Monday, April 28, 2014

Experiencing God: Crisis Of Faith

"Experiencing God:  Crisis of Faith"
1 Corinthians 10:13

Maybe some of you used to listen to Paul Harvey on the radio.  When I listened, I remember his show came on at noon, and I'd listen to his news and his spin on the news while I made my lunch.

Later on in his career he started a radio segment called, "The Rest of the Story."  He'd spin some true story about some seemingly obscure character, and some troubles they caused or ran into.  Then at the very end he'd say something like, "The young man in this story was Abraham Lincoln.  And now you know, the rest of the story."

I feel like that's what I need to do with this chapter from Experiencing God.  There was something I wasn't liking about it the whole chapter, and I finally put my finger on it when I was going over it again, re-reading it.  There's more to this chapter that Blackaby is not making clear, or that he maybe doesn't realize.  There is more to this story.

I came across a line in the chapter that epitomized what was kicking off my feelings.  Blackaby wrote:
When God lets you know what He wants to do through you, it will be something only He can do...If you lack faith, you will not do what He wants, and that is disobedience.  (page 211)

My sense of logic recoils at that statement.  If God asks us to do things that only he can do, then why is he asking us to do them?  Why doesn't God just go ahead and do them?  Why does God need us?

And then for Blackaby to make the statement that if I don't have enough faith I'm a loser and disobedient to God.  So my question here is, how much faith is enough?  How much faith do I need to exhibit so that I know when I've crossed the line over into enough faith?  Where's that line?

And if I don't have enough faith, I must have to try harder, or do something different, or do more, so it will get me over the line.  And you can probably understand where that would get me--it doesn't become faith any more.  It becomes working at faith.  It's not about faith at all anymore.  It's about me working hard to make myself approved by God so God won't call me disobedient.

Which is the very thing Paul said we shouldn't do.  There's no grace anymore.  There's nothing about grace in Blackaby's statement.  You are either working at being more faithful or you are disobedient.

Paul saw that as the dog-chasing-its-tail syndrome.  He wrote about it in Romans where he said,
But I need something more!  For if I know the law but still can't keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help!  I realize that I don't have what it takes.  I can will it, but I can't do it.  I decide to do good, but I don't really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway.  My decisions, such as they are, don't result in actions.  Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.  (Romans 7:17-20)

Paul's answer to his dilemma:
The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does.  He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.  (Romans 7:25)

The "crisis of belief" that Blackaby is trying to explain is the wrong crisis of belief.  The crisis of belief isn't about doing or not doing some task that God may or may not have asked you to do.  The only crisis of belief that has to do with faith is allowing God to save you from yourself and your sin.  You can't do that as much as you may try.  God, through Jesus Christ, has to do that.

Paul knew.  He tried.  And it didn't work.  Every time he tried to save himself with some technique, with attempting something more, better, or different, he ended up back in the sin hole.

This isn't about doing stuff for God.  God could do all that stuff himself.  This isn't about making brownie points with God so that you don't get the "loser" label, or "disobedient" label pasted to your forehead.  This is about letting God do what God does best:  letting him save us from our sinful selves, and being welcomed into the arms of God's grace.


The other point that aroused my disagreements with this chapter had to do with the basic premise of the chapter.  Let's go back to that line I quoted earlier from the chapter:  "When God lets you know what He wants to do through you, it will be something only He can do."

I want to reword that statement to read thus:  "When God lets you know what He wants to do through you, it will be something only you and He can do." Listen to this statement again (reread).  Can you catch the power of that one little word change.

We who believe, know what God can do.  What can God do?  Anything and everything.  Is there anything God can't do?  No!  So in the back of our minds we know we need God.  We understand we can't do life without God.  It's a given.  Are we all agreed on that?

And, by making that statement, as I said before, if God can do everything and anything, God doesn't need us.  God could do it all by God's self.

BUT, God chooses not to.  God chooses to enlist us to accomplish what God wants done in the world.  Therefore, God needs us.  Because God has chosen to use us human beings, as frail as we are, tending to sin as we do, God still has chosen to use us in the plan.  God has chosen to need us.  We need God--definitely.  But just as importantly, God needs us.  Has desired to need us.

That's why God has given us all certain gifts, abilities, talents, particular usefulness, to use as we make our way through life.  These gifts God has given us are to be used to help God accomplish what God want's accomplished.  If God didn't need us, God wouldn't have endowed us with some great gifts and characteristics.

So the crisis of faith, as Blackaby calls it in this chapter, is not, as he states, Do we have faith enough in God to accomplish something huge God wants done.  The crisis of faith is, for each of us, Do we have enough faith in ourselves to do what God wants done?  God has given us all the resources we need.  God has picked us for accomplishing distinctive parts of God's plan.  God believes in us.  Otherwise God wouldn't have chosen us for the particular tasks God has.  So once we are chosen by God, do we believe in ourselves, and what God has endowed us with, to do it?  That's a crisis of faith!

In one of the old All In The Family episodes, Edith and Archie are attending Edith's high school class reunion.  Edith meets up with an old classmate named Buck, who has allowed himself to become extremely obese.

Edith and Buck have an engaging conversation about old times and the things they did together.  Remarkably, Edith doesn't even notice how extremely heavy Buck has become.

Later, Edith and Archie are talking.  She says, "Archie, ain't Buck a beautiful person?"
Archie replies, "Edith, I'll never figure you out.  You and I can look at the same guy and you see a beautiful person and I see a blimp."
Edith replies, "Yeah, ain't that too bad."

"Ain't that too bad."  Ain't that too bad that God sees something in you, has endowed you with certain spiritual gifts, believes in you, and has provided for you amazing opportunities to serve him.  But you don't see it.  Not only do you not see it, you don't believe enough in yourself so that you can get done what God wants, and by asking you God clearly sees you have it within you to do it.

Blackaby says, "When God lets you know what He wants to do through you, it will be something only He can do."  But I say, with Paul,
No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face.  All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he'll never let you be pushed past your limit; he'll always be there to help you come through it.  (1 Corinthians 10:13)

People usually misquote or misrepresent this verse.  Usually people use this verse when they are going through some awful experience, or a loved one is going through an awful experience.  But Paul isn't talking about that.  Paul is talking about dealing with our temptations, which are ultimately tests of our faith.

And I think one of the biggest temptations we face has to do with our belief in ourselves in respect to what God may ask of us.  That temptation is the ultimate test of how we see ourselves vs. how God sees us.  Our temptation is to succumb to the message that we can't do what God wants us to do, not because we don't think God could do it through us, but because we don't believe in ourselves.

The temptation is not to be receptive to God's nudgings because we don't think we have it in us, that we are not worthy, or we are not able, or that God just doesn't have it right about what he's trying to tell us about our individual strengths and abilities.  Our biggest temptation is to tell God we think he has it all wrong about us.  That he's chosen the wrong person.  The temptation is not to believe in ourselves when God absolutely believes in us, or else he wouldn't have beckoned us into his work.

What will it take for you to see what God sees in you?  Because once you see it, you will know the rest of the story.

Monday, April 21, 2014

Easter Cantata Messages

Easter Cantata Messages


How It All Began

Come on a journey with me.  First to Bethlehem.  It is still a small town.  Still there's a Main Street.  On each side of the street are souvenir shops.  On the shelves of these shops, olive wood carved nativity sets, and crosses, and icons, and communion cups--also olive wood, turned on lathes to look like miniature chalices.  So much stuff for sale.

Ahead, the largest building in Bethlehem is actually three:  the church of St. Catherine; the Greek Convent; and, the Church of St. George.

The grotto where it was believed Jesus was born is encased in marble.  A 14 point silver star marks the exact spot where it is believed Mary birthed Jesus.  15 lamps, eternally burning, hover above and around the silver star.

Just across from the star is the manger scene.  A simple wood slated hay manger with a plastic Jesus laying in it.


It didn't always look that way.  Hay strewn about.  Instead of tourists mulling and pushing and shoving to get a photograph with their iPhone, there were live stock looking without seeing, straight ahead, chewing the cud.

Instead of people from different countries, buying trinkets, there were people from different parts of Israel, and different social classes registering their identities so Herod could make sure he was receiving all the tax to which he felt he was entitled.

Instead of a plastic doll, there was a real, live, kicking, crying, needy baby.  The baby laid upon a young woman's chest--a girl, really.  Does she know she's nursing God?


As He Grew

There is no "shadow of the temple" any more.  That's because there is no more temple.  All that's left is one wall:  known as the Western Wall, or the Wailing Wall.  The temple was destroyed in 70 A.D. by the Romans, and the western wall was left by the Roman armies as a sign that attests to their ultimate and destructive power.

The Wailing Wall is the most sacred place for Jews in Israel.  It is a place of prayer.  People come from all over the world, and either speak their prayers to God, or write them on little pieces of paper and cram them into the little cracks and crevices in the wall's mortar.

Imagine Jesus moving in and out of that great temple throughout his ministry.  In that temple Jesus made connection with God from early infancy on through to the last days of his life.  He also tried to help others make connection with God--and was killed for it.

At one point Jesus said, "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up" (John 2:19).  As John the gospel writer correctly surmised, the "temple" Jesus talked about was his body.

But Jesus correctly prophesied the temple's destruction.  The real temple, the real place to worship wasn't going to be a building or even what was left of a building.  The most authentic place to worship would be a person--the person of the Risen Christ.


The Lord's Supper

There is an old joke about the painting of the Last Supper.  All of those paintings show Jesus and the disciples on the one side of the table, sitting upright, Jesus in the very middle.

The joke is that Jesus said to the disciples, "OK, everyone who wants to get in the picture come to this side of the table."

More accurately, the disciples would have been all around the table, reclining at an angle out from the table.  The table could have been low to the floor with the disciples and Jesus reclining on cushions.  Jesus wouldn't have been in the middle of the table, like the painting shows, but at its head.

It would have been a relaxed atmosphere--just celebrating the Passover meal as they had so many times before.

It would have been relaxed, that is, until Jesus said, "One who has dipped in this cup will betray me."  We all blame Judas as the betrayer.  But Peter betrayed Jesus also.  So did all the rest.  After Jesus was arrested all the disciples took off and hid, leaving Jesus alone.  Only some women stuck it out.

All the disciples at the Last Supper asked Jesus, "Is it I?"  Jesus' reply?  "You will all fall away because of me this night" (Matthew 26:31).

What a lonely meal for Jesus, looking around the table, seeing their relaxed faces, hearing their laughter, knowing that in a few hours, they "will all fall away."

Song:  "Do You Believe In Me?"

Communion
I've patterned this Holy Week around three questions.  At Maundy Thursday Communion, I had those in attendance ask the same question the disciples did around the table that night:  "Is it I, Lord?"  Am I a betrayer?

Earlier this morning at the sunrise service I asked the question to those who attended, "Did Jesus really come back to life?".  And if he did, what difference does it make?

And here at the table, during our Easter worship is the question I just sung:  "Do you believe in me?"  That is, do you believe in Jesus?  Do you really?

There's been a lot made lately of the coca cola commercial, "Are you a fan?"  A number of my Christian friends have been putting up posts on Facebook that say, "Don't be a fan; be a follower," in terms of your relationship with Jesus.  Jesus doesn't need any fans.  Jesus needs followers, people who are true believers in Jesus and who Jesus was, and what Jesus was about.

All three of the questions lead to this one.  As you take the bread and the cup, dedicate yourself anew to Jesus Christ, not as a fan, but as a follower--a true believer.

(Words of the Institution: the joyful feast in the kingdom of God)

Gethsemane

I was told, before I left on my trip to Israel, that there would be sacred moments:  experiences I would not be able to anticipate, brushes with the Holy and holiness.  The Garden of Gethsemane was one of those for me.

We arrived at dusk and were given some time to walk among the ancient olive trees.  Some of those trees were alive when Jesus walked through it, knelt in anguished prayer, sweat dripping from his brow like blood.  Somewhere in there, three of the disciples slept instead of staying with Jesus in wakeful prayer.

I prayed in anguish as well.  Nothing like Jesus.  But part of my life was ending.  And I didn't know how to pray about that, other than groan and wish that there was somebody with me who knew what to say to God.

I thought it odd that there were so many pray-ers at the Wailing Wall, but hardly any here, in the Garden.  Only our little tour group and a handful of others.

This is the place where Jesus really wrestled with God and with himself.  Here is where questions turned into resolve.  Here is where the horns that could have sounded the retreat for Jesus, were not blown.  But instead Jesus moved forward from here--ever forward to what was to come.

Golgotha

One of the traditional sites of the Crucifixion is now a huge cathedral.  It's called The Church of the Holy Sepulcher.  In one part of the cathedral is a huge, ornate altar.  Candles all above the altar, constantly lit.  Beneath the altar is a hole in the floor.  The hole is bored into the rock below it (you can see the rock underneath on each side of the altar).

You can reach under the altar and put your hand in the hole.  I've done it.  It's the hole into which the cross of Christ was set.  I had an eerie feeling putting my hand in that hole.  There was a long line of people waiting to do the same.  Millions have probably done the same, and will do so on into the future.  I couldn't linger too long.

I remember standing up, looking up, looking around at all the elaborate finery of the place.  All of it kind of cheapened the experience for me.

Because it wasn't like this at all, that day--the day of Jesus' Crucifixion.  There would have been blood--lots of blood not just from being spiked to the cross through the wrist and ankles.  But also from the brutal whipping Jesus received prior to the crucifixion that still would have been oozing blood.

There would have been no gilded candle holders back then.  Just used crosses already caked with blood, and sweat and dirt from the previous wearers.  The back drop was no ornate triptych, but a cloudy sky, getting darker and darker.

No matter how much you may try, you can't pretty up a crucifixion.  You can't hang a bunch of golden candle orbs around.  You can't surround it with icons and tapestry.  It's an execution.  Someone is dying a horrible, excruciating, humiliating death.  That someone is Jesus.  And the reason is you and I.


Written In Red

I say it again:  The reason is you and I.  One of my favorite quotes about what Jesus was about, and what his death was about, goes like this:  "It wasn't the nails that held Jesus to the Cross, but his love for you and me."

To what lengths would you go to tell someone how much you love them?  How could you show the depth of your love?

There's no greater love than this, Jesus said, than someone lay down their lives for another.

A bomb has been thrown into the world.  That bomb is evil.  Evil that disrupts and destroys everything and everyone.  In an act of self-sacrifice and love, Jesus jumped on that bomb, and took the explosion on himself, saving us from its deadly consequences.

Self-sacrificial love, written in red, the ultimate expression of love--the love that held him to the cross.






The End of the Journey Is the Beginning

We started out on a journey.  We have traveled from Jesus' birth to death.  We have asked important questions along the way.  Life defining kinds of questions.  Questions you would ask yourself if you were really concerned about your relationship with The Lord.  If you were trying to figure out what life is all about.  If you want to live by faith.

LIFE.  Full life.  Life like a cup overflowing.  Life like the laughter of those set free.  Life like those who have made God their goal, as well as the way to get to that goal.  Both the way and the destination.

LIFE.  Life like a Resurrection.  Life like coming back from the dead.  Life like God smiling because of you.  Life like you smiling because God is smiling because of you.  There is no greater joy than that--than living that kind of life.

LIFE.  And it's all yours, given you by Christ through his Resurrection.  What God has done through Jesus Christ is all about Life, and being fully alive.

LIFE.  All you have to do is believe.  Throw yourself at the resurrected Christ, fall into his arms, and LIVE!

Easter Sunrise Service Message

Easter Sunrise Service--2014

This Sunrise service isn’t about coming out here to be in nature and watch the sunrise.  This Sunrise service isn’t about celebrating the Springtime.  This Sunrise service isn’t about tulips and daffodils and lilies and new blossoms and leaves on the tress.  And this Sunrise service especially isn’t about bunnies and eggs and candy.

This Sunrise service is about Jesus rising from death.  This service is an attempt to picture what it would be like to be the women who came to Jesus tomb, where they expected to see a dead corpse of a man, but instead found an empty tomb with burial cloth left as if Jesus evaporated right up through it.  This service is about a dead man—Jesus—who came back to life and talked with at least one of the women who came to take care of the dead body.

That’s what we’re about this morning.  A dead man who came back to life.

There’s at least two steps to our response to this story.  First, is answering the question, “Do I believe it?”  Do you believe it?  Do you believe that a man, Jesus, who was fully dead, came fully alive?  Not just awakened from a coma.  Not just being dead for a few moments or minutes and resuscitated after seeing the bright light at the end of the tunnel.  But dead, after three days of being dead, came to life.  Do you believe that’s what happened to Jesus?

It's not a question of, Can anyone, after being dead come back to life?  As far as we know, that hasn't happened.  The question is about this one man, Jesus.  Did Jesus come back to life after being thoroughly dead?  Do you believe that?

The apostles, who had followed Jesus, believed it.  In the book of Acts, every one of the apostles sermons recorded there have the Resurrection of Jesus as its main center point.  There is no sermon recorded in Acts that does not build up to the high point of their preaching--Jesus' return to life after being dead.

But the further evidence is what clinches their belief in the Resurrection, in my mind.  They were changed men and women after the Resurrection.  They were transformed.  They were bold.  They were empowered.  They were unafraid.  Totally different from how they were prior to the Resurrection.

So what made the difference?   The difference, in my mind, had to be the Resurrection.  Jesus coming back to life and showing himself to the disciples.  The apostles were thoroughly convinced.

They got to see Jesus after he had died and came back to life.  But we've got to take their word for it.  Of all the stories we're told, which raises the hairs of our skepticism, we have to absolutely decide if we can believe them--believe the apostles.  That's all we have to go on, really.  So we must absolutely make up our minds about Jesus coming back to life, the story the apostles told about Jesus coming back to life.

Jesus' coming back to life seems to make a difference.  The Resurrection of Jesus changes things.  The Resurrection of Jesus changes people.  But Jesus' Resurrection doesn't change things, it doesn't change you, if you don't believe it happened.  You could go on with your life as usual, disbelieving in the Resurrection.

The next step, after deciding you really believe Jesus came back to life, is pondering what that means.  What that means for us, for the church, for the world, for you in particular.  What difference does it make that Jesus came back to life?

If Jesus' coming back to life is only for securing our eternal life, I'm sorry, but that's not enough for me.  I have no idea what eternal life will be like, or even what that means.  Eternity is just too big of a concept for me.  I'll worry about that, I guess, (if worry is even a part of eternity) when I get there.

I want to know about now.  Does Jesus' coming back to life mean anything, or change anything for me now, will I'm finitely alive?  The best answer to my question, I think, has been given by the writer of the book of Hebrews.  He wrote:
Since the children are made of flesh and blood, it's logical that the Savior took on flesh and blood in order to rescue them by his death.  By embracing death, taking it into himself, he destroyed the devil's hold on death and freed all who cower through life, scared to death of death. (Hebrews 2:14-16)

That got me.  That reached me.  That hit me where I lived.  Jesus' death and Resurrection saves me from cowering through life.  Jesus' Resurrection offers me, offers us, the chance to not be "scared to death of death."  I don't know about you, but I don't want to live in a cowering kind of way.  To cower has just as much to do with your attitude as it does your body.  When someone is cowering, they are usually bent up, crouching, holding their arms and hands over themselves, in a position of dire self-protection.  It's a position of living small.

I don't want to live that way.  I don't want to live all bent over and huddled, muscles tight, because I'm always in fear of death.

Think of the opposite:  living large, upright, unafraid, arms ready and open to embrace what comes, not protecting but welcoming.  That's how I want to live.  That's the Resurrection life.

I don't want to live deeply afraid.  Especially deeply afraid of death.  Think how our fear of death determines almost everything we do.  Bucket lists.  Mid-life crisis'.  Retirement.  Youthful, anti-aging products.  And on and on.

We may not admit it, or acknowledge it, but that fear is constantly in the back of our minds, creating a shadow in our hearts.  And the writer of Hebrews says that people who live according to the fear of death can do so "all their lives."  That's a lot of life to waste.

I want to live deeply embracing life, enjoying life, being thankful and grateful about life.  And I hope I've done that for all my life, especially lately.  I haven't done so because I read the right self-help book.  Or that I found some formula of happiness.  Or because I'm taking some certain prescription.

The only way I can live outside of the power and fear of death, is by and because of Jesus Christ and his Resurrection.  Jesus' Resurrection is about eternal life.  But maybe more importantly, Jesus coming back to life, has more to do with embracing all the life that God has to offer right now, while we're alive.  To not live cowering, but standing upright and ready.  To not live afraid, but enjoying the life God has given me, grateful to him for life.

That's why believing the Resurrection really happened, and that the Resurrection is about giving us the chance to live unafraid is so important.

Monday, April 14, 2014

Experiencing God: Through Circumstances

"Experiencing God Through Circumstances"
Psalm 25:3, 5, 21; James 5:7-11


So far this chapter, "experiencing God through circumstances" has been one of my favorites.  Hopefully you will get a lot out of it, too.

One of the main themes is about not being in a hurry to understand what God is up to.

The purposes of God often develop slowly because His grand designs are never hurried. The great New England preacher Phillips Brooks was noted for his poise and quiet manner. At times, however, even he suffered moments of frustration and irritability. One day a friend saw him feverishly pacing the floor like a caged lion. "What's the trouble, Mr. Brooks?" he asked.
"The trouble is that I'm in a hurry, but God isn't!"

I think we look at time differently than God.  We feel the fastness of times passing.  I'm finding that especially true now that there is much less time ahead of me than behind me.  My use of time has become all that much more important.  Why wasn't the use of my time this important when I was younger?

I know the ticks of the clock are going no faster now than they did when I was young.  But it seems like the hands of a clock are much more like the blades on a fan--I could cool myself by them, they are moving so fast.

Feeling now that time is much too short, I find myself more in a hurry to get a number of things done that I want to get done.  I am less patient.  I am more intolerant of waiting.

I don't know how God does it.  Maybe God is outside of time, and is not affected by the sense of how fast time seems to pass for we mortals.  I don't know, but God seems to be much more patient, seeing all of the long, long history that has unfolded out of the past, forever it would seem.

And there's the rub, as Phillips Brooks put his finger on it:  "...I'm in a hurry, but God isn't."

So, as we live out our circumstances, whether it feels like they are flying by, or creeping at a slug's pace, we are still restless to find meaning in those circumstances.  We want to know where they are leading, NOW!  We want to know what they are going to mean for us, right now!

But if we push too much, we'll miss something.  If we think the rose's beauty must have come to fruition with a closed bud and snip it from the bush, we will never see the opened flower and taste its fragrance.  The rose bud is the good.  The bloomed blossom is the best.  Too often, in our haste for life, we sacrifice the best for the good.

If we had only waited.  If we had only been more patient.

Even though Paul wrote to the Roman Christians that, "...we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good," (Romans 8:28), this promise doesn't say how long it will take God to work all that together.  God may take days.  Maybe years.  We can be sure that all will come together for good by God.  But how long?  Thus waiting becomes one of the main characteristics of the Christian life.  Waiting and patience takes us to the fulfillment of what God is up to.


Lisa Beamer reflects on the loss of her dad in her book, Let’s Roll.
Slowly I began to understand that the plans God has for us don’t just include ‘good things’, but the whole array of human events. The ‘prospering’ he talks about in the book of Jeremiah is often the outcome of a ‘bad’ event. I remember my mom saying that many people look for miracles--things that in their human minds ‘fix’ a difficult situation. Many miracles, however, are not a change to the normal course of human events; they’re found in God’s ability and desire to sustain and nurture people through even the worst situations. Somewhere along the way, I stopped demanding that God immediately fix the problems in my life and simply walk with me all the way through them.


But this waiting, this kind of patience, is not easy.  Usually this kind of patiences has to do either with events in our lives, or people in our lives.  When my patiences is being pushed with people, I try to imagine how patient God has been with me.  Patience with people involves being hopeful about them, not giving up that hope, and not letting that hope turn into bitterness.

There is a part of the opposite of patience that has to do with anger.  Patience is partly being slow to anger.  It seems impatience leads to anger, since things aren't going as fast as we'd desire them to or in the direction we'd want them to go.  All of that has to do the positioning of the self into the center, thinking that your self is more important than God's workings.

On the Andy Griffith Show episode "Man in a Hurry"- Malcolm Tucker is a wealthy businessman from Charlotte. One Sunday he happens to have car trouble a couple of miles outside of Mayberry. Malcolm walks the rest of the way to town and meets Andy coming out of Sunday morning worship.

Andy offers to assist Malcolm but warns that it is nearly impossible to get anything done on a Sunday in Mayberry. Malcolm begins to lose patience when Wally, the filling station owner, refuses to fix his car because it is his policy not to work on Sunday. Furthermore, Malcolm is dumbfounded when he learns that he can't even use the telephone because the elderly Mindelbright sisters use the party line to visit on Sunday afternoons, since they are unable to get around very well.

Back at the Taylor house, things don't get much better for Malcolm. He explodes into a tirade, screaming that the citizens of Mayberry are living in another world--that this is the twentieth century, and while the whole world is living in a desperate space age, the town of Mayberry shuts down because two old ladies' feet fall asleep.

Gomer informs Malcolm that his cousin Goober has offered to fix the car. Later, when Gomer returns with the car, Malcolm is surprised that there is no charge for the repair since it was just a clogged fuel line. Goober actually considered it an honor to work on such a fine machine.

As Mr. Tucker prepares to leave, he stops and contemplates the events of the afternoon as well as his return to the activities of his hectic life. Malcolm realizes that the very characteristics of Mayberry life that initially frustrated him so much are, in fact, the priorities he needs to establish in his own life. He decides to put his business on hold and stay the night in Mayberry.

We can all see ourselves in Malcolm Tucker.  He learned something about himself, and about life, that he wouldn't have if he didn't wait, and found some other, quicker, way out of Mayberry.  In our haste to get through our life experiences, especially the ones we have evaluated as negative ones, when things don't go our way, we explode!  And who do we get angry at?  Even though we don't name God, God is the one we are really angry with.  God is supposed to "work all things together for good" and right now, dang it!  What good is having a God, if that God doesn't do things like you want God to do them, and in the time frame you have determined is best?

Letting God be God, as God knows is best, in the time frame God has set out, is the faith work behind waiting and patience.   It is the trust that God knows what's happening in our lives, and is at work.

Do the math.  Think of just the people in Pratt.  God is doing for all of them, what God is doing for you:  "working all things together for good according to his purpose."  Every circumstance, every person in Pratt is facing is being worked on by God.  Now expand out to all the people in Kansas, the United States, the world.  It totally blows every breaker in my mind to think of all that God is taking care of.

And if we wait, and we are patient, it will all turn out as God is working it out to be.  But if our impatience, and eventually our impatient anger gets the best of us, we will not get the best that God has for us.


Waiting and being patient is tied to what true hope is.  If hope focuses on the future, the patience in hope is what happens in the present moment.  If we are hopeful for our future, the patience we have in the now will make the waiting easier.  If there is no hope for the future, being patient now will quickly turn to futility, despair and anger.

It may be the hardest lesson of all to learn how to wait on God, how to wait when nothing seems to be happening, and when all the circumstances seem calculated to bring nothing but discouragement.

We have certainly seen this in Men's Bible Study, as we are following the life of Paul.  Paul goes into city after city, preaching the gospel.  But just about every where he goes, he gets beat up for it.  Some times within inches of his life.

It would have been easy to just give in to despair, or give up on his calling and God.  Not a whole lot of people would slight him for it.  But he kept going, and wouldn't have known or seen the amazing work of God if he had quit.  He wouldn't have been able to come to the end of his ministry and say, as he did to Timothy, "I have fought the good fight, I have run the race, and kept the faith."

And if it wasn't for Paul, we probably wouldn't be here, we Gentile believers.  We owe our faith to him because he was patient, waited on God, and God saw him through.


Why would God not do the same for us, as we wait in patience to let all things work together, in God's time and way?

Monday, April 7, 2014

Experiencing God Through Prayer

"Experiencing God Through Prayer"
Psalm 5:1-3

Prayer is this great mystery to many people.  It's a great mystery, because God is surrounded by mystery.  We don't know how to approach God, because we don't know what God is all about.  If we don't know what God is all about, then certainly prayer has got to be an enigma.

In the cartoon, "The Family Circus," the older brother is holding a flattened football.  "I need a new football," he said.  "But I don't know if I should send up a prayer, write a letter to Santa Claus, or call Grandma."

It is difficult to talk with someone whom you're not sure what they're about.  People do all kinds of things to make God more approachable.  In one of her newest books--a book about prayer titled, Help, Thanks, Wow, one of my favorite authors, Anne Lamott, wrote, "My friend Robyn calls God 'the Grandmothers"...I called God Phil for a long time, after a bracelet maker promised to engrave 'Phil 4:4-7' on my bracelet, Philippians 4:4-7 being my favorite passage of Scripture, but he got only as far a 'Phil' before having to dismantle his booth.  Phil is a great name for God" (page 2).

The author, Clarence Day, wrote in his book, Life With Father, "Father expected a good deal of God.  He didn't actually accuse God of inefficiency, but when he prayed his tone was lucid and angry, like that of a dissatisfied guest in a carelessly managed hotel."

Even though people aren't sure about the One they are addressing in prayer, or understand what prayer is, it doesn't keep people from praying.  A recent Gallup survey found 90 percent of Americans pray.  75 percent of those pray every day.  A majority say that they pray more than they did just a few years ago.

It seems that a high majority of people know that in order to develop a relationship with God, we need to pray.  We cannot develop our relationship with God any other way, better.

And here comes my bold claim:  In order to pray, to understand prayer best, to develop our relationship with God through prayer, we need the Psalms.  If we wish to develop a life of faith, to mature in our humanity, and glorify God, we will need to pray.  And we won't know how to pray without the Psalms.  We cannot bypass the Psalms.

In order to learn to pray, we need a prayer master.  The Psalms are just such a prayer master.  We must be an apprentice to the prayer master of the Psalms.  Eugene Peterson wrote, in his book, Answering God:  "If we are willfully ignorant of the Psalms, we are not thereby excluded from praying, but we will have to hack our way through formidable country by trial and error and with inferior tools."  (page 4)

One of the reasons we need the Psalms to teach us about prayer is because most of the time our prayers are full of ego where we try to get ourselves some credit with God.

Like the hunter, who was out hunting bears.  As he stalked through the forest looking for bears, he started climbing a steep hill.  As he was pulling himself up over the last outcropping of rocks a huge bear stood up in front of him, nose to nose.

The bear roared fiercely.  The man was so scared, he screamed and lost his balance rolling down the hill with the bear close after him.  When he finally stopped tumbling, he had a broken leg.  Escape was impossible.  So the man, who had never been particularly religious, prayed, "Dear God, if you will make this bear a Christian I will be happy with whatever you want me to do for the rest of my life."

The bear was just a couple of feet away from the man.  But suddenly it stopped in it's tracks, looked up to heaven, fell to its knees and prayed, "Lord, bless this food of which I am about to partake.  Amen."

Prayer becomes, all too quickly, a bargaining process, where we quickly try to get God in our debt.  Prayer doesn't work that way, neither does God.

The last thing we seem to want to do is be "honest-to-God".  We can't even be honest with ourselves, let alone God.  The Psalm masters show us the way of this honesty before God.  God catches us in sin, finds us in despair, invades us by grace.

This ego, this ego-defensiveness, this wheeling and dealing with God must be wrestled to obedience, and brought face-to-face with the God who reveals himself to us.  In order to do this hard work through prayer, we need a master who has done this work before us.  That master is the Psalms.

Another vital thing we learn from the Psalms is not only how to express ourselves in prayer, but more importantly, we learn how to answer God.  The Psalms show us how to answer.  That's the first lesson of the Psalms:  God speaks to us first, and prayer is basically our response.

The Psalms are poetry and the Psalms are prayer.  Poetry is not decorative speech.  It is language used with personal intensity.  Poetry isn't cosmetic language--it's intestinal.  It's from the gut.  It's earthy and basic.

Thus, when we use the Psalms for prayer we won't be looking for ideas about God. Instead, what the Psalms teach us is that prayer is the experience of being human before God.  We will be exposed.  But then we will be transformed.  That is not easy.

Our answering prayers to God are not always positive.  There is anger, there is skepticism, there is even cursing and fist shaking.  But the Psalms are honest feeling, honest response to our God who first reveals himself to us and speaks to us.

Our habits tend toward talking about God, not to God.  We love discussing God.  But the Psalms resist that kind of discussion.  The Psalms aren't to be learned and discussed.  They are primarily to be prayed and to teach us about prayer.

The poetry part of the Psalms demand that we deal with our actual humanity.  The prayer part of the Psalms requires that we deal with God.  This dual work of the Psalms is for the sole purpose of the total renovation of our lives.

It is vitally important to understand the two sides of the coin in praying the Psalms:  our humanity and God.  If we try one without the other in prayer, we will get lost and no transformation will happen.

For example, if we come to the Psalms for prayer, thinking the Psalms are just a way to develop our inner life, we've come to the wrong place.  Kahil Gibran would be a better bet for that.  The Psalms are not interested in human potential.  They are passionate about God:  a God who is obedience-shaping, will-transforming, sin-revoking, and praise-releasing.

Or, if the Psalms were just about God, they would be nothing more than a religious bull session.  The Psalms would become a bunch of theological pontificating with no human angst and passion to connect with the theology.

The Psalms, in leading us into praying, bring the human condition into the presence of God.


Now here's the thing.  In praying the Psalms, we don't first learn how to do it, like taking a class.  We simply do it.  In the doing we find out what we are doing.  In the constant doing we deepen and mature in our praying, in our humanity, and in our relationship with God.

Prayer is a human being conversing with a holy and great God--which is a mystery.  The Psalms help us cross the gulf of that mystery.  And the only way we can do that is by doing it.

So, that's what we're going to do for a few minutes.  Pray the Psalms.

Psalm 13



Psalm 51