Tag Archives: Prayer

Book Reflection, Faith

Book Reflection: The Pursuit of God

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If you read my last post, you know that my reading of this book comes on the heels of reading The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer. A.W. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God has been a very fitting follow up.

The Pursuit of God is a classic for modern Evangelicals in the West, and it’s easy to see why. Tozer’s point: God is here with us, now, inviting us into a relationship. Because of that, the book asks the questions: why are we not taking advantage of that opportunity to commune closely with God? And how can we get there?

Perhaps my number one take away from the book is this: In order to move into the relationship God is inviting us into, we must acknowledge God in all the moments we live out: the big, the small, the mundane, the heartbreaking, and the joyful. In acknowledging God’s presence, we can give each moment over to God, aligning our lives more and more with God’s will, strengthening our connection with our divine Father.

What does this look like in practice? I tried to talk this out with our church’s youth group on Sunday night. I think the Apostle Paul encapsulates this idea well:

“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” 1 Thessalonians 5:16-17

Our lives cannot be segregated out into different containers, God is with us in every instance. Whether we’d like to or not, we can’t escape the presence of God, as David describes in Psalm 139:

“Where can I go from your Spirit?
    Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
    if I settle on the far side of the sea,
 even there your hand will guide me,
    your right hand will hold me fast.“

Just because we haven’t been making ourselves aware of God’s presence with us in every moment, doesn’t mean God has not been with us. So how can we pray without ceasing? How can we acknowledge God in our midst in the different things we do throughout the day? What I recommended to our students is a simple prayer as they enter school, work, etc.:

God, please be with me as I __________ today. Make me aware of your presence in each moment, so that I may give thanks for the good in my life and that I may be comforted and strengthened when challenges arise.

Perhaps the bit from Tozer that connected me instantly back to Comer’s book is the multitude of things that we must have surgically removed from our hearts, so that God can fill the space. These areas differ for all of us, but we can be so preoccupied with our things, that God’s presence seems like a foreign concept or a faint memory from long ago.

Perhaps this preoccupation with worldly things is actually what’s burning us out. Jesus offers something better:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Trade in your load for the yoke of Jesus. Unburden yourself. Before this invitation, Jesus says this:

“I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.  Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do.  All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.“

Let us become once again like little kids at the feet of Jesus: unconcerned with titles, square footage, and 401k’s. Let’s go about our lives holding the hand of our Father.

At the end of each chapter in the book, Tozer shares a prayer. I have adapted one that I found to be extremely convicting for my life and our culture. I will share that in conclusion.

The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing:

Father, I want to know You, but my weak heart is scared to give up its stuff. I can’t give it up with out pain, and I am trying to be open about that fear. I’m scared, but I’m here.

Please remove all the things that I have given myself to that have become a part of me, so that You may enter free of resistance. Then You can make Your home beautiful. Then my heart will need no light from outside because You will fill me with all the light and warmth I need. 

In Jesus Name, Amen.

Blessings,
MC

Faith, Liturgy, Uncategorized

winter: a liturgy

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Today is another day in the long cold winter.

Another day where the sun doesn’t sufficiently light up my home.
Another day spent inside with the lights on.
This winter is long.

I see the beauty of the snow but I can’t enjoy it.
The teeth-chattering bitter wind cuts to my soul.
I long for the warmth of a new season.

On days like this during seasons like these,
I find warmth in the simplicities of common life 
in order to fend off this soul-crushing cold:
   The warm embrace of my beloved.
   The warmth of my coffee mug.
   The warm memories of days before,
   and the warm expectation of days to come.

For these, I give thanks. Amen.
Faith, Uncategorized

my.. I mean thy… will be done

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So I guess I would describe my current season of life as a season of waiting.

In my current situation, I have learned a lot about myself.  Waiting for things tends to do that.  See, when we wait for things, we often like to pass the time doing something to keep out minds busy about other things until the time comes to do whatever it is that we’re waiting to do.  Go ahead, next time you’re waiting on anything, see what you do.  I almost always pull out the phone.  That’s pretty much a go-to.  It’s safe, and strangely it has become completely socially acceptable to bury my head in my phone in the dentist’s waiting room, when I’m waiting on someone to meet me, or even at times when there is a lull in conversation.  I do not say this to condone my behavior, I am just making an observation as to something that I do that maybe you relate to.  ANYWAYS, the point is when we’re waiting, we like to keep our minds preoccupied with other things, as opposed to facing the strangeness and potentially awkward experience of waiting.  After all, what are we supposed to do?  Just sit and think?

Well by this point in what I would consider to be a prolonged period of waiting, I have pretty much exhausted all of my time-wasting options or gotten bored with them.  So now I sit here with questions.  Questions that I’m not sure I have a clear answer to.

For starters, when will this waiting end?

So you can better understand what I mean, let me explain.  I feel this calling to youth ministry, and I also feel a calling to do that as part of a church.  At this point, I want youth ministry to be my life’s work, and I need a church to support me in that; a church family to take me in and work with me to show the love of Jesus to teenagers both who are part of the church and those who are not yet part of the church.  I want to come alongside parents as they lead their children in faith.  So I’m waiting for a church to welcome this partnership.

So I am seeking these opportunities.  And I trust that God works in ways that I do not understand and cannot fathom, and I trust that it will work out for the best.  I’m also learning that the saying, “patience is a virtue” is true because virtues take practice, and patience certainly takes practice.  So I wait, and I have to believe that God’s time is better than mine.

Secondly, why has nothing already fallen into place?

The saying, “good things come to those who wait,” may be true, but it rarely appears to be truthful to those who are actually waiting.  To be comforted by this conventional wisdom, one must be hopeful about the result of their waiting.

I believe Abram was asking himself a similar question when God had proclaimed that he would be the father of a great nation, but all he had to show for it was an aging barren wife.  This question, if left unchecked, can cause us to do some rash things like how Abram slept with Hagar in order to conceive a son (Ishmael), perhaps to take his future and his family’s future into his own hands.  Maybe he thought this would in some way force God’s hand into sending his blessing through Ishmael’s line.  But God Almighty doesn’t always do what we think is best.  The Lord was planning something else, something that would go far beyond anything Abram could have imagined.  Through barren Sarai came a son, Isaac.  Through Isaac’s line, came Jesus of Nazareth, Savior of the World.

So maybe nothing’s fallen into place because though it was convenient, it wasn’t quite the plan.

And finally, when will thy will be my will?

For me, sometimes the hardest thing to pray is “thy will be done.”  Not because I don’t believe that God’s will is good and perfect, but because it’s not mine.  And I don’t feel like a necessarily terrible person for struggling with this because Jesus didn’t seem to have a particularly easy time praying this in the garden before his arrest.  Even Jesus, Son of God and member of the Holy Trinity had to surrender control to the will of the Father.  How much more so should I!?

To have God transform our will into His will, we must acknowledge that there is an Almighty God who created our world and that there is the Holy Spirit who is alive and active in our world.  We must also trust that God’s will is good for us.  And finally must pray that His will be done in our world and in our lives.  I think the latter of those is the more difficult for me most of the time.  I have to acknowledge that my life is not really “my” life, but rather that I am here on earth as an agent of the Kingdom of God.

We have to train every part of ourselves to surrender to God’s will.  We must pray that God will give us his eyes.  We must pray that God will indwell us with His Spirit.  And we must pray that God turn our thoughts towards him.

So yeah, strange times currently.  Life can get weird when you graduate from college.  I’ve learned that.  I want to leave you with a couple of prayers.  The first from Thomas Merton, and the second from Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.“

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Rain, Prayer, and Provision

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So about a half hour ago, I had a pretty weird experience with prayer.  I had just gotten out of a meeting on campus, and started to head back to my apartment.  As I walked out the door, I realized the solid amount of rain falling from the sky.  I had no jacket, no umbrella, and the next few minutes looked bleak at best.  I stood under the overhang for a minute, trying to accept the obvious truth that I would soon be cold and wet.  So I looked up and prayed (it couldn’t hurt, right?).  I prayed, “God, it would be pretty cool if you stopped the rain for the next two to three minutes so I could make the quick walk back to my apartment.  I know that’s kind of high maintenance, and it is my fault that I didn’t plan accordingly for this rain, but that would be awesome if you took care of that.”  Then I stood there for another minute or so waiting for either the will to walk through the rain or for the rain to lighten up.  Neither one of those things happened, but something did.

All of a sudden, Ben, a friend of mine, comes up through the rain with an umbrella.  I gave him the old, “What’s up, man?”

He looks at me and says, “Nothing much, what are you doing?” I’m sure I looked pretty strange just standing there alone…

“Just trying to get up the courage to walk through the rain,” I reply.

Then he extends his umbrella to me.  I look at him like he’s crazy, and he simply says, “Take this.” I’m sure I gave him a really weird look, so he added, “It’s not mine…I found it. (Ben’s that friend that everyone has who is always finding weird stuff)”

So I took the umbrella, told him I would get it back to him, and walked off towards my apartment.  And I was dry!

I tell this story for a few reasons, and the more I think about it, the more reasons I have for telling this story.  I’ll try and give these reasons in an organized manner so that you can understand my seemingly disconnected, but possibly connected thoughts:

  1. Nothing is too small to pray about.  Maybe you’re reading this and you’re thinking, “Seriously bro, that was just a coincidence.”  I disagree.  Sometimes I think God answers those little prayers in unique ways because He delights in our delight.  It’s almost as if God is winking at us, as if to say, “I’m still here, and I love to see you enjoying My presence.”  And even if you are convinced that what transpired was 100% coincidental, I have to ask, what’s the harm in praying about the small things?  God is all-powerful, and He hears our prayers, even the wee little ones.  As a Christian, I believe that God wants us to constantly be praying about literally everything! 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, Philippians 4:6.
  2. The Lord uses the people around us.  I doubt that Ben felt that the Spirit walked him toward my location and told him to lend me the umbrella.  I’ll have to talk to him about that, but I doubt that is how it went down.  Sometimes people are unaware of the impact they have on us or the way in which they might be used in our lives.  I have had many conversations from which I walked away feeling completely filled, and I wonder if those people realized what their words meant to me in the moment.  God sends us into each others lives at just the right time, sometimes as an answer to prayer.  Proverbs 25:11.
  3. God doesn’t always answer prayer directly.  See, God didn’t answer my prayer tonight by doing precisely what I asked for.  God didn’t close up the clouds for a couple minutes, but He provided an avenue for me that I hadn’t considered.  Sometimes we become so frustrated with things in our lives that God seems to be ignoring us on.  We ask over and over again for the same thing, and we work towards it, but the necessary doors never open for us.  We cannot become so focused in on what it is that we want that we limit the ways in which we are open to the work of the Lord in our lives.  A life following the Spirit’s lead is surprising, and we rarely can look back and say, “Yeah, I saw that coming.” James 4:13-15.

And I don’t tell this story to say that every time you pray for rain to stop, somebody will show up with an umbrella for you.  We are never going to fully understand the working of God in the world, and sometimes waiting on Him to reveal Himself to us is so hard.  But tonight was a cool reminder of the mysterious working of the Lord in my life.  I hope that if you’ve read this, you feel encouraged about prayer.  God is always listening, no matter how small the request, and He is always paving new paths for us.  The Lord is faithful.

Father, thank You for working in ways that I would never choose; for Your ways are far greater than mine.

-MC

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I, Wretch

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“Father, I come before you today as a wretch.  I come as one who has repeatedly, continuously turned from your grace.  For so long have I run from you.  For so long have I kept returning only to leave again.  Time and time again have I fully known what is right and good, and time and time again have I chosen the other way.  Father, for so long have I requested green pastures and quiet waters only to choose to remain in the Valley of the Shadow of Death.  My  life has only occasionally been lived in a way that matches Your Gospel.  For so long I have been hypocritical of hypocrites with a plank lodged in my own eye.  I have been impatient in the things of Your will.  I have not trusted that Your plan is better than mine.  I have turned my nose up at the sight of Your will in my life for Your people.

Father, I often do not even see people who are different than me.  I have become so desensitized to the hurt in Your world.  I have taken detours to avoid Your plans.  Over and over again, I have turned away at the sight of those in need.  Constantly I set my mind on the things of this world and block out the things of heaven.  I have turned to the wrong places for comfort.  I have told myself that I belong here.  I have pointed the finger at others.  I have excluded those who need belonging the most.

Father, I have been ashamed of the cross.  I have been terrified of what people will say and what they will think.  I have given you only pieces of who I am.  I have cheated You.  Day in and day out I have put myself ahead of You.  I have proclaimed the words of Your Gospel but failed to live it.  I encourage people to share their faith while masking my own.  I have told half-truths.  I have blamed You for my shortcomings.  I have projected anger at myself onto others.  I have hurt those whom I love.  I have used my words to hurt others.  For so long I have longed for personal recognition.  I have accepted praise.  I have repeatedly fed my own ego by tearing others down.  I have put my wants in front of the needs of others.  I have been afraid of the future.  I have been afraid of my departure from this world.  I have been afraid of Your calling.

Father, for all of these things, forgive me.”

Son, I know.  I know your faults.  I created You.  Since the beginning, I have had a plan for you, yes you!  You are so valued.  I knit you together in your mother’s womb.  I know everything that you have done and everything that you will ever do, and I still want you.  You are mine!  Do not be impatient, for everything that you could ever need is already taken care of.  I got this!  In your time on earth, there are tough times, but I will never leave you!  Come to me, I am all that you need.  I am all that you will ever need.  I created the sun, moon, and stars, but you, you are in my own image!  I have given you a heart, a heart with which to love my creation.  You were not created to count your flaws, but rather, you were created to reflect me!  You are imperfect, you make mistakes, and you always will, but I have made you righteous!  I have washed you and made you clean!  I know how many hairs are on your head, I know all of the sins that you left out, I know what you did last week, and son, even after all of that, YOU ARE MINE!

In all those things, I AM.  From the beginning until now, I AM.  From now until forever, I AM.

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Living with “No”

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Let me tell you a story.

Last summer, a man took his 8-year-old son (we’ll call him Jimmy) to his first baseball game, it was Jimmy’s birthday.  As most 8-year-old boys at a baseball game do, Jimmy brought his glove, primed and ready to catch a foul ball.  The boy waited expectantly for his opportunity, and he didn’t take his eye off of the game for the whole first inning.  The first inning went by, no foul ball.  The second inning passed with the same result.  Then the third, then the fourth.  Eight innings go by, still no fly ball for Jimmy.  The father, who has been sitting and watching his son wait, becomes distressed.  Jimmy still has hope, but will certainly be let down if they leave the park without having caught the ever elusive foul ball.  It’s Jimmy’s birthday, and his father wants him to have the best possible memory of his first experience at the ballpark.  So, Jimmy’s father prays to God.  He prays, “God, please let a foul ball be hit over here.  Its Jimmy’s first game, and its his birthday. Please, it would make his day.  He’ll remember it forever.”  Right on cue, with one out in the top of the ninth, the second baseman hit a lofty foul ball into the seats down the first base line.  People all around are reaching out trying to catch this foul ball.  The ball bounces off a man’s hand two rows in front of the father-son duo and hits Jimmy in the chest.  Jimmy picks the ball up off the ground, finally in possession of his newest prized possession.  Jimmy was beyond excited, and his father looked up to heaven thanking God for answering his prayer.  It was a miracle!  An everyday miracle.

I heard that story on a Christian radio station in Nashville about a month ago.  I don’t think I had ever felt so angry at a radio station in my life.  Why was I angry?  Because that’s not how prayer works.  Over the past several years, I have seen health declines and deaths, I have become more aware of poverty, both domestic and abroad, and time and time again, I have stumbled in my walk with Christ.  In all of these situations, prayer has been present.  So why the heck does God have time to send baseballs to little kids when people are starving and dying!?!?!?  With stories like that in our Christian circles, it no wonder that people think we’re all hypocrites.  Maybe God had something to do with the birthday boy catching a fly ball, and maybe he didn’t.  That’s not the point.  The point is that these aren’t the stories we should be telling.  I don’t have a degree in marketing, but if our evangelism point is telling people that we prayed a wish list to God, and he gave us all the stuff we wanted, then we are attracting people who have wish lists.  Then what happens when our Santa Claus version of God doesn’t come through?  We end up with churches full of discontent, unhappy non-followers of Jesus.

Maybe I am being a little harsh.  I mean after all, ending world poverty is a huge prayer, and surely it was part of God’s plan when those loved ones got sick and later passed away.  Maybe God answers easy prayers.  No, it doesn’t work like that.  I pray for a lot of easy things.  Sometimes, I pray that the stop light will stay green long enough for me to make it through (and I work at a church, so God definitely doesn’t want me to be late).  In high school, I prayed that we would win football games.  And we did win a lot of football games…until my senior year.  I mean, come on God, Just make the ball bounce our way a little more.  Keep the refs from blowing the call on the last play of the game keeping us from going to the playoffs (I’m not bitter, I promise).  So why is God answering some dude at a baseball game’s “easy” prayer, but not mine?  God, why couldn’t You have given me enough knowledge and wisdom to get an A on my Greek final?  Where were You on that one?

We live in a culture saturated with wants.  After all, I’m a 20-year-old, white, American male from a middle class family.  I’m supposed to graduate college, get a job, get married, have 2.5 kids, and live a long and happy life after retiring at 65.  I’m supposed to live happily ever after because God wants good things to happen to me, right?  Wrong.  If anything, by the standards of our culture, being a Jesus-following Christian actually makes life worse.  Among other things, Sunday mornings are no longer sleep time for you, no more premarital sex, and you are called to give away your stuff and money.  On paper, without supernatural genie powers, following Jesus just looks dumb.

So Jesus, let me get this straight.  You’re calling me to come and die.  Ok, well at least I get little “everyday miracles” along the way for, you know, praying and being a good guy.  I may die for Your name, but at least before that I get to catch balls at baseball games and get to have perfect health for me and my family.  This whole following Jesus thing doesn’t sound bad at all.  No. No. No. No. No.  Once again, this is not how following Jesus works.

Imagine a guy (we’ll call him Mike) at a bus station looking to purchase a ticket.  Mike is sick and tired of the life he has been living in his hometown of Jackson.  Jackson is a town, not too big but not too small, and Mike has grown discontent with the lifestyle.  There’s not enough hustle and bustle in Jackson to keep Mike excited and on his toes, but he also longs for the simplicity and serenity provided by a farm town out in the country.  He can purchase a ticket to Los Angeles or Farmville, USA.  In a tragic miscue, Mike didn’t decide where he was going before leaving his house that day.  Mike sits at the bus station all day trying to make up his mind, and finally decides that he is better off just going home.  After all, home has got a little bit excitement, and a little simplicity.  Mike missed the bus.  Sometimes I feel like this is how we Christians are.  Discontent with where we are in life, we look heavily at two sides of the coin, the American Dream & the Way of the Cross.  After much thought, we decide that staying where we are is the safe play.  There’s no risk.  We’ve got some fun worldly pleasures, but just enough Jesus to get us on to heaven… or wherever it is we go when we die.  There is no fusion between the American Dream and Jesus.  That is a lie we as Christians have to stop telling ourselves.  The Spirit of Christ does not reside in the things of this world.  Jesus and his followers have gotten on one boat.  The American Dream and the things of this world have gotten on another.  You can’t sit in between the two boats.  You’ll drown.

As a Christian, I am concerned about what kind of message we give off when we broadcast certain things.  The beauty of following Christ is not how easy life becomes, but how much our struggles become worth the struggle.  Our struggles become worth it when we see others fighting alongside us.  The Church is God’s gift to us.  Paul’s command to the Church in Romans 12:9 is, “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.”  We have been given a group of people to cling to in times of trouble.  So let us not only tell people of the random “everyday miracles,” but let’s share stories of grief and pain.  Let us share stories of being uplifted in times of great hurting through the love of Jesus shown to us by his people.  Let us pray about everything without ceasing.  Prayer is a source of hope in our broken world.  Without hope, there is no prayer.

We must choose to live a life fully in pursuit of Christ.  That life is full of trials, hardships, and pain.  James (the brother of Jesus) comes at it like this: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, when you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.”  Not only does James acknowledge that there will be bumps on the road, but he argues that they are necessary, beneficial even.  If a child grows up getting everything he or she has ever wanted and has never been told “No,” then when they are finally told “No,” they will inevitably have a break down.  This is a new experience for the child, and he or she doesn’t know how to handle it.  After a while though, the child becomes accustomed to not everything going their way.  This doesn’t mean they stop asking for help or things they think they need, but when they are told “No,” they handle it better.  Also, having been exposed to “No” makes hearing “Yes” much sweeter.

So let us follow Jesus.  Let us pray, understanding that “No” is a potential answer.  Let us not be discouraged, but let us persevere.  Let us live, knowing that no matter how bad life gets, we serve a God who understands our pain having lived on earth Himself.