Cleansing Prayer
Compared with King David, President Clinton is a minor league sinner. I don't mean to minimize his affair and perjury, but it just doesn't stand up to the biblical David's full-blown adultery with Bathsheba, followed by the premeditated "murder" of her husband, Uriah. (David ordered Uriah to the front lines and instructed his commander not to support Uriah's division in battle.)
If David's sin was great, so was his confession in fact, it is one of the most moving and meaningful prayers ever written. From it we can learn a great deal about how to approach God when we are weighed down with guilt a not uncommon experience for any of us. The one thing we want more than anything else is forgiveness, an understanding that we really are cleansed and that we can enjoy a new start. And there have been few prayers written in history that have the power to do that as well as the one recorded in Psalm 51.
Lasting Confession
You can read all the tantalizing details of David's escapades in 2 Samuel 11 and 12. This is a study rich in psychological insight and will pay dividends as an object of devotional study.
Even if we don't commit such "big" sins, though, we each know moments when we realize that we've done something despicable. It may be the betrayal of a confidence, a racist remark, or the neglect of a beggar. Whatever the cause, we feel guilty, lonely, disgusted, and frightened. We want to say something to God, but no words we manufacture can express our tangled emotions.
Psalm 51 has remained a perennial resource for praying about such matters, both for confessing the petty sins of daily life and especially the extraordinary sins that weigh us down (which we'll focus on in this chapter). This Psalm is so rich and holds together so well that we should take it in fully before looking at some of its parts:
"Have mercy on me, O God,
because of your unfailing love.
Because of your compassion,
blot out the stain of my sins.
Wash me clean from my guilt.
Purify me from my sin. For I recognize my shameful deeds
they haunt me day and night.
Against you, and you alone, have I sinned;
I have done what is evil in your sight.
You will be proved right in what you say,
and your judgment against me is just. For I was born a sinner
yes, from the moment my mother conceived me.
But you desire honesty from the heart,
so you can teach me to be wise in my inmost being.
Purify me from my sins, and I will be clean;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
Oh, give me back my joy again;
you have broken me
now let me rejoice.
Don't keep looking at my sins.
Remove the stain of my guilt.
Create in me a clean heart, O God.
Renew a right spirit within me.
Do not banish me from your presence,
and don't take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me again the joy of your salvation,
and make me willing to obey you. Then I will teach your ways to sinners,
and they will return to you.
Forgive me for shedding blood, O God who saves;
then I will joyfully sing of your forgiveness.
Unseal my lips, O Lord,
that I may praise you. You would not be pleased with sacrifices,
or I would bring them.
If I brought you a burnt offering,
you would not accept it.
The sacrifice you want is a broken spirit,
A broken and repentant heart, O God,
you will not despise."
Key Assumptions
There is no way even to begin to exhaust the lessons for cleansing prayer from this particular prayer, so I'll limit myself to a few highlights.
To begin, we should note the assumption that David makes entering into prayer: God is a God of "unfailing love" and "great compassion." This is not an easy assumption to make, because after a grave sin, we feel as if God will not listen to us, as if he has, in fact, already rejected us.
That's because that's how we tend to act when someone has seriously betrayed us. I know if my son were to become a pimp and a drug-pusher, let's say, I would be horrified, angry, and confused. I would have a difficult time speaking with him, let alone inviting him into my home. If he took up such a life, he would be rejecting all I had taught him and all that I stood for.
David's prayer, however, will have none of this and starts off with a surprising assumption. God is just, yes. God abhors sin, yes. God has the perfect right to punish sin, yes. But this is not God's essence. Love and mercy are. We approach him with sorrow, yes, but not in fear that is, not the type of fear that wonders what our relationship is with him. We don't have to wonder. We can begin with the assumption that God is there to receive us in all our messiness.
David makes another assumption: He can be purified from his wrongdoing. This is also startling, considering the gravity of his sins. You'd think he could never be "purified" from them.
To be purified, or cleansed, of sin doesn't mean that we don't continue to suffer regret, though. I still shake my head at sins I committed in adolescence! What David rightly assumes is that God has the power and grace to not let our sin stand in the way of a deep relationship with him.
Again, even this is difficult for us to imagine. If my friend betrays me let’s say, lies to a vice president in the company so that he can advance at my expense it’s difficult to imagine how that could not stand in the way of our relationship. Even if I formally forgave him, I would have a tough time trusting him for the rest of my life.
But this is precisely why biblical literature is called a "revelation." This business of mercy and spiritual purity is not something we would think up on our own. It is a truth about God that had to be revealed by God and in this Psalm, it is revealed as clearly as anywhere in the Bible.
A Spade Is a Spade Is a . . .
David's clear view of God's compassion is matched by the crystal clear view of his own sin. In this, he models the three key elements of a confessional prayer.
1. He takes ownership of his actions. "I recognize my shameful deeds." No excuses. No rationalizations. Human beings are natural rationalizers, and we can manufacture excuses in less time than it takes to say, "I'm sorry."
Took too much time for lunch and still left the office early? "Well, I've put in plenty of overtime in my days here and besides, I do more work in six hours than most people do in eight."
Spent a little too much time fantasizing about that woman (or man) at the video store? "Aw, they're harmless thoughts. Besides, I don't do it all that often."
Yelled at your daughter for not cleaning up the living room even though it wasn't her job? "I'd had a tough day and besides, she doesn't do enough work around here."
But David doesn't fall for this human failing (as in, "The pressures of government were overwhelming; my wife and concubines weren't satisfying me; and besides, her husband died in battle what more glorious end would a soldier want?"). David doesn't need to make excuses, of course, because he knows that he's in the presence of "unfailing love" and ''compassion." There's no need to cover his you-know-what.
2. He recognizes who he has wronged, really. "Against you, and you alone, have I sinned." It looks as if David has committed a sin against Bathsheba, Uriah, his own wives, and himself and he has. After all, these are the people most directly hurt by the whole affair. But David also knows the ultimate source of his remorse, the ultimate being to whom he is responsible for his actions.
David knows what we usually learn only from experience: We can apologize to others and try to make it up to them for the rest of our lives, but unless we also deal with God, we'll find no satisfactory cleansing. He's the one who created the moral universe in which we live. He's the one with whom we've ultimately broken faith.
3. He admits that his behavior is part of a pattern. "For I was born a sinner yes, from the moment my mother conceived me." This may strike us as unhealthy self-abasement, but it's really an honest admission of the way things are.
To say, "I'm a sinner and have been so since my birth" is not a statement about who I am at my core. No, I'm a child of God, created in his image. But let's face it, since childhood I have sinned I’ve done and said things that get in the way of my relationship with God and that spoil my relationships with others.
David is simply saying that his adultery and murder are part of a larger pattern. He's not going to blather on about how this was so uncharacteristic of him, that he must have been temporarily insane, or that he ate too many Twinkies, or whatever. No, he admits that he's the type of person who could commit adultery and who could commit adultery again.
This is probably the crux of the whole prayer. The sin we confess needs to be confessed, but it is simply a symptom of a larger problem. Unless we own up to the larger problem, we're not going to be cleansed and we're not going to make any progress in the spiritual life.
That's the great paradox of confession: If we admit we're stuck with our sinful tendencies, we have a much better chance of getting unstuck. But the moment we think we can get ourselves unstuck by trying just a tad harder, we're doomed to getting stuck.
Cleanliness Is Next to Joyfulness
Along the same lines, that's the point of the next section of this prayer: Only God has the power to heal and cleanse our hearts. "Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a right spirit within me" (Psalm 51:10).
The temptation, of course, is to apologize, to vow to do better, and then to reach down to those proverbial boot straps and start tugging. We'll never experience cleansing under these circumstances, though: first, because we can't improve ourselves by our own strength; and second, because we'll fall into self-defeating behavior.
If my wife has "sinned" against me let's say she made fun of me at a party and hurts my feelings. She apologizes and says, "I'll make it up to you." She makes me a special dinner. She gives me a massage. She buys me tickets to a Chicago Bulls game. She compliments me in front of friends at the next party.
But whatever she does has nothing to do with what she has already done. It doesn't "settle the score." It doesn't erase what has been done. It can't take away the experience of embarrassment and shame and she knows it. She'll never feel comfortable in our relationship, no matter what she does, until I forgive her. And for that forgiveness to be healing forgiveness it cannot hinge on her future good behavior. It's a gift, or it's nothing.
In the same way, we must allow God to heal and cleanse us. Instead of a flurry of vows and promises about how we'll never do that again, we are wiser simply to say, "You, Lord, create in me a clean heart. You, Lord, renew a right spirit in me. And help me not get in the way."
Of course, you'll want to change the behavior or situations that brought about the sin in the first place, but not as a way to make it up to God. Do this simply because you don't want to make the same mistake twice. In the meantime, we pray for God to change us from the inside so that we won't even be tempted the next time.
Getting the Word Out
This is probably the most unnerving part of the confessional process, but if experience is any guide, it is an essential step in the process of cleansing. We need to tell our story, from sinful beginning to confessional end, to someone else: "Restore to me again the joy of your salvation, and make me willing to obey you. Then I will teach your ways to sinners" (Psalm 51:12, 13).
By "sinners" David just means "other sinners like me “or, more simply, other people. And by "teaching your ways," he means explaining what God's way has been with him. If this seems a stretch of an interpretation, simply look at the Psalm itself: It is David announcing his story to others.
We needn't be as public as David. Sharing our story with one or two close friends, a pastor, or a spiritual adviser is sufficient. But as many recovery groups, including Alcoholics Anonymous, have discovered, there is no complete healing until we tell our story. Why this is so, it's hard to say. That it is so is the experience of thousands upon thousands of people. God completes his cleansing process in and through other people as we talk, as they listen, as we share intimately with another human being.
Humility, not Piety
At the end of his prayer, David says one more thing that seems troubling but is crucial: "If I brought you a burnt offering, you would not accept it. The sacrifice you want is a broken spirit, a broken and repentant heart, O God, you will not despise" (Psalm 51:16, 17).
When we hear that someone's "spirit has been broken," we think of someone having lost all hope and self-respect. This is not what David has in mind, though. A spirit of haughtiness, pride, stubbornness this is the sort of thing that needs to be broken.
But here's the interesting thing: If you start to get religious about this whole business, you may end up with even more haughtiness and pride than ever. And this is why David puts these two ideas religiosity and humility side by side. Let me explain.
To begin, I'm not against religion as such. As you'll see in Part 6, "Praying with Others," I will encourage you to become part of a worshipping community if you want to really develop your prayer life.
But church is no nirvana. For all its strengths, it has the odd tendency to nurture pride and arrogance. The inner dialogue, which is usually very subtle and which takes months to develop, goes something like this:
"I've sinned indeed. I need to get some help in this. I think I'll start attending worship. . . ." Then a few months go by. "This is really making a difference. I'm much more in control of myself these days. I wish I knew about this sooner. My friends at work could sure use this stuff. . . ." A few more months go by. "If my friends would just get their acts together, like I did, and start coming to church, they wouldn't be in such a mess. I'm a much better person than I've ever been."
You get the idea: a slow and steady accumulation of spiritual pride. In some churches, the pastor will periodically remind people of this temptation, but the temptation is a constant one for the religious.
David wants to clarify at the end of his prayer that, as important as religion is (he himself was an extremely devout Jew), it's not at the heart of cleansing prayer. Humility is.
Just in case you didn't get it, at the heart of humility is a realistic appraisal of who God is (unfailing love), who we are (habitual sinners), and where our help lies (in God).
Needless to say, this prayer deserves repeated visits for meditation and prayer.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
SUFFERING
Suffering
Three Approaches
To live is to suffer, and to suffer is to pray. It is almost a reflex action when we're facing one of life's storms. My wife announces that she's going into the doctor the next day to have him look at what she thinks is a lump on her breast. My first thought is "O God, no!"
But aside from the sudden and desperate cry, how should we pray? What exactly should we pray for? For immediate delivery? For patience to bear the trial? Or, should we complain about the injustice of it all?
If suffering is one of life's mysteries, how exactly to respond to it more specifically, how exactly to pray through it can also be a puzzle.
Prayer from the Belly of a (Big) Fish
The Bible has its share of prayers that were said in the midst of suffering, but three prayers stand out. Every serious prayer should know the prayers and the context in which they were said, for they have a lot to teach us. We begin with a prayer found in the well-known parable of Jonah.
Though some take the story as history, I do not. But whether history or parable, the story is divinely inspired to teach us about many things, including prayer.
The plot is well known: Jonah is asked by God to go to the city of Ninevah and preach God's coming judgment. Jonah wants none of it and boards the first ship heading in the opposite direction, thinking he can escape God.
Soon a storm arises, and even the seasoned sailors fear for their lives. They learn of Jonah's story and figure out that his disobedience to God has caused the storm. Jonah volunteers to be thrown overboard to save the ship, and after trying to manage the ship a bit longer, the crew finally obliges. This part of the story concludes, "Now the Lord had arranged for a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was inside the fish for three days and three nights" (Jonah 1:17).
We do not need vivid imaginations to figure out that life in the belly of a big fish is no pleasure cruise. Any consciousness one might experience would be completely dominated by despair: It's only a matter of minutes before death. Time to get the soul in order, if nothing else.
Jonah, however, takes a surprising approach. We best hear his "last" prayer in his own words, in full:
"I cried out to the Lord in my great trouble, and he answered me. I called to you from the world of the dead, and Lord, you heard me! You threw me into the ocean depths, and I sank down to the heart of the sea. I was buried beneath your wild and stormy waves. Then I said, 'O Lord you have driven me from your presence. How will I ever again see your holy temple?'
"I sank beneath the waves, and death was very near. The waters closed in around me, and seaweed wrapped itself around my head. I sank down to the very roots of the mountains. I was locked out of life and imprisoned in the land of the dead. But you, O Lord my God, have snatched me from the yawning jaws of death!
"When I had lost all hope, I turned my thoughts once more to the Lord. And my earnest prayer went out to you in your holy temple. Those who worship false gods turn their backs on all God's mercies. But I will offer sacrifices to you with songs of praise, and I will fulfill all my vows. For my salvation comes from the Lord" (Jonah 2:29).
Faith at the Bottom
The prayer shows signs of having been composed in a completely different setting than in the belly of a big fish. Though it makes use of imagery of the sea, it was more likely written on dry land and to be said in the Jerusalem Temple. But it was a nice literary move to place it in the mouth of Jonah at this point in the story. It was done to make a number of points, one of which is about prayer.
We're not completely aware of the full context of this prayer until we read the first sentence that follows the prayer: "Then the Lord ordered the fish to spit up Jonah on the beach, and it did" (Jonah 2:10).
What's remarkable about the prayer is this: Jonah thanks God, praising him for his deliverance before it happens.
While in the belly of the fish, Jonah prays, "I cried out to the Lord in my great trouble, and he answered me. I called to you from the world of the dead, and Lord, you heard me!"
While sinking deeper and deeper into the ocean depths, Jonah cries out, "I was locked out of life and imprisoned in the land of the dead. But you, O Lord my God, have snatched me from the yawning jaws of death!"
When only seconds of life could possibly remain, Jonah says, "But I will offer sacrifices to you with songs of praise, and I will fulfill all my vows. For my salvation comes from the Lord."
Jonah shows a type of faith in the midst of suffering that is rare but real. This may be a parable, but the reaction to suffering is genuine. Some people, when they see death staring at them in the face, simply smile and say, "Praise the Lord." They are confident that God will rescue them and if not, what does it matter? They'll be with the Lord in a few minutes anyway.
This remarkable sort of faith doesn't seem to be given to everyone. It is not something to aspire to it is a gift. If you are suddenly given such hope in the midst of suffering, don't necessarily chalk it up as a "psychological defense mechanism" or "denial." It could very well be a gift of the Holy Spirit, and you should pray just as your soul soars.
Tragic Job
Though we might be tempted to think that this is the right way to pray, it apparently is not. The Bible records other instances of saintly people praying in utterly different ways. At the other end of the spectrum from Jonah stands the tragic figure of Job. Again, we're dealing with a parable, but this is one of the most profound that has ever been told.
The plot line unfolds pretty quickly in the first two chapters. Job is described as a "blameless man, a man of complete integrity. He feared God and stayed away from evil" (Job 1:1). Furthermore, Job was a pious man who never neglected his religious duties.
Job was also a blessed man: He had seven sons and three daughters. He owned thousands of sheep and camels, and hundreds of oxen and donkeys, and he employed many servants. "He was, in fact," the story says, "the richest man in the entire area" (Job 1:3).
At this point, Satan, God's great adversary, asked permission to test Job. Satan believed that Job was devout and righteous simply because he had been so richly blessed. "Take away everything he has," Satan concluded, "and he will surely curse you to your face" (Job 1:11).
God granted the permission, and the game was on. In short order, Job lost his herds to marauding bands and to fire; his home collapsed in a storm that killed all of his children, who were inside at the time. Finally, he was struck down with a case of boils that completely covered his body. The writer sadly concludes, "Then Job scraped his skin with a piece of broken pottery as he sat among the ashes" (Job 2:8).
At the end of this string of tragedy, his wife came up to him and told him, "Curse God and die" (Job 2:9).
But Job replied, "You talk like a godless woman. Should we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad?" (Job 2:10)
The writer notes, "So in all this, Job said nothing wrong" (Job 2:10).
God's Critic
Job may not have cursed God, and he may not have said anything wrong, but that didn't keep him from speaking his mind honestly. After sitting with three friends for seven days in silence, he finally blurted out:
''Cursed be the day of my birth, and cursed be the night when I was conceived. Let that day be turned to darkness. Let it be lost even to God on high, and let it be shrouded in darkness. . . . Curse it for its failure to shut my mother's womb, for letting me be born to all this trouble.
"Why didn't I die at birth as I came from the womb? Why did my mother let me live? Why did she nurse me at her breasts? For if I had died at birth, I would be at peace now, asleep and at rest" (Job 3:3, 4, 1113).
He may not curse God, but Job does complain:
"If my sadness could be weighed and my troubles be put on the scales, they would be heavier than all the sands of the sea. . . . For the Almighty has struck me down with his arrows. He has sent his poisoned arrows deep within my spirit. All God's terrors are arrayed against me. Don't I have a right to complain?" (Job 6:25)
And the more Job thinks about it, the more anguished become his prayers:
"I cannot keep from speaking. I must express my anguish. I must complain in my bitterness. Am I a sea monster that you place a guard on me?
"What are mere mortals, that you should make so much of us? For you examine us every morning and test us every moment. Why won't you leave me alone even for a moment? Have I sinned? What have I done to you, O watcher of all humanity? Why have you made me your target? Am I a burden to you?" (7:11, 1720)
Here we have not only some of the most moving poetry ever written, but an eloquent example of prayer in the midst of suffering. It is difficult to believe that God would honor this sort of thing, but at the end of the story of Job, God does exactly that.
God came in a whirlwind and, yes, chastised Job for becoming "God's critic." Job, in turn, humbly submitted himself to God's power and wisdom: "I was talking about things I did not understand, things far too wonderful for me. . . . I take back everything I said, and I sit in dust and ashes to show my repentance" (Job 42:2, 5).
In the end, though, God rewarded Job by returning his lost fortunes, giving him twice as much as before. Job may have spoken ignorantly and arrogantly when he questioned God and complained against him, but it was not an unforgivable sin. The unforgivable sin is to reject God in such circumstances, to harden our hearts and have nothing to do with him again. That is unforgivable because we put ourselves in a stance toward God that will not allow him to forgive, let alone allow ourselves to repent.
Job was angry, and for good reason. But he never forsook God. He simply wanted to have an argument with him. He lost the argument, yes, but he did not lose his God.
Looking for a Way Out
A third approach to prayer in suffering is modeled by Jesus, and it looks at suffering a completely different way probably the way most of us pray in painful circumstances.
Jesus had known his fate for weeks, if not months, and it came crashing down on him the night before he was to die. Jesus had just finished eating his last meal with his disciples, his friends. Weighed down with grief, he decided to go off with his closest friends and pray. Gospel writer Mark is sparse with the words he uses to describe the scene, but the effect is potent:
And they came to an olive grove called Gethsemane, and Jesus said, "Sit here while I go and pray." He took Peter, James, and John with him, and he began to be filled with horror and deep distress. He told them, "My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and watch with me."
He went on a little farther and fell face down on the ground. He prayed that, if it were possible, the awful hour awaiting him might pass him by. "Abba, Father," he said, "everything is possible for you. Please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will, not mine" (Mark 14:3236).
The prayer has two dimensions. The first is an honest expression of what Jesus feels he wants: He wants to live. He tells God so, and he pleads that he might be spared the cruel death of being nailed to a cross.
We don't know how long Jesus prayed this way, for Mark has greatly shortened the scene. It may have been an hour; it may have been all night. He may have been praying this prayer every night for months. But this night it is said with such anguish, that we sense the pain even 2,000 years removed.
This is the prayer most of us pray when facing pain and distress. We don't want our loved ones to have cancer.
We want to be spared bankruptcy. We don't want to live with unrelenting back pain for decades.
Sometimes, as we noted in early chapters, God honors the request. The cancer is healed, the business comes in, the vertebrae is restored. And like Jonah, we exult in God's goodness though after the fact.
And sometimes, for reasons known only to God alone, we hear silence in return. This is what Jesus heard, so much silence over the next few hours that as he hung on the cross, he shouted, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
Yet Jesus had the courage to go through the mockery of a trial and the brutality of a whipping and the cruelty of crucifixion because of something he said that night: "Yet I want your will, not mine" (Mark 14:36).
The very words that sound as if we're giving up are, in fact, the most powerful words we can utter in our despair. For to say, "Thy will be done" is to put ourselves completely into the hands of God, whose love, strength, and grace can sustain us through any storm or as we hang upon the cruelest of crosses.
The Key to Prayer in Suffering
How should we pray in suffering? I have no idea. I do know there is hardly a wrong way. The point is to do whatever needs to be done to stay connected with God whether that means trusting God to save, like Jonah, or fighting for understanding, like Job, or submitting to God's will, like Jesus.
So what is the key?
Just do it.
Three Approaches
To live is to suffer, and to suffer is to pray. It is almost a reflex action when we're facing one of life's storms. My wife announces that she's going into the doctor the next day to have him look at what she thinks is a lump on her breast. My first thought is "O God, no!"
But aside from the sudden and desperate cry, how should we pray? What exactly should we pray for? For immediate delivery? For patience to bear the trial? Or, should we complain about the injustice of it all?
If suffering is one of life's mysteries, how exactly to respond to it more specifically, how exactly to pray through it can also be a puzzle.
Prayer from the Belly of a (Big) Fish
The Bible has its share of prayers that were said in the midst of suffering, but three prayers stand out. Every serious prayer should know the prayers and the context in which they were said, for they have a lot to teach us. We begin with a prayer found in the well-known parable of Jonah.
Though some take the story as history, I do not. But whether history or parable, the story is divinely inspired to teach us about many things, including prayer.
The plot is well known: Jonah is asked by God to go to the city of Ninevah and preach God's coming judgment. Jonah wants none of it and boards the first ship heading in the opposite direction, thinking he can escape God.
Soon a storm arises, and even the seasoned sailors fear for their lives. They learn of Jonah's story and figure out that his disobedience to God has caused the storm. Jonah volunteers to be thrown overboard to save the ship, and after trying to manage the ship a bit longer, the crew finally obliges. This part of the story concludes, "Now the Lord had arranged for a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was inside the fish for three days and three nights" (Jonah 1:17).
We do not need vivid imaginations to figure out that life in the belly of a big fish is no pleasure cruise. Any consciousness one might experience would be completely dominated by despair: It's only a matter of minutes before death. Time to get the soul in order, if nothing else.
Jonah, however, takes a surprising approach. We best hear his "last" prayer in his own words, in full:
"I cried out to the Lord in my great trouble, and he answered me. I called to you from the world of the dead, and Lord, you heard me! You threw me into the ocean depths, and I sank down to the heart of the sea. I was buried beneath your wild and stormy waves. Then I said, 'O Lord you have driven me from your presence. How will I ever again see your holy temple?'
"I sank beneath the waves, and death was very near. The waters closed in around me, and seaweed wrapped itself around my head. I sank down to the very roots of the mountains. I was locked out of life and imprisoned in the land of the dead. But you, O Lord my God, have snatched me from the yawning jaws of death!
"When I had lost all hope, I turned my thoughts once more to the Lord. And my earnest prayer went out to you in your holy temple. Those who worship false gods turn their backs on all God's mercies. But I will offer sacrifices to you with songs of praise, and I will fulfill all my vows. For my salvation comes from the Lord" (Jonah 2:29).
Faith at the Bottom
The prayer shows signs of having been composed in a completely different setting than in the belly of a big fish. Though it makes use of imagery of the sea, it was more likely written on dry land and to be said in the Jerusalem Temple. But it was a nice literary move to place it in the mouth of Jonah at this point in the story. It was done to make a number of points, one of which is about prayer.
We're not completely aware of the full context of this prayer until we read the first sentence that follows the prayer: "Then the Lord ordered the fish to spit up Jonah on the beach, and it did" (Jonah 2:10).
What's remarkable about the prayer is this: Jonah thanks God, praising him for his deliverance before it happens.
While in the belly of the fish, Jonah prays, "I cried out to the Lord in my great trouble, and he answered me. I called to you from the world of the dead, and Lord, you heard me!"
While sinking deeper and deeper into the ocean depths, Jonah cries out, "I was locked out of life and imprisoned in the land of the dead. But you, O Lord my God, have snatched me from the yawning jaws of death!"
When only seconds of life could possibly remain, Jonah says, "But I will offer sacrifices to you with songs of praise, and I will fulfill all my vows. For my salvation comes from the Lord."
Jonah shows a type of faith in the midst of suffering that is rare but real. This may be a parable, but the reaction to suffering is genuine. Some people, when they see death staring at them in the face, simply smile and say, "Praise the Lord." They are confident that God will rescue them and if not, what does it matter? They'll be with the Lord in a few minutes anyway.
This remarkable sort of faith doesn't seem to be given to everyone. It is not something to aspire to it is a gift. If you are suddenly given such hope in the midst of suffering, don't necessarily chalk it up as a "psychological defense mechanism" or "denial." It could very well be a gift of the Holy Spirit, and you should pray just as your soul soars.
Tragic Job
Though we might be tempted to think that this is the right way to pray, it apparently is not. The Bible records other instances of saintly people praying in utterly different ways. At the other end of the spectrum from Jonah stands the tragic figure of Job. Again, we're dealing with a parable, but this is one of the most profound that has ever been told.
The plot line unfolds pretty quickly in the first two chapters. Job is described as a "blameless man, a man of complete integrity. He feared God and stayed away from evil" (Job 1:1). Furthermore, Job was a pious man who never neglected his religious duties.
Job was also a blessed man: He had seven sons and three daughters. He owned thousands of sheep and camels, and hundreds of oxen and donkeys, and he employed many servants. "He was, in fact," the story says, "the richest man in the entire area" (Job 1:3).
At this point, Satan, God's great adversary, asked permission to test Job. Satan believed that Job was devout and righteous simply because he had been so richly blessed. "Take away everything he has," Satan concluded, "and he will surely curse you to your face" (Job 1:11).
God granted the permission, and the game was on. In short order, Job lost his herds to marauding bands and to fire; his home collapsed in a storm that killed all of his children, who were inside at the time. Finally, he was struck down with a case of boils that completely covered his body. The writer sadly concludes, "Then Job scraped his skin with a piece of broken pottery as he sat among the ashes" (Job 2:8).
At the end of this string of tragedy, his wife came up to him and told him, "Curse God and die" (Job 2:9).
But Job replied, "You talk like a godless woman. Should we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad?" (Job 2:10)
The writer notes, "So in all this, Job said nothing wrong" (Job 2:10).
God's Critic
Job may not have cursed God, and he may not have said anything wrong, but that didn't keep him from speaking his mind honestly. After sitting with three friends for seven days in silence, he finally blurted out:
''Cursed be the day of my birth, and cursed be the night when I was conceived. Let that day be turned to darkness. Let it be lost even to God on high, and let it be shrouded in darkness. . . . Curse it for its failure to shut my mother's womb, for letting me be born to all this trouble.
"Why didn't I die at birth as I came from the womb? Why did my mother let me live? Why did she nurse me at her breasts? For if I had died at birth, I would be at peace now, asleep and at rest" (Job 3:3, 4, 1113).
He may not curse God, but Job does complain:
"If my sadness could be weighed and my troubles be put on the scales, they would be heavier than all the sands of the sea. . . . For the Almighty has struck me down with his arrows. He has sent his poisoned arrows deep within my spirit. All God's terrors are arrayed against me. Don't I have a right to complain?" (Job 6:25)
And the more Job thinks about it, the more anguished become his prayers:
"I cannot keep from speaking. I must express my anguish. I must complain in my bitterness. Am I a sea monster that you place a guard on me?
"What are mere mortals, that you should make so much of us? For you examine us every morning and test us every moment. Why won't you leave me alone even for a moment? Have I sinned? What have I done to you, O watcher of all humanity? Why have you made me your target? Am I a burden to you?" (7:11, 1720)
Here we have not only some of the most moving poetry ever written, but an eloquent example of prayer in the midst of suffering. It is difficult to believe that God would honor this sort of thing, but at the end of the story of Job, God does exactly that.
God came in a whirlwind and, yes, chastised Job for becoming "God's critic." Job, in turn, humbly submitted himself to God's power and wisdom: "I was talking about things I did not understand, things far too wonderful for me. . . . I take back everything I said, and I sit in dust and ashes to show my repentance" (Job 42:2, 5).
In the end, though, God rewarded Job by returning his lost fortunes, giving him twice as much as before. Job may have spoken ignorantly and arrogantly when he questioned God and complained against him, but it was not an unforgivable sin. The unforgivable sin is to reject God in such circumstances, to harden our hearts and have nothing to do with him again. That is unforgivable because we put ourselves in a stance toward God that will not allow him to forgive, let alone allow ourselves to repent.
Job was angry, and for good reason. But he never forsook God. He simply wanted to have an argument with him. He lost the argument, yes, but he did not lose his God.
Looking for a Way Out
A third approach to prayer in suffering is modeled by Jesus, and it looks at suffering a completely different way probably the way most of us pray in painful circumstances.
Jesus had known his fate for weeks, if not months, and it came crashing down on him the night before he was to die. Jesus had just finished eating his last meal with his disciples, his friends. Weighed down with grief, he decided to go off with his closest friends and pray. Gospel writer Mark is sparse with the words he uses to describe the scene, but the effect is potent:
And they came to an olive grove called Gethsemane, and Jesus said, "Sit here while I go and pray." He took Peter, James, and John with him, and he began to be filled with horror and deep distress. He told them, "My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and watch with me."
He went on a little farther and fell face down on the ground. He prayed that, if it were possible, the awful hour awaiting him might pass him by. "Abba, Father," he said, "everything is possible for you. Please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will, not mine" (Mark 14:3236).
The prayer has two dimensions. The first is an honest expression of what Jesus feels he wants: He wants to live. He tells God so, and he pleads that he might be spared the cruel death of being nailed to a cross.
We don't know how long Jesus prayed this way, for Mark has greatly shortened the scene. It may have been an hour; it may have been all night. He may have been praying this prayer every night for months. But this night it is said with such anguish, that we sense the pain even 2,000 years removed.
This is the prayer most of us pray when facing pain and distress. We don't want our loved ones to have cancer.
We want to be spared bankruptcy. We don't want to live with unrelenting back pain for decades.
Sometimes, as we noted in early chapters, God honors the request. The cancer is healed, the business comes in, the vertebrae is restored. And like Jonah, we exult in God's goodness though after the fact.
And sometimes, for reasons known only to God alone, we hear silence in return. This is what Jesus heard, so much silence over the next few hours that as he hung on the cross, he shouted, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
Yet Jesus had the courage to go through the mockery of a trial and the brutality of a whipping and the cruelty of crucifixion because of something he said that night: "Yet I want your will, not mine" (Mark 14:36).
The very words that sound as if we're giving up are, in fact, the most powerful words we can utter in our despair. For to say, "Thy will be done" is to put ourselves completely into the hands of God, whose love, strength, and grace can sustain us through any storm or as we hang upon the cruelest of crosses.
The Key to Prayer in Suffering
How should we pray in suffering? I have no idea. I do know there is hardly a wrong way. The point is to do whatever needs to be done to stay connected with God whether that means trusting God to save, like Jonah, or fighting for understanding, like Job, or submitting to God's will, like Jesus.
So what is the key?
Just do it.
MENDING RELATIONSHIPS
Mending Relationships
We joke about relationship movies being "chick flicks," but they are really "people pictures" because all of us are deeply concerned about relationships. We want to be close to others, but that is a difficult thing to achieve. Relationships, we soon discover, are fragile things; they tear apart with the slightest tug and sometimes they tear in such a way that we cannot imagine ever putting them back together.
When relationships are torn, so are our hearts. The joy we experience in whole relationships is matched by the pain we feel when they are broken. It is no wonder that relationships not only our own relationships, but other people's relationships with one another occupy so much of our minds and hearts. As such, it is an appropriate topic of prayer.
A Last Prayer for Friends
Jesus spent three intense years developing relationships with 12 men. He was training them to follow in his footsteps, which is why we call these men "disciples." He was teaching them to go out and spread his message as well, which is why they are also called "apostles." But despite these purposes, Jesus gathered them so that they might become his friends.
It is interesting to look back on the moment when Jesus first gathered these 12 men. In the Gospel of Mark we read, "He appointed 12, whom he also named apostles, to be with him. . . " (3:14, New Revised Standard Version). Mark adds a number of jobs Jesus intended the 12 to fulfill, but he lists being with Jesus and with one another first.
This helps us appreciate something Jesus did at the end of his life. When he kneels to pray his final prayer (recorded in John 17) the night before he is to die, his main concern is these 12 friends. Let us now turn to that prayer to discover how to better pray about relationships.
Those Given to Us
Toward the beginning of this prayer (v. 9), Jesus says, "My prayer is not for the world, but for those you have given me. . . ." This comes as somewhat of a surprise for those raised on the notion that Jesus died "for the world." He did, indeed, but Jesus was not abstract in his love. It was directed to real people, not to generalizations such as "the world" or ''humanity."
The old joke goes, "I love humanity; it's people I can't stand." Well, Jesus wasn't as interested in humanity as he was in people, especially those closest to him. In fact, he had a special understanding of these people: He said these were people God had given him, people God wanted him to be especially concerned about, and individuals with whom he was to play a unique and indispensable role.
This is the context in which we are to pray for our own relationships. It is good and right to pray for the world for hunger, injustice, oppression. If such topics are not a part of our prayers, we have some serious restructuring of our prayer life to do. But the relationships we have with our family, our friends, and our neighbors are given to us by God. In them we play a unique and indispensable role, and it is right that they are a high priority in our prayers.
This also means that as we pray for others, we might pray for ourselves, especially to understand the role we are to play in these people's lives and to be faithful in doing what we're called to do with them.
If a new couple moves in next door, this is not an accident. In God's providence, they have now entered my life and I have entered theirs. Therefore, they are people I can be praying for their marriage, for their infant, that they might settle into the community. But I'm also supposed to play some special role in their life. It may be as simple as inviting them to my church, or having them over for desert to help them feel more welcomed. It may mean putting up a fence together. It may mean becoming lifelong friends. Who knows? But this much I do know: These people have entered my life for some purpose, however small, and I have a role to play in their lives, however small.
Letting Go
Jesus finishes that thought with this: "My prayer is not for the world, but for those you have given me, because they belong to you" (v. 9). This is the second context in which prayer for others takes place. It's mighty easy to forget this and to begin praying and living as if our loved ones belong to us.
Almost any relationship will do as an example, but take that of husband and wife. Let me speak for myself: In 24 years of marriage, there have been a few times when I have tried to fashion my wife in my own image. I've wanted her to be more interested in theology. I've wanted her to be more interested in sex. I've wanted her to be more organized. I've wanted her to be, well, more like me (let's not go too far with that thought I recognize the absurdity). And there have been a few times when I've nagged, cajoled, bribed, and manipulated her to be different.
All this is to no avail, of course. It only makes things worse more tension, more arguments, more dissatisfaction. Only when I can let go of her can I have a healthy relationship with her again. That means I need to recognize that Barbara does not belong to me but to God, that God has made her unique and special, for unique and special ends that may or may not coincide with my plans.
The temptation in prayer is to try to "fix" people; we're pretty good at seeing how people need to be fixed. But we are wiser to let God figure out what ought to be fixed and how the fixing ought to be done if it needs to be done at all. When we begin praying for others, we should recognize right off that they belong to God and that he has a wonderful plan for their lives much better than ours.
This doesn't mean that we shouldn't pray specifically for others, especially when the need is obvious: "Lord, heal Frank of alcoholism." "God, help Ruth to not be so bitter." But it also means to say all such prayers while trusting in God to answer the prayer in the time and in the way he will.
The Mother of All Requests
Now we'll jump to the heart of Jesus' last prayer: "I am praying not only for these disciples, but also for all who will ever believe in me. . . . My prayer for all of them is that they will be one, just as you and I are one" (vv. 20, 21).
Jesus is praying for all his later followers (that is, the people we now call "Christians"), and his request is pretty simple: that there will be no divisions among them.
Uh, what happened? Christians have become one of the most divided people on earth. As of last count, there were more than 20,000 denominations worldwide.
A number of things need to be said about Jesus' request and its dubious result first, two things that have nothing to do with the theme of this chapter but that reinforce things said elsewhere in the book.
1. This goes to show that the lack of an answer to prayer has nothing to do with the prayer's lack of faith (as some suggest). No one has had more faith than Jesus, and yet his prayer has not been answered yet.
2. This also suggests that it is appropriate to pray for some things that won't see fruition for some time. I have no doubt that Christians in fact, the whole world will someday be one. God's kingdom will come. And if Jesus thought it was worth his time praying for such "long-distance requests," it's probably worth my time as well. If nothing else, it keeps the hope alive that God's rule will, in fact, eventually prevail.
Then let's look at a couple of things related to the business of relationships.
1. Jesus knew that the greatest problem his followers would face would be division. After all, broken relationships are the problem of humanity. This is the problem that most concerns Jesus, and it's not surprising that it is the problem that most concerns us.
2. Though Jesus prays specifically for the Christian church ("all who will ever believe in me"), it doesn't take a German theologian to see that the prayer for unity is the fundamental prayer for all people, for all relationships. Jesus did, in fact, die for the whole world, that each person could be reconciled to God and to others.
To put it simply, there is no more important prayer we can pray than that broken relationships be healed the relationship of God and the individual, and the relationships of people with one another. To say such prayers is to participate with Christ in his mission of reconciling the world to himself and people to one another.
So What?
Practically speaking this means a couple of things:
1. We can't simply pray for people as isolated individuals. People are already in relationships, and everything an individual does affects those relationships. When we pray for Frank's alcoholism, we are wise to pray for all those affected by Frank's alcoholism. When we pray for Susan to do well on an exam, we are wise to pray for friends and family to be supportive. When we pray for Tom's bitterness toward Mary, we are wise to pray for Mary as well, that she might not become bitter in return. You get the picture.
2. We must mend our own relationships even when the break is not our fault. It goes without saying that if we have done something to cause a tear in a relationship, we should seek forgiveness and reconciliation. But healed relationships are so important to Jesus, he asks us to go a step further. Note what he says in a passage from his "Sermon on the Mount":
"So if you are standing before the altar in the temple, offering sacrifice to God, and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, leave your sacrifice there beside the altar. Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God" (Matthew 5:2324).
Note that it is not the worshipper who has something against the other, but the other who has something against the worshipper.
In the real world, of course, it is not always possible to seek reconciliation with people angry with us. We often don't know when someone has a grudge against us. Sometimes people die while still angry with us. Sometimes they live too far away for us to attempt to heal the break. But this is not a new legalism that Jesus is weighing us down with; it is a recognition that relationships are so important that, as people of prayer (and as people who seek a closer relationship with God), we should do everything possible to heal our broken relationships with others.
Perhaps you can see why, from another perspective, Jesus tells us to pray, "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtor." Prayer ultimately is about one thing: unity. That means oneness and healed relationships. We can't compartmentalize, hoping to get right with God and not try to get right with others. It's not so much that it is wrong it’s just doesn't make sense.
God by the Back Door
There is one more practical result from praying for and seeking reconciliation. Jesus notes it toward the end of his prayer. Speaking of his disciples, he says, "I have given them the glory [that is, the power and honor] you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are I in them and you in me, all being perfected into one. Then the world will know that you sent me and will understand that you love them as much as you love me" (vv. 22, 23).
One thing that people of prayer begin to enjoy more and more is a loving relationship with God. They experience love as they've never known it. Naturally, they want others to enjoy this experience, but just telling others about it often makes little impact. Outsiders tend to think of Christians as people who just happen to be "into religion"; they have no clue that what we experience is something they can experience as well.
Jesus assumes that the godly love we experience in prayer is the same love that reconciled people experience. If people become one and especially if people become one with God as they become one with one another this is what will impress others. This is what will help others glimpse the larger reality of the love that surrounds them.
A treasurer in a church in northern Illinois recently embezzled over $100,000 from the church's building fund. When the church board discovered it, many members were furious. But taking the Bible as his cue, the pastor tried to combine justice with mercy, insisting that the man pay the church back while encouraging reconciliation between him and angry members. A few weeks after the discovery, after a plan of repayment had begun, the pastor held a service in which the man publicly asked for forgiveness. Afterwards, many of the people who had been angry with him came up and embraced him. Tears flowed freely. For members and visitors alike, it was very moving service, demonstrating the healing power of the gospel of love.
Mending relationships it’s hard to imagine that there's anything more vital to pray about.
We joke about relationship movies being "chick flicks," but they are really "people pictures" because all of us are deeply concerned about relationships. We want to be close to others, but that is a difficult thing to achieve. Relationships, we soon discover, are fragile things; they tear apart with the slightest tug and sometimes they tear in such a way that we cannot imagine ever putting them back together.
When relationships are torn, so are our hearts. The joy we experience in whole relationships is matched by the pain we feel when they are broken. It is no wonder that relationships not only our own relationships, but other people's relationships with one another occupy so much of our minds and hearts. As such, it is an appropriate topic of prayer.
A Last Prayer for Friends
Jesus spent three intense years developing relationships with 12 men. He was training them to follow in his footsteps, which is why we call these men "disciples." He was teaching them to go out and spread his message as well, which is why they are also called "apostles." But despite these purposes, Jesus gathered them so that they might become his friends.
It is interesting to look back on the moment when Jesus first gathered these 12 men. In the Gospel of Mark we read, "He appointed 12, whom he also named apostles, to be with him. . . " (3:14, New Revised Standard Version). Mark adds a number of jobs Jesus intended the 12 to fulfill, but he lists being with Jesus and with one another first.
This helps us appreciate something Jesus did at the end of his life. When he kneels to pray his final prayer (recorded in John 17) the night before he is to die, his main concern is these 12 friends. Let us now turn to that prayer to discover how to better pray about relationships.
Those Given to Us
Toward the beginning of this prayer (v. 9), Jesus says, "My prayer is not for the world, but for those you have given me. . . ." This comes as somewhat of a surprise for those raised on the notion that Jesus died "for the world." He did, indeed, but Jesus was not abstract in his love. It was directed to real people, not to generalizations such as "the world" or ''humanity."
The old joke goes, "I love humanity; it's people I can't stand." Well, Jesus wasn't as interested in humanity as he was in people, especially those closest to him. In fact, he had a special understanding of these people: He said these were people God had given him, people God wanted him to be especially concerned about, and individuals with whom he was to play a unique and indispensable role.
This is the context in which we are to pray for our own relationships. It is good and right to pray for the world for hunger, injustice, oppression. If such topics are not a part of our prayers, we have some serious restructuring of our prayer life to do. But the relationships we have with our family, our friends, and our neighbors are given to us by God. In them we play a unique and indispensable role, and it is right that they are a high priority in our prayers.
This also means that as we pray for others, we might pray for ourselves, especially to understand the role we are to play in these people's lives and to be faithful in doing what we're called to do with them.
If a new couple moves in next door, this is not an accident. In God's providence, they have now entered my life and I have entered theirs. Therefore, they are people I can be praying for their marriage, for their infant, that they might settle into the community. But I'm also supposed to play some special role in their life. It may be as simple as inviting them to my church, or having them over for desert to help them feel more welcomed. It may mean putting up a fence together. It may mean becoming lifelong friends. Who knows? But this much I do know: These people have entered my life for some purpose, however small, and I have a role to play in their lives, however small.
Letting Go
Jesus finishes that thought with this: "My prayer is not for the world, but for those you have given me, because they belong to you" (v. 9). This is the second context in which prayer for others takes place. It's mighty easy to forget this and to begin praying and living as if our loved ones belong to us.
Almost any relationship will do as an example, but take that of husband and wife. Let me speak for myself: In 24 years of marriage, there have been a few times when I have tried to fashion my wife in my own image. I've wanted her to be more interested in theology. I've wanted her to be more interested in sex. I've wanted her to be more organized. I've wanted her to be, well, more like me (let's not go too far with that thought I recognize the absurdity). And there have been a few times when I've nagged, cajoled, bribed, and manipulated her to be different.
All this is to no avail, of course. It only makes things worse more tension, more arguments, more dissatisfaction. Only when I can let go of her can I have a healthy relationship with her again. That means I need to recognize that Barbara does not belong to me but to God, that God has made her unique and special, for unique and special ends that may or may not coincide with my plans.
The temptation in prayer is to try to "fix" people; we're pretty good at seeing how people need to be fixed. But we are wiser to let God figure out what ought to be fixed and how the fixing ought to be done if it needs to be done at all. When we begin praying for others, we should recognize right off that they belong to God and that he has a wonderful plan for their lives much better than ours.
This doesn't mean that we shouldn't pray specifically for others, especially when the need is obvious: "Lord, heal Frank of alcoholism." "God, help Ruth to not be so bitter." But it also means to say all such prayers while trusting in God to answer the prayer in the time and in the way he will.
The Mother of All Requests
Now we'll jump to the heart of Jesus' last prayer: "I am praying not only for these disciples, but also for all who will ever believe in me. . . . My prayer for all of them is that they will be one, just as you and I are one" (vv. 20, 21).
Jesus is praying for all his later followers (that is, the people we now call "Christians"), and his request is pretty simple: that there will be no divisions among them.
Uh, what happened? Christians have become one of the most divided people on earth. As of last count, there were more than 20,000 denominations worldwide.
A number of things need to be said about Jesus' request and its dubious result first, two things that have nothing to do with the theme of this chapter but that reinforce things said elsewhere in the book.
1. This goes to show that the lack of an answer to prayer has nothing to do with the prayer's lack of faith (as some suggest). No one has had more faith than Jesus, and yet his prayer has not been answered yet.
2. This also suggests that it is appropriate to pray for some things that won't see fruition for some time. I have no doubt that Christians in fact, the whole world will someday be one. God's kingdom will come. And if Jesus thought it was worth his time praying for such "long-distance requests," it's probably worth my time as well. If nothing else, it keeps the hope alive that God's rule will, in fact, eventually prevail.
Then let's look at a couple of things related to the business of relationships.
1. Jesus knew that the greatest problem his followers would face would be division. After all, broken relationships are the problem of humanity. This is the problem that most concerns Jesus, and it's not surprising that it is the problem that most concerns us.
2. Though Jesus prays specifically for the Christian church ("all who will ever believe in me"), it doesn't take a German theologian to see that the prayer for unity is the fundamental prayer for all people, for all relationships. Jesus did, in fact, die for the whole world, that each person could be reconciled to God and to others.
To put it simply, there is no more important prayer we can pray than that broken relationships be healed the relationship of God and the individual, and the relationships of people with one another. To say such prayers is to participate with Christ in his mission of reconciling the world to himself and people to one another.
So What?
Practically speaking this means a couple of things:
1. We can't simply pray for people as isolated individuals. People are already in relationships, and everything an individual does affects those relationships. When we pray for Frank's alcoholism, we are wise to pray for all those affected by Frank's alcoholism. When we pray for Susan to do well on an exam, we are wise to pray for friends and family to be supportive. When we pray for Tom's bitterness toward Mary, we are wise to pray for Mary as well, that she might not become bitter in return. You get the picture.
2. We must mend our own relationships even when the break is not our fault. It goes without saying that if we have done something to cause a tear in a relationship, we should seek forgiveness and reconciliation. But healed relationships are so important to Jesus, he asks us to go a step further. Note what he says in a passage from his "Sermon on the Mount":
"So if you are standing before the altar in the temple, offering sacrifice to God, and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, leave your sacrifice there beside the altar. Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God" (Matthew 5:2324).
Note that it is not the worshipper who has something against the other, but the other who has something against the worshipper.
In the real world, of course, it is not always possible to seek reconciliation with people angry with us. We often don't know when someone has a grudge against us. Sometimes people die while still angry with us. Sometimes they live too far away for us to attempt to heal the break. But this is not a new legalism that Jesus is weighing us down with; it is a recognition that relationships are so important that, as people of prayer (and as people who seek a closer relationship with God), we should do everything possible to heal our broken relationships with others.
Perhaps you can see why, from another perspective, Jesus tells us to pray, "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtor." Prayer ultimately is about one thing: unity. That means oneness and healed relationships. We can't compartmentalize, hoping to get right with God and not try to get right with others. It's not so much that it is wrong it’s just doesn't make sense.
God by the Back Door
There is one more practical result from praying for and seeking reconciliation. Jesus notes it toward the end of his prayer. Speaking of his disciples, he says, "I have given them the glory [that is, the power and honor] you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are I in them and you in me, all being perfected into one. Then the world will know that you sent me and will understand that you love them as much as you love me" (vv. 22, 23).
One thing that people of prayer begin to enjoy more and more is a loving relationship with God. They experience love as they've never known it. Naturally, they want others to enjoy this experience, but just telling others about it often makes little impact. Outsiders tend to think of Christians as people who just happen to be "into religion"; they have no clue that what we experience is something they can experience as well.
Jesus assumes that the godly love we experience in prayer is the same love that reconciled people experience. If people become one and especially if people become one with God as they become one with one another this is what will impress others. This is what will help others glimpse the larger reality of the love that surrounds them.
A treasurer in a church in northern Illinois recently embezzled over $100,000 from the church's building fund. When the church board discovered it, many members were furious. But taking the Bible as his cue, the pastor tried to combine justice with mercy, insisting that the man pay the church back while encouraging reconciliation between him and angry members. A few weeks after the discovery, after a plan of repayment had begun, the pastor held a service in which the man publicly asked for forgiveness. Afterwards, many of the people who had been angry with him came up and embraced him. Tears flowed freely. For members and visitors alike, it was very moving service, demonstrating the healing power of the gospel of love.
Mending relationships it’s hard to imagine that there's anything more vital to pray about.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
HANDLING FEAR
Handling Fear
Fear is a constant. We fear losing our jobs. We fear failing. We fear losing loved ones. We fear not having enough money in retirement. We fear dying. And on it goes.
For some of us, these fears lie beneath the surface of our lives and erupt, volcano-like, only periodically but when they do erupt, they can paralyze us. For others of us, every morning we wake with a sense of dread of what might go wrong.
This is why fear is such a big theme in the Bible and why it is such a common topic of prayer. Moses' encounter with God early in his life (in Exodus 3 and 4) has much to teach us about how to pray through our fears.
Holy Ground
Before Moses became a powerful political and military leader, he was a shepherd. One day as he was tending his sheep near the wilderness of Sinai, he saw something strange: a bush that was engulfed in flames and yet was not consumed. This naturally aroused his curiosity, so he drew nearer. When he did, he heard a voice: ''Moses! Moses!"
Stunned no doubt, he replied, "Here I am."
"Do not come any closer," the voice said. "Take off your sandals, for you are standing on holy ground."
The reader, of course, is tipped off at the beginning about what is going on. It is "an angel of the Lord" who is appearing to Moses in the burning bush, and the voice is that of the Lord. For our purposes, the story illustrates again the varied ways in which God chooses to meet us.
With Abraham, God came to him through a chance encounter with passing travelers. With Moses, he came through creation. Again, we need to be ready to pray, to dialogue with God, at any moment not just in our living rooms, not just in church, not just with people but also when no one's around and we're in the middle of nowhere. Wherever we meet God, it is "holy ground “a special place where extraordinary things may happen.
There is usually something appropriate about the way God chooses to meet us. Abraham was approached through human agents, as if to accent that it was flesh-and-blood humanity who lived in Sodom and Gomorrah and that real people were under the threat of punishment. We might wonder if Abraham's concern for those cities was heightened by the fact that he had encountered God in human form.
Moses met God in nature, where God's incomparable power and beauty are found. It's as if God was trying to accent his ability to conquer Moses' fears. Too bad it never really worked.
God's Family History
The voice finally identified itself to Moses: "I am the God of your ancestors the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob."
In other words, "I have a history with you and your family." God had met, comforted, guided, inspired, and sustained Moses' extended "family," the Israelites. Thus Moses stood in a tradition that had a special relationship with God.
So it wasn't as if Moses was encountering a stranger. Because he knew his people's history, he knew something about the history of this God. He knew that God was just, gracious, and powerful. He knew that God was God, which is why the Exodus writer notes, "When Moses heard this, he hid his face in his hands because he was afraid to look at God."
This is a key aspect of prayer that we've touched on only briefly. Our history-impaired age is fascinated with the latest craze, and most things like fashions or computers a year old are considered ancient and not worth bothering about. This is a disastrous attitude to take into prayer, in which we would hanker after novel spiritual experiences or practices; this addiction to the new and different robs us of much wisdom and strength that prayer can impart.
Instead, we can pray to a God who has met, comforted, guided, inspired, and sustained people for centuries. We can read their stories and pray their prayers and find rich resources for our lives today. We aren't the first generation that is attacked by fears that threaten to overwhelm us. And the God who helped our forefathers, is the God who meets us today.
God Knows Our Suffering
The story continues: "Then the Lord told him, 'You can be sure I have seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard their cries for deliverance from their harsh slave drivers. Yes, I am aware of their suffering."
This is one of the most profound truths of prayer, and yet it is one of the hardest to believe sometimes. God does indeed care about our suffering, but when we are forced to endure pain for months or years without relief, we doubt that God cares. We even doubt that God exists.
This is why the Bible never tires of reminding of this the "good news about Jesus Christ" is that he is the definitive expression of God's care for us. The New Testament author of the Book of Hebrews put it this way:
We have a great High Priest who has gone to heaven, Jesus, the Son of God. Let us cling to him and never stop trusting him. This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same temptations we do, yet he did not sin. So, let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it.
Though this might be clearer to us today, it was not all that clear to Moses.
Telling God Like It Is
After the Lord told Moses of his concern for his people, he added this: "I have come to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and lead them out of Egypt to their own good and spacious land."
All well and good, thought Moses, until the Lord continued: "Now go, for I am sending you to Pharaoh. You will lead my people the Israelites out of Egypt."
At this, Moses panicked. "But who am I to appear before Pharaoh? How can you expect me to lead the Israelites out of Egypt?"
A natural enough reaction, we might think, except for a few facts. Moses had been raised in the house of Pharaoh, so he knew something about the halls of power and how to manage himself in that world. He had already committed murder in defending an Israelite who was being brutalized, so he obviously had courage to act boldly. And he clearly had some innate leadership gifts because, in fact, he did become Israel's greatest leader.
At this point, though, Moses was not aware of those experiences and gifts. He was instead overwhelmed with fear. He was acting very much as we do when faced with a new situation.
What exactly was he afraid of? It's hard to say, but three things come to mind immediately:
1. Responsibility. Responsibility is a burden. It's the thing that gets you in the office early and makes you stay late. It keeps you up at night with worry. It makes you cautious because the success and possible failure of others depends on you. And when you're responsible for others, it makes you care and hurt more than is comfortable. Tending a few sheep in a wilderness far removed from the politics of Egypt is about all the responsibility Moses wanted.
2. Failure. Closely related is the fear of failure. We like to think of ourselves as competent individuals, people who can do what's asked of us and do it well. When given an opportunity to do something grand, most of us panic because we're afraid we'll fail. This is Moses.
3. Making a fool of yourself. This covers a lot of ground; we spend lots of time and money making sure we won't appear foolish. We buy the right clothes and drive the right car and learn to say the right things so that we will fit it.
This is why the fear of public speaking (which we'll soon see is one theme in this story) is the greatest fear, rated higher by Americans than even death. If we die, we don't have to face the scrutiny of others. If we goof up speaking in front of others, we still have to step down from the podium and walk among those who may be snickering at us.
The point is this: Fear comes in many forms and plagues us in a variety of ways. Moses refused to put on a pious act ( "Yes, Lord, if you want me to lead the people, I will") but instead blurted out exactly how he was feeling: "How can you expect me to lead the Israelites out of Egypt?"
Meeting God at Every Excuse
Here's where the prayer Moses' dialogue with God gets interesting because Moses refused to be comforted. He was so overwhelmed with fear that he simply would not let God help him deal with his fears.
To Moses' initial objection, God replied, "I will be with you."
To this Moses said, "If I go to the people of Israel and tell them, 'The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,' they won't believe me. They will ask, 'Which god are you talking about? What is his name?' Then what should I tell them?"
To which God replied, "I Am the One Who Always Is. Just tell them 'I Am has sent me to you.'"
Moses protested again: "Look, they won't believe me! They won't do what I tell them. They'll just say, 'The Lord never appeared to you.'"
Seeing that Moses doubted his own abilities, God decided to do something miraculous as if speaking out of a burning bush wasn't enough. But God had to do more, so he helped Moses himself perform a couple of miracles.
First he ordered Moses to throw his shepherd's staff to the ground. The writer of Exodus records, "So Moses threw it to the ground, and it became a snake!"
Moses' reaction? "Moses was terrified, so he turned and ran away." God brought Moses back and convinced him to grab the snake, whereupon he found himself holding his staff again.
Knowing that selling Moses on leadership would be tough, the Lord got Moses to perform another miracle still: Moses was able to make his hand become leprous and then clean.
And as if this were not enough, God told Moses that if he took water from the Nile River and poured it on the ground, the water would turn into blood.
At this point, Moses was nearly checkmated. He knew that if he were to do these sorts of things in front of the Israelites or Pharaoh, they'd be inclined to believe his claims. But fear still ruled the heart of Moses, and he made one last desperate attempt to squirm out of his new job: "O Lord, I'm just not a good speaker. I never have been and I'm not now, even after you have spoken to me. I'm clumsy with words."
The writer of Exodus suggests that at this point, God becomes a bit impatient: "Who makes mouths? Who makes people so they can speak or not speak, hear or not hear, see or not see? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go, and do as I have told you. I will help you speak well, and I will tell you what to say."
That should have settled it. God does seem capable of doing that sort of thing. But a frightened Moses would have none of it: "Lord, please! Send someone else."
The story concludes, "Then the Lord became angry with Moses. 'All right,' he said. 'What about your brother Aaron, the Levite? He is a good speaker. . . . You talk to him, giving him the words to say. I will help both of you to speak clearly, and I will tell you what to do.'"
Checkmate. Moses could think of nothing more to say.
God's Failure
Moses failed the interview with flying colors. He had the opportunity to become a pious man of great faith. Instead, he was forced to slink away a defeated and reluctant leader.
If Moses failed his test, so did God. He brought to bear as much power and wonder as would seem necessary to convince a mortal, but Moses refused to be convinced. It is fear that wins the day, not God.
Then again. . . .
God has a funny way of appearing defeated only to come out the victor in the end Jesus on the cross is but the supreme instance. In this case, when we take the long view, we see something different than the failure of Moses. What we read as we continue is a story of Moses' remarkable leadership, his great courage, his keen insight, and his heroic sacrifice. He becomes, in short, not merely an extraordinary leader of the people of Israel, but one of the greatest men in human history.
The lesson in prayer is simple: Our fears are not to be shoved down in the name of faith or piety. Our fears should be expressed frankly, persistently, and honestly to God. He is so gracious that he will respond to each and every objection, changing his very will to accommodate our petty concerns. In the end, you see, he is working with us to develop us, to help us blossom into the people he has created us to be, fulfilling the life purposes he wants us to fulfill.
The path to those ends, though, is through honest and, yes, fearless prayer before God. If he can transform a coward like Moses, surely he can work with us.
Fear is a constant. We fear losing our jobs. We fear failing. We fear losing loved ones. We fear not having enough money in retirement. We fear dying. And on it goes.
For some of us, these fears lie beneath the surface of our lives and erupt, volcano-like, only periodically but when they do erupt, they can paralyze us. For others of us, every morning we wake with a sense of dread of what might go wrong.
This is why fear is such a big theme in the Bible and why it is such a common topic of prayer. Moses' encounter with God early in his life (in Exodus 3 and 4) has much to teach us about how to pray through our fears.
Holy Ground
Before Moses became a powerful political and military leader, he was a shepherd. One day as he was tending his sheep near the wilderness of Sinai, he saw something strange: a bush that was engulfed in flames and yet was not consumed. This naturally aroused his curiosity, so he drew nearer. When he did, he heard a voice: ''Moses! Moses!"
Stunned no doubt, he replied, "Here I am."
"Do not come any closer," the voice said. "Take off your sandals, for you are standing on holy ground."
The reader, of course, is tipped off at the beginning about what is going on. It is "an angel of the Lord" who is appearing to Moses in the burning bush, and the voice is that of the Lord. For our purposes, the story illustrates again the varied ways in which God chooses to meet us.
With Abraham, God came to him through a chance encounter with passing travelers. With Moses, he came through creation. Again, we need to be ready to pray, to dialogue with God, at any moment not just in our living rooms, not just in church, not just with people but also when no one's around and we're in the middle of nowhere. Wherever we meet God, it is "holy ground “a special place where extraordinary things may happen.
There is usually something appropriate about the way God chooses to meet us. Abraham was approached through human agents, as if to accent that it was flesh-and-blood humanity who lived in Sodom and Gomorrah and that real people were under the threat of punishment. We might wonder if Abraham's concern for those cities was heightened by the fact that he had encountered God in human form.
Moses met God in nature, where God's incomparable power and beauty are found. It's as if God was trying to accent his ability to conquer Moses' fears. Too bad it never really worked.
God's Family History
The voice finally identified itself to Moses: "I am the God of your ancestors the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob."
In other words, "I have a history with you and your family." God had met, comforted, guided, inspired, and sustained Moses' extended "family," the Israelites. Thus Moses stood in a tradition that had a special relationship with God.
So it wasn't as if Moses was encountering a stranger. Because he knew his people's history, he knew something about the history of this God. He knew that God was just, gracious, and powerful. He knew that God was God, which is why the Exodus writer notes, "When Moses heard this, he hid his face in his hands because he was afraid to look at God."
This is a key aspect of prayer that we've touched on only briefly. Our history-impaired age is fascinated with the latest craze, and most things like fashions or computers a year old are considered ancient and not worth bothering about. This is a disastrous attitude to take into prayer, in which we would hanker after novel spiritual experiences or practices; this addiction to the new and different robs us of much wisdom and strength that prayer can impart.
Instead, we can pray to a God who has met, comforted, guided, inspired, and sustained people for centuries. We can read their stories and pray their prayers and find rich resources for our lives today. We aren't the first generation that is attacked by fears that threaten to overwhelm us. And the God who helped our forefathers, is the God who meets us today.
God Knows Our Suffering
The story continues: "Then the Lord told him, 'You can be sure I have seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard their cries for deliverance from their harsh slave drivers. Yes, I am aware of their suffering."
This is one of the most profound truths of prayer, and yet it is one of the hardest to believe sometimes. God does indeed care about our suffering, but when we are forced to endure pain for months or years without relief, we doubt that God cares. We even doubt that God exists.
This is why the Bible never tires of reminding of this the "good news about Jesus Christ" is that he is the definitive expression of God's care for us. The New Testament author of the Book of Hebrews put it this way:
We have a great High Priest who has gone to heaven, Jesus, the Son of God. Let us cling to him and never stop trusting him. This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same temptations we do, yet he did not sin. So, let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it.
Though this might be clearer to us today, it was not all that clear to Moses.
Telling God Like It Is
After the Lord told Moses of his concern for his people, he added this: "I have come to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and lead them out of Egypt to their own good and spacious land."
All well and good, thought Moses, until the Lord continued: "Now go, for I am sending you to Pharaoh. You will lead my people the Israelites out of Egypt."
At this, Moses panicked. "But who am I to appear before Pharaoh? How can you expect me to lead the Israelites out of Egypt?"
A natural enough reaction, we might think, except for a few facts. Moses had been raised in the house of Pharaoh, so he knew something about the halls of power and how to manage himself in that world. He had already committed murder in defending an Israelite who was being brutalized, so he obviously had courage to act boldly. And he clearly had some innate leadership gifts because, in fact, he did become Israel's greatest leader.
At this point, though, Moses was not aware of those experiences and gifts. He was instead overwhelmed with fear. He was acting very much as we do when faced with a new situation.
What exactly was he afraid of? It's hard to say, but three things come to mind immediately:
1. Responsibility. Responsibility is a burden. It's the thing that gets you in the office early and makes you stay late. It keeps you up at night with worry. It makes you cautious because the success and possible failure of others depends on you. And when you're responsible for others, it makes you care and hurt more than is comfortable. Tending a few sheep in a wilderness far removed from the politics of Egypt is about all the responsibility Moses wanted.
2. Failure. Closely related is the fear of failure. We like to think of ourselves as competent individuals, people who can do what's asked of us and do it well. When given an opportunity to do something grand, most of us panic because we're afraid we'll fail. This is Moses.
3. Making a fool of yourself. This covers a lot of ground; we spend lots of time and money making sure we won't appear foolish. We buy the right clothes and drive the right car and learn to say the right things so that we will fit it.
This is why the fear of public speaking (which we'll soon see is one theme in this story) is the greatest fear, rated higher by Americans than even death. If we die, we don't have to face the scrutiny of others. If we goof up speaking in front of others, we still have to step down from the podium and walk among those who may be snickering at us.
The point is this: Fear comes in many forms and plagues us in a variety of ways. Moses refused to put on a pious act ( "Yes, Lord, if you want me to lead the people, I will") but instead blurted out exactly how he was feeling: "How can you expect me to lead the Israelites out of Egypt?"
Meeting God at Every Excuse
Here's where the prayer Moses' dialogue with God gets interesting because Moses refused to be comforted. He was so overwhelmed with fear that he simply would not let God help him deal with his fears.
To Moses' initial objection, God replied, "I will be with you."
To this Moses said, "If I go to the people of Israel and tell them, 'The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,' they won't believe me. They will ask, 'Which god are you talking about? What is his name?' Then what should I tell them?"
To which God replied, "I Am the One Who Always Is. Just tell them 'I Am has sent me to you.'"
Moses protested again: "Look, they won't believe me! They won't do what I tell them. They'll just say, 'The Lord never appeared to you.'"
Seeing that Moses doubted his own abilities, God decided to do something miraculous as if speaking out of a burning bush wasn't enough. But God had to do more, so he helped Moses himself perform a couple of miracles.
First he ordered Moses to throw his shepherd's staff to the ground. The writer of Exodus records, "So Moses threw it to the ground, and it became a snake!"
Moses' reaction? "Moses was terrified, so he turned and ran away." God brought Moses back and convinced him to grab the snake, whereupon he found himself holding his staff again.
Knowing that selling Moses on leadership would be tough, the Lord got Moses to perform another miracle still: Moses was able to make his hand become leprous and then clean.
And as if this were not enough, God told Moses that if he took water from the Nile River and poured it on the ground, the water would turn into blood.
At this point, Moses was nearly checkmated. He knew that if he were to do these sorts of things in front of the Israelites or Pharaoh, they'd be inclined to believe his claims. But fear still ruled the heart of Moses, and he made one last desperate attempt to squirm out of his new job: "O Lord, I'm just not a good speaker. I never have been and I'm not now, even after you have spoken to me. I'm clumsy with words."
The writer of Exodus suggests that at this point, God becomes a bit impatient: "Who makes mouths? Who makes people so they can speak or not speak, hear or not hear, see or not see? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go, and do as I have told you. I will help you speak well, and I will tell you what to say."
That should have settled it. God does seem capable of doing that sort of thing. But a frightened Moses would have none of it: "Lord, please! Send someone else."
The story concludes, "Then the Lord became angry with Moses. 'All right,' he said. 'What about your brother Aaron, the Levite? He is a good speaker. . . . You talk to him, giving him the words to say. I will help both of you to speak clearly, and I will tell you what to do.'"
Checkmate. Moses could think of nothing more to say.
God's Failure
Moses failed the interview with flying colors. He had the opportunity to become a pious man of great faith. Instead, he was forced to slink away a defeated and reluctant leader.
If Moses failed his test, so did God. He brought to bear as much power and wonder as would seem necessary to convince a mortal, but Moses refused to be convinced. It is fear that wins the day, not God.
Then again. . . .
God has a funny way of appearing defeated only to come out the victor in the end Jesus on the cross is but the supreme instance. In this case, when we take the long view, we see something different than the failure of Moses. What we read as we continue is a story of Moses' remarkable leadership, his great courage, his keen insight, and his heroic sacrifice. He becomes, in short, not merely an extraordinary leader of the people of Israel, but one of the greatest men in human history.
The lesson in prayer is simple: Our fears are not to be shoved down in the name of faith or piety. Our fears should be expressed frankly, persistently, and honestly to God. He is so gracious that he will respond to each and every objection, changing his very will to accommodate our petty concerns. In the end, you see, he is working with us to develop us, to help us blossom into the people he has created us to be, fulfilling the life purposes he wants us to fulfill.
The path to those ends, though, is through honest and, yes, fearless prayer before God. If he can transform a coward like Moses, surely he can work with us.
SHAPING THE FUTURE
Shaping the Future
It's time to get more specific now. Instead of looking at entire sections of the Bible to see how they can enhance prayer, for the next few chapters, we'll focus on some of the most well-known prayers of the Bible. This will help us see how dynamic and varied prayer can be, and it will teach us better how to pray through a variety of issues that most concern us.
We begin with one of the most common human concerns and one of the earliest biblical prayers. This concern has to do with the shape of the future: Is God's will set in stone? What role do we play in shaping our future? Do we simply submit to God's plan, or do we help shape it? This is something that a man named Abraham had to figure out. His encounter with God as recorded in Genesis 18 is one of the most humorous and instructive encounters in the Bible.
Subtle Arrival
The story begins innocently enough: "One day about noon, as Abraham was sitting at the entrance to his tent, he suddenly noticed three men standing nearby."
Abraham greeted his visitors and, with impeccable Middle Eastern manners, offered them hospitality: "Rest in the shade of this tree while my servants get some water to wash your feet," he said. "Let me prepare some food to refresh you. Please stay a while before continuing on your journey."
What Abraham didn't know at that moment was that he was entertaining the Lord. We readers are let in on the secret right away, though. The writer helps us understand right off that "the Lord appeared again to Abraham while he was camped near the oak grove belonging to Mamre" (about 17 miles south of Jerusalem). As the story unfolds, though, it becomes clearer to Abraham: "The men said" and "the Lord said" are used interchangeably, and we are given to understand that in some mysterious way, God appeared to Abraham through these Bedouin visitors.
This is a key point in prayer. Prayer is an encounter with God, and as such, it is not confined to those private moments when we are bowed in prayer. God will come to meet us at the oddest times in the middle of the day while we're daydreaming outside our tents and in the most mundane forms, such as through other people.
Early in college, I believed I had received a "call" to become a minister, so to get myself ready for ministry, I volunteered to help lead a variety of activities in my church becoming a sponsor for the junior high program, helping lead the college group, and so on. As the demands of the activities increased, and as my personal resources became depleted, I sank into discouragement. In anger and despair one day, I resigned all my church responsibilities and determined to do nothing more until I had clear direction from God.
A few months later, I was approached by some Christian friends at college, and out of the blue they asked if I would lead a Bible study held on campus. This came as a shock because I had only begun attending this Bible study and had made it a point to not get more involved than that. The timing, the request, and some inner sense convinced me then as it does today that God came to me in these friends and spoke to me.
The encounter, naturally, was ambiguous. No halos floated above my friends' heads, and their voices didn't boom majestically. But it was clear to me as I reflected and prayed about their request that this was nothing less than the voice of God to me. I tell this story not to say that I'm special, but only because it is so typical of many people's encounters with God. God does meet us outside of our prayer time, so all of life becomes material for prayer.
God's Chosen = Us!
Let's take up our story of Abraham again.
Then the men got up from their meal and started on toward Sodom. Abraham went with them part of the way.
"Should I hide my plan from Abraham?" the Lord asked. "For Abraham will become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth will be blessed through him. I have singled him out so that he will direct his sons and their families to keep the way of the Lord and do what is right and just."
First, note again the identification of these men with "the Lord." Second, note the special relationship of Abraham and God: Abraham is specially chosen of God to be a "blessing" to others, to be an instrument of God's love and grace.
"Why Abraham?" is the question that naturally arises, and a host of others soon follow. Rather than step into that theological minefield, let's take the long view: God's choosing Abraham was only the first step in his choosing all humankind, which according to Christian teachings, is what happened when Christ lived and died for us. For us today, the issue is not why Abraham was chosen, but why we are chosen to carry God's blessing to others.
Actually, even that is not the question: We're chosen because God is gracious. We certainly haven't done anything to deserve such a role in history. And yet, here we are.
This is, to say the least, a helpful perspective to enter into prayer with. We are not outsiders who must plead for an audience, but people who already have a special place in God's heart. We are sons and daughters, not strangers.
From time to time, children come knocking at my door, selling things such as peanut brittle or tickets to a pancake breakfast to raise money for Boy Scouts, Little League, or whatever. They usually make their pitch hesitantly, cautiously, without a lot of confidence that I'll buy from them.
When my youngest daughter approaches me about buying Girl Scout cookies, however, she's not only confident, but she almost demands that I buy them. The difference, of course, is that she is my daughter and has a special relationship with me. She feels free, therefore, to be more bold with me.
This is not unlike our relationship with God. We come as his children, and so we can be bold.
When God debated whether to let Abraham in on his divine plans, this isn't just telling of his particular relationship with Abraham. This is a literary device to show that God had the option of not letting Abrahamor us in on the deal. But biblical history shows that time and again he has let us in.
This is an illustration of the biblical belief that we can shape the future through our prayers which is what we come to next.
At a Board Meeting with God
The story continues:
So the Lord told Abraham, "I have heard that the people of Sodom and Gomorrah are extremely evil, and that everything they do is wicked. I am going down to see whether or not these reports are true."
The upshot, the writer suggests, is that God planned to destroy Sodom and Gomorrahand every last person in them. Abraham was horrified, and the ensuing dialogue has always struck me as one of the more humorous passages of the Bible.
Abraham reproached him and said, "Will you destroy both innocent and guilty alike? Suppose you find 50 innocent people there within the city will you still destroy it, and not spare it for their sakes? Surely you wouldn't do such a thing, destroying the innocent with the guilty exactly the same. Surely you wouldn't do that! Should the judge of all the earth do what is right?"
And the Lord replied, "If I find 50 innocent people in Sodom, I will spare the entire city for their sake."
Then Abraham spoke again. "Since I have begun, let me go on and speak further to my Lord, even though I am but dust and ashes. Suppose there are only 45? Will you destroy the city for lack of five?"
And the Lord said, "I will not destroy it if I find 45."
Then Abraham pressed his request further. "Suppose there are only 40?"
And the Lord replied, "I will not destroy it if there are 40."
"Please don't be angry, my Lord," Abraham pleaded. "Let me speak suppose only 30 are found?"
And the Lord replied, "I will not destroy it if there are 30."
Then Abraham said, "Since I have dared to speak to the Lord, let me continue suppose there are only 20?"
And the Lord said, "Then I will not destroy it for the sake of the 20."
Finally, Abraham said, "Lord, please do not get angry; I will speak but once more! Suppose only 10 are found there?"
And the Lord said, "For the sake of the 10, I will not destroy it."
Then the Lord went on his way when he had finished his conversation with Abraham, and Abraham returned to his tent.
This story illustrates God's "flexibility" regarding his will for the planet. (In fact, according to Genesis, God could not even find 10 faithful, so Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed.) Maybe we cannot alter God's plans completely, but like Abraham, we can influence it in significant ways. This means our own future what happens at our jobs, in our families, in our neighborhood, and even what happens in our nation.
One big difference between Abraham's story and ours is this: We often don't have a vivid conversation in which we see the future and its paths before us. Nor can we easily tell what exact difference our prayers make. It's like asking what would have happened if Ronald Reagan had not been elected president. We know what history was like with him as president, but we can only guess what it would have been like if Walter Mondale had been elected. At one level, we know that our one little vote didn't make a difference. At another level, every little vote for Ronald Reagan did.
At an even more profound level, my little prayer doesn't seem to make a difference, and yet it does. The biblical teaching is that it alters the future, though we cannot say exactly how the future would have been without our prayers. This is a rather sobering idea: God is not merely in the business of running the planet, but he invites us to help him run it. As such, he lets us in on his larger plan and then as we'll see in a moment allows us to help shape that plan.
This naturally changes the setting of prayer. Honest prayer will always be about my world and my personal concerns. But here we see that it is much larger than that. We are not only coming before a loving father with our personal needs in prayer, but we are also sitting in a board meeting in which our future and even the future of the planet is being discussed.
Thy Will Be Done My Way
This dialogue also illustrates another point: "Thy will be done" is the last prayer we pray, not the first. Ultimately, we're concerned about aligning our wills with God's, and when God seems intent on letting things take a certain course, we should submit as gracefully as we can. But in the meantime, we're free to argue, gripe, complain, wrestle, and fight with God. That is prayer at its most dynamic.
As we have noted again and again, prayer is conversation with God, the means of conducting a dynamic relationship and an honest relationship. Abraham questions the great Judge's very sense of justice and keeps pursuing him until he gets a satisfactory answer.
In his book Daring to Draw Near: People in Prayer, writer John White says this: "You cannot have a relationship with God without standing, at one time or another, precisely where Abraham stood." He goes on to explain his own dismay at various biblical incidents: one where God is said to have killed a man for simply touching the chest that held the Ten Commandments (2 Samuel 6:6).
"I remember kneeling on the boards of an old church hall, begging God to show me that he was not the God of 2 Samuel 6. How could I preach his saving mercy if he were in fact a petulant tyrant?
"I was frightened both by what I seemed to be seeing and by my own temerity in daring to judge the judge of the universe. Lord, how could you be like that? And his answer has always been to show me more of himself than I had seen before, so that my tears and perplexity gave way to awe and to worship."
True submission to God comes not by blindly and naively accepting whatever happens, but by working through your thoughts and emotions honestly and persistently with the one you both question and want to submit to.
At any rate, these are but some of the riches this dynamic prayer yields. It is well worth many a morning's meditation.
It's time to get more specific now. Instead of looking at entire sections of the Bible to see how they can enhance prayer, for the next few chapters, we'll focus on some of the most well-known prayers of the Bible. This will help us see how dynamic and varied prayer can be, and it will teach us better how to pray through a variety of issues that most concern us.
We begin with one of the most common human concerns and one of the earliest biblical prayers. This concern has to do with the shape of the future: Is God's will set in stone? What role do we play in shaping our future? Do we simply submit to God's plan, or do we help shape it? This is something that a man named Abraham had to figure out. His encounter with God as recorded in Genesis 18 is one of the most humorous and instructive encounters in the Bible.
Subtle Arrival
The story begins innocently enough: "One day about noon, as Abraham was sitting at the entrance to his tent, he suddenly noticed three men standing nearby."
Abraham greeted his visitors and, with impeccable Middle Eastern manners, offered them hospitality: "Rest in the shade of this tree while my servants get some water to wash your feet," he said. "Let me prepare some food to refresh you. Please stay a while before continuing on your journey."
What Abraham didn't know at that moment was that he was entertaining the Lord. We readers are let in on the secret right away, though. The writer helps us understand right off that "the Lord appeared again to Abraham while he was camped near the oak grove belonging to Mamre" (about 17 miles south of Jerusalem). As the story unfolds, though, it becomes clearer to Abraham: "The men said" and "the Lord said" are used interchangeably, and we are given to understand that in some mysterious way, God appeared to Abraham through these Bedouin visitors.
This is a key point in prayer. Prayer is an encounter with God, and as such, it is not confined to those private moments when we are bowed in prayer. God will come to meet us at the oddest times in the middle of the day while we're daydreaming outside our tents and in the most mundane forms, such as through other people.
Early in college, I believed I had received a "call" to become a minister, so to get myself ready for ministry, I volunteered to help lead a variety of activities in my church becoming a sponsor for the junior high program, helping lead the college group, and so on. As the demands of the activities increased, and as my personal resources became depleted, I sank into discouragement. In anger and despair one day, I resigned all my church responsibilities and determined to do nothing more until I had clear direction from God.
A few months later, I was approached by some Christian friends at college, and out of the blue they asked if I would lead a Bible study held on campus. This came as a shock because I had only begun attending this Bible study and had made it a point to not get more involved than that. The timing, the request, and some inner sense convinced me then as it does today that God came to me in these friends and spoke to me.
The encounter, naturally, was ambiguous. No halos floated above my friends' heads, and their voices didn't boom majestically. But it was clear to me as I reflected and prayed about their request that this was nothing less than the voice of God to me. I tell this story not to say that I'm special, but only because it is so typical of many people's encounters with God. God does meet us outside of our prayer time, so all of life becomes material for prayer.
God's Chosen = Us!
Let's take up our story of Abraham again.
Then the men got up from their meal and started on toward Sodom. Abraham went with them part of the way.
"Should I hide my plan from Abraham?" the Lord asked. "For Abraham will become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth will be blessed through him. I have singled him out so that he will direct his sons and their families to keep the way of the Lord and do what is right and just."
First, note again the identification of these men with "the Lord." Second, note the special relationship of Abraham and God: Abraham is specially chosen of God to be a "blessing" to others, to be an instrument of God's love and grace.
"Why Abraham?" is the question that naturally arises, and a host of others soon follow. Rather than step into that theological minefield, let's take the long view: God's choosing Abraham was only the first step in his choosing all humankind, which according to Christian teachings, is what happened when Christ lived and died for us. For us today, the issue is not why Abraham was chosen, but why we are chosen to carry God's blessing to others.
Actually, even that is not the question: We're chosen because God is gracious. We certainly haven't done anything to deserve such a role in history. And yet, here we are.
This is, to say the least, a helpful perspective to enter into prayer with. We are not outsiders who must plead for an audience, but people who already have a special place in God's heart. We are sons and daughters, not strangers.
From time to time, children come knocking at my door, selling things such as peanut brittle or tickets to a pancake breakfast to raise money for Boy Scouts, Little League, or whatever. They usually make their pitch hesitantly, cautiously, without a lot of confidence that I'll buy from them.
When my youngest daughter approaches me about buying Girl Scout cookies, however, she's not only confident, but she almost demands that I buy them. The difference, of course, is that she is my daughter and has a special relationship with me. She feels free, therefore, to be more bold with me.
This is not unlike our relationship with God. We come as his children, and so we can be bold.
When God debated whether to let Abraham in on his divine plans, this isn't just telling of his particular relationship with Abraham. This is a literary device to show that God had the option of not letting Abrahamor us in on the deal. But biblical history shows that time and again he has let us in.
This is an illustration of the biblical belief that we can shape the future through our prayers which is what we come to next.
At a Board Meeting with God
The story continues:
So the Lord told Abraham, "I have heard that the people of Sodom and Gomorrah are extremely evil, and that everything they do is wicked. I am going down to see whether or not these reports are true."
The upshot, the writer suggests, is that God planned to destroy Sodom and Gomorrahand every last person in them. Abraham was horrified, and the ensuing dialogue has always struck me as one of the more humorous passages of the Bible.
Abraham reproached him and said, "Will you destroy both innocent and guilty alike? Suppose you find 50 innocent people there within the city will you still destroy it, and not spare it for their sakes? Surely you wouldn't do such a thing, destroying the innocent with the guilty exactly the same. Surely you wouldn't do that! Should the judge of all the earth do what is right?"
And the Lord replied, "If I find 50 innocent people in Sodom, I will spare the entire city for their sake."
Then Abraham spoke again. "Since I have begun, let me go on and speak further to my Lord, even though I am but dust and ashes. Suppose there are only 45? Will you destroy the city for lack of five?"
And the Lord said, "I will not destroy it if I find 45."
Then Abraham pressed his request further. "Suppose there are only 40?"
And the Lord replied, "I will not destroy it if there are 40."
"Please don't be angry, my Lord," Abraham pleaded. "Let me speak suppose only 30 are found?"
And the Lord replied, "I will not destroy it if there are 30."
Then Abraham said, "Since I have dared to speak to the Lord, let me continue suppose there are only 20?"
And the Lord said, "Then I will not destroy it for the sake of the 20."
Finally, Abraham said, "Lord, please do not get angry; I will speak but once more! Suppose only 10 are found there?"
And the Lord said, "For the sake of the 10, I will not destroy it."
Then the Lord went on his way when he had finished his conversation with Abraham, and Abraham returned to his tent.
This story illustrates God's "flexibility" regarding his will for the planet. (In fact, according to Genesis, God could not even find 10 faithful, so Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed.) Maybe we cannot alter God's plans completely, but like Abraham, we can influence it in significant ways. This means our own future what happens at our jobs, in our families, in our neighborhood, and even what happens in our nation.
One big difference between Abraham's story and ours is this: We often don't have a vivid conversation in which we see the future and its paths before us. Nor can we easily tell what exact difference our prayers make. It's like asking what would have happened if Ronald Reagan had not been elected president. We know what history was like with him as president, but we can only guess what it would have been like if Walter Mondale had been elected. At one level, we know that our one little vote didn't make a difference. At another level, every little vote for Ronald Reagan did.
At an even more profound level, my little prayer doesn't seem to make a difference, and yet it does. The biblical teaching is that it alters the future, though we cannot say exactly how the future would have been without our prayers. This is a rather sobering idea: God is not merely in the business of running the planet, but he invites us to help him run it. As such, he lets us in on his larger plan and then as we'll see in a moment allows us to help shape that plan.
This naturally changes the setting of prayer. Honest prayer will always be about my world and my personal concerns. But here we see that it is much larger than that. We are not only coming before a loving father with our personal needs in prayer, but we are also sitting in a board meeting in which our future and even the future of the planet is being discussed.
Thy Will Be Done My Way
This dialogue also illustrates another point: "Thy will be done" is the last prayer we pray, not the first. Ultimately, we're concerned about aligning our wills with God's, and when God seems intent on letting things take a certain course, we should submit as gracefully as we can. But in the meantime, we're free to argue, gripe, complain, wrestle, and fight with God. That is prayer at its most dynamic.
As we have noted again and again, prayer is conversation with God, the means of conducting a dynamic relationship and an honest relationship. Abraham questions the great Judge's very sense of justice and keeps pursuing him until he gets a satisfactory answer.
In his book Daring to Draw Near: People in Prayer, writer John White says this: "You cannot have a relationship with God without standing, at one time or another, precisely where Abraham stood." He goes on to explain his own dismay at various biblical incidents: one where God is said to have killed a man for simply touching the chest that held the Ten Commandments (2 Samuel 6:6).
"I remember kneeling on the boards of an old church hall, begging God to show me that he was not the God of 2 Samuel 6. How could I preach his saving mercy if he were in fact a petulant tyrant?
"I was frightened both by what I seemed to be seeing and by my own temerity in daring to judge the judge of the universe. Lord, how could you be like that? And his answer has always been to show me more of himself than I had seen before, so that my tears and perplexity gave way to awe and to worship."
True submission to God comes not by blindly and naively accepting whatever happens, but by working through your thoughts and emotions honestly and persistently with the one you both question and want to submit to.
At any rate, these are but some of the riches this dynamic prayer yields. It is well worth many a morning's meditation.
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