cultivating holy imagination, we will always be limited in our understanding of the breadth and wonder of God's love and his Kingdom as it is coming, as it could possibly come, as we might long for it to come.
This is not living in lah-lah land. This is being caught up in the vision of God's work going forth in our own lives, conquering all the pain and death and brokenness in this world, and leaning our prayer life into this certain and sure future.
The cultivating of holy imagination is one of the most under-discussed spiritual disciplines in the church. But apart from holy imagination, we cannot enter into the wonder and mystery of God that Paul speaks about and delights in so richly throughout his letters. Apart from cultivating holy imagination, we will never learn to pray.
Finally, urgency is a fantastic driver for prayer. Plenty of us who stink at prayer suddenly find motivation when something is pressing; when a dream or hope or family member is on the line we find fresh energy for prayer.
For Paul, the gospel going forth is a matter of great urgency. It matters if Greeks and barbarians do not hear the gospel. It is a matter of life or death.
This does not play well in my context. The sophisticated, educated, academic culture where I minister would prefer me to think that nothing much matters except that people get educated enough to blunt their religious passions.
But urgency is part of what drives genuine prayer. And there is plenty that is urgent to address, particularly the very real fact that thousands on my campus are apart from Christ and therefore are not actually alive yet.
I think that we can enter into a vibrant and healthy and active prayer life if at least one of these things is in play. When all of them are on the sidelines (which happens to me from time to time) my prayer life probably needs to shift back to the very basic question that the disciples asked of Jesus: "Lord, teach me to pray..."
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Why I Don't Believe in Prayer
A couple of weeks ago I posted some reflections from Psalm 20 called "Using, Not Trusting." There the psalmist talks about how they don't trust in their horses or chariots. They used them, but they weren't going to put their faith in them. Their faith was in the Lord.
In the post I applied this 'using but not trusting' principle to money. But the concept of using, not trusting, has continued to roll around in my head. The other day, it brought back one of the many glorious rants my systematic theology professor had, this one about prayer:
We are to use prayer, engage with it, appreciate it, be glad in it. But we are not to take pride in it, we are not to trust in our prayers to make things happen. It's not about us and our activities, the stuff that we can drum up or make happen--not even our prayers.
It's about God. This radical un-selfing is good news, if we let it do its' thing. Add prayer to money and employment/position on the growing list of things that we are to engage with or use but not trust in. I suspect for most of us there's some trusting of the wrong things going on in our lives.
"Some trust in horses, some trust in chariots, but we will trust in the name of the LORD our God."
In the post I applied this 'using but not trusting' principle to money. But the concept of using, not trusting, has continued to roll around in my head. The other day, it brought back one of the many glorious rants my systematic theology professor had, this one about prayer:
"Christians don't believe in prayer. Prayer is not what our hope or trust is about. Witches pray. Lots of people pray.This was somewhat startling at the time. But now the truth of it is gloriously good news to me.
We believe in the one who is Lord over prayer, the God who hears our prayers and decides with perfect wisdom and power and grace and love and truth how to respond. But we don't believe in prayer. Our ability to pray is not what our hope is in. Our hope is in God. He hears our prayers and he uses them in his power and grace to affect change in our world. This is great and glorious. But let's not fool ourselves. Prayer is not the hope of our lives. Jesus is."
We are to use prayer, engage with it, appreciate it, be glad in it. But we are not to take pride in it, we are not to trust in our prayers to make things happen. It's not about us and our activities, the stuff that we can drum up or make happen--not even our prayers.
It's about God. This radical un-selfing is good news, if we let it do its' thing. Add prayer to money and employment/position on the growing list of things that we are to engage with or use but not trust in. I suspect for most of us there's some trusting of the wrong things going on in our lives.
"Some trust in horses, some trust in chariots, but we will trust in the name of the LORD our God."
Thursday, March 27, 2008
A Good Prayer
My fellow wise co-staff worker has been meeting with a small group of students who are working to overcome their family brokenness. Several weeks ago she told me that her main prayer for these students is that the voice of the Lord might be louder than the voices of their past.
Seems like a prayer that might be good for many of us, family brokenness or no.
Seems like a prayer that might be good for many of us, family brokenness or no.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Prayer
Last week in our glorious small group, a question came up regarding prayer. Do we pray for God's will to be done, do we pray for our own desires, or something of both?
I think that there's a couple of extremes on a continuum when it comes to our desires and prayer. On the one extreme, some folks pray that God's will be done as a smokescreen: they don't really trust that God is interested in hearing their requests or that he'll grant them, so the "your will be done" prayer is a way of avoiding genuine interaction with God. This would seem to defeat the purpose of prayer. If you related to your parents like that, it would be unhealthy. Similarly in this case with God. To be too afraid to lay your genuine, heart-felt requests before the Lord is symptomatic of a deeper issue of distrust and lack of freedom and the intimacy that I think God wants for us.
On the other extreme is the person who goes to God with an ultimatum: do this, or I refuse to believe in you/trust you/whatever. Throughout the gospels the demand for a sign or a miracle is used as a proof of shallow faith. Jesus hardly ever grants such requests.
It would seem that the best way to approach this tension is to hit somewhere in the middle. We genuinely and with reckless abandon come to God with our desires, our hopes, our dreams, our goals. In the process of praying those things up to the Lord, we submit them to Him. That's a real submission. Not a "fill out a card and submit it in the mail" kind of submission. A real submission, a full giving over of all our desires to the Lord. We lay out all that we want and in the end we entrust those things to God.
A pastor I once heard challenged us to take a good look at our prayers to see our idols. The things that we pray for the most might be the places where we are most tempted to worship something apart from God: family, success in a business or ministry context, etc. This is, I think, an interesting challenge worth considering on a regular basis.
I think that what's happening in prayer is so much more about the process of transformation than it is about outcomes. Outcomes matter. But who we're becoming in the midst of those outcomes, both the ones that we want and the ones that we don't, matters infinitely more. And so we must pray to the Lord with all our heart for the things that we want...and then leave those things there before him, allowing him to sort through all our jumbled motives, desires, fears and hopes so that he might purify those things and in the process purify us.
I think that there's a couple of extremes on a continuum when it comes to our desires and prayer. On the one extreme, some folks pray that God's will be done as a smokescreen: they don't really trust that God is interested in hearing their requests or that he'll grant them, so the "your will be done" prayer is a way of avoiding genuine interaction with God. This would seem to defeat the purpose of prayer. If you related to your parents like that, it would be unhealthy. Similarly in this case with God. To be too afraid to lay your genuine, heart-felt requests before the Lord is symptomatic of a deeper issue of distrust and lack of freedom and the intimacy that I think God wants for us.
On the other extreme is the person who goes to God with an ultimatum: do this, or I refuse to believe in you/trust you/whatever. Throughout the gospels the demand for a sign or a miracle is used as a proof of shallow faith. Jesus hardly ever grants such requests.
It would seem that the best way to approach this tension is to hit somewhere in the middle. We genuinely and with reckless abandon come to God with our desires, our hopes, our dreams, our goals. In the process of praying those things up to the Lord, we submit them to Him. That's a real submission. Not a "fill out a card and submit it in the mail" kind of submission. A real submission, a full giving over of all our desires to the Lord. We lay out all that we want and in the end we entrust those things to God.
A pastor I once heard challenged us to take a good look at our prayers to see our idols. The things that we pray for the most might be the places where we are most tempted to worship something apart from God: family, success in a business or ministry context, etc. This is, I think, an interesting challenge worth considering on a regular basis.
I think that what's happening in prayer is so much more about the process of transformation than it is about outcomes. Outcomes matter. But who we're becoming in the midst of those outcomes, both the ones that we want and the ones that we don't, matters infinitely more. And so we must pray to the Lord with all our heart for the things that we want...and then leave those things there before him, allowing him to sort through all our jumbled motives, desires, fears and hopes so that he might purify those things and in the process purify us.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Prayer
One of the most consistent conversations that I have with students in their walk with God is about prayer. Particularly, the question of trusting God when he doesn't answer or move in such a way that it seems plain a good God would want to move (i.e. the healing of a sick parent or deliverance from a sin pattern).
This is a pretty complicated question, but here are a couple preliminary thoughts:
My own prayer is that I might be able to likewise be fully submitted to the will of the Father.
This is a pretty complicated question, but here are a couple preliminary thoughts:
- We always want prayer to work like a vending machine. But it doesn’t. We don’t always get what we want, and that’s a good thing. The purpose of prayer is to cultivate a relationship with God. In the midst of that, we submit requests. And I mean that seriously: we “submit” our requests—we submit our desires to God and trust that He’s good. In his goodness he says one of three things: yes, no, or wait. To get the last two answers often makes us mad, but that’s what the walk of faith is at least partly about: will I trust God to be good to me, even when I don’t get what I want when I want it?
- Some of the hardest questions about prayer revolve around stuff that it seems obvious that God would want to say yes to: a sick parent, breaking free of something in our own lives that’s keeping us down, etc. But if God’s saying no or wait on those things, the challenge and the opportunity is to consider and ask what he might want to do with this in the mean time. I had a hard break-up sophomore year of college. I wanted to be free of my feelings for her right away, but God didn’t grant me that request. Instead, I learned how to develop guy friendships that walked me through that hard time in my life. So instead of God magically waving a wand to heal me, he taught me another valuable lesson—about community and really experiencing it in places where I felt vulnerable—and that lesson has stuck with me for the rest of my life. This is a small issue compared to what many others go through, but the principle applies to many, much harder situations. Sometimes God says no to something in order to say yes to something much greater that we cannot yet see.
My own prayer is that I might be able to likewise be fully submitted to the will of the Father.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Is Prayer the Work?
We prayed a lot last week on campus in InterVarsity--24 hours a day, 7 days during that week, in fact. And the discussion came up at one point--is this sufficient to have the type of impact on campus or do we need to do something else? This came up specifically in conjunction with the question of evangelism. Is prayer the work or is it preparation for the work or is it something in between?
Perhaps an analogy might help.
At the end of each semester, students have this glorious season called exams. For many days, they are in exam mode. What exam mode means is not simply that they must go to a specified room and get a specified set of questions to answer or problems to solve. Exam mode means that they are both going to take exams and also that they are engaged in all types of rituals in order to help prepare them for said taking of said exams. They drink caffeinated beverages. They get together in study groups. They pour over notes. They read books. They discuss ideas. They don't sleep.
Now it would be extremely odd if the students did all these rituals and never actually went and took the exam. Indeed, it might be borderline psychotic. It would be a little less disturbing but still questionable if they went to their exams apart from participating in any of these rituals.
And so it is with prayer and evangelism. We must pray, but we must also take a risk. There are many of us who wish it were not so, and that prayer was simply enough. But it's not. God will not allow us to hide behind anything to miss out on the joy of taking risks for the sake of His name--not even to hide behind something as pious-sounding as prayer. Prayer and speaking the gospel is like exam season--it's all one thing, with two separate movements.
And so this Thursday we're taking a risk at our large group. I'm speaking and the title of the night is Christianity is Revolutionary. To a campus full of activists who are passionate about justice, I'm going to argue that God is the first and supreme activist who also has the final word over all of it for our good: Hope Wins. And we're challenging our Christian students to invite friends for whom this would be a good entry point for the gospel.
I'll probably post some core thoughts from my talk over the next few days. In the mean time, please pray, we need it...
Perhaps an analogy might help.
At the end of each semester, students have this glorious season called exams. For many days, they are in exam mode. What exam mode means is not simply that they must go to a specified room and get a specified set of questions to answer or problems to solve. Exam mode means that they are both going to take exams and also that they are engaged in all types of rituals in order to help prepare them for said taking of said exams. They drink caffeinated beverages. They get together in study groups. They pour over notes. They read books. They discuss ideas. They don't sleep.
Now it would be extremely odd if the students did all these rituals and never actually went and took the exam. Indeed, it might be borderline psychotic. It would be a little less disturbing but still questionable if they went to their exams apart from participating in any of these rituals.
And so it is with prayer and evangelism. We must pray, but we must also take a risk. There are many of us who wish it were not so, and that prayer was simply enough. But it's not. God will not allow us to hide behind anything to miss out on the joy of taking risks for the sake of His name--not even to hide behind something as pious-sounding as prayer. Prayer and speaking the gospel is like exam season--it's all one thing, with two separate movements.
And so this Thursday we're taking a risk at our large group. I'm speaking and the title of the night is Christianity is Revolutionary. To a campus full of activists who are passionate about justice, I'm going to argue that God is the first and supreme activist who also has the final word over all of it for our good: Hope Wins. And we're challenging our Christian students to invite friends for whom this would be a good entry point for the gospel.
I'll probably post some core thoughts from my talk over the next few days. In the mean time, please pray, we need it...
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Unity with a Purpose
Tonight we're capping off our participation in 24/7 Prayer with a joint meeting of InterVarsity and Campus Crusade, the two largest Christian groups on campus. The purpose is for us to gather together as a larger body of Christ to pray for the campus, to ask God's blessing on this couple square miles of land that we occupy along with 25,000+ other students, faculty, and staff.
Students, of course, love this kind of stuff. There is generally a low-level grumble on campus that there are multiple Christian student groups. Why do we have to be divided? And every year or two a group of students decides that they want to be the group that gathers all peoples together. There's some sort of all-campus Christian pep rally thrown (where each group still sits together with it's own people), we all go home and things go on as usual.
There's a number of things going on here. One is that it genuinely does feel like you're the only one following Christ seriously on a secular campus--even in a relatively large community like UNC's Crusade (650) or InterVarsity (325). So just being in a gym full of other Christians makes you feel a little less like a freak.
And there's the very good desire that we not have a sense of competition or comparison. Inevitably every year there's some inter-group run-in where someone feels that their people are disrespected. Then the anecdotes get passed around, and before you know it, everyone in Crusade says that IV sucks...which of course makes us think that they suck.
So we need to work to make sure that we have healthy, cooperative relationships. But here's my deal: we could literally expend hundreds of work-hours trying to do joint events all the time. I'd much rather we spend that time, energy, money, and effort into mission outside ourselves than expend it trying to make sure that everyone plays nice.
There are tons of students on campus. We need more than one fellowship on campus to do Kingdom work in all the nooks and crannies of it. We need to be for one another, to honor and respect one another, certainly and by all means. I enjoy meeting with the other campus ministers and hearing what God's doing in their ministries.
But please, let's not waste time with Christian pep rallies. We have bigger missional fish to fry. We're gathering tonight not just for unity sake but for this work of prayer that we've been called to and engaged in together. And that makes it worth it.
Students, of course, love this kind of stuff. There is generally a low-level grumble on campus that there are multiple Christian student groups. Why do we have to be divided? And every year or two a group of students decides that they want to be the group that gathers all peoples together. There's some sort of all-campus Christian pep rally thrown (where each group still sits together with it's own people), we all go home and things go on as usual.
There's a number of things going on here. One is that it genuinely does feel like you're the only one following Christ seriously on a secular campus--even in a relatively large community like UNC's Crusade (650) or InterVarsity (325). So just being in a gym full of other Christians makes you feel a little less like a freak.
And there's the very good desire that we not have a sense of competition or comparison. Inevitably every year there's some inter-group run-in where someone feels that their people are disrespected. Then the anecdotes get passed around, and before you know it, everyone in Crusade says that IV sucks...which of course makes us think that they suck.
So we need to work to make sure that we have healthy, cooperative relationships. But here's my deal: we could literally expend hundreds of work-hours trying to do joint events all the time. I'd much rather we spend that time, energy, money, and effort into mission outside ourselves than expend it trying to make sure that everyone plays nice.
There are tons of students on campus. We need more than one fellowship on campus to do Kingdom work in all the nooks and crannies of it. We need to be for one another, to honor and respect one another, certainly and by all means. I enjoy meeting with the other campus ministers and hearing what God's doing in their ministries.
But please, let's not waste time with Christian pep rallies. We have bigger missional fish to fry. We're gathering tonight not just for unity sake but for this work of prayer that we've been called to and engaged in together. And that makes it worth it.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
24/7 Prayer
Last Thursday at 9 p.m. we kicked off 24/7 prayer on campus. Students signed up from various Christian groups on campus to pray at all hours of the day and night for the campus, state, nation, world and for rest, reconciliation, and personal healing.
My hope and prayer is that this might turn into an annual thing. It's been fantastic for everyone involved thus far. I think that ten years from now we'll look back on this 24/7 prayer event as the spark that sent missionaries all over the globe and the turning point in terms of seeing a dramatic increase in the number of people coming to Christ.
But in the mean time, it's been a great opportunity to talk about the bigger Story. 24/7 prayer is a participatory thing.
Hebrews tells us that Jesus is always interceding perfectly before the Father for all people. 24/7 prayer has been happening for a long time. Our praying is always and only an echo of that perfect prayer. Not that it doesn't matter that we pray. Indeed, Revelations talks about the bowl of incence that is the prayers of the saints that are poured out on the earth as part of the bringing about the end and the beginning of the renewal of all things.
It's just that when we pray, be it at 2 a.m. or over our noon-day meal, it always behooves us to remember that prayers is always already happening. This is a participatory action, not a voice crying out in the dark inky void of the universe.
In fact, we would be wise to listen first. To see if we might catch some whiff of what is already being said, to see if we might join in concert with the Voice that is always going before the Father.
My hope and prayer is that this might turn into an annual thing. It's been fantastic for everyone involved thus far. I think that ten years from now we'll look back on this 24/7 prayer event as the spark that sent missionaries all over the globe and the turning point in terms of seeing a dramatic increase in the number of people coming to Christ.
But in the mean time, it's been a great opportunity to talk about the bigger Story. 24/7 prayer is a participatory thing.
Hebrews tells us that Jesus is always interceding perfectly before the Father for all people. 24/7 prayer has been happening for a long time. Our praying is always and only an echo of that perfect prayer. Not that it doesn't matter that we pray. Indeed, Revelations talks about the bowl of incence that is the prayers of the saints that are poured out on the earth as part of the bringing about the end and the beginning of the renewal of all things.
It's just that when we pray, be it at 2 a.m. or over our noon-day meal, it always behooves us to remember that prayers is always already happening. This is a participatory action, not a voice crying out in the dark inky void of the universe.
In fact, we would be wise to listen first. To see if we might catch some whiff of what is already being said, to see if we might join in concert with the Voice that is always going before the Father.
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