Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Prayer

  • Fervent Prayer and Praying in the Spirit

    Dave Black provides an extract from his forthcoming book on the Seven Marks of a New Testament Church. In it, he refers to praying in the Spirit, noting that some exegetes say this refers to praying in tongues. He doesn’t deny that possibility but says it is broader than that.

    While I believe that praying in tongues is praying in the Spirit, “praying in the Spirit” is not a category of prayer, in that one might pray “in” and “out” of the Spirit in some way. Rather, it describes something that should be a characteristic of all prayer. There are those who elevate or diminish praying in tongues. On the one hand nobody, even the person praying, necessarily knows what a prayer in tongues is about. Is it not better that people hear the prayer? On the other hand, prayer in the Spirit is most definitely not under the conscious control of the one praying. Is it not better to be fully under the control of the Spirit of God?

    Actually prayer, and any spiritual discipline can be verbal or non-verbal. I find I hear most from the Lord when I’m reading Scripture. But often it is not the words, or at least not consciously the words, that bring peace or direction. Sometimes I just study and come to some decision or other that I needed to. Sometimes I merely feel my anxiety relieved, even though I may not have been reading. This morning I was helped to a place of peace (I was worrying about something I had no business worrying about) while reading Leviticus 23 in Hebrew. I cannot think of anything in that text that related to my situation.

    I would suggest that bringing the words of one’s prayer, when those words are spoken aloud and consciously, under the power of the Spirit is more difficult. It is definitely worth doing. But you won’t do it yourself. You can only hope and wait for the Holy Spirit to do it. And obey when He does!

  • Letting the Holy Spirit Teach

    I’ve been meditating a bit on letting the Holy Spirit be the teacher. There’s an interesting corollary to letting the Holy Spirit teach—letting other people learn.

    You see, what we often want to do is to “let” the Holy Spirit teach other people what we already know, and what we think they need to learn. If they don’t learn that fast enough, or heaven help them, if they don’t ever learn what we know, we’re likely to start questioning which spirit they’re listening to. Letting the Holy Spirit teach involves not just trusting God, but also trusting other people to be able to hear from God. I think we frequently trust the Holy Spirit just so long as he doesn’t slip his leash. By which, of course, we mean that he has failed to keep other people in the proper order as we see it.

    So I’m going to tell a story. This happened in 1999 just before I married Jody. I traveled to England with Perry Dalton and a fairly stellar group of speakers. (I’ll name Perry, but not try to list all the others.) We were to offer pastors’ conferences at a number of Methodist churches. I was very easily the least famous person on the team, and I didn’t figure I’d be doing all that much talking. Yes, there was the moment of pride when I told myself I had plenty of notes to use in speaking and I’d love to use them, but I reconciled myself to just going along. That wasn’t hard. After all, I was going to spend three weeks traveling all over England and Wales. What’s not to enjoy? Just for fun, I should mention that not a few of our friends suggested that I was getting cold feet about the upcoming wedding and had fled to Europe! But I came back, and Jody and I are coming up on our 14th anniversary this November.

    The first conference—and no, I don’t remember the name of the town—was quite a rousing event as I remember it, though my expectations about not speaking were fully realized. Until, that is, it was time for the closing meeting of the evening. Now those who read this and know Perry will be unsurprised at this. As the singing finished for the final meeting Perry comes up to me and says, “Get ready. You’re going to wrap this thing up.” Getting ready involved something like 30 seconds. So I got up and wrapped things up. I don’t remember a thing I said, and I believe I can safely say that nobody else does either.

    Then I closed with a prayer exercise I use. I invite people to begin in silence and listen for the Holy Spirit to direct them to somebody else in the room they should pray for. This exercise tends to scare conference leaders. They’re afraid of the chaos that might result, the crazy things people might do. And this fear is not unfounded. We’ve all encountered crazy people doing crazy things and blaming it all on the Holy Spirit. “God told me,” is often an excuse for the worst sort of silliness and abuse. On the other hand, I’ve done this many, many times, and have never regretted it.

    It went well that time as well. People prayed for one another. There were the inevitable questions for me from people who are concerned about the rules. What if the Holy Spirit tells two people to pray for the same person? What if I’m supposed to pray for more than one person? What if I’m supposed to sit in my seat and pray for everyone?

    Then it was over. Nothing spectacular.

    As we were about to close, an elderly gentleman asked to give a testimony. (Knowing Perry, he may have been calling for testimonies. I don’t really remember.) The gentleman was grinning from ear to ear. He was fairly bubbling with joy and excitement. Then he started to talk.

    He pointed to the first speaker. “I was reluctant to come here this morning,” he said, “but I did. I listened to your presentation, and I just about left. It did nothing for me.”

    He pointed to the second and told him that his had done nothing for him either. He was so joyful, however, that nobody could really take offense. He said at lunch time, he had almost decided not to return to the conference. He went through the list of afternoon speakers and said the same thing about each one.

    Then he said, pointing to me, “And you, young man, yours was all just rubbish to me too. It did nothing for me. But then you called for prayer. I was certain nothing was going to happen. I had a particular thing I wanted to hear about from the Lord, and I was sure this was going to be a failure. Then I felt someone put his hand on my shoulder and start to pray. It was my own pastor! I was disappointed. But then he started to pray, and I heard precisely what I’d been waiting to hear all day today and for a long time. The Lord sent all of you here all the way from America just so my pastor could pray for me!”

    The question, of course, is whether those of us called to teach can handle having what we say called rubbish, and being sent on intercontinental flights so God can use other people to do his work.

    Or is there too much pride?

     

  • I Know Less about Prayer than I Used To

    Today I extracted a paragraph from David Alan Black’s blog (I have his blanket permission), just so I could comment on it. He notes:

    I often ask myself, How can I write anything about prayer? I’ve still got so much to learn about it!

    I am in sympathy with his comment. My wife and I have taught seminars about prayer, and we’ve both written about it as well, both on our blogs and in print. But the more I’ve taught about prayer, the more convinced I’ve become is that the most important thing to do is to unlearn things that I think I already know. Communion with God is not something that can be reduced to science. You won’t have a good prayer life because you follow a formula, however complex and all-encompassing that formula may be.

    This doesn’t mean that you never learn anything from others. I’ve learned many things from others about prayer. Yet in most cases, that learning has involved unlearning something else, removing the limits that I have placed on the way God can and will work.

    Abraham had a mighty interesting prayer life. He argued with God about Sodom. When asked to sacrifice his son, he didn’t argue with God, and I wonder if he was supposed to have done so. He tried to lie his way through various situations, and God worked with him despite that. Abraham, of course, had no concise printed guides to how to pray. Amazing how well that worked.

    I’ll keep teaching about prayer. I may even write more about it. But at the same time, I hope what we all do is clear away all the barriers we have to just getting in touch with God.

    I look forward to seeing Dave’s chapter on prayer. I know the furnace in which it is being forged, and I expect the Lord to do great things through Dave’s pen (and keyboard).

  • On Hebrews 5:1-10 and Prayer

    I’m going to do something I almost never do on any of my blogs—re-post. But first a few comments.

    Hebrews 5:1-10 is the epistle lesson from this week’s lectionary. Hebrews has always held a special place in my heart (my study guide on it), because it is such beautiful prose bringing a very deep message. In addition, passages such as Hebrews 1:1-4 and 4:12-14 helped shape my views of scripture and my christology at the same time, and Hebrews 6 became a key passage at a pivotal point in my own experience. (This isn’t “book advertising” week, but I discuss that experience in my book Not Ashamed of the Gospel: Confessions of a Liberal Charismatic.)

    But one of the most critical passages for me has been this one, which has helped in developing my understanding of prayer and its value and purpose in the life of a Christian disciple.

    Since our son James died, Jody and I have found that the one thing most people want to hear about when we speak or teach is just how one lives through such a thing. How do you deal with the grief? How do you deal with the questions? Why would God let your child die while you were busy teaching about prayer?

    On this especially I must let Jody answer for herself. Each person’s walk with God in such a situation is individual. In many ways my answer is much like that in another of this week’s lectionary passages, Job 38. I don’t know why, but I know God. But then I also realize that I don’t even know God all that well, but I can still strive to know what surpasses knowledge and in that active relationship, I can withstand even the whirlwind.

    So herewith the re-posted post from May 3, 2007:

    7Who, in the days of his flesh, offered entreaties and petitions to the one who was able to save him from death with loud cries and tears, and he was heard because of his piety. 8Even though he was a son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered, 9and being made whole he became a means of eternal salvation to all those who obey him, 10since he was designated by God as a priest according to the priestly order of Melchizedek. — Hebrews 5:7-10

    I’m writing this on the national day of prayer. A “national” day of prayer makes me wonder just what we’re praying for and how. But it reminded me of a question I hear frequently: “Why should anyone pray if they’re not going to get what they pray for?” That question starts with a false premise. It assumes that you won’t. But since I believe that quite often you will not get what you pray for, I should give it consideration.

    In Hebrews 5:7-10, we have the statement that Jesus prayed. He prayed to “the one who was able to save him from death.” I presume such a prayer might have, and did, occur many times during his ministry, but likely this reference is primarily to his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.” He also placed that prayer under subjection to God’s will. Now if the text stopped in the middle of verse seven, we might imagine that the prayer of Jesus was not heard because he didn’t get what he was asking for.

    But the text explicitly says that Jesus was heard. And there is what’s hard for us to get hold of. Praying is not about getting stuff. Praying is about our communion with God. That’s why all these scientific tests about prayer and healing largely miss the mark. They’re interesting, but the can’t test prayer because prayer is not a means of getting things.

    What if the prayer of Jesus was counted in a scientific test? It would certainly go into the “failed” column. He didn’t get what he asked for. And yet he was heard, and what actually happened was better–in the end–than what he had requested. It happens that way because there’s a lot more knowledge on God’s end of the prayer than on mine.

    So a national day of prayer invites me to commune with God, and that is the only purpose I have to have. If I have communed with God, my prayer worked. The amazing thing is that I often would rather have God do it my way. I’m in touch with infinite power and infinite knowledge, but what I ask is that God use his infinite power to make things work the way I–oh so incredibly finite–want them to.

    One of the most blessed characteristics of this universe is that God doesn’t always answer our prayers in the way that we would prefer.

    Jesus was the great example of this. One thing was refused him–escape from the cross. Through that one refusal, a refusal he invited by saying “not my will but yours,” our salvation was secured.

    Aren’t you thankful that God doesn’t do things your way?

  • Ephesians 3 in The Voice

    Well, I continue to read The Voice and it continues to annoy me.

    But first let me note that in reading Ephesians 3 I don’t find anything that will lead you astray in your understanding of the chapter. In many cases the material in italics just seems unnecessary. In other words, the translators have already clearly translated the message. You can leave the italicized material out of your reading and you’ll get pretty much the same message.

    For example, the first part of verse 20 reads: “Now to the God who can do so many awe-inspiring things, immeasurable things, things great than we ever could ask or imagine ….” Now read the verse without the italicized material. Has anything been contributed? It does make it a little more exhortative, and that might be the intention.

    On the other hand, breaking out the prayer of verses 16-19 as a prayer, rather than as a report of a prayer, does fulfill the goals of the translation and is helpful, in my view. Helpful, at least, if one’s goal is to get a more dramatic presentation, which is one of the purposes of The Voice.

    This prayer passage has a special place in my life, because I adapted it into a prayer some years ago and it was used as a blessing at my wedding. Our wedding bands have the reference inscribed inside as well.

  • Defensive Christianity

    PrayerI’ve seen a great number of words from Christians here in America recently, some of them coming from Facebook or Twitter, some in blog posts, some in words spoken directly to me, or on Television or the Radio. I’m not going to cite specific sources, because I’m not writing about what some particular person said. Rather, I’m writing about an atmosphere.

    The atmosphere is one of defensiveness, reflecting a Christianity that is on the defensive. Sometimes this refers to the church as a whole losing ground or being in danger. Sometimes it refers to one’s personal position or standing with God. Sometimes it refers to personal safety. At other times it’s about the course our nation is taking.

    Now I want to be clear that I’m talking about American Christianity here. I would hate for my brothers and sisters in places where they are truly threatened to think I’m talking about them.

    We American Christians live in a land of plenty. Yes, we’ve had some times that have been harder than usual, but we’re still doing well financially when compared to the vast majority of people on this planet. We also live in a nation where we are in the majority. Now I know many will question this by asking how many true Christians there are as opposed to just nominal Christians. My response to that is simply to point out that we tend to claim all those who identify themselves as Christians when we want to emphasize the strength of Christianity. Should we be permitted to change the definition in another context so we can call ourselves a minority?

    By defensive, I don’t mean that we actively defend our faith. I think apologetics is a good discipline. We should be able to give an answer for our faith.

    What I mean is that we live our Christian lives in a state of fear. We’re afraid that our young people will learn something in college that will make them lose their faith. We’re afraid that a book that teaches something heretical will lead us (or someone we call “weaker”) astray. We’re afraid that a Mormon president might make heretics of us all, or that a liberal Christian as president will change the face of the country. We’re afraid that the language in party platforms or the content of political speeches will make or break our lives here.

    We think that the results of this upcoming election may bring disaster and that we have to get desperate and persuade all our friends and relatives to vote the same way we do, because if the right person doesn’t win, our country is finished. We think we need to pray for God to make things go the right way, lest the wrong person get into power.

    The sum of all our fears makes us seem, and indeed be, defensive. We do not witness to the God who rules in the kingdoms of men (Daniel 4:17) because we aren’t really sure that he does. We think that the issue depends on us: our prayers, our actions, our votes, our words.

    It doesn’t depend on us.

    I’m not suggesting that we don’t pray. We need to pray, but we need to pray especially that God will work in us (more on prayer).

    I’m not suggesting that we don’t act. We need to act regularly. I’d suggest that Matthew 25:31-46 and related passages as a guide to our actions.

    I’m not suggesting that we don’t speak. Let our words be a witness to the One we belong to.

    I’m not suggesting that we don’t vote. I plan to vote. I hope you do too. In my view it’s a duty and a privilege. But God’s kingdom doesn’t depend on it.

    But what about our rights? Shouldn’t we be defending our civil rights, our freedom of religion?

    Yes, again, but remember that God’s kingdom doesn’t depend on our civil rights. In fact, some of Christianity’s greatest moments have been under persecution when church members had no rights at all.

    And if we remember that, we might also remember to defend everyone’s rights. We might add to “doing to others what we would have them to do us” something new: Defending the rights of others as we would hope they would defend ours. Whose rights might those be?

    Perhaps it would be a group of Muslims who want to build a mosque in “your” community.

    Perhaps it would be the atheist child who doesn’t want to be made a participant in your prayers in a public place.

    Perhaps it would be that person who has been singled out by security because he looks like a terrorist.

    Our willingness to see people in each of these groups given less rights than we have is a sign of defensive Christianity.

    A confident Christian would welcome Muslim neighbors and enter into dialogue with them, welcoming the opportunity to be a witness by demonstrating the love of Jesus.

    A confident Christian would be more concerned with the discomfort of the atheist child than he would be with his desire to do things his own way. After all, he can pray just about anywhere.

    A confident Christian would realize that the right thing to do is to defend the rights of the person who looks different than he is.

    I pray for the day when I will truly be a confident Christian, when I will truly desire the well-being of others more than I do my own (Philippians 2:4). I’m praying, not that God will bring about one outcome or another in the election, but that no matter what happens I will learn to live the kingdom of God more and more fully every day.

    I am praying that God will change me so my confidence is in God and not in myself. That’s the only way I can give up defensiveness and truly be defended.

  • A Monopoly on Healing?

    I’m enjoying editing Bruce Epperly‘s new book, to be released this fall, Healing Marks. Here’s an excerpt:

    A Monopoly on Healing? Quite satisfied with their orthodoxy and ability to maintain the purity of Jesus’ healing ministry, the disciples come to Jesus with what they assume is good news: “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” They expect a pat on the back for maintaining decency, order, and clarity in Jesus’ healing lineage. Imagine their surprise when the Healer retorts:

    “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterwards to speak evil of me. 40Whoever is not against us is for us. 41For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.” – Mark 9:39-41

    The one who opened the floodgates to divine healing and hospitality to all people by welcoming sinners, social outcasts, diseased women, lepers, tax collectors, foreigners, and persons possessed by demons, adds one more scandalous footnote to his healing ministry, divine healing is not restricted to his direct followers or even to Christians. God wants everyone to live abundantly and will use any healthy means to bring us to well-being (page 138 in advance copies).

    Yep! I’m enjoying this …

  • On Praying for My Country

    Some time ago I was teaching a Sunday School class and the topic of prayer at public events came up. Now I would have a serious problem offering prayer at a public event. Though I support the idea of separation of church and state, my major objection is not based on the constitutional principle. After all, courts have allowed prayers in congress.

    My opposition is simply that I believe public prayer is prayer offered for a group. If it is just a ritual, or if it cannot reasonably be expected that the group joining in the prayer actually does join, then to me it is empty. I could sit out in my car and pray for a blessing on the activities of government, but I could not stand up in the group and offer a prayer as though God and the governmental meeting were on the same program.

    In my private prayers for the government, I pray largely that God will give wisdom to political leaders. I do not make the assumption that those political leaders and the political system under which I live are somehow more on God’s program than any other.

    I think that prayers at government events are not designed to invoke God’s favor, nor are they designed to seek God’s will. They are designed to give the impression that those who are doing the government’s business are, in fact, blessed, and are somehow blessed. It’s the whitewash on the sepulcher.

    In any case, to get back to the story, my explanation of my own view didn’t get through. One gentleman raised his hand and said, “I think you just don’t have the courage of your convictions.”

    “No,” I told him, “I don’t have the courage of your convictions.”

    In the discussion that followed, it became clear that he simply could not conceive of a reason for not offering a public prayer, other than that I was afraid of offending people in the audience. He (and many in the room) were so certain that this was an appropriate activity that they simply couldn’t see any reason not to. To them, America is God’s country, a Christian nation, and there’s no problem with Christian prayers.

    I was reminded of this when reading this post by Arthur Sido (HT: Dave Black Online via Christian-Archy.com). This is a topic that will shock many, many American Christians. Why not wear a “God Bless America” T-Shirt? It’s not something they’ve ever considered. The conviction that God is on our side runs very deep. Often it erupts in the claim that American policy carries out God’s will, either knowingly or unknowingly. That claim in turn can lead us to give up the church’s mission and ministry to the world.

    If we truly believe that the Gospel is “God’s power for salvation to everyone who believes” then we ought to act that way. But over and over again our solutions for economic problems, crime, moral issues, and even family relations is to get the government to solve it for us. I don’t doubt that the government needs to have its eye on such things, but how much of our effort as Christians needs to be used in that way?

    Would we not change more people and make more of a difference in our world by living and proclaiming (and I believe proclaiming without living is no proclamation at all) the good news accomplish more than all the political activism we can do as a church?

    I don’t know this, but I think most of us simply don’t believe that the Gospel will transform people’s lives. I don’t think we really believe the Gospel will work. I suspect that, throughout Christian history, our resort to the sword of the state results from a lack of faith.

    The separation I’m most concerned about is the separation where the church says, “We cannot compromise the gospel with the state’s structures of power. We need to stay away to maintain the integrity of the gospel.” The theological separation is more important than the constitutional.

     

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  • Praying Without Ceasing and Hyperbole

    Mike Sangrey has a post on translating 1 Thessalonians 5:17 at Better Bibles Blog where he suggests “Don’t stop praying!” would be more accurate than “Pray without ceasing,” which is what most of us are used to hearing. He arrives at this conclusion by looking at various uses of the Greek word in question (adialeiptws). Nonetheless the key argument seems to be that:

    the words “without ceasing” carry the idea of “unending, continuous prayer” to the English mind.  I think such an action is impossible and others think so, too.

    Just so! I think it’s impossible as well. But as the first commenter notes, this is likely a form of hyperbole. Now I’m quite comfortable with interpretive translations that try to adapt one idiom into another, or take a rhetorical device from the source language that is absent (or different) in the target language and replace it with another.

    My concern in this case is that hyperbole is a perfectly good rhetorical device in English. We use it regularly. Sometimes our “holy filter” keeps us from seeing it in scripture, but that’s not because it’s absent from the language.

    My question is this: If Paul was using hyperbole here, then what is wrong with hyperbole in an English translation? To be more precise, I could ask whether a Greek speaking reader might have heard the passage as “unending, continuous prayer,” realize he had encountered hyperbole, and apply it appropriately. If so, why not let an English speaking reader do the same?

    If I might illustrate further, when Jesus says that if your right eye offends you, pluck it out (Matthew 5:29), is it not likely that we have just a small amount of hyperbole? If so, should I translate this verse into something non-hyperbolic, such as “it might be better to be blind than to have your eyes lead you into lust”? (I’m not proposing that as a good translation–just a pointer.)

    I’m leaving comments open, but suggesting you comment at Mike’s post or on your own blog to keep the discussion linked.

  • Bruce Epperly on Prayer Changing Things

    I wrote recently that I prefer “prayer changes you” to “prayer changes things” but I don’t deny that prayer changes things. But how?

    Bruce Epperly contributes a post to Ponderings on a Faith Journey that looks at this along with the idea of human freedom. I know that any form of open theism tends to make some people crazy, but I think many of us talk and behave as though something like this is true, even while affirming God’s eternal plans. In fact, I might suggest that living with such tensions is something God intended us to do! Nonetheless I find this discussion challenging and useful.

    For my own notes on prayer, which come to a somewhat less firm conclusion, see my essays The Hand of God, The Hand of God – Miracles, and The Hand of God – Prayer. They date from ancient times, or rather 2003.