quote of the day

Charles Spurgeon:

When you are so weak that you cannot do much more than cry, you coin diamonds with both your eyes. The sweetest prayers God ever hears are the groans and sighs of those who have no hope in anything but His love.

I am a "fart aerobics instructor" and my son is Martin Luther. Both of these help us pray.

Here.

THE PRAYiNG LiFE [paul miller]

My church has encouraged everyone to pick up a copy of Paul Miller's book "The Praying Life: Connecting With God in a Distracting World." I'm only a few chapters in, but it's quite humbling. The following was really encouraging with all of life's previous and on-the-horizon happenings:

Learning to pray doesn't offer you a less busy life; it offers you a less busy heart.

The Lord's Prayer [part 1]

There are 18 Benedictions in Judaism, recited 3x daily. These blessings/prayers were developed between 5th century BC and the 2nd century AD, strangely straddling the life of Jesus. They are also known as the Amidah and/or the Shmonah Esreh. Listen carefully to several of them.

#1 is a prayer/praise for YHWH being the Father of the biblical patriarchs [Abe, Isaac, Jake].

#3 ascribes worth to God because of His holiness.

#5 is a petition for God to guide His people in the ways of Torah.

#6 is a petition/praise concerning forgiveness.

#7 pleads for God to "look upon our affliction; fight our fight; redeem us speedily."

#10 asks God to restore the exiles back to the land.

#12 desires for God to execute justice on the enemies of His people.

#14 asks God to restore Jerusalem.

#15 cries out for God to usher in a Davidic/Kingly Messiah.

#17 asks God to restore Temple services and sacrifices. 

#18 requests that God would grant peace, mercy, and covenant love to His people, Israel.

Now remember, Jesus was a good Jew. He likely knew all of these and so did the people to whom he preached. So, when he says,

Our Father in heaven

Hallowed be your name

Your kingdom come
Your will be done

On earth as it is in heaven

Give us this day our daily bread

And forgive us our debts

As we also have forgiven our debtors
And lead us not into temptation

But deliver us from evil

When he said this, those listening had a specific frame of reference. But what Jesus does is odd. It is especially odd if you read the whole sermon [the one on the mount in Mt 5-7]. He has already spoken poignantly about Torah and he just dished out some painful blows to the super-spiritual regarding their gaudy prayer lives. He now arrives at the "how to" of sincerity in prayer. Kenneth Bailey describes it vividly.

Jesus de-Zionizes the tradition. The Lord's Prayer contains no references to Jerusalem or the Temple, and the disciples are taught to pray for the Kingdom to come on earth, which reflects a global concern for all people. Forgiveness is tied to forgiving others. No attack on outsiders is voiced. And there is no request for God to look on the suffering of His people or for God to fight for them.

Jesus changes it up because he is now the faithful Servant of YHWH who will be a light to the nations [Is 49.6]. He is the Davidic/Kingly Messiah [Mt 1.1, 1.18-23, 4.17]. He is Temple of God [Jn 2, Rev 21]. He is the peace, mercy, and covenant love of YHWH come to His people. He is the only satisfactory sacrifice [Heb 10]. Prayer is now about what God is doing through Jesus.

This angle on the Lord's Prayer is far more potent because it sits comfortably in its own context. Yet, its potency carries with it a kind of contrition that should be evident as well.

For THiNE is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen.

"sweet sacramental sabbath" OR "foretaste"

There really is something grace-laden about Sundays to me. Driving on an unbusy Highway 14 with hymns lightly playing in the car has a satisfaction that that same route never affords. It is usually never too warm or too cool. After Sara quietly finishes her make-up, we usually sing a verse or so of whatever is playing. Then, with right blinker on as we pull into the parking lot, I turn the volume down and pray.



I ask our Father to bless His people coming together. I ask that He make us unified, humble, and happy. I ask the Spirit to empower the word that day and also to give utterance to other pastors we know.

There's just something about it. It's transcendant. I love it.

In a book I'm reading, this same feeling is put another way.

Sometimes I have loved the peacefulness of an ordinary Sunday. It is like standing in a newly planted garden after a warm rain. You can feel the silent and invisible life.

On Prayer [John Piper]

Is it a duty? Is it a discipline? Is it legalistic to say we have to pray? Further, it is likely a good read any time Piper gets fired up enough to say, "To hell with the devil!"

HERE!

Obama's Conversion, etc

The following is from Obama's speech at the National Prayer Breakfast this past week. You can read the whole thing here.

I didn’t become a Christian until many years later, when I moved to the South Side of Chicago after college. It happened not because of indoctrination or a sudden revelation, but because I spent month after month working with church folks who simply wanted to help neighbors who were down on their luck – no matter what they looked like, or where they came from, or who they prayed to. It was on those streets, in those neighborhoods, that I first heard God’s spirit beckon me. It was there that I felt called to a higher purpose – His purpose.

He included another one-liner to make sure everybody knows at least one thing about God, whoever he is.

There is no God who condones taking the life of an innocent human being.  This much we know.

MARTiN LUTHER

I am so busy now that if I did not spend two or three hours each day in prayer, I would not get through the day.

on prayer

Every Christian needs a half hour of prayer each day, except when he is busy, then he needs an hour. [St Francis of Sales] 

Any concern too small to be turned into a prayer is too small to be made into a burden. [Corrie ten Boom]

Don't pray for lighter burdens. Pray for stronger backs. [Anonymous]

Prayer is as natural an expression of faith as breathing is of life. [Jonathan Edwards]

The one concern of the devil is to keep Christians from praying. He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work, and prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but trembles when we pray. [Samuel Chadwick]

Prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance, but laying hold of His willingness. [Martin Luther]

SURPRiSED BY HOPE [helpful tid-bits, interaction, review, and reflection]

After discussing prayer in general as a part of the church's mission, Wright says that there are four roots of biblical prayer: transcendence, intimacy, celebration, and covenant.

He expresses his frustration with how Easter Sunday is treated theologically and ecclesiastically. Wright says that

Easter week ought to be an eight-day festival, with champagne served after morning prayer or even before, with lots of alleluias and extra hymns and spectacular anthems. Is it any wonder people find it hard to believe in the resurrection of Jesus if we don't throw our hats in the air? Is it any wonder we find it hard to live the resurrection if we don't do it exuberantly in our liturgies? Is it any wonder the world doesn't take much notice if Easter is celebrated as simply the one-day happy ending tacked on to forty days of fasting and gloom?

Regarding "new creation" as a hermeneutic we employ rather than a experience that is simply spiritual, Wright relates justice, beauty, and evangelism to this "new creation" hermeneutic and Jesus' resurrection. Of beauty, he states,

We are moving away, I think, from the old split in which it was expected that good Christians couldn't be good artists and good artists couldn't be good Christians. We now have, thank God, some wonderful Christian painters, sculptors, and even poets who are showing the way forward. I want to offer a proposal about where the artistic endeavor belongs - within the discipline of the Christian mission, within the map of creation and new creation.

[Along these same lines, my father-in-law is an art professor. He always says that the first thing anyone knows about God when they read the Bible is that He is an Artist: "In the beginning, God created..." There's some aesthetically satisfying image-bearing that needs to happen because that is true.]



Wright's subtitle is: "Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection and the Mission of the Church." His purpose in this book is accomplished. He gives excellent and corrective insights throughout. However, Wright also seems to ease the weight of a couple issues that should be equally related to eschatology, resurrection, and mission.

Concerning the rapture, he dishes out some academically tactful blows to those who swear Tim LaHaye and Hal Lindsey should be canonized. Isn't it logical to study how the apocalyptic genre functioned in Second Temple Judaism rather than interpret Revelation with the lens of CNN? Wright does excellent Jewish and Roman background work to bring many of the second coming passages to light. Speaking on 1 Ths 4.16-17 and how Paul mixes metaphors when speaking of Jesus' coming, Wright says,

In the next chapter, 1 Ths 5, Paul says that the thief will come in the night, so the woman will go into labor, so you mustn't get drunk but stay awake and put on your armor. As the television programs say, don't try this one at home.

Overall, this is a great read. Tom Wright's correctives are quite helpful. I thank God that the world's leading New Testament scholar is not a flaming liberal whose denial of the supernatural is as simple as eating and breathing. On several occasions, Wright says things like, "I am compelled by the New Testament..." We should be as well. Don't be a stuck-up Calvinist and hate him.

[He is also friends with Bishop John Inge, who did my wedding. He gives "Uncle John" a shout-out in his last chapter. This gives me 4 cool points.]

Lastly, thinking critically and spiritually is a challenge. It is also a necessity. It is what I tell my students they must do, it is what all Christians must do, and it is what I feel that Tom Wright does in his new book. Take that approach and go read. Shalom.

karl barth

To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising of the disorder of this world.

A Franciscan Benediction

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships so that you may live deep within your heart. May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression and exploitation of people so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace. May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, starvation, and war so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and turn their pain into joy. And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in the world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.

a prayer of Aquinas

prayers and thanks

I feel as though my prayer life as of late has consisted of only gratitude. We have two Hondas that are nearing 600,000 miles as a dynamic duo [neither have AC at the moment either]. We just bought this house and still have many more nights of labor to put into it. We have no clue how to fix it all either. The funds are tight. The days are long. The summer has already promised to prove itself chaotic as far as calendars are concerned. And the best part of all of this though is that I am convinced it's normal.

Everybody has stuff on their plate. Relationships. Finances. Jobs. In-laws. Schedules. Church. Kids. Whatever. Who am I to complain or act like some victim. I must be and I get to be grateful. At first I was really mad/sad that I wasn't praying as much for others or ministries or whatnot. Actually, I still am. But.... God has so brought peace to me when I realized that this season of appreciation-saturated prayer is a wonderfully humbling thing.

I love what some of the old Puritans used to say about prayer. They were known for this lovely axiom: "Pray until you pray." Meaning, be with Him until you are no longer thinking about it and concentrating on it, but you just are. You're thanking Him. You're pleading with Him. You're trusting His word. You're confessing. You're happy in Him. That's what I see when I read the prayers of Paul. That's how I long for it to be for me too.

"Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus" [1 Ths 5.16-18].

we got to pray just to make it today

These are means I have either witnessed, experienced, or heard through the grape vine that the Spirit uses to strengthen His children in prayer. Feel free to add your own because I'd love to know. Gracias.

1. Read D. A. Carson's book on the prayers of Paul. The intro and Ch 1 were worth the book to me.
   
2. Use Operation World to pray more intentionally for the nations and God's global mission. I like using the book.
   
3. Tie your prayers to the Scriptures.
   
4. Pray out loud. It helps you focus.
   
5. Pray with other believers.
   
6. Buy a house.
   
7. Have a baby.
   
8. Get married.
   
9. Maybe, possibly, occasionally write it out in a journal or something. Sometimes this helps me focus.
   
10. Realize that as believers, we get to fellowship with each member of the Godhead. I know that sounds weird. So, read John Owen's book about communing with God.
    
11. Set aside specific time to pray. Distractions will dominate your puny motivation if you don't deliberately set aside time for it.

HOW TO ASCERTAiN THE WiLL OF GOD

This is from George Mueller's book "Answers to Prayer." He lived from 1805-1898 and fed thousands of children at an orphanage, some nights not knowing where food would come from the next morning.

1. I seek at the beginning to get my heart into such a state that it has no will of its own in regard to a given matter. Nine-tenths of the trouble with people generally is just here. Nine-tenths of the difficulties are overcome when our hearts are ready to do the Lord's will, whatever that may be. When one is truly in this state, it is usually but a little way to the knowledge of what His will is.

2. Having done this, I do not leave the result to feeling or simple impression. If so, I make myself liable to great delusions.

3. I seek the will of the Spirit of God through, or in connection with, the Word of God. The Spirit and the Word must be combined. If I look to the Spirit alone without the Word, I lay myself open to great delusions also. If the Holy Ghost guides us at all, He will do it according to the Scriptures and never contrary to them.

4. Next, I take into account providential circumstances. These often plainly indicate God's will in connection with His Word and Spirit.

5. I ask God in prayer to reveal His will to me aright.

6. Thus, through prayer to God, the study of the Word, and reflection, I come to a deliberate judgment according to the best of my ability and knowledge; and if my mind is thus at peace, and continues so after two or three more petitions, I proceed accordingly. In trivial matters, and in transactions involving the most important issues, I have found this method always effective.