We make prayer so difficult. It isn’t. Really.
But, first, we have to get past the idea that proper prayer means saying the proper words in the proper way at the proper time, otherwise God won’t listen. Prayer, at its most basic, is simply talking and listening to God, no more, no less.
Consider this: a God who, by definition, is all-knowing, already knows what’s in our hearts and minds. We don’t have to give voice to our prayers for God to hear them. Which means that “proper” doesn’t enter into it: God will hear our prayers however, wherever, whenever they’re said. I’d even go so far as to say that prayer is less important for what we say and how we say it than it is for what the act of praying says about our faith—that we acknowledge God as the source of our help and salvation, that we turn to and trust in God above all others (including ourselves), that we recognize a God still active in the world is, through the work and power of the Holy Spirit, active in our lives, using for good whatever befalls us.
None of which is to say that we should pray carelessly or only to further our own agendas. The fact “proper” doesn’t enter into it doesn’t mean we can talk to God the way we would a telemarketer…or an employee. We can certainly be angry at God, praying angry prayers…and we can pray frightened prayers and lonely prayers and how-dare-you prayers. The Psalms—Scripture’s prayer book—is full of such prayers. As it is joyful prayers, worshipful prayers, prayers of thanksgiving and outright awe…also appropriate prayers to pray. However we pray, God is big enough to take it.
But prayer, equally, is about listening. If you’re like me, the biggest challenge in praying is to stop talking. I tend to treat God like God’s taking dictation: I speak my laundry list of concerns, God makes notes, then gets to work on my behalf. If, however, God knows what’s in my heart before I say it, my words are far less important than God’s answer. Which means listening, but listening not just with my ears. I may talk but God frequently answers my prayers in ways that don’t involve words at all: they involve other people, they involve experiences, they involve feelings. Understand “listening,” then, as “openness”…openness to all that is around you because God will answer your prayers as God chooses, how God chooses, when and where God chooses.
So, prayer in the life of a Jesus follower—not about “proper” but about this: faith that God alone is the answer…trust that God will answer…openness to how God will answer…patience for when God will answer…conviction to embrace and live out God’s answer.
Some Scripture: Psalm 5
Matthew 6:5-15
Romans 8:26-27
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Monday, August 6, 2012
Missional Discipleship Practices, 4: Scripture
It’s just sort of a given that if you’re going to be a follower of Jesus, you’re going to spend at least some time reading the Bible.
This can be a little daunting. Especially if you’re just finding your way into Scripture. It’s a big book, and it isn’t always the easiest of reads. Furthermore, people can’t agree about it. They argue about where it came from, how to read it, whether or not it’s still applicable to life today. But I would say this: yes, reading the Bible can be daunting, but it’s important…one of the most important disciplines of anyone who’d follow Jesus…and it is absolutely applicable today, with as much to say to you and me as at any time since the words were committed to scrolls. That’s because Scripture, first and foremost, tells us about Jesus—do we need Jesus any less now than anyone has in the past?
My purpose in this post is not to provide a plan for reading Scripture (you can find one here). But I do have a couple of things to say.
First, it’s important to read the Bible not just for content, for what the words say. It’s important to read the Bible because it’s through the words of Scripture that the Holy Spirit so often speaks to us. Hearing the Holy Spirit speaking to you through Scripture doesn’t require Biblical expertise, that you know the Bible cover-to-cover and understand all it says (no one can rightly claim that). It simply requires a willingness to engage what you find with heart and mind open. Reading the Bible opens a line of communication with the Lord.
Second, it’s important to read the Bible in community. This doesn’t mean reading solo is a bad idea. There is much to be gained from time spent, alone, with Scripture. But if reading the Bible opens a line of communication with the Lord, what the Lord may be saying is probably best discerned corporately. It’s too easy to confuse your own agenda with the voice of the Lord if you’re the only one listening.
Third, it’s important to read the Bible as a discipline but not necessarily in the sense of I-must-read-three-chapters-a-day-or-I’m-letting-Jesus-down. The Lord is not, after all, limited to speaking to us only through Scripture. The Lord can speak to us through art, through music, through experience. In fact, because silence itself can often speak volumes, the Lord can communicate to us by saying nothing at all. Reading the Bible should be a discipline in the sense that it is part—indeed, the biggest, most important part—of an ongoing, consistent, intentional effort to listen to what the Lord is telling you, however the Lord is telling you, every day.
Finally, it’s important to read the Bible as God’s message to a missional people. God’s call to Abraham (Genesis 12:1-9) is the call to go forth and be a blessing to all the nations—a call that, one way or another, resonates throughout the entire Scriptural narrative, from King David to the Prophets to Jesus himself to Paul and the development of the early church. And it’s still the call God places on our lives today as followers of Jesus: go forth, live the Good News, and be a blessing to those around us. Understanding that the Bible is God’s message to a missional people (that’s you and me) is critically important because it reminds us that we are to listen to what the Lord tells us through Scripture missionally. Which is to say that we hear it not as being just about our own personal, individual salvation, but as being about the role each of us plays in helping grow the Kingdom.
Some Scripture: Luke 5:1-11
Acts 1:6-11
This can be a little daunting. Especially if you’re just finding your way into Scripture. It’s a big book, and it isn’t always the easiest of reads. Furthermore, people can’t agree about it. They argue about where it came from, how to read it, whether or not it’s still applicable to life today. But I would say this: yes, reading the Bible can be daunting, but it’s important…one of the most important disciplines of anyone who’d follow Jesus…and it is absolutely applicable today, with as much to say to you and me as at any time since the words were committed to scrolls. That’s because Scripture, first and foremost, tells us about Jesus—do we need Jesus any less now than anyone has in the past?
My purpose in this post is not to provide a plan for reading Scripture (you can find one here). But I do have a couple of things to say.
First, it’s important to read the Bible not just for content, for what the words say. It’s important to read the Bible because it’s through the words of Scripture that the Holy Spirit so often speaks to us. Hearing the Holy Spirit speaking to you through Scripture doesn’t require Biblical expertise, that you know the Bible cover-to-cover and understand all it says (no one can rightly claim that). It simply requires a willingness to engage what you find with heart and mind open. Reading the Bible opens a line of communication with the Lord.
Second, it’s important to read the Bible in community. This doesn’t mean reading solo is a bad idea. There is much to be gained from time spent, alone, with Scripture. But if reading the Bible opens a line of communication with the Lord, what the Lord may be saying is probably best discerned corporately. It’s too easy to confuse your own agenda with the voice of the Lord if you’re the only one listening.
Third, it’s important to read the Bible as a discipline but not necessarily in the sense of I-must-read-three-chapters-a-day-or-I’m-letting-Jesus-down. The Lord is not, after all, limited to speaking to us only through Scripture. The Lord can speak to us through art, through music, through experience. In fact, because silence itself can often speak volumes, the Lord can communicate to us by saying nothing at all. Reading the Bible should be a discipline in the sense that it is part—indeed, the biggest, most important part—of an ongoing, consistent, intentional effort to listen to what the Lord is telling you, however the Lord is telling you, every day.
Finally, it’s important to read the Bible as God’s message to a missional people. God’s call to Abraham (Genesis 12:1-9) is the call to go forth and be a blessing to all the nations—a call that, one way or another, resonates throughout the entire Scriptural narrative, from King David to the Prophets to Jesus himself to Paul and the development of the early church. And it’s still the call God places on our lives today as followers of Jesus: go forth, live the Good News, and be a blessing to those around us. Understanding that the Bible is God’s message to a missional people (that’s you and me) is critically important because it reminds us that we are to listen to what the Lord tells us through Scripture missionally. Which is to say that we hear it not as being just about our own personal, individual salvation, but as being about the role each of us plays in helping grow the Kingdom.
Some Scripture: Luke 5:1-11
Acts 1:6-11
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Missional Discipleship Practices, 3: Stewards
What I have is mine. I worked for it…I paid for it…it belongs to me. And what I do with it is up to me: whether I hoard it or share it is nobody’s business because it’s mine to do with as I please.
In a way of life that places so much emphasis on individualism—individual success, individual achievement—and measures the significance of that individualism mostly in terms of stuff…well, it just seems to follow that whatever we have, we own.
Yet the Bible has an altogether different take and, frankly, in a I-worked-for-it-I-paid-for-it-it-belongs-to-me world, it’s a tough sell. Tough or not, Scripture is unflinching: The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it. The world and all its people belong to him. (Psalm 24:1). In parable after parable Jesus tells, God is always the owner of the land or vineyard, always the King, and you and I—we’re the tenants, the workers, the managers, the servants. The point is not our respective roles (who wants to think of themselves as a servant?). The point is the relationship (owner/worker) and what that relationship says about our possessions.
What it says is, we aren’t owners. We’re stewards. What we possess—all of it—is a gift from God, a gift given with the intent that we will use it to meet our own needs but, equally important, to do our part in meeting the needs of others. This doesn’t diminish how hard we work nor does it suggest we don’t deserve what we have. After all, God didn’t just drop our houses and our cars and our clothes in our laps. But it does remind us of the bigger reality: if everything in the world first belongs to God, what we have and the skills and opportunities we utilized to acquire it—all that belongs to God.
This follows from the first two disciplines. My life is not about me alone but about life lived with and for others in community. As a steward of God’s good gifts, I do my part in meeting my own needs…I do my part in helping meet the needs of others.
But I don’t do it from a sense of guilt or obligation. I do it—I give—because of what Jesus gave for me. If my life was worth his life, how can I not give? It’s an act of thanksgiving and an act of worship. And an act, if you will, of testimony. All that stuff measuring my success? It’s a means to an end much bigger than my own creature comforts and sense of security. They’re tools for doing my part for the Kingdom and, in the process, showing the world something of what it means to follow Jesus.
Some Scripture: Psalm 24
Matthew 25:14-30
In a way of life that places so much emphasis on individualism—individual success, individual achievement—and measures the significance of that individualism mostly in terms of stuff…well, it just seems to follow that whatever we have, we own.
Yet the Bible has an altogether different take and, frankly, in a I-worked-for-it-I-paid-for-it-it-belongs-to-me world, it’s a tough sell. Tough or not, Scripture is unflinching: The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it. The world and all its people belong to him. (Psalm 24:1). In parable after parable Jesus tells, God is always the owner of the land or vineyard, always the King, and you and I—we’re the tenants, the workers, the managers, the servants. The point is not our respective roles (who wants to think of themselves as a servant?). The point is the relationship (owner/worker) and what that relationship says about our possessions.
What it says is, we aren’t owners. We’re stewards. What we possess—all of it—is a gift from God, a gift given with the intent that we will use it to meet our own needs but, equally important, to do our part in meeting the needs of others. This doesn’t diminish how hard we work nor does it suggest we don’t deserve what we have. After all, God didn’t just drop our houses and our cars and our clothes in our laps. But it does remind us of the bigger reality: if everything in the world first belongs to God, what we have and the skills and opportunities we utilized to acquire it—all that belongs to God.
This follows from the first two disciplines. My life is not about me alone but about life lived with and for others in community. As a steward of God’s good gifts, I do my part in meeting my own needs…I do my part in helping meet the needs of others.
But I don’t do it from a sense of guilt or obligation. I do it—I give—because of what Jesus gave for me. If my life was worth his life, how can I not give? It’s an act of thanksgiving and an act of worship. And an act, if you will, of testimony. All that stuff measuring my success? It’s a means to an end much bigger than my own creature comforts and sense of security. They’re tools for doing my part for the Kingdom and, in the process, showing the world something of what it means to follow Jesus.
Some Scripture: Psalm 24
Matthew 25:14-30
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