The Priority of Corporate Prayer

              For the past couple of weeks, my church has been emphasizing prayer.  I appreciate the words that have been shared.  From things that I have been thinking about for several months and actually pet peeves that I have had for years, I would like to take the challenge just a little deeper.

              We have heard the importance of prayer.  We have heard about the beauty of being able to commune with our Creator.  We have discussed how much God wants to hear from us and how much he wants to heal our broken world.

              The struggle that I have with modern corporate prayer is the realization of how often it is used for transition.  We pray while the worship team quietly exits the stage.  We pray for the offering, not so much that God would bless our giving hearts and the resources he has blessed us with, but instead the prayer indicates to the ushers that they need to come forward so that we can take the offering.  We enter prayer times in our service so that the tech team can sneak onto the stage and fix technical glitches.  We offer up prayers that use special code phrases to indicate that we are skipping a song in the worship set.  So, we know about the importance and value of prayer, but the only times that we pray in our church services are scripted.

              I recently heard an interesting interview with the late Leonard Nimoy.  The point that stands out to me in the interview is his definition of why we close our eyes during prayer.  I have always been told that we close our eyes to help us focus, to close out the distractions around us.  According to Nimoy, the reason Jews are taught to close their eyes is because if the Shekinah glory of God showed up while the congregation was praying, they might die.  It really changes the focus not only of closing our eyes, but the focus of corporate prayer in general.

              As Christians, we know that God is always with us, and so we don’t anticipate anything greater happening during our services when we pray.  It is okay to move about the room to exit the stage or fix tech glitches because what is the worst that could happen if we didn’t?  We don’t expect God to really be present in our services, and so we expect very little.  Prayer helps the performance of our worship services to run more smoothly, so why not take advantage of it?

              Perhaps we should expect more of God.  Perhaps we should expect more of our corporate prayer.

The Patriots

So, today is Super Bowl Sunday.  For the past three weeks, we have heard about “Deflategate.”  Lots of people have weighed in with their opinions on the events of the AFC Championship Game.  The biggest issue that I have with the discussion is how it magnifies our country’s relative morality.

The arguments that have been made are related to thing like:

1. They didn’t know there was such a rule.
2. Are you saying no other team in the league used under deflated footballs at all this season?
3. The only reason why people are upset is that they got caught.
4. Once the footballs were inflated to regulation PSI, the Patriots played better.  Imagine what the score would have been if they had used regulation footballs the entire game.
5. They might have broken this rule, but so many other teams use drugs.  So many other players beat their wives.  This is a non-issue really.
6. If you aren’t cheating, you’re not trying.

These arguments are extremely immature – I feel like I’m listening to a bunch of 7-year-olds talking about their neighborhood flag-football game.  These are adult professional football players.  They knew what they were doing – they may not have known the regulation PSI, but even I as one of the world least knowledgeable about the game knows there are rules about every aspect of the game.

Why have we not heard anybody say, “We’re sorry we played dishonestly.”  “We will work on our teams checks-and-balances and make sure this sort of oversight doesn’t happen again.”  “We’ll take a long hard look at our motivations.”

When our morality is based on the actions of people around us, we will always be able to find people who are worse than us.  And perhaps our own immorality will justify somebody else’s bad behavior somewhere else.  It is a downward spiral if we don’t acknowledge our faults and try to be better.

I think it’s sad that this isn’t just an issue with football.  It is an issue our whole nation deals with.  Politics.  Business.  Marriage.  Personal morality.  It seems that being immoral might just be what it means to be a Patriot – are we going to change that?

Today in History

1966 John Lennon says "We (Beatles) are more popular than Jesus"

Ironically nobody has to ask, "Jesus who?"

1950: Walt Disney's feature-length animated motion picture Cinderella is released.

She doesn't look a day over 20.

The parable of the water bottles

I went to my car this morning and there was a water sitting by itself in the cup holder next to the driver's seat. Since it was only 4 degrees outside, it was solid ice and could only be used to kill small rodents. However, behind the seats I had a package of 24 other water bottles - same size and same conditions as the water bottle by the drivers seat, however, since they were together in a bundle, the ice inside the bottle was thin and with very little effort, was drinkable.

Last summer, the water bottle next to the driver's seat was hot and horrible to taste. However, again the water in the bundle, although not exactly wonderful, was refreshing enough on a hot day.

Over-Sciencing Miracles

Scientist finds Jesus might have walked on ice. So, I guess the miracle is that the disciples were able to take a boat all the way across a frozen lake.

Moses more likely crossed the Sea of Reeds So, I guess the miracle here is the Pharoah and his army was wiped out by three inches of water.

Living a Parable

So, a short summary of my life:

1. Our school district is switching student information systems in less than a month. Part of my job description is to support the whole school staff through the whole process. Part of my job description is to train all of the teachers at my school how to use the system - most importantly, how to take attendance on April 3rd. (It's also a personal goal to train a few other people in just a little more than just attendance to make my life easier in the long run.)


2. The staff meeting where I was planning to introduce everyone to the primary concepts of the new system got cancelled today because of a pep assembly.


3. I had a four day training on the new product about three weeks ago - I have yet to recover from taking four days off.


4. On the last day of that training, I received notice that (thanks to decisions at the district) Apple Computer was shipping almost 100 new computers to my school - to arrive within the next week. I don't have storage space for 100 computers.


5. My son had surgery on a dermoid cyst last Wednesday. All went well, but I missed yet another day of work and he seems to only feel the pain at bedtime. He also learned two tricks this week: crawling and pulling up. These are two really fun tricks for a child with eight fresh stitches over his left eye. He likes to practice these at bedtime too...


6. The bookkeeper is ending the budget cycle next week so that purchases have time to amortize by the end of the fiscal year. Suffice it to say that I still have budget money to spend.


7. Today, I got a call from my wife while I was at work saying that she had thrown up and that she would like me to come home as early as possible.

I think that sums up the primary points - there are other points, but they involve that I still have family life, normal job duties, and stuff going on at church - so on to the parable.

Tonight, my son was having trouble falling asleep and, of course, only I could attempt to comfort him. It was obvious that he didn't want me, he wanted mommy. It was obvious that his eye was bothering him. It was obvious that he wanted to be moving around and not lying down.

I found myself saying, "If you would just slow down and rest here with daddy, you would realize that everything is going to be okay!"

hmm...

Cool new website

http://www.elevationlife.org/

Nicely done - and I am a critic... There's always room for improvement on a new web site, but hey, I'm in one of the pictures. Who can argue!

Struggling with the "goodness" of God

My biggest struggle with Christianity today is the focus on the goodness of God. It’s not that I don’t believe that God is gracious, which is good, or merciful, which is good, or that He does good things. I struggle with the “God is good, all the time – all the time, God is good” stuff. Romans 8:28 says: “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose.” But does that mean that all things are good? Or that God is good to all people? Some scriptural examples that Paul brings up very shortly after Roman 8:28 (in Romans 9 – a section of Christianity which is largely overlooked by most churches today) Pharaoh might not agree that God is good all the time; Esau might not agree that God is good all the time. Here’s a verse that I don’t see Sunday school teachers encouraging their students to memorize – Romans 9:17: “For the scripture says to Pharaoh: ‘I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.’” This seems different than Esther 4:14’s “for such a time as this.” It’s called providence, not goodness.

I believe that the “God is good, all the time” stuff has caused major problems with the effectiveness of the witness of Christianity today. It doesn’t fit with most people’s experiences and so they blow off Christianity without even giving it major consideration. How can a person look at September 11, 2001 and say “God is good all the time”? I can still say “in all things God works for the good”, without saying “wasn’t God good on September 11th?” I don’t think the second is necessarily true. God used September 11th to cause good things to happen, but I cannot say God was good to allow that to happen.

Here are some examples from my personal experience. (These are all experiences that I was involved in directly or indirectly. I have chosen to write them from a third person perspective because I don’t want it to be about me. I want it to be about how my perspective has been shaped by these experiences.) When the parents of a five year old found out that their child had major problems with his left kidney, their first reaction wasn’t “God is good all the time.” It was more like “God was good to let us find this now before it caused major complications.” In college when one of a friend’s tests got lost causing him to almost fail a class (he would have failed the class if the professor hadn’t found the test 8 weeks later), it didn’t cause him to say “God is good”. One man I know was invited by his friend to become business partners. After agreeing to go into business and making significant financial sacrifices, the friend was “called by God” to go into the missions field. The impact that this had on the man’s view of God and missionaries wasn’t “God is good”. Another friend was let go from three different volunteer positions at his church. (To quote Scrooged, “You can’t fire them, their volunteers!”) And then when he tried to get a paying position at the church he was told that his track record for his volunteer work wasn’t very strong. Isn’t God just so good! Then when a lady I know had a miscarriage, God was not “good” to her.

So, how have I learned to view God through all of these circumstances? Well, it would seem as though I would want to blow off Christianity completely, because who wants to worship a God that is not good? Well, a person with a capitalistic world view might want to shop for a better God, but I agree with Peter: “Lord, to whom shall we go. You have the words of eternal life.” (John 6:68) It may be a hard truth, but it is still truth.

Job 2:10 “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”

Job 1:21 “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.”

I never understood...

There are some Bible verses that I don't think I fully understood until I had kids.

Psalm 73:21-23
Psalm 131:2
Isaiah 64:6
John 3:3-4
Deuteronomy 10:16
Genesis 7:9-10