Seize the Word

This week’s ABC, Ephesians 6:18:

With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints.

I like how this verse tells us to be “on the alert” for prayer requests, essentially. I think we tend to view prayer requests as things that are dealt with a few times when experiences of troubles are volunteered in BCS, and not much more.

The reason why I like this passage is that it encourages us to have a more active role in ministering to others in prayer. It’s not just praying for people who happen to share in BCS or come to prayer meeting, but much more than that. I have a prayer list, and try to update it regularly. I encourage everyone to do the same. Prayer requests and brethren in need are things we should watch for more vigilantly and follow up on them with more perseverance. I will be the first to admit that I’ve taken prayer requests before and forgotten about them or not ended up praying for them for whatever bad excuse, but keeping a prayer list helps guard against this. It serves as a reminder of those requests and people who slip your radar now and then.

There are many practical things we can do to have a more active and effective personal prayer ministry, but keeping a prayer list (and an up to date one!) is a quick and practical way to get some results. So I encourage you all to do so if you do not already.

I think this is a good passage to think about in light of the Missions Conference that just passed. It’s challenging to me in that John states that his joy will be completed in proclaiming the gospel and seeing more people come to Christ. I’m happy when I hear about other people accepting Christ as Lord and Savior, but I don’t know if I could say that it is the thing that really gets me going. And this is probably why missions and sharing the gospel with random people comes so hard for me. Certainly, I care about some of my friends and have a heart for them and pray regularly that they will find Christ. But when it comes to faceless, random people in the world that I don’t know, the compassion just isn’t strong enough. I often find it a lot harder to pray for countries or people groups to receive Christ, because it seems so impersonal. But the scope of John’s message and Christ’s compassion universal. It didn’t just extend to his friends or people he’d gotten to know well. I’m sure that it included a lot of those types of people, but it went far beyond that. Just a challenge for me coming out of this weekend and this passage.

As some of you know, Tim and I are taking Near Eastern Studies 132 (Biblical Poetry) together.  In this class, we are currently learning about the literary styles of Canaanite, Babylonian, and Egyptian poetry, in the context of which elements have carried over to the Bible.

The Babylonians had many gods.  Whenever a misfortune — viewed as punishment — occurred, the people were often unsure of both the god offended and the crime.  This uncertainty led to rather amusing results, as poems address both gods and goddesses (what if it wasn’t a god you offended, per se?), with repeated statements of the poor mortal’s unawareness at what wrong he had committed.

A collection of snippets I picked out:

“May the god, whoever he is, be reconciled.
May the goddess, whoever she is, be reconciled…
I have perpetrated unwittingly an abomination to my god.
I have unwittingly violated a taboo of my goddess…
O god, whoever you are, many are my wrongs, great my sins,
O goddess, whoever you are, many are my wrongs, great my sins!
I do not know what wrong I have done,
I do not know what sin I have committed,
I do not know what abomination I have perpetrated,
I do not know what taboo I have violated!”

Isn’t it lovely that we only have one God, so there’s no question of who we’re angering, and that He’s pretty clear in general about what He approves and disapproves of?  Praise be to Him, the one and only!

I was going to write on the ABC today, but I stumbled across BibleGateway’s verse of the day, which really kind of struck me and made me think a bit. So here it is, Psalm 143:10 (NIV):

Teach me to do your will, for you are my God;
may your good Spirit lead me on level ground.

I read this while I was at work and looking for some encouragement from God. There’s a couple things that made me think.

The psalmist asks for God’s help in doing His will. There’s two parts of help here that I can see that God gives us in this regard. First is discernment, so that we may see God’s will and know where He wants us to go. That’s definitely an important part, but sometimes, I feel that we stop there. Sometimes help in doing God’s will can seem like if we only knew what God’s will were, it would be a snap to just do it.

God’s will is good, but it’s often not an easy thing to do, especially when it involves us and choices we have to make. That’s why the psalmist asks for help to “do” God’s will, not just “know” God’s will. But what’s encouraging is that once God lays out the paths for us, He gives us the strength to walk in those paths. We just need to turn to Him, even though it may involve going out on a limb (as PK talked about in his very interesting sermon yesterday).

So why does the psalmist want to do these things, despite the fact that it may incur hardship or be really, really challenging? Because God is his God. That is incentive enough for him. I note, with some dismay, that it doesn’t seem like enough for me in some situations. It should be, but my actions and thoughts don’t say that all the time.

The psalmist recognizes following God’s way can have a cost associated with it, and so he prays for that to be minimalized (“may your good Spirit lead me on level ground”), but he’s ok with getting some hills and valleys too. He asks for an easy time, but he does not say “I’ll only follow you on level ground”. Even though we don’t say that explicitly, how often might we think that or display that feeling in our actions?

Rather challenging. I’ll be thinking about this more over the days.

How do we know what’s faith in God and what’s faith in ourselves? The answer might hurt more than we expect.

This is one of the things I go after when I’m driving hard at a cloudy concept of “faith”. We should know where our decisions are coming from as well as we can.

[Reposted from my site.]

Author’s note: Having written independently of knowing what the summer X-Roads theme is, I am delighted that they have matched up nearly perfectly. I hope, then, that this is a blessing to all of you, and I hope to see those of you who have not yet graduated in the fall — my best again to those who have.

For those of you who have little time, the essence of the post is this:

As long as we view prayer simply as the means to maintaining our own Christian lives, we will not fully understand what it is really supposed to be. But when we learn to regard it as the highest part of the work entrusted to us — the root and strength of all other work — we will see that there is nothing we need to study and practice more than the art of praying.

—Andrew Murray, With Christ in the School of Prayer

Read from the beginning…

Just a random thought that came across to me from my Bible reading and scanning through potential BBS studies for the fall.

Hebrews 13:5–6:

Make sure that your character is free from the love of money, being content with what you have; for He Himself has said, “I WILL NEVER DESERT YOU, NOR WILL I EVER FORSAKE YOU, so that we confidently say, “THE LORD IS MY HELPER, I WILL NOT BE AFRAID. WHAT WILL MAN DO TO ME?“

As I was reminded by a brother today, God could take everything away from us if He wanted to. All that we have is from Him, and He can reclaim it any time He wants. God is good to us. I think the material aspect of this verse just caught me a bit more, seeing as I’m now working and dealing with my own finances. And I know, I don’t have it bad, but it’s just new and a source of stress in working it all out.

But even more… God is with us forever. Just that thought is so awesome. Definitely something we all can aspire to in dealing with new things. God is with us, so we should not be afraid. As simple as it sounds and as true as it is, it’s hard for me to take to heart. But I want to, and I’m working on it.

Praise Him for the Word.

Reposted from my site.

In an apparent continuation of a theme started by a previous post, I was thinking while at CostCo a few days back about something talked about in the book Every Young Man’s Battle, the idea that we don’t even entertain the thought of impurity, that we do not have the liberty of considering the wrong “alternative,” that the “alternative” does not even exist.

At the time I thought it to be a good idea on a simply practical, visceral level, but as I looked around at the flow of people moving past me, I noticed many women attempting to be “attractive”: the makeup, the clothes (or lack thereof). I took note of this but also that had I not had my brain turned on, I could easily have been sucked in as well. I’m aware of the rationalization we so quickly go through: “Oh, she’s nice” or “I’ll stay faithful given I’m still attracted to my wife or that temptress is not hot enough.”

But do you see what’s wrong?

We’re focusing (again) on ourselves — on ourselves or the person in question. It’s then that I realize the value of advice and the underlying reality that makes the advice sound. When we say that we “don’t have the authority to consider such an ‘alternative’ ” we make it about the God who has bought us with His blood. Yes, ultimately this comes down to the matter of God’s sovereignty and authority over our lives.

In fact, let’s take this a step further. Since, then, true purity is focusing on God and His ownership over our lives, is then the person who does the acts of purity not being pure if he is abstaining simply because of say, convenience of himself or the person in question not meeting a minimum attractiveness, etc. ? In other words, are there then a lot of people who practice purity for the wrong reasons? Is that not then a feigned purity, so deluding themselves and others?

Your thoughts?

This thought actually came to me when I was rewatching the whole season of an anime series called Code Geass (the completed first season as well as all the episodes currently out for the second season). Many times we approach learning and understanding as a task done once, and we then convince ourselves that after the first time we have learned something, to repeat through the same materials and lessons is just review. But in review we also learn new stuff that we don’t notice or catch the first time around; you then feel like smacking yourself in the head for having missed a crucial detail, which yields a deeper insight to the overall lesson.

On another note though, don’t let this discourage you from learning in the first place, thinking that it is moot to learn if you can’t understand everything the first time around. I know I feel like that many a times. So the takeaway thought is that in school, in personal devos, in whatever you do, you’ll never be perfect, but if you review and practice enough, you’ll get darn close to it. Yeah, I know. Cliche. Too bad.

Once you are saved, the trajectories of your spiritual and personal growth are inseparable:

From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. (2 Cor. 5:16–17)

How, then, can maturity in one be viewed separately from maturity in another? Both are Christ’s!