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 - Endorsed - Indifferent - Contested
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| The Nashville Statement
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Name:Daniel
Home: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
About Me: I used to believe that evolution was reasonable, that homosexuality was genetic, and that people became Christians because they couldn't deal with the 'reality' that this life was all there was. I used to believe, that if there was a heaven - I could get there by being good - and I used to think I was more or less a good person. I was wrong on all counts. One day I finally had my eyes opened and I saw that I was not going to go to heaven, but that I was certainly going to suffer the wrath of God for all my sin. I saw myself as a treasonous rebel at heart - I hated God for creating me just to send me to Hell - and I was wretched beyond my own comprehension. Into this spiritual vacuum Jesus Christ came and he opened my understanding - delivering me from God's wrath into God's grace. I was "saved" as an adult, and now my life is hid in Christ. I am by no means sinless, but by God's grace I am a repenting believer - a born again Christian.
My complete profile...
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Daniel's posts are almost always pastoral and God centered. I appreciate and am challenged by them frequently. He has a great sense of humor as well.
- Marc Heinrich
His posts are either funny or challenging. He is very friendly and nice.
- Rose Cole
[He has] good posts, both the serious like this one, and the humorous like yesterday. [He is] the reason that I have restrained myself from making Canadian jokes in my posts.
- C-Train
This post contains nothing that is of any use to me. What were you thinking? Anyway, it's probably the best I've read all day.
- David Kjos
Daniel, nicely done and much more original than Frank the Turk.
- Jonathan Moorhead
There are some people who are smart, deep, or funny. There are not very many people that are all 3. Daniel is one of those people. His opinion, insight and humor have kept me coming back to his blog since I first visited earlier this year.
- Carla Rolfe
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| Mortality. |
It isn't that I was ever living on the edge or anything. I lived a more or less quiet life. People died now and again, but by and large I didn't really have to deal with death very often. For my daily life, death was not something I really had to deal with. I knew my own death was coming "one day" but like everyone else, I was taught that thinking about your own death was just depressing and morbid - and was something entirely discouraged by everyone in the culture.
As someone who grew up Catholic, I believed that there was a God, and that Jesus died for sins. I didn't know the gospel, but I believed that if I was more good than evil when I died, I stood a pretty good chance of getting a better afterlife. In fact the very first time I ever took a serious look at my own mortality was when an evangelical pastor shared the genuine gospel with me.
I had showed up asking to be a missionary because I had broken up with a girlfriend, and though the best way to get over her, and look cool at the same time, would be to spend a few months in Africa digging wells or something like that. I opened the phonebook, called the first church that used the word "missionary" in their ad, and made an appointment that very day to come down and talk about becoming a missionary.
I naively thought that you just showed up, and said, "I am willing to go" and they just sent you off somewhere, but the pastor had a lot of questions for me. First he wanted to know how long I had been a Christian. I didn't understand what he meant, I had been a (non practicing) Catholic all my life. Did me mean to ask me how old I was? I explained that I was baptized as a baby. So he asked me specifically when I had been born again. He may as well have been talking another language. Born again? What?
So because of my confusion, he asked straight up if I knew whether I was going to go to hell or not when I die. I said I sure hoped not. He said I could know for sure - that the bible tells you whether or not you will wind up in hell. I was a little put off by that because it seemed quite arrogant. The idea that you could "know" how God was going to judge you seemed to me to be the most presumptuous thing on earth.
I have wrote of my conversion before, so bear with me if this old hat...
Well, because he had said something about the bible, I allowed him to continue, and opening the scriptures to the third chapter of the book of Romans, the pastor began to systematically prove from scripture that everyone is a sinner, and in short order, I was quite convinced that I was guilty before God on account of my sin. The pastor then showed me that the judgment was already pronounced; that the wages of my sin was death, not merely the death of the body, but the "second" death - being cast into the lake of fire.
I think this was the first time in my life that my own mortality meant anything to me.
I mean, I had been careful not to die - I mean, we all work to preserve our own lives, and not only the life itself, but the quality of it - but in that moment when I realized that I was one breath away from God's judgment - in that moment I suddenly was aware how very mortal I was.
Not to dwell on my conversion, but the pastor then shared the true gospel with me, and I surrendered the entirety of my life to Christ in His office, and thereby was reconciled to the very God that moments ago I hated with all my being for condemning me on account of my sin. At the time I had no idea how love suddenly overwhelmed me so that I was willing to turn from my sin even at the cost of every earthly pleasure, and submit myself to God's just rule - but I was overcome in a heartbeat and in that same heartbeat, I repented, I believed, and I stood up justified.
There is something that happens in your thinking whenever your own death becomes a suddenly real possibility. Many an unbeliever, like my former self, has come to his senses by being suddenly waked from their dough-headed slumber, to take not only this life, but the afterlife seriously.
It is one thing, then, when an unbeliever stares down the barrel of his or her own mortality - to turn to God; but quite another when a believer suddenly finds themselves near death and realizes that their profession of faith isn't giving them any comfort as death draws near.
I write for you believers out there. If you had a week to live, would you be praying and asking God to please, please, please, give you more time? What if you were dying slowly, and in great discomfort? Would you be begging God for comfort, and healing? What then when your discomfort increases? Do your prayers make you feel like God is far away or near?
Most of us have a picture of our own passing that is preciously ideal. There we are on our deathbed, tired of living, ready to go, and more or less waiting for death to suddenly take us. Perhaps we are surrounded by loved ones, perhaps we picture ourselves saying something awesome just before we go - you know, like, "I see my Lord!" then Plop! we keel over.
Few of us imagine ourselves dying over the course of months of increasing discomfort. Few of us imagine that this is going to be the greatest challenge to our faith that we will likely face in this life. How will I respond to God when I cry out to Him in my distress and nothing happens? When my prayers for deliverence from death bounce off the ceiling. When I am satisfied to die, but my life lingers painfully on. Where is my God when I am suffering the last fight of faith?
You see, your typical genuine, but sadly shallow, Sunday morning faith isn't ready for that. Believe me, there are believers who come to the end of their life unprepared, who lack assurance to begin with, and disintigrate when they find themselves suffering - believing that God has abandoned them in their hour of need - because all they want is to get well, they don't want to go home. Or maybe they want to go home, but they are made to tarry here and suffer.
If God is not your *real* comfort today, you are going to be hard pressed to find that comfort when your every thought is monofocused on the ending of your life. I am writing to you believers who somehow manage to get through every day without prayer, without a real certainty that God is not only with you, but for you. Work at that relationship today, so that you are not scrambling to piece it together when you need it most. It doesn't have to be your own demise - it can be some other great suffering.
It is like the parable of the virgins and the lamps. You have an opportunity that diminishes each day that you fail to take advantage of it. Today if you begin to invest your time in the Lord, you will be thankful tomorrow - but if you put it off, and put it off, you will remain shallow, and when your need comes upon you, you will find yourself abysmally unprepared.
Consider therefore your own mortality, consider that you will face not only death one day, but profound temptation to despair; I don't believe that the time before you leave this earth is going to be a time you want to feel utterly alone.Labels: Faith and prayer., mortality |
posted by Daniel @
1:16 PM
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| 1010: Justified By Faith (Part II) |
Have you ever felt like your prayers are not getting through to God?
You know, where you feel like even though God is aware of all things at all times, that is, even though you know that God must hear your prayer, yet because you know that you are not as holy and pure in your prayer today as you were on your best day, that because of your current spiritual deficit, or rather your currently acute awareness of the same spiritual deficit you had even on your "best" day, you are certain that your prayer is utterly useless. You tell yourself that even though God "hears" your prayer, yet He will not respect it because you haven't been perfect in your obedience, and you see yourself for a hypocrite, and imagine that anything you say is worthless because you're such a phony.
Well if you're a genuine Christian, I am pretty sure you have been there, and probably more often than you would comfortably admit.
What is it that draws a believer out of a funk like that?
A woman I knew once remarked at a bible study that she used "praise and worship" music to get her in the mood for church. As a personal rule, I am something of a bulldog when people say stuff like that around me. "In the mood for church?", I asked, "what does that mean?" I don't recall the exact wording of her answer, but the gist of it was that she felt she could not receive God's word unless or until she was hyped up emotionally. In a nutshell, unless or until she felt spiritual, she believed she wasn't being spiritual.
Don't get me wrong, I have experienced a very real, spiritual elecation through sining in a congregation of people who are actually worshipping God in song. I have tasted the exaltation of God in my soul when singing worship songs. I do not suggest for a moment that a Christian cannot be drawn closer to God through worship in music. But this did not seem to be the nature of what she was describing. Her response was not about coming to a place of worship, but rather coming to a place of heightened emotional response. In her mind, she equated high emotions with spirituality, and low emotions with a lack thereof.
I am not sure if this was my first exposure to this sort of quackery, but it was certainly one of the first, and if my soul could form facial expressions in the wake of this response, it would have been one of wide-eyed, gaping mouthed, horror. Let me qualify my reaction a bit further though; I do not mean to present myself as so far above this sort of thing that I am looking down upon it from some great spiritual height. In the infancy of my own faith I was by no means immune to the influence of various superstitions, empty traditions, and well intentioned appeals to the mystical. If I was appalled, it was only in the knowledge that this person had been a Christian from her youth, and in all that time had never learned any better. I was not appalled by the quality of her ignorance, as much as I was that it should still exist after so many years.
Every new believer wants tangible assurance that they are genuine - that their faith is the real deal. I myself wanted, in the infancy of my faith, to be able to appeal to some "saved" feeling whenever I needed assurance. Said another way, I wanted to be able to supernaturally sense that I was saved. I think that is a common felt "need" of every person who joins themself to Christ - and it is common to both the genuine and the illegitimate. I was more or less ignorant of the scriptures, so I didn't really know what assurance was supposed to be like. Was it emotional? Tangible? Mystical? I had my own preconceptions, and in my case I was certain that whatever assurance was, it would come with a serious and settled "saved" feeling. This feeling would be supernatural in origin (mystical) - a sensation of sorts that only I was aware of, but something that was always there so that I could, by tapping into it at will, always know that I was really, really a Christian.
In fact, I sort of thought that unless I had some sort of ever-present supernatural experience going on, I might not even be a real Christian! Especially having listened to the sort of superficial Christian conversations that were the mainstay of my early fellowship - Christians talking to one another in language that made it sound like their lives were sprinkled liberally with supernatural impressions. When someone said, "the Lord showed me this morning that..." I took that to mean that they either had some sort of supernatural ability to hear God speak that I lacked, or worse, that I was receiving messages from God all the time but was not spiritual enough to interpret them properly. I began to consider every stray thought as a possible message from God, and every twinge of guilt as condemnation from the same. Being inclined towards compulsive thoughts I would think about the most horrible thing that God might want ask me to do, then convince myself that God was in fact "moving me" to do it, and that my reluctance to obey the voice of God was the most heinous of sins. My walk of "faith" was more of a stumbling, barely controlled free-fall down a careening path, twisting and turning, and driven by the winds of guilt at not answering immediately every stray thought that God was "beaming" in to my head.
My walk was a mess, and my faith was a burden to me, for I longed to be righteous, but was weighed down with the notion that God was micro managing the minutia of my existence, and that I was failing left, right, front, and center, to answer every buffetting wind. As exposed myself to God's word, I began to be set free from these lying doctrines, and man-made, mystical superstitions. The truth set me free, just as it sets all free who genuinely seek and find it. Afterwards, I equated my former ignorance with immaturity, and though I was ashamed and embarrassed that I should have been so foolishly led, I chalked it up to the infancy of my faith, and set it aside. When I was a child, I spoke and acted like a child, but I grew out of that, and put it away from me. My assumption was that everyone else in church must have gone through that long ago, and that I had only come lately to be where they were at, if I had even attained to that height.
So when I heard this woman speak of needing to be emotionally hyped up in order to do anything spiritual, I was shocked and stunned by the news. Shocked that anyone who has spent their life in the company of Christians could, in practice, be so flaky, and stunned I say, by the magnitude of her zeal, given how sorely misplaced it was. How was it that no one had corrected her of this notion? How was it that when I spoke against it, I felt like Paul on Mars Hill - I was speaking strange things that offended and confused people?
My point is not to drone on about this one instance, but rather to show in real life ignorance in the church produces empty religious rituals that go no where, and do no good thing, rather they only contribute to the demise of a church.
Getting back to the first point in this post: the path out of a dead prayer life; the path out of the agony of feeling that God doesn't hear your prayers, is not to find some emotional pick-me-up, but to find again the first truth that you have set aside covered over with empty and even superstitious religious notions.
That truth is that if you are in Christ God will hear your prayers. God will hear your prayers whether you feel you are right and acceptable to Him (because of some merit earned through righteous living), or you whether you feel you are too sinful and unacceptable to Him (...having failed to produce this same personal merit).
Certainty does not (and cannot) come from your emotions. Certainty comes when you trust that God hears you because of Christ's finished work on the cross. Certainty - or assurance, flows from faith, and not the other way around.
Let me give you real life account from my own life. My oldest daughter had a bit of a crisis last night, and in part that is why I use this particular example of prayer to introduce the big picture. She is only ten, and after listening to me read Isaiah 23 last night, and in the course of the discussion that followed about the end of the world, she began, though she had given her life to Christ a couple of years ago, to be sorely concerned for her soul. She realized, perhaps for the first time publicly, that she was afraid that her faith might not be real, and that when she dies she might not go to be with God, but instead would be exposed to His wrath. Through large tears she confessed that she knew she wanted to believe God, but that she found herself not trusting that He really would save her.
I call "judgment day clarity" like that a God send, and rightly so. She saw herself, perhaps for the first time, for who she truly was - someone who wanted to avoid hell, but who didn't really believe God. She came face to face with a burning anguish that would not be pacified by any platitude, grand or small. She saw that [1] she needed to believe, and [2] that she couldn't "make herself" believe.
Would that more believers had such a clear understanding of their truest dilemma! We talked for hours, my daughter and I, and I had to deny myself several times as I so wanted to placate her torment with cries of, "Peace! Peace!" when it was evident that such cries of peace would be more for my benefit than hers.
I explained faith to her ten times in ten different ways, and I underscored the fact that she cannot ride on my faith, but has to deal with God personally and directly. I couldn't give her faith, nor could she generate it herself, but she had to turn to the Author of faith Himself, and deal directly with Him, for He alone was the only one who could raise her up out of her dilemma.
But here is the crux of this personal example: I myself was praying up a storm as we talked, I was begging God silently for wisdom, for the right words, for His words (i.e. words from scripture), that I might not speak from my own wisdom, but quote His, and though I have been in Christ many years now, - I began to feel a little impotent when all my prayers seemed to be having no immediate effect.
My daughter was still tormented having her eyes of understanding glossed over in doubt. Why wasn't God opening her understanding?? I wasn't exactly panicked, but I was definitely off my game, as it were. At one point she went to the bathroom, trail of tears in her wake, and I was able to turn my soul full faced to the Lord and pray not alongside what I was doing, but as it were, I was able to be alone with the Lord long enough to realize that I was no longer exercising faith, but had begun to simply pleah with God to do my will, and wondering where the lions were.
You see, I had taken my eyes off of Christ. I had started to worry, to fret, to try and call down from heaven the sort of resolution I thought the situation needed.
When the solution I thought was necessary failed to materialize, I began to question whether God was listening, or whether my own prayers were fruitless, ...useless. I wasn't praying in faith, I was praying as a form or diligent religion. I knew that prayer was called for, I knew that unless God built this house, the labourer (me) would labor in vain. But for all that, I hadn't actually been coming to God in faith while talking to my daughter, but coming to God in pretense. I was coming to God in my desperation and trying to force God (through prayer) to do my will (calm my daughter, and open her understanding... now!), and this primarily for my own benefit. I was trying to do the right thing and wanted God's power to make it happen - rather than resting in God, and trusting that the situation was in His hands and not my own.
When I saw that I was floundering in prayer, in that moment I set my heart on the truth - that God hears me in Christ, and that having committed my path to the Lord, I was willing to rest in whatever God would do. These matters were in His capable hands, hadn't I appealed to my God? Hadn't He heard my prayer? The bible teaches that He heard my appeal, for it is surely His will that I instruct my children in the way they are to go, that I share the good news of Christ, and that sinners repent, and the gospel be proclaimed. In the blink of an eye I went from a desperate father full of concern, to a man so certain of God's goodness and provision, that I was at once filled with all patience and joy. I was in the Spirit, not some mystical place of emotion, but resting in the certainty of God's presence, God's power, and God's provision. Jehovah Jireh, amen.
My daughter came back from the washroom calm and at ease. I told her about my own lack of faith in our discussion, and how in the moment it was restored to me, I was at peace, trusting in God to do what I could not. She was so excited to hear this because she said in the two minutes she had left to go to the washroom, she suddenly found herself comforted and calmed - she was excited to hear how God had answered my prayer in her. It is one thing for a little girl to hear about God answering prayer, and another to be the knowing recipient of it.
Now, she didn't come back and tell me about some transcendent peace and calm that overcame her mystically with some sort of tangible tingle; rather I told her about my prayer, and then she told me about how it was answered, and knowing that I couldn't have known about her calmness she realized that God must have heard my prayer and answered it, and that her sudden calmness and renewed certainty were proof that God had answered my prayer. If she was calm when she came back, she was strengthened spiritually by the news that God had heard and answered my prayer in providing her with the calmness that comes from resting in the Lord.
I could go on and on about the grace and majesty of God, especially as it pertains to my daughter whom I so dearly love, but I mention this only to introduce faith as a component of the Christian life.
When scripture says that the just shall live by faith, it isn't describing the process of the new birth, it is describing the life that follows the new birth.
It isn't that the just shall inherit life by faith, it is that the just shall live by faith. Faith is not merely the foundation of our justification, it is also, and perhaps more significant given how this point is practically unheard of in many congregations - the foundation of our sanctification. I hope to show in the next post, that many immature believers today are not living their Christian lives by faith as they should, both to God's glory, and to their own joy. I hope also to articulate, as best I can, exactly what it means to live by faith.Labels: faith, Faith and prayer., prayer |
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posted by Daniel @
7:46 AM
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| Faith?? |
Youngest daughter: "Daddy, can I have some ice cream?"
Father: "Of course you can have some ice cream, the real question is whether or not you may have ice cream..."
There are many today who would say that the distinction is trivial and even pompous; for if, by the context, the father understood what his daughter intended to say then the grammar doesn't matter. These would regard the father as a Hebert (you must be familiar with Star Trek TOS to understand the reference).
I make this distinction with my children all the time because I know that, even though our generation is grammatically slack, previous generations were not. The word "can" denotes ability, the word "may" denotes permission. Anyone can commit murder, but the law tells us that no one may. When scripture says that "no one -can- come to the Son, unless the Father draws him, it means that no one has the ability to come to the Son, unless the Father draws that person. It doesn't mean no one wants to, or no one has permission to, or no one thinks about it - what it is saying is that it is impossible for anyone to come to the Son unless/until the Father draws that person to the Son.
That's not the point of this post however, I just mention that to illustrate how a failure to understand even the language we speak, can translate into bad doctrine, which always leads to bad practice.
Consider the word "faith". Without faith it is impossible to please God. What does scripture mean here (Hebrews 11:6)? That unless a person believes there is a God, he cannot please God? Um. No.
You see, a person can easily believe that there is a God, and that He is the God of scripture, and that He is able to do everything that scripture says He is able to do; a person can even believe all that and believe that Christ is going to save him (or has already saved him) based on the promises found in scripture - and still fail to believe God for even trivial things. That is, a person can assent to the fact that God "can" do something, but will halt at the thought that God "will" do a thing.
Faith is more than simply giving an intellectual assent to the facts.We see this mostly in our prayer life. Yes, of course God "can" bring so and so to faith, but will he? Yes, God "can" heal the other over there, but will he? In fact, God "can" answer prayer, but does he ever? Oh sure, the one says, God answers prayers, -- just not mine.
You see, that's not faith, that's unbelief.
Of course God "can" do these things. It doesn't take a great "faith" to know this. The demons know that God "can" do these things, and it isn't counted as faith for them. It would just be counted as lunacy to deny it - only a fool (who has embraced his own sin) can say there is no God. Faith is more than simply giving an intellectual assent to the facts; faith requires a trust that God -will- do something. In other words faith doesn't say God "can" do this, it says, God "will" do this.
Now before we go off the rails and into word/faith heresy, let's understand that even if I really, really believe that God is going to give me a million dollars, that isn't going to "make it happen". Faith is not a kind of power that makes things happen. No one can incline God to obey their voice, even if they really, really believe He will. Faith doesn't work that way. In other words, faith has more to it than simply believing God will do something.
Let's recap briefly:
[1] Faith requires more than believing that God can do something, it requires that one believes that God -will- do something.
[2] Faith is also more than being convinced that God -will- do something...
Biblical faith believes that God will do everything that He has promised to do. It believes that God is exactly as scripture portrays Him to be, personified perfectly in the person of Christ. There is no reason for any believer to doubt any of God's promises, and where we find ourselves asking for something outside of God's promises, we can trust in the character of God - that is, we can trust God to respond to our prayers as the God of scripture would respond.
Faith is also more than being convinced that God -will- do something ...Let's bring this home, it is good and right to believe that God will answer your prayer providing (at least) that your prayer is actually good and right. James wrote that you do not receive what you ask for because what you ask for is not right. It really is that plain and simple. If you don't believe that God is going to answer your prayer positively, why on earth are you praying? That is praying from a position of doubt. What you need is not to hype yourself up until you can convince yourself that God will bow to your desires - you need instead to educate yourself and learn whether or not this is something God has promised to do. If you can find nothing, or if time is pressed so that you must pray before you can be sure that what you are praying for is fit and right - then commend your prayer to God's character - believe that God will answer according to what is right, and be satisfied with God's answer.
It troubles me that there are some who are crippled in their prayer life because they only ever ask God for things that a loving God would never give them, and so have learned through their own sad history that God doesn't ever, or hardly ever, answers prayer. I want people like that to know that God does answer prayer, all the time. If you want to see God answering prayer in your life, start praying for thgose things that God has promised - if a son asks his father for bread, the father will not give him a scorpion, but bread. How much moreso will our heavenly Father give? He won't supply our lusts, our gluttony, our avarice - but He will supply the Spirit for what we need - sanctification; He will answer every promise He has made.
Seriously, God will.Labels: Faith and prayer. |
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posted by Daniel @
8:41 AM
3 comment(s)
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| Prayer and Faith. |
Consider this prayer: Father in Heaven,
You know the situation before me; You know how I lack grace and patience. Please bless your servant with the grace to be patient and content through this ordeal,
for Your name's sake,
and to the glory of your praise,
In Christ's name,
Amen. I mean, it will sound pretty good to most evangelical Christians, and few, if any, would find much wrong with it. It seems a good prayer to pray, and has the aroma (if you will) of piety, given that it looks to God, and not self for supply, and given that there is that little flourish of seemingly selfless praise in the closing vamp. All in all, most of us would not think twice about such a prayer, and if any thought were given at all to the matter, we might simply echo the thought - yes Lord, please give that person patience and contentment, and glorify your name through doing so.
The problem with that prayer is that theologically speaking, it makes God a liar, the believer a victimized "hoper", and probably is only paying lip service to God's glory.
Postmodernism has taught many to shy away from putting too fine an edge on anything. Our culture has trained us not to define anything in strong absolutes because that leads to the sort of extremism that causes not only division, but fanaticism and sociopathy. Postmodernism also teaches us that the odds of us actually landing close to the "real truth" are so small, that it arrogant to even pursue the possibility.
Few of us escape passing all that we see and do through our unconscious postmodern strainers.
That is largely because public schools and television share the same social agenda - training us from the very cradle to think and act in harmony with an ideal that depends upon the goodness of man for its success. Anyone who has had their eyes open to the very real corruption that sin has brought into this world, cannot long suffer this wonderfully altruistic, but ultimately and critically flawed world view. Notwithstanding, I say, we are raised from infancy to think that certainty and precision cannot penetrate much deeper than a very shallow surface, so that we can pour scorn and ridicule (at best) upon anyone who thinks that we ought to pursue clarity with any hope of achieving it.
I mention this up front because if you read that prayer and saw nothing wrong with it, the reason is likely because your Pomo-Filter™ kept everything light and fluffy for you. But let's chew on this and see what comes of our dutiful mastication.
Now, we could rip this prayer up ten ways to Sunday - comparing it against the Lord's prayer, for instance, we might note that it isn't following the "formula" of hallowing God's name, followed by a petition that God's will be done, etc. etc. But not every prayer Christ ever prayed followed the formula - and I don't think the intent of His prayer was to give us the correct "structure" so much as the correct "Object" of our prayer - God's glory.
We can likewise, and our Pomo-Filter™ definitely inclines us in this direction, brush aside certain flaws in the prayer as acceptable, since we don't want to be overly critical, lest we turn prayer into something bloated, complex, and artificial, but that is a presumption we will not entertain today. Let us not, for the sake of this post at least, allow ourselves to wave away anything in presumptuous disdain, but engage ourselves with a simple, but pernicious and narrow goal: to examine something closely, and see what we find.
First of all, let's outline what is correct about the prayer. We want to do this because we want to take instruction from this truth: a lie is more believable when mixed with truth; that is, what is wrong with this prayer can be hidden by what is right with it - so we want to be certain that we identify the oil of "what is right" up front, in order that it may be separate from the water of "what is wrong" when we discuss it.
"Father in Heaven"
Correct. It is good and right to recognize God as our Father, and again to recognize that He is in heaven. The profound theological depth of those three words put together like that would take years to exhaust. It is unrealistic to expect that anyone will ever again be able to impart into those words anything that even approaches the infinite depth of their meaning - I say "again" because when Christ spoke in this fashion, I expect He alone could impart the fullest sense of all that these words hold in them into their use. The invocation is correct in word, but more often than not, it is merely a formality; We recite the words because that is a proper form of address.
I am reminded of those big doors with the little doors built right into them at eye level - so that you can open the little door and see who is out there before you open the big door and let them in.
A man can prop a corpse up and knock on the door, but it is not very likely to gain him entry - yet for most of us our salutation is not unlike that corpse - a lifeless formality - a platitude served cold before the King of Kings upon whose forbearance we have, by longstanding habit continuously imposed unimpeded, so that we now regard our liberty in this area as a right, and the notion of thinking any deeper on the matter as a labor beneath our contempt. Surely God isn't concerned about such formalities.
Flowers are so beautiful in bloom, but let them die and their buds, and leaves fall away - all that life produced in them - and offer the kindling of their stalks in a bouquet and you will find that few will accept such a gift. Yet how many of us are routinely in our prayer life offering the same to God?
I say, this part was correct, but only if we imparted in those words the reality of their worth. We can offer God our lip service, but it is our heart service that He regards.
"You know the situation before me; "
Correct, even flawlessly so. God does know the situation. I am reminded here about God's words to Israel supplied many times through various prophets, which, paraphrased basically says that God promises to cause Israel to seek Him even when they have played the whore, that is, even when they turn to something other than God - God promises to make them seek Him earnestly. How? Here I prefer not to paraphrase, but to cite, because God's word is more convicting than any man's paraphrase. Consider what God says To Israel through the prophet Hosea in Hosea 5:15, "I will return again to my place, until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face, and in their distress earnestly seek me." I hope the significance of that isn't lost on you. God is basically saying, I will depart from you and make you needy in order that in the vacuum to follow you will see your genuine need of me - and so seek me, not as you are now - all fluffy and half hearted, filled with your own ways - no, I will make you earnestly seek me by showing you your desperate need of me.
Listen: God does know everything, but His knowledge is not like that of some divine fortune teller who merely knows what is going on - God is a living God, and as Christ testified, He is working still, and continues to work - consider again whether your situation is something that God merely has knowledge of, or whether in fact God is chastising you because you are a legitimate child, or whether God is blessing you with some struggle because that very struggle is going to purify your faith. Do you imagine that faith drops out of the sky out of nowhere and squeezed out of nothing? Does it fall from the sky into your lap Christian? No. Faith is planted into plowed up soil, not fallow ground - and the plowing is often the thing we beg God to deliver us from, rather than walk with us through.
Notwithstanding, there is nothing wrong with assenting to God's omnipotence, even if for the most part we are doing so in a horribly shallow way. It is the next part that starts to get slippery.
"Please bless your servant with the grace to be patient and content through this ordeal"
Not right.
First Ephesians 1:3 tells us that we have already been blessed with every spiritual blessing. I mean, if God emptied all there is on us, then it stands to reason that there is no more, and that calling God to bless further is to suggest that God has held something back.
Right about there the pomo-filter usually kicks back in. What? Are you saying it is wrong to ask God to bless us?
No, I am saying it is wrong to ask God to bless you again, there is a difference.
Okay, you think as you step back from the original feather-ruffling, clearly it is just an argument about word choice and semantics - you mean that it is wrong to ask God to bless you, mentally putting the word "bless" in quotes as though by doing so it now means something else. Listen, it isn't a matter of language or word choice - it is a matter of vague theology being scrutinized under the microscope, and found wanting. Do not dismiss it - examine it. We do not pursue sound doctrine to win doctrinal debates - we pursue sound doctrine because sound doctrine instructs us in correct practice (orthopraxy).
You don't ask God to do what He has already done unless you don't understand that God has done it already. If you believe that God has done it already, and you are still asking for it - then get to the heart of the matter - you don't really believe that God has blessed you.
Follow the prayer again... asking for patience? Patience is not a prayer request it is a fruit of the Holy Spirit! Asking God for patience is tantamount to asking God to give you the Holy Spirit all over again.
POMO FILTER ALERT.
Don't give into the idea that I am being too critical, or too rough, here. Don't suggest to yourself that I should be more sensitive, maybe not for you, but for those baby Christians who might read this, or for those who don't know the Lord who might get the wrong impression about faith. I tell you that though I take no joy in anyone being stung by a bee, I take great joy when something true convicts, because it is no man's work, but God's work, and I rejoice in it. How much less, do I care then if someone has so misconstrued Christ's ministry to this world that they take offense when their imitation is exposed.
No, I say, take it all in. I may be abrupt and even heavy handed with the truth here, but don't take that out on the truth, it isn't the truth's fault if I deliver it all ham-fisted like.
Seriously think this one through then, before you dismiss it, if dismissing it is your natural inclination. Yes, it is holy and humble to acknowledge our desperate need. But it is not holy or humble to ask for a thing we already have. It may be genuine ignorance and it may be seasoned a good bit by unchecked immaturity - but there is nothing noble about ignorance or immaturity. It is only excusable once, after that you are responsible for what you know.
The problem here, I say is not ignorance or immaturity, but something far more earthshaking considering the scope of those who suffer from, and because of it. The problem is unbelief.
Don't brush this off as a teaching for the next person either.
When a person asks for something they already have, it is because they either [1] don't believe that they have it, or [2] don't believe that what they have is what it is supposed to be, or alternately [2a] they don't believe it "works" or that they are [2b] doing it right.
Ordeals will come (and do come) to Christians and when they do, they always serve a purpose that is, and must remain, in accord with God's purpose. God's purpose is often obscure in what He allows His saints to endure - but His purpose is never simply to make you ask Him again for what He has already given. Rather all that God has given has been given to serve this one purpose - to strengthen and grow your reliance on God - to take you to the place where your reliance is entirely on God - as is proper for any creature.
Can I ask God for grace? For blessings? For patience? For love? For joy? They are mine already.
But, objects the sinister man in the top hat as he twists the tip of his mustache in one hand, if these things are truly mine already, why is it that I cannot make use of them? Why if I have patience am I not patient? Do I, or must I brainwash myself? Is that what I am to do? Do I pretend that I am really patient, when all evidence screams to me that I am by no means patient? Am I truly expected, in the name of Christian faith to act what I am not, and tell myself that I am something that I am not, and hope that eventually what I practice in my self imposed delusion becomes actual at some point? Is the strength of Christianity reduced to a beggarly intellectual dishonesty whereby I convince myself of something that is neither true or beneficial, and experience bliss only when I can no longer discern what is real of myself?
We all worry about that, I mean if we are thoughtful enough, and sincere enough. We don't want to pretend to be something we are not. We do not become good Christians by pretending to be good Christians - or said in biblical language, we do not actually clean the cup by polishing the outside of it.
This is the part of the conversation where eyes roll because we know the garden path so well by now. We can't do it, God has to do it... yeah, yeah, the leopard cannot change its own spots - we have heard this before, and all that knowledge did was make us feel even more hopeless - since if we cannot do it, it must mean that God is supposed to but isn't doing it for some reason. It doesn't help the eye rollers to know that God does it, because they can't figure out how to make God do it, and therein lies the problem.
You see unbelief is often veiled by our I-am-a-victim complex. It's not -my- fault things aren't working. I regard myself as sincere, and I presume to know myself well enough to say that if I could do something about it, I would - but since nothing is being done, I am left to conclude that I must be doing something "wrong" because God is not providing for me what scripture clearly says He will provide.
Do you see the victimization? I am a victim of my own ignorance, it isn't my fault I don't understand, if I understood, I would do it right. Tell me how to get patience, and I will get patience in the right way...
The myopia is pricelessly ironic. You have all you need right now.
No I don't.
Yes you do, you just don't believe that you do.
Ah - we are back to word games, or the power of positive thinking; you want me to start telling myself a thing is true until I believe its true - one of those "unicorns have to be believed in order to be seen" lines of (faulty) reasoning?
No, no, a thousand times no. That is the way a heart that lacks faith processes things. It refuses to see itself as lacking faith, even in the face of plain and naked evidence.
Listen, if God says that He has blessed you with every blessing - you have all there is. If the Holy Spirit is in you, you have His patience in you. You don't need any more.
Ah - see, I knew it was just a word game. You meant that I personally don't have patience, but that God (the Holy Spirit) has patience in me, such that you can say that "I" have patience, but you mean God in me. Still no help.
NO! That is not what I am saying. That is unbelief looking for justification, looking to paint failure in terms of someone else and not self. Look, I am spelling it out in plain terms, the reason you don't see it is not because it isn't simple or straight forward - you don't see it because if for a moment you loosen that death grip you have on your false hope - exposing something so dreadful you dare not even think it: that in spite of your profession, you are truly faithless.
If I am talking to you, get over yourself. Stop denying what you know is true. Are you going to tell me that you truly believe that Jesus is going to save you, but you doubt that He is sanctifying you in any meaningful way? Are you saying that you have had a profound experience - being transferred out of the kingdom of darkness, and into the kingdom of light by God Himself - and yet now God has left you clueless?
No, listen. There is a place for immaturity. We were all babes once upon a time, and surely we are all childish in many ways to this day. But unbelief is not on par with teething pain - it is the very opposite of faith.
How did Isaiah say it, "Who has believed our report?" - Christians, as one, answer, "us, we heard it!" - but is that true of you? Do you really believe all that God has said, or just the part about you getting saved?
Consider the queerness of your faith if it is able to grasp and hold onto something as profound as justification for every sin you have ever, or will ever commit - but finds itself impotent when it comes to believing that you have every blessing already, or refuses to believe that it has any sort of victory in the arena of sin.
Ah, we are such victims, who hold our own unbelief as though it were virtuous to possess it so long as you feel bad about it, and would change it if you could...
The truth is that your flesh isn't going to get any better, it will always spit up temptations, it will always be impatient, and lustful. That isn't going away, and if you ask God to take it away, you are asking God to kill you on the spot, for until your flesh dies, it will always be a fountain of wickedness. But the "you" that is in that flesh are not enslaved by it, you are in fact set free from its dominion if you are in Christ - and if free, then free indeed (that is, free in deeds as well as in words).
How then is it that I am impatient? I am impatient because I am in the flesh, where I choose to be, for I have the strength of God Almighty at hand, provided by God, intended by God for my sustenance, and given in full measure already - all waiting on me to employ, and when I fail to do so, I blame it on everything but my own lack of faith.
That's what's wrong with praying for patience or asking for blessings. It not as simply as saying God, I don't believe I have these things - it is like saying, these things you have given are clumsy and useless - I don't want to suffer in my sinful flesh relying on your sustaining grace for all - I don't want to believe you, or turn to you because I don't believe You, Jehovah Jireh, will provide. I don't believe you will answer me, because I am such a wretch, I don't believe, because of all these very good and justifiable reasons.... I don't believe because.
Listen, there is no excuse for unbelief, and when we ask God for what we have, it boils down to unbelief. Don't call yourself a believer if you are an unbeliever, just because you said a salvation prayer once and someone told you that you are a Christian - if you think that you believe God for your salvation, but can't believe him for anything else - let me warn you, you are probably so self deceived that you are beyond all hope - excepting that God is ALL mighty, and can derail the train to hell you are riding, even now.
But moving on, in my light hearted way, we get to the final, bloated closing phrase:
for Your name's sake,
and to the glory of your praise,
In Christ's name,
Amen.
How poetic. Is it really for the sake of God's name that you are asking Him to redo what He has already done? Dear God, please for your names sake, accept my unbelief, nay - act upon it - come down from heaven and reward it - for your names sake.
What about the glory of Your praise eh? What's that? Does that mean that God is glorious when He praises someone, or does it mean that praising God gives God glory?
I suspect the latter - that praising God gives Him glory - but can I really call my prayer of unbelief an act of praise that will bring God's glory? Dear God, be glorified by the praise I am going to give you when you provide me with special sin stopping "power", so that instead of needing you moment by moment, to the glory of your praise, now I can ignore you all the time and praise you once... for the momentary glory?
Listen, I didn't grab that prayer from somewhere. I made it up - using the sort of pretty words one often hears employed by practiced public prayer persons. A prayer like that can be said in a single breath, it can sound like Shakespeare, but that doesn't make it a good prayer.
I am reminded of a remarkable incident involving George Meuller, which many of you will already be familiar with. Here it is, in the words of Charles Inglis:
When I first came to America thirty-one years ago, I crossed the Atlantic with the captain of a steamer who was one of the most devoted men I ever knew; and when we were off the banks of Newfoundland he said to me: ‘Mr. Inglis, the last time I crossed there, five weeks ago, one of the most extraordinary things happened that has completely revolutionized the whole of my Christian life. Up to that time I was one of your ordinary Christians. We had a man of God on board, George Mueller, of Bristol. I had been on that bridge for twenty-two hours and never left it. I was startled by someone tapping me on the shoulder. It was George Mueller. “ ‘Captain,’said he, ‘I have come to tell you that I must be in Quebec on Saturday afternoon. ’This was Wednesday. “‘It is impossible, ’I said. “‘Very well, if your ship can’t take me God will find some other means of locomotion to take me. I have never broken an engagement in fifty-seven years.’
“‘I would willingly help you, but how can I? I am helpless.’“‘Let us go down to the chart room and pray, ’he said. “I looked at this man and I thought to myself, ‘What lunatic asylum could the man have come from? I never heard of such a thing.’“‘Mr. Mueller, ’I said, ‘do you know how dense this fog is?’ “‘No, ’he replied, ‘my eye is not on the density of the fog, but on the living God, who controls every circumstance of my life.’“‘He went down on his knees, and he prayed one of the most simple prayers.
I thought to myself, ‘That would suit a children’s class, where the children were not more than eight or nine years of age. ’The burden of his prayer was something like this: ‘O Lord, if it is consistent with Thy will, please remove this fog in five minutes. You know the engagement You made for me in Quebec for Saturday. I believe it is Your will.’“When he had finished, I was going to pray, but he put his hand on my shoulder and told me not to pray. “ ‘First,’he said, ‘you do not believe God will do it; and, second, I believe He has done it. And there is no need whatever for you to pray about it.’ “I looked at him, and George Mueller said this: ‘Captain, I have known my Lord for fifty-seven years and there has never been a single day that I have failed to gain an audience with the King. Get up, Captain and open the door, and you will find the fog is gone.’I got up, and the fog was gone. On Saturday afternoon George Mueller was in Quebec.
You see, faith is not the same as hope - hope says, I sure hope God will do such and such - and this sort of hope is pretty much impotent and useless - it is not faith, but is allowed to masquerade as such in many circles. Faith says that almighty God will do this, period.
Faith isn't a muscle that we exercise as though there was some sort of make-it-happen power in positive thinking - there isn't. God doesn't answer our prayers merely because we have convinced ourself that He will. A call to faith -is not- a call to force yourself to believe something. It is a specific call, to a specific task: believe that God is whom He claims to be and will do what He has promised to do.
You see, the one who comes to God must not only believe that He is, but also that He rewards those who diligently seek Him. It believes that God is truly for us, and not against us, it believes that God is with us and hasn't forsaken us, it believes that God's almighty power - the power that raised Christ from the dead is resident in every believer who is in Christ (through the Holy Spirit), and it acts in a way that is consistent and not contrary to that belief.
Here is the same prayer as in the beginning, see if you catch the difference:
Oh great God; the Father of my Lord Jesus Christ, through whom you have called me to yourself, thank you.
I thank you lord for this present ordeal. Not because I cherish suffering, but because I know that my suffering serves this good purpose: it is used by you to draw me to out of all my carnal pretensions, and into an earnest seeking of your face. I have set You aside and set my affections upon myself, I know this because I find myself lacking the fruit of your Spirit, lacking patience and contentment, and my heart cries out for these things apart from you - as though I want them in order to avoid the very thing you are using this ordeal to bring about - my being drawn closer to you. Though you are merciful, and your mercies endure forever, yet I feel in my heart that I am forever trying your patience, so much so that I am driven by the fear of what you could do, rather than the love shown in what you are doing.
I want to thank you therefore God, that the moment I turn from my sin you are there to accept me, and here I am now Lord, not with empty platitudes, but seeing your work in me anew, I worship you - not to make you like me, but because I see how deeply you are invested in me - and I see your glory in the contrast between my lack of worth, and that great investment - your mercy on display before my own eyes, and yet will I ever speak of it? Will I not just hide it away in me - buried like a gift in the soil - hidden because I regard it as my secret - oh, let me share it all, let me praise you with my heart, soul, and lips - as I confess my sin, let the joy of what you are doing daily on my behalf - the joy of you tender care and love -soak me through.
Haven't I abused you, and you have given me every blessing. Haven't I fought you every step of the way, yet you are leading me to the still waters. Have I not refused to bow before you, even as you are placing a crown of infinite worth upon my brow. I don't have to pretend to sing your praises, or to glorify you - I need only say what is true, and you are glorified - oh that I had a thousand eyes to look upon your glory, and a mind that could take it all in, for you are food and drink to my soul Lord, you are bread indeed.
How can I leave the throne? I shall stay in your house forever - thank you for your continued grace, for supplying my every need, against my protests and shouts. This you have done, to put your glory on display, for your own names sake, sending your Son for me, through whom I gladly praise you.
Amen.
Anyway - the point is, that prayer requires faith, and faith is more than hope. If you don't believe God in prayer, you don't believe God period. Deal with whatever that teaches you.Labels: Faith and prayer. |
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posted by Daniel @
10:35 AM
7 comment(s)
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