New Season (Hosea 14:1-9)

Sunday, August 19, 2018

            I was talking recently with a woman whose discipline in prayer I greatly admire.  She writes down her prayer requests in a notebook and dates the entry.  Then she reads scripture and prays.  This is how she starts every day.  Whenever, she sees God respond to her prayer request, she writes God’s answer down, next to the original request.  This is how her on-going conversation with God happens.

            I was with her a few weeks ago, and as we talked, I told her of my admiration for her discipline.  She looked at me and said, “O, I stopped doing that about a year ago.”  I was devastated.  She said, “Now, when I get up in the morning, I check my email.”  As we continued discussing it, she committed to a return.  She would go back to her practice of beginning the day in conversation with God.  I committed to spending a bare minimum of 10 minutes per day in concentrated prayer.  And since, I have I returned to Chapel Hill from the visit, I have kept my commitment.  From my correspondence with her, I know that she has too. 

She has returned to morning conversations with God – the God who loves her.  God’s been waiting all along and was ready to welcome her and to welcome me back with open arms.  That’s the theme this morning – returning.  Return to God – the God who loves you.  Return to a life with God at the center.  Maybe this is a life you have never lived before.  Maybe you don’t know what it is to live with God at the center of everything. 

God’s there, in your life, waiting for you to stop fixating on gadgets or new romance or career goals or the miseries you’ve endured.  Gadgets and phones are fun; everyone wants to be able to tell “Alexa” was to do and see her do it.  A new romance is wonderful.  Career goals are admirable.  And personal miseries cannot be ignored.  But God has to be bigger than all of this in our lives; God loves us and will not tolerate being second to anything. 

I titled this sermon, “New Season.”  I don’t mean a new football season, although I, of course, am excited about that too.  No, what I mean by this title is a new season of life.  I was single until I got married at 32.  Life dramatically changed for me.  I had entered a new season and there was no going back to the old me.  Whatever I liked or hated about being single, after January 11, 2003, that was all behind me.  This is what I mean by a “new season.”

It can come for us at any time, but Fall in Chapel Hill is a special time of transition and of the beginning of new eras in people’s lives.  Of course students are back at UNC.  We rent parking spaces to UNC students.  All week, the church office was abuzz with students and their parents coming in to pick up their passes.  Many that Dina and I met are freshman, off to school, away from home for the first time in their lives. 

It’s not just the freshmen who enter a new season.  Upper classman have had a year or a couple of years to get used to Chapel Hill, and now return with a greater sense of purpose.  They come with sights set on the degree and the career that degree will prepare them to begin.  Graduates arrive in town to begin post doctorate fellowships.  New faculty move into town.  Many visiting scholars from other nations have just begun their time at UNC, in Chapel Hill.

The university is an enormous community and when things get rolling in the fall, the entire town feels the difference.  There’s a different vibe.  

Yet, many people in our church family and in our area have nothing to do directly with the university, and yet this is also a time of new things for them.  Anyone with school-aged children will send those little lovelies back to school a week from this Tuesday.  Maybe one of your kids is beginning elementary or middle or high school for the first time; or maybe, kindergarten, for the first time.  If you aren’t associated with UNC and don’t have school aged kids at home, immediately after Labor Day, it’s time for you to go on vacation; everywhere, the rates go down and the crowds are smaller. 

In church, Wednesday night dinner starts back up in September; family missions’ projects start back up in October; Sunday supper clubs get going again.  This is a time for each of us to look deep inside our lives and see what new thing God is doing in us.  We have the opportunity to respond to the grace of God and live life with God at the center; God shapes our sense of self, our identity; God defines all our relationships; and, our idea of success and fulfillment.  We discover what life looks like with God at the center of it all.

It might be odd to talk about a new season as we come to the very last chapter of the words of the prophet Hosea, who we’ve been hearing from all summer.  But, Hosea has been leading us to this point.  Up to now, Hosea has made two major claims.  First, the ancient people of Israel have turned away from God.  They have worshiped idols – statues of stone and wood that neighboring peoples, the ancient Egyptians and Assyrians, have passed off as gods.  In direct disregard of the first of the 10 commandments, Israel had worshiped ‘other gods,’ false gods.  Along with this offense to the one true God, the Creator of all that is, injustice was everywhere in Israel.  The poor suffered greatly.  Hosea drove this point home with the graphic imagery of Israel as a prostitute, unfaithful to her husband. 

Hosea’s second major point, has been to insist upon the absolute dependability of God’s love.  God is angry.  God is hurt.  But God loves Israel.  Though punishment is coming, God will not give Israel up to destruction.  The punishment of exile, which is an event that happened in history, was a part of what God was preparing for Israel: a new season in which the people would once again live in a relationship of love, trust, and dependence upon God. 

In her great commentary on the Minor Prophets, the late Elizabeth Achtemeier, offers a daring interpretation of the exile that Hosea predicted and that ultimately befell Israel.  She likens it to the Jews in slavery in Egypt many centuries earlier.  God led them out of bondage and, eventually, into the Promised Land.  However, between Egypt and Promised Land was 40 years in the wilderness.  There, the only thing the people could do to survive was depend on God.  Achtemeier proposes that Hosea’s words show that exile is a second wilderness.  God is leading Israel there, and there God will once again woo Israel as the object of God’s affection.

God did not need a temple in Jerusalem or shrines at Samaria or Bethel.  God did not ask the people to offer more animals as blood sacrifices.  What God wanted from his people was their love and their trust.  In exile to Assyria in 8^th century and then to Babylon in the 6^th, the people had been stripped of all possession, all position, and all power.  All they had left was desperate prayer that they lifted to God.  Achtemeier suggests that God caused exile or at least allowed it because we are at our very best when we live dependently.[i]  When we see God at the center of everything and depend on God for success in everything, that’s when we have joy and hope.  That’s when we see the power of the Holy Spirit transform our lives. 

The form of Hosea 14:4-7 is what leads Achtemeier to her interpretation.  The the images that fill these verses come from traditional romance poetry.  God says, “I will love them freely.  … I will be like dew to Israel,” refreshing the people each day.  “… They shall live beneath my shadow, they shall flourish as a garden; they shall blossom like the vine, their fragrance shall be like the wine of Lebanon.”  God is romancing his people.  But God won’t give such attentive love to a people who ignore his advances.

Israel had flirted with Assyria and her gods, and then Egypt and her gods.  Each insistence of infidelity to the only true God went as badly it possibly could.  Only when the people had lost everything and could see their own sins and could see the evil of the pagan empires that tried to dominate them could they then, finally, focus on the God who is truly all-powerful and who truly loved them.

What distractions have grabbed our attention and caused us to move God out of the center?  What in life has deceived us into thinking we could take our faith and our relationship with God, set it on a shelf, and let God collect dust there as we pursue other interests?  The images of arresting beauty in Hosea 14:4-7 hint at the good God has in store for His people once they have been fully brought back from their sins.  The ultimate fulfillment for Israel comes in the birth, life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God’s son, God-in-the-flesh. 

He didn’t die on that cross so that it would become a piece of jewelry.  He didn’t come so that we’d make church and faith a part of our lives.  He came to be our very center.  Have you focused on success in school or in career?  Shift that focus!  This is your time, the new season, the day when God moves to the very heart of your thinking.  Set your eyes on Him and let Him bring the success.  O, work hard, for sure!  Study, put the effort in, and strive for greatness; but do it in a way that never allows you to forget that God is ever before you, and ever with you because God loves you so much.

Has your pain or the losses you’ve endured or the frustrations you’ve had to bear become what defines you?  Ambition is one idol that occupies the space God is supposed to occupy in our lives.  Suffering is another.  Many fall to the point that they only know themselves by the daily ordeals they have to endure.  Shift your focus!  It’s a new season in your life, one in which God wants you to flourish and to blossom like the most beautiful of flowers.  To God, that’s what you are.  I know, the pain is still there.  Doctors and the church family should come around you and try to help put that pain behind you.  When that’s impossible, then the community of God-worshipers, the church family, is to help you live with whatever is that makes life such a struggle.  That hurt, that condition, can’t bring you down, because now, you realize God is with you, loves you, and will give you purpose and joy in your life. 

What beginning is beginning in your life today, right now?  Hosea told Israel, “Take words with you, and return to the Lord.”  He meant words of confession and words of faith.  They had brought animals to sacrifice many times.  God was done with that.  He wanted His people to come with words that revealed hearts turned to God in faith.

It is time for us to bring our words to God, words that tell our stories.  Are you a student?  What words tells who you are?  What words do you bring?  Dean’s list?  Scholarship?  Or, failure? Academic probation? 

Are you retired?  Retired people enter new seasons with God; it’s the perfect time.  What words can you bring to God, words that communicate your heart?  Relaxation?  Accomplishment?  Smiles and grandchildren?  Or, worry.  Or, tears, regret, and disappointment? 

Are you new to town, literally beginning a new season?  What words do you bring?  Hope?  Or, uncertainty?

Gather the words that tell your story.  Then, return to the Lord because He is beauty, he is welcome; He gives fruit and shade.  He is a father, and He is love.  Decide today that this is, for you, a new season, one of honesty before God, full confession, and trust; believe that God will make you new and fill you with His Spirit. 

The final word from Hosea – “Those who are wise understand these things; those who are discerning know them.  For the ways of the Lord are right, and the upright walk in them.”

AMEN

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[i] Achtemeier, Elizabeth (1996), New International Bible Commentary: Minor Prophets I, Paternoster Press (Peabody, MA), p.111.  She writes, “In the future, God will begin a new saving history, leading Israel once again into the wilderness, where he will woo her tenderly, and make her his own.”

The Story of Your Life ...

Yes, I know it is September 19, 2017.  However, today, I am working on Ephesians for this Sunday at HillSong Church.  I came across this message from January 2011.  Usually, I am sort of annoyed by my old manuscripts.  But I thought this one wasn't bad and I had not previously posted it.  So here it is.

The Story of Your Life in 2011 (Ephesians 1:3-14)

Rob Tennant, HillSong Church, Chapel Hill, NC

January 2, 2011

            

I am holding the story of your year.  This is the life of   fill in your name  , 2011.  It is December 31, 2011.  What’s on these pages?  Something new?  Did you do something you’ve never done before, and is it recorded here in the story of your life in 2011?

Who did you meet?  Who is the person unknown to you on January 1 2011 that becomes a central figure in your life on December 31, 2011? 

What places did you go?  On December 31, 2010, I was able to say I visited Kearney, Nebraska.  I couldn’t say that before 2010.  On December 31, 2011, as you review your year, what places did you go?  What stories will you tell about the places that you went?

What did you learn?  As you read the story of your life, 2011, what do you know now, now that it is December 31, 2011, that you did not know before this year?

Ah, the story of the year that was, 2011; in your book, what’s on these pages?  This is what is so exciting about the beginning of a new year.  Nothing in this book has been written yet.  We can imagine how we will fill these pages, but it is not December 31, 2011, it is January 2.  All we have is imagination … and planning … and prayer. 

I know some don’t think this way.  You live in the moment.  The turning of the page from one year to the next is not all that significant.  It’s too abstract and too philosophical.  You’re more wired to deal with the moment, getting through this day, this week. 

Others are might imagine the year to come, but not optimistically.  You don’t ask who will I meet, but who will I lose?  You’re not wondering what might be, but rather, what might go wrong? 

If you are an “in-the-moment” person, that’s OK.  God made you that way and dreamers like me need practical minded people like you to keep us grounded.  If you are a “prepare-for-the-worst” type, that’s good too.  God helps optimists like me who think all is well prepare for when things are not so well by bringing folks like you into our lives. 

Optimists, dreamers, pragmatists, and planners – all are needed; each one is created in the image of God.  Each has something to offer in the kingdom of God.  This morning as we step into a new year, we will look at how each of us contributes to life and to our life together as a community of faith.  Even if it is not your normal way of thinking, I invite you, just this morning, to join me in imagining, but not exactly you might think.

As we do imagine together, I want to borrow a line that will help us.  It’s from the book The Purpose Driven Life.  It’s the very first sentence of the book.  “It’s not about you.”  Or me.  Planners who are prepared for the next catastrophe, life is not about your worrying, helpful as it often is.  Pragmatists who live for today and deal with today, life is not about your intense and I might add very admirable focus.  My fellow dreamers and optimists, life is not about our fantasies of what might be and how good it can be.  What then, is life about?  If it’s not about me and not about you, what is it?  What’s the story and how are we supposed to live? 

Of the numerous scriptures that richly answer these questions, I am drawn to the opening verses of Ephesians which we just read.  This is written to people who are Christ followers.  I acknowledge that many here may not be followers of Jesus.  You’re checking the Christian scene out and exploring faith and visiting a church, and that’s awesome.  We love it that you are here.  Listen to what this Bible passage promises for people who have given themselves completely to Jesus and surrendered to his rule in life.

It says God the Father has promised “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (v.3).  Heavenly places are not far off lands to be enjoyed in a distant future by the soul some unknown duration of time after death.  They’re much closer and accessible for the person of faith.  The Apostle Paul was called to the third heaven even as he did missionary work in ancient Greece and ancient Turkey, places like Galatia and Thessolonica.  I have in the depths of my being in moments of extreme spiritual intimacy with God felt the fullness of the blessings in these heavenly places. 

With these blessings that we have when we are in Christ, we are adopted as children of God.  This will be more of my focus next week, what does it mean to be a child of God in the world?  For now I simply state that the New Testament clearly promises that all who put their trust in Jesus and give their lives to Jesus are sons and daughters of God Almighty, and Ephesians 1:5 is one of many passages that state this reality. 

Verse 6 and 7 speak of God’s grace and the forgiveness we are given.  Everything we have in Jesus is a gift.  Our sins – and we all commit them – separate us from God, but in Jesus Christ, we have complete forgiveness.  That which separates us has been removed, and it says in verse 11 we have an inheritance.  Our Father God is bequeathing to us an eternal home where there is no pain or worry and there is unending joy.

Along with that, and here we get to the meat of the matter, all who are in Christ are destined for a specific way of living.  What’s life all about? It’s not about me.  It’s not about you.  We see in Ephesians 1 we are destined to live for the praise of God’s glory (v.11a, 12b).

            It’s possible that I just lost half the room, maybe 2/3.  You just checked out and will come back next week to see I have anything interesting offer because what I just said is too churchy, too removed from real life.  To be fair to me, I am spouting my personal philosophy.  I am quoting from Ephesians 1.  To tune out what I am saying to tune out the Bible.  But that doesn’t matter.  To say that life is all about the praise of God’s glory feels unreal; it’s abstract; it’s ethereal. 

When I am washing the pots after we have had soup for dinner, I am not living for the praise of God’s glory.  I am trying to get the pot clean, and I am grumbling because the stuff is stuck on there and won’t come off.  I wasn’t grumbling when I ate the soup.  That meal hit the spot on a cold winter’s night.  But as happy as I was to eat it, I am suddenly a crab having to clean it up.  That stuff about God’s glory doesn’t apply. 

You’re about an hour away from leaving work for the day, and the boss says he needs you to stay two extra hours.  What can you do?  You need the job.  God’s glory?  You’ve got to trudge through another two hours.  You’re too tired and too distracted to be dreaming about praising God. 

Her boyfriend just left.  She thought this evening was going to end with him on one knee, presenting a diamond ring.  She was not expecting “I think we should take a break, maybe see other people for a while.”  God’s glory?  Praise?  She’s heartbroken.  She’s not emotionally in a place where she can live out the words of Ephesians 1.  She needs the promises of those Heavenly blessings, but she just can’t live for the sake of praising God, not right now. 

No, to say that life is all about living for God and to say that each of us should make that our driving ambition in 2011 is just unrealistic and unreachable.

But, what if …?  I know, I am a dreamer.  But what if we looked at each of the places of life – home (where we eat good food and have good times but also complain and sometimes fight with those we love), and work (where we make money but also give the greatest amount of waking hours and maybe give a bit of our souls), and relationships (where we cannot predict how they will go because they involve other people) – what if we look at the places of life differently? What if instead of combing the scriptures to find a verse to get me through the day, I submit myself to the scripture no matter how the day is going? 

I open up my self, my spirit, that I may be filled with the Holy Spirit so that I am ready for my day be it the worst of the year or the best.

I constantly meet with other believers in my church family and in my small group because God nourishes me through those people.

The Bible, the Spirit, the Community – I am continually filled in these places, so my life can be a testament of praise and in the world I can live in a way that points people to Jesus.

It’s December 31^st 2011, and this is story of God having been at work in the world specifically seen in your life and mine.  It’s the story of someone who has discovered that life is about the relationship with God and the deeper one goes with God, the more one sees Jesus, lives a life that raises praise in church and in the daily world, and the more one lives in those Heavenly blessings. 

Take the three examples: home life, I am washing the soup pot, but I am living as one who wants to praise God with my life.  It doesn’t make the goop at the bottom come off any easier.  The change is in me.  I’ve opened myself to God’s grace, so my mind is on how grateful I am for the soup, for the wife who prepared it, for my kids who ate with me.  Maybe they fought all the way through dinner.  But I have gratitude because of God at work in me and my focus on Him.  Parenting isn’t easier and dirty pots are still dirty.  But I am different because of my relationship with God.  Because I am different, the whole scene is different.

You are tired and not happy about having to work two extra hours.  What’s different?  Starting 2011, you determined that this would not be a story about your job.  2011 is about you seeking God and God speaking through your life.  The drama plays out at your job and affects your approach to that job and your response to that boss.  You work hard and encourage your coworkers even when it’s tough to do so.  The title of this story is not “Dave the Insurance Adjuster.”  This story is called, “The God of the Universe at work in Dave’s life.”

She wanted him to propose and instead he dumped her.  She’s very, very sad.  But that is not the end of the story.  It’s not the story at all.  It might be a chapter in it, and maybe a long and dark chapter.  But the story is of a young woman seeking God, living in such a way that her life points to God and points others around her to the grace and forgiveness and love of Jesus.  She knows as a daughter of God she has a divine inheritance and she knows as one who walks in intimate relationship with God, the blessings are hers today.  Even when she is sad, she will pray, she will obey, and she will praise.  Even if it feels like she’s forcing herself.  Praise can be a spiritual discipline.  Praise is not about her own emotional state or how well things are going in life.  Praise is about God.  No matter what comes, her life will point to God. 

I can pray “God, please speak to me.  As I spend time washing this pot, a mundane activity, let this be a time I am thankful for the food I enjoyed that came from this pot.  And let me hear your voice.” 

You can pray, “Oh Lord, help me through these final hours of work.  I am tired and I want to go home, but I am thankful for this job.  Help me have a good attitude and reflect the love of Christ.” 

She can pray, “God, I am so lost right now. I need help.  I want to be married and I thought he was the one.  I don’t know where to turn so I am turning to you.”

It is good and right and Biblical to pray in all circumstances.  The examples I have shared vary from being of little importance (doing the dishes) to things that matter very, very much (like relationships and engagements).  You can think of more extreme examples.  In the little and the big, the insignificant and the highly important, our stories in 2011 can be about God because in everything we turn to Him and live in such a way that people see us and see God in us.

In His book The Next Christians, Gabe Lyons tells about the taxi stand at La Guardia airport in New York City.  He flies into New York often and has been to the taxi stand many times.  He always notices, if it is the right time of day, a group men in turbans.  They are at a part of the sidewalk that doesn’t have a loot of foot traffic.  They have their prayer mats, and they are kneeling facing east.  Their heads are on the ground. 

Lyons admires the dedication of these Muslims.  He writes, “Even though I don’t fully get it, and even though I’ve never felt the need to pray like this in public, I respect their countercultural commitment.  The odd and the curious practice of seeing a man put his face on a rug in the middle of a parking lot makes a statement.  It says, ‘I’m serious about my faith.  I’ve committed to expressing it and I don’t care what anyone else thinks.  I’ve found a better way to live’” (p.179)!

The Apostle Paul asserts in Ephesians 1 that life in Christ is the better way to live.  In Christ, our lives, the disappointments, the frustrations, the normal and boring, and the high and exciting times all point to Jesus.  It happens because we know life is all about Him.  We turn to Him in everything.  Through the Bible, through prayer and the Holy Spirit, and through the community of faith, we live in Christ.

December 31, 2011, may another take the book, the story of our lives over the course of the year.  May they read it and say, Oh wow!  This person knows Jesus and because of his life or her life, I want to know Jesus.  In Christ, we live the better story.  Many 2011 be a year we live in Christ.

AMEN

Developing Our God Receptors

            We have sensory receptors.  Our eyes transduce light, our ears sound, and so on.  When it comes to processing the information that light, sound, touch, and the other senses convey to us, our experiences, our temperament, our IQ, our personality style, and our world view all influence how we process the words our eyes read or ears hear.  So then, how do we see or hear God in it?

            At our church, we are spending 2017 trying to see and hear more of God, and even taste and see that God is good (Psalm 34:8).  We want to feel God’s Spirit fill us and wash over us.  This talk of the senses in relation to knowing God is intended to fully awaken us for the sake of knowing more of God than we now know.  It is both metaphor and literal knowing. 

            One of the points I have tried to emphasize is that God is present, is speaking, and is active – right here, right now.  If we can’t hear and see God, it might be because we are too distracted.  We’re paying attention to other things and God in God’s freedom chooses to allow us to choose to ignore him.  Living in America in 2017, there is plenty of noise vying for our attention.  TV, radio, Facebook, Twitter, streaming news, streaming video, You Tube; it all competes for our minds.  With our eyes drawn to all this media, how do we ever focus and see and hear and know the God who loves us?

            We need to develop our brains and then get our brains in tune with our sense receptors so that we are ready to see and hear God amidst the noise.  The first thing to do is to block it all out (temporarily).  This mostly happens in daily devotions.  Get up early when the world is still relatively quiet.  Pray and read the Bible, but before doing that, sit in silence.  Ask God, ‘O Lord, what do you want for me today?’  Then sit in silence and await God’s reply.

            As you do this, you’ll notice a million things that creep into your mind; the grocery list; last night’s football game; an argument with a friend; an important meeting at work; scene from the Netflix show you are binge-watching.  When we try to quiet our minds, even for five minutes, these things and countless others try to jump in. 

One way I have combatted these distraction in my own devotions is to close my eyes and imagine myself sitting on the bank of a gently flowing river.  I am quietly waiting for God to speak.  As I do, last night’s argument with my son parks itself right in the middle of my thoughts.  I do not try to forcefully eject that thought from my mindsight.  It’s there.  So I gently nudge it to the river, and when that distracting thought is in the water, I watch it float down the river, eventually right out of my mind.  Then I am quiet again, listening to God.  Sometimes, my quiet meditation is completely eaten up sending distractions afloat down the river.  Other days, I am able to achieve quiet before the Lord and thus listen. 

After time spent in silence (some days 2-5 minutes, other days a bit longer), then I move into confession, thanksgiving, and pray for things (‘God please help my daughter do well in school today;’ ‘God, my friend’s marriage is falling apart, please help him;’ etc.).  Finally, I spend time reading the Bible.  That initial period of silence before the Lord is the first step in developing my God receptor.  I block out the noise and listen to the Spirit in my spirit.

After blocking out the noise, I then put the colors on the canvass.  Lately I’ve been watching old videos of the bushy-haired painter, Bob Ross.  I don’t actually want to paint, but I find it relaxing to watch him paint and talk about painting.   Bob Ross always begins by painting the canvass with liquid white.  It gets the canvass wet and ready to receive the other colors he will affix to it.  How do we get the canvass that is our mind/spirit ready so that God’s messages will be received and will stick throughout the day?

We prepare our canvass (mind/spirit).  We don’t go into the day with a blank slate.  We color our minds so that when we receive stimuli, it comes through a specific filter, a Holy Spirit-tinted filter.  The coloring of the canvass begins on Sunday morning when the people of the church gather together in worship.  We pray together.  We sing together.  We hear the sermon.  Maybe the sermon is helpful; maybe it sparks push back from you.  Either way, it should stimulate your brain not only to hear the scripture read, but also to think deeply about how the scripture’s message speaks to your life today. 

After Sunday worship, throughout the week, we color the palette by the reading the Bible.  You can read in chunks, several chapters from different books in one sitting.  Or you can reading one passage and spend time reflecting on what it says.  Either way, you’re covering your brain with a layer of the Bible story; that in turn will affect how you take in stimuli that comes throughout the day. 

For example, you hear someone promise to do something.  Trust me!  He says.   This is serious, and I swear on the Bible you can count on me.  You hear that, and somewhere in the recesses of your mind, you remember that last week you read Matthew 5:35-37.  Jesus said, “Do not swear at all, either by heaven or by the earth … let your ‘yes’ be yes, and your ‘no’ be no.”  Maybe you remember specifically that these words come from the Sermon on the Mount.  Maybe you don’t.  But these words of Jesus are on your canvass and in this moment come into play when your friend swears on the Bible and then crosses his heart and hopes to die.

This is a simple ‘for instance’ of how coloring your palette works.  We set our brains by consistently reading scripture.  We come to prayer and to the Bible moldable, allowing the Word of God to shape us.

First we spend time blocking out the noise.  Second we prepare the palette of our brains (our mindsight) through engaged reading of scripture.  A third way we develop our God receptors is intentional looking.  We head into the day constantly telling ourselves, “I am seeking God in this,” whatever “this” might be.  It takes practice. 

Maybe you have a conference with a professor who is making life hard for you as a student.  When you had your devotions in the morning, you reminded yourself to “seek God in this, whatever ‘this’ is.”  As you drove to campus, you again reminded yourself.  But then, in the professor’s office, fighting to not be intimidated while stating your case to the person who controls your final grade, you get nervous.  You are a mixture of anger, fear, and frustration.  You forget all about “seeking God in this.”  Afterward, on top of being frustrated by the meeting, you’re frustrated that it feels like you handled the way anyone would not the way a disciple of Jesus should.  In the pressure of the moment, you totally forgot to ‘seek God in this.’

That happens!  All the time!  Failures are moments where we are more oriented toward the world than toward the eternal Kingdom, but God is a giver of unending grace.  God doesn’t hold our failure against us and we don’t need to dwell on it.  God encourages us to keep stepping toward Him.  Continue, day after day, reminding yourself to “seek God in this.”  The first time you really do it, you’ll be surprised.  You look back at some interaction or experience and realize, “Wow!  I was actually conscious of the Spirit’s presence, and now I can see how God was at work.”

There is much, much more to seeing, hearing, and knowing God.  However, when we begin by daily blocking out the noise, preparing the palette of our mind/spirit, and seeking God in every encounter, we discover just how differently the world is.  When we see live with sensitive, heightened God receptors active, we realize God is at work in the world and we are in the process of aligning ourselves with God.  After a month of consistent, committed execution of the three steps identified here, we see more of God and we’ll see the world differently.  We’ll begin to see from a Kingdom perspective.   

The Praying Life

Sunday, February 8, 2015

            My grandmother is 92.  No one in our family has lived to that age.  When she was 86, she got really sick.  I began preparing for her death.  Most people don’t live into their 90’s.  It is happening more and more, but it is not a tragedy when someone over 85 dies.  I want to be careful with this.  I am not casual about anyone’s death.  We read in 1^st Corinthians 15 that death is the enemy.  It is serious and whenever my grandmother does die whether is this year or when she is 100, we will grieve.  But it is not a tragedy.  It is a full life, lived well. 

            And that would have been true had she died a few years ago when she was sick at 86.  Even so, we prayed for her recovery.  Relative in 8 different states were praying.  In our family, Meme is a revered, saintly figure.  And she recovered. 

            Did she get well because we prayed so hard.  Maybe.  My grandmother was on the wrong medication and once it was changed, her depression was gone.  Her zeal for life, even at 86, returned and is still there now at 92. 

            So what do we see?  Meme recovered because of everyone’s prayers or Meme recovered because they finally got the medication right?  I don’t even try to know the answer.  I believe prayer helped.  I know my praying helped draw me to God.  God walked with me in a tense, uncertain time.  Life is full of tension and uncertainty.  If Meme had died, God would have helped me cope.  Someday she will die.  When it comes prayer will help us because prayer is conversation with God and God loves us.

            Christ followers live in prayer.  When we are right in our walk with God, our lives are prayer-filled lives.  If you think, Uh oh, my life is not prayer-filled, I may not be where I need to be, spiritually speaking, don’t worry.  God is not staring with arms angrily folded, glaring at us and thinking, you better get this right.  God loves us with mercy and grace.  God’s desire is to walk with us.  We are more aware of God when our lives are built on prayer and immersed in prayer.

            In the book Streams of Living Water, Richard Foster writes that the prayer-filled-life is defined the “steady gaze [or a person’s] soul [is] upon the God who loves us” (p.49).  The stead gaze of her soul is upon the God who loves her.  The steady gaze of your soul is upon the God who loves you.

            I don’t know about you, but that is kind of different from the way I normally think and talk.  We would suppose Christians – we – are praying people.  But when we say that, what exactly are we saying?  Again, consider Foster’s quote, “the steady gaze of the soul upon the God who loves us.”  Do you picture an esoteric aesthetic who retreats to the mountains and sits in silent mediation?  Or the monk, cloistered in a cell, chanting for hours on end?  We can imagine the guy steadily gazing upon the soul of the God who loves him.  I can’t see myself being that guy.

            I imagine myself and it is a week before Christmas.  Christmas shopping needs to be done.  There is a Christmas event at church.  My older son is singing in school choir’s performance at Barnes and Noble.  My younger son has a basketball game.  I need to finish my sermon.  We have out-of-town company.  And both Candy and I are sick.   If someone is tempted to chalk that up to “Christmas stress,” there are numerous other times in the year that the schedule is that full.  And we know a lot of people, devoted Christian people, who are as busy as we are.  How are supposed to “maintain a steady gaze upon the God who loves us?”  We are so caught up jumping from one event to the next, we don’t have a steady gaze on anything. 

            But it is not just stress that interrupts us and gets in the way of living the praying life.  The problem of evil crops up. I read an interview just this week touching on this. A British actor, one I thoroughly enjoy in films, was asked about his atheism.  The interviewer said, ‘what if you died and found there is a God?  What would say to him?’  The actor replied, ‘I’d say to God, bone cancer in children.  What’s that about?’  He went on to name other dreadfully awful tragedies.  He blamed God for all of it.[i]  If there is God, that God is to blame for all the evil and suffering in the world.  The theological term for this is theodicy; the problem of evil. 

            It is a reasonable thing to consider when we talk about prayer.  Pondering evil, how do we pray at all?  We think about the suffering that is in the world and it gets heavy?  If we have a heart, we are wearied by the plight so many people face.

            Each of the four gospels offers examples of Jesus at prayer.  In Mark’s account we see Jesus, right in the midst of a very full life, making space to gaze upon God.  And, Jesus does surrounded by examples of the pain and suffering that the actor and many atheists cannot stomach.  No one hates the evil and the hurt humans endure more than Jesus.  This is why he came. 

In a Sabbath day service with Jesus preaching in the synagogue, a man interrupts everything.  His maniacal rants make it clear that he is possessed by a demon.  Today we see such a thing and chalk it up to severe mental illness.  I believe demons are real.  I believe demons are real.  I believe mental illness is real.  There is no way to determine what was up with this guy.  He came off as insane as he interrupted Jesus’ sermon with his crazed rants. 

            Then, the unexpected; the demons recognize Jesus.  “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?  Have you come to destroy us?  I know who you are, Holy One of God.”  What was this demon saying?  Jesus was the son of Joseph and Mary, not God.

            Jesus sternly called out the demons and they obeyed.  The affair rocked that little Capernaum synagogue.  They had seen possessions, but never had they witness demons meekly submit to a man’s authority.  This was the carpenter’s son.  Jesus became the talk of the town.  Simon Peter’s mother-in-law had a debilitating fever.  Jesus touched her and she was back to full health. 

            Word spread.  There’s a miracle man at Simon Peter’s house.  Mobs of people descended on this out-of-the hamlet, and Jesus responded to every need.  He and his disciples walked from village to village, teaching the Kingdom and casting demons out of people. 

            Once, a leper came to him.  Lepers were supposed to stand at a distance and shout “unclean” so other would stay away.  One was so desperate, he violated convention and ran right up to kneel before Jesus.  Jesus was “moved with pity.”  He healed the man. 

            In Mark Jesus was always hurried and rushed by crowds.  The word that characterizes Mark’s gospel is “immediately.”  Every need was right now.  On one occasion, Jesus was so exhausted, he fell fast asleep in the bow of the boat.  Waves lifted the small craft high in the air and then slapped it down hard on the water again and again.  The 12 disciples held on for dear life.  I wonder if the tax collector got seasick.  I doubt he was an experienced sailor.

Jesus, also not a boatman, lay in bow and snoozed away.  The only time people gave him any space was when he was in the middle of the sea in weather not fit for man nor beast.  If ever someone did not have time to pause and cast a steady gaze of the soul upon the God who love us, it was Jesus.

Jesus knew busyness, yet he prayed.  His relationship with his Father-God deepened as he prayed in trying times.  Jesus could not be who he was without prayer.  Mark 1:35: “In the morning, while it was still dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.”  He prayed at meals.  He prayed with large crowds in the country side.  While he hung dying the cross, he talked to God.  Mark’s gospel shows how normal it was to see Jesus praying. 

As a guest in Simon’s home, he sacrificed sleep, rising pre-dawn so he could focus on God.  Everyone else was still in bed.  He was fully human and needed sleep as much as anyone.  Something he needed more than sleep was time with his Heavenly Father.

Other times, he went far into the wilderness, leaving crowds behind.  I know I sacrifice prayer time for tasks, sometimes very necessary things; sometimes not-so-necessary.  Jesus sacrificed tasks, and appointments because prayer took priority.  He built his life around it.  He did not fit prayer into the life he was building.  Everything else came after he had his time with God.

How does this look in your life or mine?  In 2015, with all the ways life gets filled, how do we live the praying life as Jesus lived it?

It begins with the development of our relationship with God.  No one can do this for you or for me.  We go to God together as a community.  Together, we sing.  Together we serve.  Together we pray.  We all have to be in it.  There is no surrogate faith.  Your mom, my friend, an elder – no one else can develop your life with God.  It is you and God.  It is God and me; we have to step toward the Father in prayer. 

God has stepped toward us.  Jesus came – God in flesh.  Jesus took the penalty of sin upon himself.  With death on the cross and his resurrection, sin no longer comes between us and God.  We repent, he forgives, and the relationship is right there to be lived.

We are made ready for stressful days through our prayers during the calm times.  We make daily prayer a top priority.   What I offer here are a few possible ways one might enter the praying life.

It could be every morning.  With that first cup of coffee, you read a few verses, write your thoughts and prayers in a daily notebook, and then spend at least five minutes in quiet, talking in your spirit to God and listening in your heart as God speaks to you. 

It could be a quiet meditation.  You make sure every day to arrive at work 5 minutes early, but you don’t go in right away.  You sit in your car for 5 minutes.  Read a passage in the Bible. Spend quiet moments asking God to prepare you for the day ahead. 

Perhaps you have young children.  As the school bus pulls away, you pull out your Bible and set it on your kitchen table.  The next 20 minutes will be you, God, the word, and your prayer notebook.  And nothing else gets that time.

Peter woke up.  No Jesus.  Where was he?  Peter, Mark says, “Hunted” for Jesus.  I don’t know if Jesus was done praying when Peter found him, but Jesus was ready to go. 

When shape our lives so that we get to those desert places alone God and daily, we linger there.  When those quiet moments become fixed in our lives and prayer is normal for us, then everything else falls in place.  It does not mean everything is easy or perfect.  It means we are in touch with God.  We sense God’s presence and hear when God speaks.  Like Jesus, from our times of prayer, living the prayer-filled life, we are ready to live the purposes and works God has for us. 

So, copy the master.  Carve out space so that life is filled up with prayer and thus filled up with God. 

AMEN

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[i] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/11381589/Watch-Stephen-Fry-brands-God-utterly-utterly-evil.html

Called for Life (Colossians 4:2-6)

Sunday, June 29, 2014

            Fans of the movie Frozen remember how important “Coronation Day” is in that story.  In the story of our church life, “Ordination Day” is a big day.  If it is your ordination, you have to speak in front of the congregation.  The church gathers around you and lays hands on you as your name is carried to God in prayer.  If it is not your ordination, you may not remember as much about the day.  Like most Sundays, you come to church.  It is special, but may not stand out from other Sundays. 

            This morning three individuals are recognized as uniquely set apart.  Each has answered the call to a servant-ministry role that is specific in the life of HillSong Church. 

            As all of us participate in recognizing the ordination of Jess, Tabitha, and Jeremy, we remember the word of God from last week, Colossians 3.  We are God’s chosen, beloved and holy.  Not all are ordained, but all who are in Christ are God’s people.   To be his is to have his purpose as ours.  God chooses us and God defines us.  If there is something we all might remember from this ordination day – those being ordained and those laying on hands and saying prayers – it might be the words of wisdom Paul gives the church in the opening verses of Colossians 4.

            He begins, “devote yourselves to prayer.”  Make prayer a marker in your life, an activity, a ‘go-to’ coping response, and an automatic way of processing information and emotions.  This cannot be overemphasized.  The disciple lives a praying life.  It would require a sermon series lasting a couple of months to think through all the different ways that we pray.  I simply urge each of this morning to identify one way that we pray that is most comfortable and to practice that method without fail daily for the next 30 days.  It could be prayer with journaling, it could be praying the scriptures, intercession, or something else, but find your sweet spot in prayer and don’t miss a day for the next 30.  Find a style of praying that works for you and stick with it. 

            Also, pray in ways that are challenging.  You struggle with silent prayer.  You don’t like to get up early, so sun rise prayers are tough.  Praying in public is difficult.  Find that one way that is most difficult for you.  Practice that for 30 days. 

We meet God in our comfort zones and also way outside our comfort zones.  In both meetings with God, we are blessed and we grow.  Especially, newly ordained leaders, you will want to discover new avenues of prayer.  You will want to find out what it means to live a praying life.  Paul insisted here and in other letters that we devote ourselves to prayer.  He wanted every church under his influence to be a praying church (Phil. 4:6; 1 Thess. 5:17).

            Devote yourselves to prayer.

            “Pray for us … that God will open a door for the word” (Col. 4:3).  In asking that they pray for him, Paul acknowledged his own dependence.  He could not succeed without God’s constant help.  He also knew that if he did succeed, it would advance the Kingdom of God.  Prayer by the church then and now plays a role in the advance of the kingdom.

            Colossians 4:3 is a summons to the church to pray for that church’s pastors.  In our case, this is a call to prayer for our youth minister Emily, and for Heather and me.  We need your prayer for us to be successful in helping our body of Christ-followers make sense of the world according to the word of God.  We will be better pastors if you make prayer for us a part of your lives.  And the church will be closer to who God is creating our church to be with pastors and ministers who are covered in prayer.  In addition to volunteering, prayer is a way you participate in church life.

            Colossians 4:3 also ties the prayers of the church to the work of God in the world.  Paul’s intent is that God will open a door for the Word as Christ followers spread the gospel around the world.  In living a praying life, we are called by God to pray for Christian workers – evangelists, missionaries, and lay people who serve God on campus and in the marketplace. 

Choose one day a week your own prayer life and make that the day you pray for pastors, missionaries, and Christian workers in the world.  Make your prayer specific.  Pray for our partnership in Ethiopia.  Pray for members of our church going on trips.  Pray for persecuted Christians in Iraq, Syria, Sudan, and Nigeria.  Pray for our members – your friends; ask God to make them missionaries in their jobs.  Make this prayer for the advancement of the word in our own community and worldwide something that matters greatly in your life.

Devote yourselves to prayer.

Pray that God will open a door for the word.

A final instruction – “Conduct yourselves wisely toward outsiders; let your speech always be gracious.” 

As we become praying people – we come to know God more and more.  As we invest our heart’s energies in praying for the advancement of the Word, we become more connected to God’s work in the world.  Striving for wisdom and gracious speech, we embody God’s loving, inviting character.  Our faith comes to life as it is lived beyond the walls of the church building.  We see what kind of Christ followers we truly are in how conduct ourselves with non-Christians.  Are we aloof or warm and inviting?  Are we judgmental or gracious?  Everyone can be a Christian at church.  There one is rewarded for singing well, praying well, and speaking well.  The God who calls is a God who sends and we are sent to engage in relationships with people who have not given themselves to Christ.  We live out our lives within systems not in step with the Kingdom. 

Coronation day is a declaration of the state of affairs of the kingdom.  If the new ruler follows a tyrant, the subjects in the kingdom have hope that life will be better under a newer, gentler monarch.  If the new king replaces a beloved king, there’s anxiety.  Can he be as great as his father?  Can anyone?  What will become of our kingdom?

Similarly, the ordination is statement of the health of the life of the church.  I look at Jess, Tabitha, and Jeremy and I have hope.  God is at work in the lives of the people of our church and they are answering his call.  And I have seen people in our church live praying lives.  I have heard as HillSong people have prayed fervently for the advance of the Word of God in the world.  I have watched my brothers and sisters in this place conduct themselves wisely in the world, sharing grace, and acting as salt that preserves and seasons their environments with the Gospel.  I am impressed by how much this church calls me to pray and live.  I know the three being ordained today will step into that role of encouraging their fellow church family members just as they are being encouraged.

Colossians ends with Paul telling someone named Archippus to complete the task he has received in the Lord (4:17).  He had something specific in mind for Archippus.  His advice transcends and speaks to us.  We complete the task God has given us by living prayerful lives as followers of Jesus.  This is true for ordained deacons and elders and it is true for all who read the word, hear the call of God, and decide to give themselves to Him.  All of us are called to life and called for life.

AMEN