Monday 28 December 2015

Wasting time with God?

One of the biggest obstacles to prayer in our day is the feeling that prayer is a waste of time.

I am busy in our church's prayer ministry, but I often find myself doing other things when I could be praying.

Michael Evans felt like that about prayer until he ran into a brick wall - burnout.  Active in ministry, he found himself stretched too thin.  His wife recognized the symptoms of burnout and suggested he take some time off, rest and decide what he was going to do.

He wandered down to a raging river running through a nearby canyon and simply sat, enjoying nature.  He did this for six weeks - not speaking or reading.  Gradually, he began opening up to God.

"During this time, God planted the seed that began to germinate and grow into a desire to spend significant time alone with him," Evans writes in his book Why Not Waste Time With God?

He adds: "The idea of simply being with him - doing absolutely 'nothing' but being with him - was a tough one to overcome.  Now I cannot imagine not doing it.  Some would say I am wasting time, but I have come to see it as crucial for survival."

For many of us, the purpose of prayer is to tell God what we need.  The idea of simply sitting in silence in his presence is foreign to us.

But Evans says there are great benefits from resting in God's presence such as:

  • Peace beginning to settle over your whole being;
  • Understanding how special you are to God;
  • Approval of man becoming less of an issue;
  • The desire for being in the spotlight fading; and
  • Starting to hunger for more of God.
It also means that God has an easier time speaking to you, dropping thoughts into your mind.  You are not preoccupied with the other things going on in your life.

Jesus said in John 5:19 that he could only do what the Father was doing - he depended on his close relationship with the Father to carry out his task on earth.  In John 15:5, he said that without him, we can do nothing.

If that is true, how can we carry out what God wants us to do without a close relationship with Jesus?

When you think of it, the psalmist David loved wasting time with God.  In Psalm 27:4, he wrote:

"One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple."

David was so successful in seeking God that he was called "a man after God's own heart".

That is as good a recommendation as any for spending time in silence with God.

Monday 21 December 2015

Heal our land

How big is our prayer vision?  Can we pray for God to transform nations?

If so, is it something that ordinary people can do?  Or, do we have to be super pray-ers?

I believe ordinary people can pray for big things.  But there are conditions for results.

The biggest condition is the state of our hearts.

God put it very clearly to Solomon in a vision one night after the dramatic dedication of the temple where God's glory filled the new building.  God says that if his people wander away from him, he will punish them.  But he offers hope in this wonderful statement in 2 Chronicles 7:14:

"Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land."

There is much that appalls Christians - and others, too - in the world around us.  We often feel helpless in the face of rampant sins and widespread violence.

But God pointed Solomon to the answer.  We need to seek God with all our hearts and seek forgiveness for our own sins.  Once we do that, we can look for God to bring healing to our society.

Revivals throughout history have shown this to be true.

The book of Nehemiah is an example.  Nehemiah, a Jew who was a high official in the Persian king's court, is deeply upset by news of the destruction in his native city Jerusalem.  He reacts by coming before God in repentant prayer.

His prayer in Nehemiah 1 is a model for us today.  He confesses to God that the Jews have sinned against him - and he includes himself.  I think that is vital - we must begin by pointing our fingers at ourselves.

He asks for forgiveness and then requests that God give him success in seeking the King's permission to go back to Jerusalem and rebuild the city.  The King grants him that request and Nehemiah returns to Jerusalem as governor and repairs the walls and restores the city.

As well, I have just been reading in Alex Rowlands' book The Presence: Experiencing More of God about the 1949 revival on the Scottish island of Lewis.  It began with a vision by two elderly women of a church packed with young people even though youth had long since abandoned the church.

They suggested to the church leadership that they should join them in their barn and pray about this for two nights every week.  They did this for six weeks until one of the elders read aloud Psalm 24 which says: "Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place?  He who has clean hands and a pure heart."

The elder fell to his knees on the barn floor and cried out: "God, are my hands clean?  Is my heart pure?  It is not the young people of this island that need reviving.  It's me!"

Shortly afterwards, a great four-year-long revival broke out with young people and old flooding the church to be touched in extraordinary ways by God.  Not only did it bring many into the kingdom of God, but it changed the whole of life on the island.

If we want to see our land healed, we need to pray for ourselves first.  Do we hunger and thirst for more of God?  Do we love our fellow believers or do we think and speak badly of them?  Do we cling to our sins and turn a blind eye to the needs of others?  Do we have God's heart for those who do not know Jesus?

Like Nehemiah, I confess my hands are unclean.  I need more of God.


Sunday 13 December 2015

No strings attached

I have been asking myself: Do I love God - no strings attached?

Or, do I love God only when he gives me things?

Those are key questions for people who pray - indeed, for any follower of Jesus.  It helps determine how we pray and why we pray.

What prompted these thoughts was something author Peter Lord wrote in his book Hearing God:

"If God gave you nothing but himself, would you be satisfied? The answer reveals whether you are loving God for himself or what you hope he will do."

Our pastor touched on this in a sermon today, saying he was frustrated with God after praying for something that was vital for his son and there was no answer.  And the next day, he prayed again and found what his son was desperately searching for.

The point he was making was that his mood - and even attitude - changed depending on whether God gave him what he sought or not.  I have felt the same way many times.

But our pastor underlined that God had not changed.  He is always the loving God we see in the scriptures.

How do we know what God is really like?

Our pastor pointed to key verses in the gospel of John including:

  • "I and the Father are one." (John 10:30); and
  • "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father." (John 14:9)
In other words, the Father is like Jesus.  Jesus was the essence of love and truth.  He always wanted the best for those he spoke with and helped - sometimes sharing tough truths even with his closest friends.  All of this flowed from a heart of love.

We can be transformed when we realize that God is not a condemning judge but someone loves us and leads us and guides us through life.

Hannah Whitall Smith, one of my favourite authors, calls this the "unselfishness of God".  In one of her last books, she wrote that it took her a lifetime to realize that God is "really and fundamentally unselfish, caring not at all for himself, but only and always for us and for our welfare".

She came to this conclusion after seeing that Jesus was the exact image of the Father.  And Jesus said himself that he came into the world to serve.

So what do I take away from this?

It makes me look at the world around me in a different way.  I can see Jesus even in the hard things of life.

I am just starting a regular prayer journal devoted only to short items of praising God and brief notes of thanks for the everyday things that God has brought into my life - even for the little black dog running joyfully around the golf course.  God is at work everywhere.

I will still pray for things.  But my attitude will change.

I want to love God without strings attached.


Monday 7 December 2015

The Name

The apostle Peter gave a startling answer to Jewish authorities who asked how a lame man was healed at the gate of the Temple in the early days of the Christian church.

Speaking to the men who arrested him and the apostle John, he said the lame man was healed "by the powerful name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, the man you crucified but whom God raised from the dead." (Acts 4:10)

The name of Jesus?  Yes, the name of Jesus is powerful.

Joyce Meyer explains in her book The Power of Simple Prayer what praying in the name of Jesus really means.  It means that we are approaching God "on the merits of Jesus".

The precondition is that I must approach God with "a heart that believes in him, trusts His power, and is submitted to his Lordship".

She says a friend, who was a committed believer, was driving home and his son fell out of the car while he was making a sharp turn. (This was in the days before seat belts.)  Horrified, he saw a car speeding towards the little boy and he shouted in panic: "Jesus!"

He stopped his car and ran to his son who was fine.  The other driver was close to hysterics, so he assured him he could thank God because the boy was unscathed.  The man replied: "You don't understand.  I never touched my brakes."

When we are submitted to God, "there is unbelievable power in the name of Jesus", writes Meyer.

She quotes Andrew Murray, a great writer on prayer, as saying: "When I go in the name of another, I deny myself, I take not only his name, but himself and what he is, instead of myself and what I am."

Murray also wrote: "The use of the name [of Jesus] always supposes the surrender of our interests to Him whom we represent."

Whenever we are locked in battle with the devil, Meyer says, we need to use the name of Jesus.

She points out the Bible makes clear that the name of Jesus:

  • has power to save (Acts 4:12);
  • assures us of the presence of God when meeting with others (Matthew 18:20); and
  • sets us free from spiritual darkness (Mark 16:17)
All praise to Jesus!