Charis

Okay, I couldn’t not write about this week’s prayer, specifically the first part:

Lord, make me have perpetual love and reverence for your holy Name

While I respect the desire expressed in this prayer, I confess that I’m troubled by make me each time I read it. We recently sang a song at church that expressed a similar sentiment: “Please wipe away the part of me that gets in the way.” I had a hard time singing these words, though I totally understand where the writer is coming from.

Here’s the problem: is it appropriate to ask God to make us do something? It seems to me that if I desire greater love and reverence for God, my prayer should be “Lord, help me to grow into perpetual love and reverence for your Holy Name.”

It’s about responsibility Continue reading »

[Sorry I’m posting this so far into the week]

Lord, make me have perpetual love and reverence for your holy Name, for you never fail to help and govern those whom you have set upon the sure foundation of your loving-kindness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

I’m continuing to read George Müller’s Answers to Prayer, and I find myself encouraged and challenged at every turn. I’m encouraged because Müller’s story is such an incredible testimony of God’s faithfulness, not once or twice but over decades. And I’m challenged because I realize how far I have to go in learning to pray and trust as Müller did.

Müller tells how, in the 1860s, he needed workers for his third new orphan home that he had built. He had already been praying daily for several years, while the home was built, that God would provide the right people to serve in all the various positions required to run the home. That’s lesson number 1: Müller didn’t wait until the need was at crisis level to pray; as soon as he recognized the need, he brought it before God, and he continued to bring it before God every day. Yet, as the opening approached, and he considered the applicants, he came up short. He writes: Continue reading »

My friend Sandy wrote today about her pushy cat Pepper, describing how she (the cat) gets in the way of being fed. Sandy writes:

But as I reflected on my demanding feline, I wondered if I do the same thing when I pray. I beg and plead with God to respond to my needs and my wants… and then I promptly get in the way. Like He needs help or something. And I wonder if my “help” is sometimes responsible for the delay in an answered prayer, if my life would be so much more peaceful if I could simply learn, like David, to wait before the Lord.

She concludes with Psalm 38:15: “But for you, O Lord, do I wait; it is you, O Lord my God, who will answer.”

Thanks, Sandy, for reminding me of my childhood cat Willie (also pushy)—and more importantly, of giving me a really vivid picture of what getting in God’s way looks like!

Last night’s compline prayers included a passage by 17th-century British clergyman Jeremy Taylor:

There is no greater proof in the world of our spiritual danger than the reluctance which most people always have and all people sometimes have to pray; so weary of their length, so glad when they are done, so clever to excuse and neglect their opportunity. Yet prayer is nothing but desiring God to give us the greatest and best things we can have and that can make us happy. It is a work so easy, so honorable, and to so great a purpose, that (except in the incarnation of His Son) God has never given us a greater argument of His willingness to have us saved and our unwillingness to accept it, of His goodness and our gracelessness, of His infinite condescension and our folly, than by rewarding so easy a duty with such great blessings.

I like this because it is so wonderfully expressed—Taylor is noted more for his good writing than for his deep theology—but there’s a lot to think about here. In particular, I’m drawn to Taylor’s definition: Continue reading »

Most of us like personal attention, knowing that someone else has given thought to us individually and specifically. But so many Christians don’t seem to believe that personal attention can occur between themselves and God, and certainly, the lost don’t believe that such a thing exists—and they often make fun of us who not only believe in it but expect it.

Growing up, I heard about “getting saved,” and it wasn’t until I was an adult that I heard phrases like “a personal relationship with God” or “accept Jesus as your personal Savior.” I had mixed feelings about such wording, particularly the second one, which sounds a little too much like Jesus is in the same category as personal chefs, personal assistants, and personal trainers.

But, I have come to appreciate more and more the thought behind such phrasing, because it points toward the heart of what I believe Christianity is about: relationship, as opposed to religion. Continue reading »

This is second in a series on mercy.

Tuesday, I wrote about praying the Jesus Prayer (Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner) and how the beginning acknowledges all that Jesus is. I ended with the question, “But what about the mercy part?” and that’s where I’ll pick up today.

I wondered how often mercy showed up in Scripture. It’s there a lot! What caught my attention as I looked at the gospels is that the most frequent occurrence of mercy is in requests: Continue reading »

I never gave much thought to the mercy of God until this past weekend. “Lord, have mercy” has long been an expression of exasperation (as in, “Lord have mercy! What were you thinking?”) rather than a prayer. My first exposure to this was in sixth grade, when we moved to Columbus, Mississippi—my family’s first time in the South. My teacher that year—I can’t remember her name, but I clearly remember her face, her blue hair, and her rather unpleasant disposition—was a good Southern woman, and she used to exclaim, “Laaaw-zay mer-say may!” (translation: Lordy, mercy me!) when she was frustrated. Later, in high school, Sunday school teacher Dave Krebs suggested to us boys that “mercy” was a good word to say instead of a profanity. Not a bad idea, I suppose. The other place that I encountered “mercy” was in games of strength: you extend your arms upward, interlock fingers with the other guy, and try to push him down to his knees, making him cry for mercy.

The upshot of this, particularly using mercy as an exclamation, is that the word was emptied of meaning for me. I knew that it was a theologically important concept, as well as a potentially troubling one, linked as it always was to God’s sovereignty. God said to Moses, “I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy,” and I always wondered how He decided. Since I usually ended up scared when I pondered this, I decided not to think about it at all. So “mercy” didn’t enter much into my understanding of God or into my prayers. Continue reading »

I just got Oswald Chambers’ If You Will Ask, and I’m already loving it, one chapter in. According to Chambers, prayer “develops the life of God in us” and “nourishes” that life; in other words, if we don’t pray, we are starving ourselves. That’s a sobering thought!

He goes on to say the life of God in us

is nourished by refusing to worry over anything, for worry means there is something over which we cannot have our own way… Never let anything push you to your wits’ end, because you will get worried, and worry makes you self-interested and disturbs the nourishment of the life of God. Give thanks to God that He is there, no matter what is happening….

He concludes his discussion of worry with this beautiful thought:

The secret of Christian quietness is not indifference, but the knowledge that God is my Father, He loves me, and I shall never think of anything He will forget, and worry becomes an impossibility.

I shall never think of anything He will forget: this is one of those Selah moments. Pause, and calmly think about that!

The chapter ends with a prayer from Chambers’ journal:

O Lord, this day may your beauty and grace and soothing peace be in me and upon me. May no wind or weather or anxiety ever touch Your beauty and Your peace in my life or in this place.

Joee Blogs posted photos yesterday of Muslim protesters outside Westminster Cathedral in London. He took the photos not as a casual bystander or journalist but as someone on his way to mass.

The protesters were holding signs with sayings like, “May Allah curse the Pope” and “Jesus is the slave of Allah.” As you might expect, the photos generated a considerable response. Two things stood out to me as I read the post and the comments:

1. Joee took time to pray for the protesters while he was at the cathedral.
2. The level of hatred in the comments was disturbing.

First, kudos to Joee for being Christ-like in his attitude. He posted his photos to document what happened, not to stir up hate. He prayed for these Muslims, and early this morning he took action on his blog to stop the hate mongering:

Addendum: I’ve had to turn comment moderation on again since some of the comments show as much hatred as these extremists in the pictures. I’ll post again about this but I’d like three things to be noted:
1) These were 100 Muslims out of the 2 million (ish?) living in Britain. Thus this is hardly representative of all Muslims.
2) The Pope’s speech reiterated Christ’s words to love your enemies, and not to commit violence in the name of religion. Further, Christ gives us a difficult commandment (Mt 5:28) that even to think of evil is as bad as committing it.
3) I prayed the rosary for their intentions.

Among the commenters, there were undoubtedly non-Christians, but my sense was that many of those adding comments consider themselves to be believers. And yet—the protesters are called “animals” and various other names, culminating in this anonymous comment: “Oh to drive by that crowd with a Bren gun and give them the Good News!”

Truthfully, I’m more disturbed by the hatred in the comments than I am by the Muslim protesters. It’s easy to see extremists on the news and become angry, especially when their actions lead to murder, as in the case of the nun killed in Somalia this weekend. As we get angry, as our emotions rise, we have two choices: like Peter, we can grab the sword and rush in cause harm, or, with Jesus, we can say, “Put your sword into its sheath.”

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us clearly:

You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Joee has chosen to be a son of his Father by praying; may all of us who wear the name Christian do likewise.