Pray, then, in this way…

8 02 2008

Our Father, who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done, On earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. Matthew 6:9-13.

Oh, how many times I/we have repeated those lines in public forums, during athletic events, even in church. I expect Jesus knew as much would occur. Here is what he says right before:

  • And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words. So do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. Pray, then, in this way: Matthew 6:7-8

I do not recall ever contemplating this instruction before reciting the Lord’s Prayer publicly. Do you? Recently, I have given this a good deal of thought, but only recently. The whole WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) craze came and went well before I began to take Jesus seriously, but in this respect we have his perfect advice. “Pray, then, in this way:” How many times have I/we asked for God to give me/us direction or guidance about a particular subject? Too many for me to remember, that’s for certain. But even about this, Jesus has told us what to do. Why continue to wonder?

Have you heard this(?): “I don’t know how to pray about __________.” I’ve said this, I’ve even used this as a form of prayer, “God, I don’t even know how to pray about this, but…” Sound familiar? Since Jesus said, “Pray then in this way:”, I guess I will. Let’s analyze, shall we?

“Our Father who is in heaven.” The magnitude of this statement is almost beyond comprehension, if you really think about it. You have an all knowing, all powerful God worthy of fear, respect, adoration, and never ending praise from angelic beings the likes of which brought guys like the Apostle Paul and John to their knees. Yet, at the same time you have God as the Father, Abba (Dad or Daddy). There seems to be a tension between the sheer distance between humanity and this God and the close relationship intensely desired (probably more by God than humanity). The tension is entirely a human creation. When we are able to grasp that God wants to be our Dad, there to give advice, impart wisdom, and shower with blessings, his grandeur becomes all the more grand.

“Hallowed be Your name.” That grandeur I was talking about, that never ending praise: holiness. I don’t think we can imagine this holiness, but one day we may have some idea. I suspect that if we truly contemplated this holiness when we prayed, our prayers would be quite different. Note: this should not in any way lead to the tension I mentioned earlier, quite the contrary. God is so holy that His holiness makes even the unholy righteous. Call it grace, call it divine, call it what you will, but if your goodness is so good that you make everyone and everything work together for good, that’s pretty holy.

“Your kingdom come.” I think our understanding of this concept is hampered by temporal limits we try to place on it. I imagine that most view this as a plea for God to hasten the coming of the end. I do not mean to reject that notion entirely because I think it is a significant part of the meaning, but I think it is only a part. “Your kingdom come” should be a plea for kingdom encounters on earth NOW. We get glimpses of this when we see someone healed of a terminal illness or missing organs or limbs restored. We see glimpses of this when we experience a prophetic word and watch it unfold. But, I think Jesus meant to instruct us to ask God to make this a regular part of our life. Jesus very clearly said, “the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Matthew 3:2 I think we forget this. Implementation may not be so easy, but availability is certain.

“Your will be done.” Why do you suppose Jesus instructed us to pray for God’s will to be done? If God’s will was done by default, this would be completely unnecessary. I think too many of us dismiss things as God’s will that simply are not. Does this sound familiar? “We prayed for God to heal him/her and they weren’t healed, so it must be God’s will?” WHAT? For which diseases was Jesus’ sacrifice insufficient. As I read Isaiah 53, Jesus bore ALL of our sicknesses and by His scourging we are healed. Is this not God’s will? Perhaps Isaiah should have come with footnotes containing all of the exclusions. The notion of “salvation” is all encompassing. Whether we choose to walk in this or not is no fault of God. Explaining away what we are unable to explain as “God’s will” shortchanges what Jesus did. Imagine trying to tell Jesus that his sacrifice was sufficient for the cold or flu but not for cancer or arthritis. I truly believe that failures in this regard are due to our shortcomings not God’s. We can either take God at His word, or try to define His word by our own experiences.

“On earth as it is in heaven.” When Christ returns this will happen, undoubtedly, but we are instructed to pray for this now. Again, if God’s will were the default, why bother to pray for it? I firmly believe Jesus could have come to earth and healed everyone, rid the earth of demons, and saved the world, but the time had not come. The demons knew it wasn’t time (Matthew 8:29) and Jesus knew. Why do things this way? Because this IS God’s will. Jesus did, instructed his disciples what to do, and then sent them out. Our commission is still the same.

“Give us this day our daily bread.” If there is one thing God wants us to know about Him, it is that He is a provider. This is not to suggest there is a hierarchy of roles, but God very clearly wants our trust and faith. This is all he asks in return, a rather small price. Jesus came so that we would have life, and have life abundantly. God wants to provide abundantly, and some of us need to think bigger. I have always felt somewhat guilty about praying for provision, it always seemed somewhat selfish. I am shedding that guilt now. If Jesus said to pray for provision then I will do so abundantly.

“And forgive us our debts” Having been raised Catholic, I grew up saying “forgive us our trespasses (or sins)”, but I think the term “debts” is really all encompassing. All encompassing not just of the type of wrongs or obligations, but encompassing of the people who have been wronged and to whom the obligations are owed. Clearly we owe and have wronged God, but we should earnestly seek forgiveness, which is readily available, for all of debts. Tip: if you are unsure of what qualifies, ask. The Holy Spirit is faithful to answer, but only if you ask.

“as we have also forgiven our debtors.” Note that the “forgiven” in this clause is in the past tense, it is required before we can rightfully ask for God to forgive us. When we have forgiven, God will forgive. I would say that unforgiveness is one of the most dangerous things facing humans. So important is forgiveness that immediately following these instructions, Jesus emphasized forgiveness. “For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, your Father will not forgive your transgressions.” Matthew 6:14-15. The unwillingness to forgive is the one thing we know will cause God to “hand [us] over to the torturers.” Matthew 18:34. Quite a dire statement of fact, but one for which the evidence is abundant. I would venture to say that many if not most problems (be they health, emotional, psychological, or otherwise) can be traced to a hurt and subsequent lack of forgiveness. We have all been wounded, so it is fortunate that we also have the first-aid kit.

“And lead us not into temptation,” Admittedly, I have always struggled with this concept. Would God really lead us into temptation? The answer is not necessarily implicit, but Jesus clearly instructs to pray that He not. That’s close enough for me. We know Satan tries to tempt us all of the time, so, for good measure, we probably should pray for protection from that as well. But, if I can submit a slightly different take on this idea: I do not believe that God leads us into temptation, per se, where temptation is the ultimate destination, a test designed by God to test our faithfulness. Rather, I believe God leads us in a direction we are ready to go, though there might be land mines along the way. In Is That You God? Act 2: The Attack, I wrote that I doubted anyone could accomplish any real good for the kingdom without going through a little to do it. I still believe that, and I wonder now if this is the kind of “temptation” to which Jesus was referring. A “help me get there without stepping on any land mines” sort of thing.

“but deliver us from evil.” If you have landed in evil, or ever stepped in it along the way, God probably needs to deliver you from it, it will seldom go away on its own. The “lead us not” is protection for the future, the “but deliver us” is for the past and present. Deliverance is an idea that is foreign to most. The notion of repelling, or expelling, evil makes for good Hollywood drama, but not good dinner conversation. It’s sad really because deliverance needn’t be so spooky. It is simply a matter of surrender/ownership. A surrender to the ownership of Christ. The battle has already been won, it is the claiming of the victory that remains elusive. In Ephesians 6, Paul explains this distinction between the spiritual battle and the fleshly battle. Too many of us battle against flesh, when the war is in the spiritual. It’s a battle we are sure to lose, unless we enlist God’s minister of deliverance, the Holy Spirit.

Five simple verses, one all encompassing prayer. The simplicity and beauty of the Lord’s Prayer. Meditate on it, appreciate it, but most importantly, use it.


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Is That You God? Act 3: The Application

28 12 2007

Okay, so God has given you an answer, a vision, a word, a direction, or some idea of where you go from here (Act 1: The Answer). He is faithful to do that if you just ask. James 4:2 “…You do not have because you do not ask.” Also, exercise a little faith in asking, Matthew 21:22 “And all things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.”

Then, the enemy has tried to take it away or prevent you from receiving. You should know it is going to happen and expect it. John 10:10 “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy…” (Act 2: The Attack). The great thing about John 10:10, though, is that it is in the context of Jesus teaching that He is the good shepherd. Just a few verses earlier, Jesus says:

“10:3 …He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 When He has brought all his own outside, he goes ahead of them. The sheep follow him because they recognize his voice. 5 They will never follow a stranger, instead they will run away from him, because they don’t recognize the voice of strangers.”

Typically, however, John goes on to note in verse 6, “Jesus gave them this illustration but they did not understand what He was telling them.”

I think the real key to “The Application” is right there in John 10:4-6: recognizing the shepherd’s voice and following it, or following strangers because you don’t understand. Hence, the title, “Is That You God?”

By no means am I saying this is easy, or that I am an expert, I am not. I struggle with this question daily, but I do think that mastery of this is like mastery of anything else, it comes with practice. Part of the problem, I think, is that we are so out of practice, that we don’t recognize the shepherd’s voice…and He is trying desperately to lead us out.

The point of this trilogy is, in part, to show that sometimes we do hear that voice, we just may not recognize it because the thief is trying to prevent our understanding. An attack following an answer is a great way of doing that because it makes us question our very ability to hear the answer. We need to be sensitive to this. I will give one brief personal example.

Not too long ago, Lori (my wife, for you who don’t know her) and I began to recognize that we would have arguments over the strangest things immediately before our joint efforts would be needed the following day, usually for a ministry opportunity. It might be the night before or the morning of, but invariably, if we had an argument that seemed to come from no where, we knew something was afoot. This tactic has become less effective, note that I said less effective, not ineffective…we are still working on this one. I would imagine that if you reflected for a moment, you could very easily begin to discern a few of these attacks.

Why all of this energy and effort aimed at preventing or confusing “The Answer”? It is because of “The Application”. As great as “The Answer” may be, it does not have the same effect as “The Application”. If you keep it a secret, don’t implement it, or don’t otherwise share it, there is little or no ripple effect. The ripple effect is what the enemy is most worried about.

This goes all the way back to Abraham, God blessed Abraham SO THAT Abraham would be a blessing to others. (Gen. 12:2). When we get an answer, it is SO THAT we will bless others. You get a raise, more money for the kingdom (you help a family in need or a missionary); you get healed, a testimony for the kingdom (you give someone else a boost of faith); your marriage is restored, you become a counselor for the kingdom (other marriages are restored). It’s the ripple effect. The answer will always have ripple effects. If there are no ripple effects, then the answer wasn’t from God, or, more likely, there was no application.

So, what then is “The Application”?

You get it, then you give it. It is the whole point of the gospel: spreading the good news. GO MAKE WAVES!


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Is That You God? Act 2: The Attack

17 12 2007

Act 2: The Attack. Perhaps not always, but certainly far too often, I think answered prayers, opportunities for ministry and profound breakthroughs are thwarted before they can be fully realized. To put it another way, I seriously question whether anyone can accomplish any real good for the kingdom of God without having to go through a little hell to do it.

Imagine this: “Are they servants of Christ?…I more so; in far more labors, in far more imprisonments, beaten times without number, often in danger of death. Five times I received from the Jews thirty-nine lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, a night and a day I have spent in the deep. I have been on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers on the sea, dangers among false brethren; I have been in labor and hardship, through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure.” 2 Cor. 11:23-27.

Why such trouble for the apostle Paul? The same reason the Jews and the nation of Israel have undergone generations of abuse, ridicule, persecution, hatred, and near annihilation: to thwart God’s plan. Will you and I face that kind of persecution and hatred? Probably not, but if we carried the gospel with the same vigor that Paul did, we just might.

PLEASE HEAR ME: I am not saying that you should chalk up all of your troubles to the devil trying to stop you on your holy mission from God. I think we can get ourselves into plenty of trouble on our own. But, there are very strategic, well-timed, laser-guided attacks designed to prevent us from realizing answered prayers, being effective ministers of the gospel, or experience profound breakthroughs.

Again, I want to give just a couple of examples from personal experience just to illustrate this point. Not that they were apparent at the time, only that God graciously made me aware of the reality of these experiences in due time.

I do not know anyone who has faced 39 lashes, but something like this may seem a little more familiar:

In March of this year, Lori (my wife, for those of you who do not know us) and I felt particularly led to minister to a family very close to us in tremendous need. If fact, if they read this they would have no idea I was talking about them because we allowed this opportunity for ministry to be thwarted. On a Sunday we committed to contacting this family, inviting them out for dinner and sharing what we felt led to do. On Monday, our dog, Maggie, was hit by a car and died.

This was especially devastating because Maggie was our wedding gift to each other, and she (yes, Maggie) almost singlehandedly held our marriage together early on. The shorthand version is she would not allow us to carry on a fight. If I was in one room upset and Lori was in another, Maggie would go back and forth until we came together. If we happened to be in the car, it was from seat to seat. This unique mediation technique ended more fights than any professional mediator could have, I assure you.

Needless to say, this left us debilitated for several days. A week or two later, the Lord posed a very gentle question, “What were you planning on doing before Maggie died?” It hit me like a ton of bricks. To this day, we have yet to recapture that sense of timing we felt then for this particular situation. I praise God, though, that even in my failures, spiritual training is taking place, and pray that this opportunity opens up again.

Example 2. When I first started this blog at the beginning of November, I simultaneously began researching methods for publicizing it. The surest way, it seemed, to have a successful blog was to publish in a variety of locations and direct traffic back to your blog. Naturally, I began doing this as well. In fact, I publish on many of the same topics in My Hubpages (where I also try my hand at humor) and on my Squiddoo lens 101 Really Cool Things in the Bible.

Surprising though it may sound, it is difficult to promote blog content on all of the social networking sites, social bookmarking sites, stumbleupon, reddit, digg…the list seems endless, without encountering content that is, shall we say, dangerous for a male to encounter. In fact, I became apprehensive enough about this potential problem that I considered shutting this whole operation down early on.

However, I had a vision that I firmly believe was from God. As I was driving, I saw an endless spider web, a very dense but definable spider web. Then, the corners of each obtuse angle (thousands, if not millions) became computer terminals, and God posed this question: “Why do you think there has been such a flood of pornography, and hate, and violence, and evil, and pure distraction on the internet?” The answer was obvious: the church is designed to be that spider web of people, and groups, and organizations, and ministries. The whole interconnectedness thing from Act 1.

Now, over 2K years after Jesus walked the earth, we finally have the ability to be that web (literally the World Wide Web-how cool is that?), but we can’t because everyone is scared to death of the internet.

A quick aside, a relevant one, but an aside nonetheless. I was at a funeral recently and I overheard a Pastor and his wife telling a story. The gist of the story was this, “we couldn’t find a vacancy sign in ‘blank’ city except at a hotel next door to a casino. Can you just imagine what everyone would have said if they had seen us, ‘Pastor so-and-so and Ms. so-and-so going in to a casino, ha! ha!’ So we kept on driving.”

What if, and this is just a “‘what if?”, but what if there were people needing ministry in the hotel bar, or in the lobby, or in the parking lot? It was right next door to a casino, I think it’s a safe bet. Did God have a special room reserved for this pastor? But, is this not our view of the internet? There are a lot of people needing ministry on the internet (and not the kind of ministry that preaches how sinful they are, but that delivers the message the apostle Paul endured so much to deliver).

We need to avoid falling into the trap of assuming that an attack of the enemy is God’s way of telling us not to do something. It may be just the opposite: The Attack may confirm The Answer.


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Is That You God? A Prayer Breakdown In 3 Acts. Act 1: The Answer

11 12 2007

This past weekend I felt particularly led by the Spirit to write to someone (whoever you are), maybe several of you, or maybe even me, about how to apply the whole faith thing post prayer. I am usually not a fan of acronyms, alliteration or the like when speaking, teaching or writing. I know psychologists maintain that they are useful memory tools, but I think audiences deserve more credit. Nevertheless, I was stuck on how to frame this series of posts until God alliterated it for me. Thus, the 3 acts: The Answer, The Attack, and The Application.

Act 1: The Answer. There was a tremendous response to my post A Little Context where I wrote about faith, and how we have been conditioned to measure our faith by human standards. As I was driving this weekend, God very graciously showed me that if I did not follow up on that post, it would be incomplete.

Just like we will never have enough faith if we measure faith in terms of human quantity, we will never know the fullness of God’s grace in answering prayer if we only look for what we expect to find. I would like to illustrate this with a few examples. First, I will use the example I wrote about in A Little Context. For several months, my prayer was, “God, increase my faith.” I expected, and I assume many people would also expect, that the answer to that prayer would be to see things that were unbelievable or inexplicable in natural terms. Guess what? That is actually correct, but the unbelievable and inexplicable was not where I would have ever thought to look.

So, what does an answer to prayer really look like? There is no one right answer, but I think we often miss the answer because we do not recognize it. Recall from Daniel 10 that Daniel had a revelation about a great war; he prayed and fasted about its meaning. For 21 days, there was no apparent response. I would imagine Daniel was getting dejected. We now know that a “Daniel fast” is 21 days, but Daniel didn’t. A “Daniel fast” is only 21 days because that is how long it took Daniel to get his answer. I would imagine that even with all of Daniel’s faith (the lion’s den, etc.), after about 10, 11, 12 days he was getting pretty bummed.

Dan. 10:12 …“Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. 13 But the prince of the kingdom of Persia resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia.”

Wow!

Imagine, a 21 day angelic battle. Why do you suppose the “prince” of the “kingdom of Persia” tried to prevent that encounter? It is because the answer to that one prayer was so important. Literally, it was one for the record books. I want to pray those prayers. Understand me, I am no Daniel (not yet), but I want to see things and pray for things that all hell would try to stop. But, more on that aspect (Act 2: The Attack) in the next post.

As I recall, I started praying for the increase of faith in February ‘07. I did not know it at the time, or for several months thereafter (21 days…forget about it), but God was on it[s]ince the first day that [I] set [my] mind to gain understanding and to humble [my]self before [my] God.

By March, my wife and I had committed to go to Israel on a mission trip, and by August we were there. That trip berthed a desire to study Hebrew and read the Bible in its original language, and (seemingly) by chance I came across a teaching regarding the meanings of Hebrew letters. In trying to stumble through Genesis, God lifted a veil from the word Elohim (which I wrote about in The Lord is My Shepherd) and I was blown away. I spent the next two months buried in Genesis 1:1 (which I will post on again, I promise). There was no doubt left.

By no means am I saying that what God was doing was immediately apparent to me, but right about the time I started to see the overall structure of Genesis 1:1, I had a Verizon commercial moment, God was saying, “Can you SEE me now?”

Example 2. Last week, I spent way too much time mentally wrestling with a particular issue that was giving me grief. By Thursday I was doing mental jumping jacks and praying hard for God to just tell me. Friday, I woke up convinced God was going to let me figure this one out on my own. Friday morning, I returned a call from a dear friend of mine (Pastor Eric von Atzigen, of Emmanuel Fellowing Church in Sweetwater) who had forgotten why he called me. Ultimately, he remembered, called me back and we went to lunch.

Near the end of our lunch meeting, he asked a few questions (again, seemingly) in passing, and my instinctive response was to answer “fine” as would be normal. The conversation moved on from there. Then, I got a gentle nudge (more of a jolt, really) from the Spirit asking me, “Hey, didn’t you have a question you wanted answered? What more do you want, I go through the trouble of setting up a lunch meeting with a pastor for you, your forget to ask, and now he’s the one asking you what you forgot to ask?” Needless to say, I asked, he answered, and my mind was set at ease.

The moral of that story is: I was a hair away from missing out on what God was dishing out. There is no telling how long I would have stewed over that one. The answer is not always a matter of grand revelation. In fact, I would say that grand revelation is the exception, not the rule. Answers come from everywhere. I suspect that God’s intention is that they most frequently come from others so that we stay interconnected and co-dependent. It’s cool to have a pastor handy, but even then you can miss it if you’re not careful.

Lastly, although it should be the first place we look, the answer to every prayer, question or struggle you could ever have can be found in God’s word. It may not be apparent, but it’s there. We may need someone to find it and explain it, but it’s there. We may need God to open it up to us, but it’s there.

Everything we will ever need has already been given to us, we just need to learn to look for it.

I’ll talk about The Attack after The Answer next time.


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