The Bold Prayers

So often the deepest and most desperate prayers of the heart are more half-hearted than bold.  Our praying often sounds more like, "God, You wouldn't want to bless me, would You?" or, "I know this sounds impossible, but I thought I would ask it of You just in case."  This is not the prayer of faith, but the prayer of doubt.  James wrote about such praying in the early part of his letter to the church:  "But ask in faith, never doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind; for the doubter, being double minded and unstable in every way, must not expect to receive anything from the Lord." (James 1:6-8).   

Too many times we have come before the Lord with our petitions in hand not really expecting our prayers to make any difference.  It is as if they are thrown into a wind that blows them back in our face instead of toward the throne of grace.  Over and over the Scripture tells us to pray with faith.  Again and again the Word calls us to pray with boldness.  Perhaps, the first prayer we must pray in the face of what seems impossible is to ask God to deliver us from a spirit of timidity and fear.   

Anyone who takes prayer seriously certainly understands that the prayer room is shrouded in divine mystery.  We are told by the Word that it has great power, but we do not always see it.  Once our prayers are spoken with faith into the ear of God, they become as building blocks useful to Him for the work of His will.  How it all works we may never know in this life, but He knows and that is enough.

A Fallen Sparrow

One of the things which frightens us in our spiritual journey are the those moments when our encounter with God seems to refute what we have learned to believe about Him.  Byron Herbert Reece was an Appalachian poet of north Georgia whose legacy still lingers heavy in the valleys and hills he called home.  One of his poems is about that passage of Scripture which speaks of God's protective eye being on the sparrow.  The poem begins with the words, "I saw a fallen sparrow..."  As the poet wrote lines wondering how it happened, he ends with the words, 'I had no means to know; But this I minded well: Whose eye was on the sparrow Shifted,--and it fell."     

What do we do with a healing God who does not heal?  How do we relate to a caring God who allows my child to die?  How do we relate to a God who supposedly watches over the sparrow; yet, who lets him fall?  If our questions about faith are easily answered, it is likely that we have not been asking the right questions.  With his poem Reece pondered what seemed as mystery to Him.  If we read the gospel as a book of answers for life, we will likely be disappointed in the end.  What the gospel reveals is not answers, but an open door into the mystery where God can be encountered.  

Mystery abound.  How can it be that a person who dies shall live again?  How is that God became flesh?  How is that the cross has the power to transform life and bring into the creation a new order?  As Reece saw the sparrow, he pondered what cannot be understood.  Dare we do the same?

Its Own Legs

When I was a child I got hooked on reading the Bible by reading the stories of the Old Testament.  While I am not sure fascinated is the right word to use for a young reader, I found myself reading those stories in Genesis and Exodus over and over again.  As my reading expanded, I found other great Old Testament stories as well as those of the gospel.  Back in my preaching days, I occasionally used the narrative of a Biblically based created story as a substitute for a Sunday sermon.  When I did, I avoided making sure everyone got the point of the story out of a belief that a good story stands on its own legs.   

Later it would come to me that the many stories of the Bible were connected by a common thread.  Collectively, they are all a part of the story God wrote with the people He brought into being.  It is not just a story of a big boat and a flood, a young boy killing a giant, or a king losing sight of his purpose, but the story of God at work among us.  Thus, the story is still being written.  When Jesus, the Son of God, came as the Incarnate One of God into Bethlehem, the story took on a new dimension.  

It became a story not just being written with the external actions of men and women, but a story told which recorded the way life is transformed by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  It became not just a story of deeds done; it became a story of a heart wrapping its arms around the world.  The story of the gospel is not just the story of mighty deeds of wise people.  It is the story of overcoming love.  It is a story which stands on its own legs.

His Plans

We talk much about the fact that God has a plan for each of us.  Jeremiah 29:11 is an oft quoted verse in these days.  "For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope."  It is a Word from God which is not only a word of encouragement, but a promise.  It is also a word which requires a radical kind of faith which speaks of abandoning self for the plan of God.  The truth is His plans are not always our plans because they are not in line with the plans we have made for ourselves.  

One thing learned about the plan of God over the decades of walking with Him is that there is nothing predictable about His ways.  The way He leads is not a straight path, but one that has many surprising and unexpected twists and turns.  To abandon ourselves to His plans and His future is to be willing to live as a risk taker.  Experience has taught us that when God leads us into the future He is unfolding before us, it often means that He is going to lead us away from where we feel in control of our life to the place where  life can only be lived if He is given control.  

This is the world where "the plans I  have for you..." become visible to us.  It is, therefore, not the world of the known, but the world of faith.  The question is not the one which asks if God really does have a plan for us. The Word of God is dependable and trustworthy.  The real question is do we have the faith to walk with Him into that unknown and still not yet see plan.

The Fallen Snow

Fallen snow invites us to enter into its silence.  It makes no noise.  It floats in frigid air until it finds its place on the cold earth.  When it settles in its place on the ground, it waits.  There is about it a contentment with being in the presence of the stillness.  It is so content, it seeks nothing more. It does nothing to call attention to itself.  It looks like a white canvas that contains what has not yet come and something not yet seen.   

Is that not what it is to enter into the silence created by the very breath of the Holy Spirit?  Too often we approach our dedicated time with God with what we seek from Him.  We have brokenness which needs wholeness, emptiness which needs filling, and hope we need restored.  There is within us an endless stream of petitions for the something more that seems to always be a part of our life.  There are even those desperate moments when we take the brush in our own hands and dare to put on the empty canvas of our life what our impatience requires in the now.  

The waiting snow invites us to see our own heart as the empty canvas waiting in the stillness for the Spirit to begin or continue His work of creating in us someone who has not yet come into existence.  We are never who we see ourselves as being in the past, nor are we simply who we see ourselves being in the present, but instead, we are also who we cannot yet see ourselves as becoming.  To enter in the stillness with a waiting spirit is to trust the Spirit to make visible the invisible, unseen, and not yet part of who we are becoming.         

  

Preaching Christ

The church needs to rediscover what it means to be Jesus centered.  The Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Corinth, "...we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles..." (I Corinthians 1:23).  In our day preaching about Jesus has been replaced with preaching about the mission of Jesus, or preaching about the spiritual character of Jesus.  It often seems that the gospel has become equated with some justice or service mission, or perhaps, a word which calls for those who hear to model their living after the example of Jesus.    

While there is nothing intrinsically wrong about such preaching, it is not the message about the Christ who delivers, saves, and radically transforms the heart.  The cross is used to speak of the suffering the mission calls us to endure and the love we are to have in our hearts, but not an act of God which is justifying, redemptive, and atoning.  For some the traditional language may sound too holy and too out of date, and if so, it is imperative that we find new ways to communicate the spiritual truths such words convey.   The church cannot preach Christ and not first preach about a relationship with Jesus.  Christ cannot be preached if the message about Him is not an invitational message which creates a longing for life with Him.  We can preach and inspire people to do better and we can persuade people to do the right things in terms of social justice issues or ministries of service; however, it has no lasting power. 

The core problem is that without the transforming power of Christ touching the heart, the strength and motivation for the modeling and the mission will soon run dry.  If it is not the love of Christ which moves us into the world, those who seek to do the mission will soon become exhausted and those who seek to model the lifestyle of Christ will soon become the duty bound instead of the dispensers of unconditional love.  The church must either preach Christ crucified or prepare for its funeral.  

The Land of Not Knowing

What cannot be seen is greater than what can be seen.  What exists in the invisible realm of God's Kingdom is greater than those thing which exist in the visible realm where we live and breathe.  There is more unknown about God than what is known.  God's ways are surely mysterious and wondrous, but more of this dimension of God's work is unseen by the human eye than we dare to think we have seen. The human means of relating to the world of the Kingdom of God is faith.  

Hebrews 11:1 says, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen..."  Two things are very clear.  First, some of the things God is doing as well as the means by which He does them are in the unseen realm.  Secondly, faith is the God given tool to interact with the unseen activity of God in the world.  So many of our spirituality programs outline a process which has as its purpose understanding the ways of God and then implementing them to our benefit.  The "how to" books about being in relationship with God and living in His world fill up book shelves.  They surely have their place in our spiritual journey, but not often do they take us to place of of being immersed in the cloud of not knowing.  

They seek to bring us into a realm of greater understanding.  Seldom do they simply take us into the holy mystery that speaks of the air breathed by God and those who linger close enough to Him to be stirred and given life by His breath.  When I graduated from seminary some fifty five years ago, I was given two things.  I was given a parchment which spoke of what I knew and I was given a church to lead that was filled with such godly people that I was constantly reminded of how little I  knew.  Our faith beckons us to walk into this land of mystery, this land of not knowing.