June 14th 2007

Tunnel Vision Praying

Read Matthew 9:9-13 and Acts 20:17-27

"For I did not shrink from declaring

the whole will of God..." (Acts 20:27)

As the prayer of Jesus moves on, it moves from a prayer of Kingdom to a prayer of will. What is the will? What does it mean to say that we often operate according to our own will? Better yet, how are we to know and follow the will of God? I once heard it defined that the will is "that inner capacity which governs our choices and determines our actions." So in essence, how I live and behave in this world is directly related to the orientation of my will. If my will is goverened by selfishness and preoccupation with me, then the choices I make and the actions I take will evidence that orientation. In contrast, if my will is surrendered to God, then I will not live to gratify myself but to abide in God's nature which determines his actions in this world.

In His prayer, Jesus says, pray "Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." That by its very act is a moment of surrender. We are saying, don't let my world operate according to my will. Intercede God, and may all that happens here on earth be goverened by the same will that holds all things together in heaven. But beyond surrender, we must seek to understand how liberating this prayer becomes for us.

Many of us live trapped by paralysis hoping that we don't miss the will of God for our lives. We pray very selfish prayers hoping that God's will lines up with ours. What does it mean to say we miss the will of God? Does it mean we didn't choose the right job, spouse, house, or car? Is that what it means? Is that what we pray when we pray the Lord's prayer? Or is something more involved?

Praying for God's will to be done on earth as it is in heaven is to live in constant recognition and obedience to what moves the heart of God. According to Paul in his speech to the Ephesians in Acts 20, by preaching the message of Jesus and embodying the holiness of God he didn't fail to make known the whole will of God. So for us to pray the Lord's prayer, we are moving out of a selfish tunnel vision that keeps us from doing anything because we fear we will miss the will of God, to the liberated responsibility of proclaiming and embodying God's recreating, saving, redeeming, restoring, reconciling power in Jesus Christ. We are liberated to understand that as we live surrendered to the will of the One that saves us and our entire lives are pointed in the way of glorifying him in all things, honoring Him by all things, loving Him and others above all things, then we are right smack dab in the center of God's will.

Yes, God might have an assignment for you here or there. But if you are truly surrendered to his will and living out this liberated responsibility, you don't have to walk around fearing that you will miss it. And if you happen to, continue to live out the will of God and he will be gracious and bless you where you are.

June 6th 2007

Petition for Justice

Read Matthew 6:5-14 and Luke 11:1-4

"Your kingdom come..." vs. 10

In a world full of poverty and war, of deceit and manipulation, of self-indulgence and brutal prejudice, how are we to pray? When lives are racked by the destuctive forces of unforgiveness and greed, how are we to pray? When our children aren't safe any longer to play in their own front yards, safe to go to school, safe within their own homes, how are we to pray? When the nations of this world consume the lives of its young and brave, sacrifice them upon the altars of imperialism, financial prosperity, and patriotic egotism, how are we to pray?

Luke tells the story of Jesus' prayer in a little different way than Matthew recounts it. In Luke, Jesus' followers had approached him and asked, "Lord teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples to pray." (vs.11:1) Their question is much like ours. "How are we to pray." For many of us that question is reduced to methods and techniques. Unfortunatley, that question should be provoked by a deep desire to understand, "Where do I begin?"

After naming God (we have dealt with this in the last two devotionals), Jesus moves to the first petition. "Your kingdom come." I wonder if we understand the profundity of that petition. Oppressed and manipulated by the Roman government, there was a strong desire amongst the Jewish people for a regime change. In fact, this deep desire stood at the center of their messianic hopes. When would God come and relieve them of their oppression? When would God topple the proud and exalt the humble? When would God be faithful to the promises he had made to his chosen people? When would the justice of God be triumphant? And this is what Jesus says..."Pray like this, Your Kingdom come!"

Praying for God's kingdom is pronouncing the desire that God's justice would unfold within the lives of His creation. To pray this prayer is to stand in the face of the principalities and powers of this world and declare them as merely a perverted shadow of what is to come. These principalities and powers establish themselves as kingdoms to be honored, empires to be reveered, and nations requiring unbridled allegiance. They maintain themselves through the manipulation of their citizens. They extend themselves through the brutality of self-interest. They glorify themselves by making idolatrous claims about their capacity for freedom and peace. They cast aside the lowly and thrive because of the wealthy. They abuse the weak and exalt the strong.

Jesus says, "Pray like this...Your Kingdom come!" Father, come with your justice. Father, ensure that workers are paid fairly. Place food on the plates of the hungry. Enable our leaders to speak truthfully. Give us eyes to look upon those in need. Father, may we no longer judge by the color of skin nor of gender. Lord, cause us to lay down our weapons and sit at your table and speak of true peace. God almighty, help us to cast aside the desire to consume more and more taking from those who have little. Give us the strength to reject allegiance to powers that set themselves up against you. Lord, help us to pick up and dust off those the world has cast aside. Father, grant us the power to forgive, to release resentment and bitterness. Father, grant to us your Kingdom!

June 5, 2007

Naming God

Read Matthew 6:5-14 and Psalm 99

"hallowed (holy) be your name..." vs. 9

It has been nearly a week since my last blog and to those who read faithfully, I apologize. The reason for my delinquency is two-fold. First, last week was extremely busy. Two, and probably more of the reason than the first, the second verse of the Lord's prayer has completely intimidated me. I have spent the last few days stressing over writing a devotional that some how does justice to the second line of Jesus' prayer. I have been meditating on it, praying on it, and in some respects avoiding it.

Starting off, I guess I would like to say that naming God is a matter of utmost seriousness. Our language for God is merely analogy. None of our language can properly contain God nor define Him perfectly. Therefore, as we speak of God we are doing the best we can with the language we have. For some of us this might seem a foreign thought. The Bible defines God as love, holy, and sovereign. Obviously then, God is these things. Yes, but the degree to which He is these things and the ways by which he transcends these categories reveals to us the limits of our language. God is love. However, God is love to the degree that supercedes our ability to fully define what it means to say that God is love. What does this mean? Shall we stop talking of God because of the limits of our language. Never! We have been given an appropriate language through our Scriptures, a language that seeks to faithfully identify the One to which our worship is directed. We engage in the humbling task of speaking about God in ways that honor Him and at the same time stay exceedingly dependent upon His Spirit for our conversation about Him.

Groovy, now what on earth has this to do with prayer? Ok, the second line of Jesus' prayer names God as holy. Our last devotional spoke of God as a Father, an extremely analogous term that helps us recognize God within earthly categories. Now we have named Him Holy. To speak of God's holiness is to be whisked away from the categories or our earthly existence and be placed within the realm of God's "otherness." In theological lingo, "otherness" is another way of saying that God is not like us. God is not bound by the same limitations that we are. We are finite...He is infinite. We are bound by time...He is eternal. We mess up...He is perfect. We are bent toward sinfulness...He is purely good. We are limited in persepective...He grasps all things. In so many ways, God stands far beyond us in His being.

When we pray, we pray to a God who isn't limited. We name a God whose "otherness" pushes us to have faith in the One who calls things to be that once were not. We pray to a God whose holiness exceeds our understanding, our expectation, and our definitions. We pray to a God who is perfectly good and faithful. We pray to a God who is free to act as He would when He would knowing that he properly grasps all things. To name God holy is to speak of a God that is so completely free from evil and sin that we needn't doubt His intentions for our lives, the motive for His actions in our lives, nor the responses to the prayers of our lives. Holy is his name!

Let me finally conclude, praying to a God that is completely holy should offer to us a great assurance about whom we pray to. Also, allow me to say this, and we will deal with this to a further degree later, holiness leads us to God's otherness. But God's otherness has broken into our world in the person of Jesus Christ. Although God is beyond us, he became like us so that we might become like Him. Through Christ we are drawn into the otherness of God. In fact, one might say that through Christ we are moving beyond our limitations. In Christ, we break free from our bondage to time and live eternally. Likewise, our bent toward sinfulness and self-worship is being redefined. We are in the process of becoming holy as He is Holy (1 Peter 1). Therefore, as we pray the holiness we have as we participate in Christ calls us to evaluate our intentions for prayer and our acceptance of God's perfect will in His answer to our prayers.