The Power of Prayer

To you, O LORD, I call; my rock, be not deaf to me, lest, if you be silent to me, I become like those who go down to the pit. -- Psalms 28:1

My week, I hope, is about over, and, despite it being a short one, it won’t end any too soon. 

Today’s verse is the subject of one of Spurgeon’s commentaries.  He used the word “formalist”, meaning, I think, those who involve themselves primarily in the forms and rituals of religious activity.  Cultivating discipline, whether in prayer or some other meditative form such as a tea ceremony or archery (I meditate better doing something rather than nothing), is beneficial.  I can appreciate Zen.  The difference for us is that we believe our practice leads to a Person. 

I know that God does hear us when we pray.  I know that He is not deaf to my pleas, and that He does respond -- whether my prayer moves the mountain, causes the mountain to cease to be an obstacle to me, or moves me beyond it. 

Prayer is a discipline.  It is a comfort.  It calms us and encourages us, helps us face challenges and fears.  But it is most effective when we understand that it is communication.  Prayer works because it actually brings God into our situation and causes us to give Him our attention.  

There have been times when I’ve said myself that there is no point in praying because surely God knows what a mess I’m in.  I’m not telling Him anything He doesn’t know.  And I am completely missing the point when I say that. 

This is a personal anecdote.  Yesterday was a bad day.  I say a lot of things here, and some of it could be considered sensible advice.  It got so bad that I took some of my own advice, and I prayed, and I got an answer.  I saw the source of my problem.  As usual, it was me.  I needed to adjust the way I was thinking about a person.  I did that.  This morning, I was on a conference call.  Everybody was happy.  All was well.  I was no longer in the hot seat.  Just like that.    

So, I want to thank the Lord for bailing me out yet again. There is power in prayer. It doesn't always work the way we might imagine, but there are answers because we are talking to God.

Wee Camels

When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”  But when he heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich.  Jesus, looking at him with sadness, said, “How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!  For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”  Those who heard it said, “Then who can be saved?”  But he said, “What is impossible with men is possible with God.” – Luke 18:23-27   

And there was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and was rich. … So he hurried and came down and received him joyfully. … And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.” And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham.  For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” – Luke 19:2-10

Zacchaeus was a wee, little man -- wee enough, apparently that, had he been a camel, he could have passed through the eye of a needle.  He was a rich man who entered the kingdom of God. 

This is something I tend to forget in reading the Bible.  It’s telling a bigger story than whatever verses, passages or phrases might light up in Pneuma-neon as we are reading.  The story of the rich young man who was one of the rulers of the synagogue is a familiar one.  He rejected the call to sell his goods, though he was clearly an honest, decent, moral man.  He was, indeed, a better man by almost any standard than the dwarfish, conniving tax-collector, Zacchaeus.   

Both the sinful taxman and the righteous ruler deliberately sought out Jesus to follow Him.  I suspect that the rich ruler expected to be commended and praised by the Lord for his good conduct and holiness.  We know that the rich sinner hoped only to be able to see the Lord’s face, never expecting that he would be graced by the presence of the Master in his house. 

Another difference between the two men is their reaction to the words of Jesus.  One became sad.  The other responded with great joy.  One turned away and rejected the call.  The other made a generous offer of charity and recompense without, as far as we know, being asked.  As Jesus said elsewhere, the one who is forgiven much might be expected to love more than the one who is forgiven little.   

The grace of God allows even the worst of us to go from bondage to liberty, from hopelessness to new life.  There are those who hope in themselves, convinced that they are as good as humans can be, and better than most people.  The self-righteous do not grasp at straws or long for a glimmer of hope.  They think that if they feel dead and empty it is perhaps only a temporary unease that can be remedied by a little more religion, a little more walking the line. 

We say that Jesus gives hope to the hopeless.  What happens if we are not hopeless?  Only empty vessels can be filled. 

The Planting of the Lord

And he said to him, “Say now to her, ‘See, you have taken all this trouble for us; what is to be done for you? Would you have a word spoken on your behalf to the king or to the commander of the army?’” She answered, “I dwell among my own people.” – 2 Kings 4:13 (ESV)

This is from the story of the Shunammite woman. I refer to Matthew Henry who tells us that Shunem was a town in the tribal area of Issachar. It lay on the road between Samaria and Mount Carmel and was a place the prophet Elisha passed by on many occasions in his travels for the Lord. The woman was the wife of a prosperous man. They could afford to provide food and accommodations to the prophet. She had asked her husband to build a small, simple room that the prophet might have a place to rest and pray as he passed through. Perhaps she thought she and her husband would be blessed for their efforts. Or perhaps she simply had a heart for God and sought to please Him by showing kindness to His man.

Elisha seeks to repay the kindness done to him, and he asks her what it is that he might do for her. He had connections in the royal city of Samaria. His face was as familiar to the king as it was sometimes dreaded. Samaria was probably nearly as corrupt as Chicago, but, if one knew the right people and greased the right palms, business could be done. The leaders of Israel feared Elisha at least as much as they respected him. He did not need a bribe to sway them. All he would have to do is speak a word in the ear of the king.

The woman’s answer fascinates me. “I dwell among my own people.” She requires no special favors – at least, not yet. She and her husband had their rightful inheritance in the Land of Promise, their home among their family and their clan. Their fathers and mothers were buried in that ground. Their very bones were knit from it. They had a place where they belonged. The woman expresses no dissatisfaction, no discontent. She has enough because she sees it as being what God has given her.

Can I be satisfied with what God has given me? There is so much around me that seeks to stir up the muck of discontent. I have very nearly quit watching television except for my own DVD’s. I listen to the radio much less than I used to. But dissatisfaction still finds me. I can deal with the desire to have a new car or a new MP3 player or a new firearm. A desire for things is, for most of us, rather trivial. It does not do us a great deal of harm unless it becomes a substitute for something else.

The danger comes when I am not satisfied with where God has placed me or how He has made me. If I am unhappy with my heritage, my place in His great plan, I am at risk. This is related to the subject of my previous post. One does not have to be a Simon Magus (Acts 8:18) or a Diotrephes (3 John 9) to be led astray. Perhaps the greatest single key to developing as a Christian is to learn to rest in one’s current circumstances.

Look at Psalm 1:3: He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. A tree does not plant itself. We are planted at God’s direction. This sometimes looks like a desert, but there must be an underground river nearby.

Paul reflects a similar view in Philippians 4:11, saying, Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. Again, in Colossians 3:23, he says, Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men…. Wherever I find myself, all God asks is that I take care of what is in front of me. If I do what I can, where I am, it will be enough.

We may not always be able to remain in our place (2 Kings 8:1-6). We may be forced to sojourn and toil in a foreign and unfamiliar land. But, in that, too, we may recognize the sovereign and merciful hand of God – if we will. In the end, there will be restoration, as there was for that Shunammite woman. But we will never find rest without putting our trust fully in God as the One who is ultimately in control. He offers us pure and eternal peace with Him through Christ Jesus. He asks of us nothing except a willingness to enter into His rest and to be content.

Ode to an Easy Out

When I became embittered and my innermost being was wounded, I was a fool and didn't understand: I was an unthinking animal toward You. — Psalm 73:21-22

I've noticed that there are people who would seem to have every right to be angry with God yet are not. Then there are people like me who ought to be ashamed to complain yet frequently cry out against God in anger and frustration. Bitterness is a dangerous state of being. We are warned against allowing bitterness to take root in us (Hebrews 12:15). For this attitude has the power not just to put down roots in us but to blossom and go to seed. It can potentially "defile many". The writer said earlier in this same Psalm that if he had spoken his thoughts aloud, he would have betrayed God's people (verse 15). Bitterness is as invasive as it is destructive. To be bitter is to be sour on life. It corrodes our trust and turns us away from the transforming power of God's love for and acceptance of us.

My dad used to get wound up during "hay time". It was a big management challenge. Everything had to line up. The weather in our part of the country is never predictable, even these days, and putting up hay in good shape is very weather-dependent. The equipment had to be ready to roll; break-downs could be disastrous. On top of that, back before everyone was using big round bales, getting square bales out of the fields and into the barns required a good deal of manual labor and was thus dependent on the availability of hay hands.

My cousin lived a mile from us, and with his three sons and me, we could put together a pretty decent crew. We would put up hay at my Dad's place or my cousin's then move to the other farm. This particular year Dad had gotten his up first. He pulled the John Deere baler up to the house and got ready to service it before hitting the road to his nephew's. Dad was meticulous and thorough with his grease gun. He checked bolts and belts. Those old square balers were precise pieces of machinery. Everything had to be timed just right in order for the bales to be tied consistently and securely. There were little tempered steel "fingers" that caught the twine and pulled the knots tight. There were knives that cut the twine smoothly to set up for the next bale to be tied. Dad decided to take the knives off and touch them up. They were held in position by bolts that went down into threaded holes in the heavy gauge steel of the baler's chute.

One came off with no problem. The second one seemed tight. I offered to give the wrench a try. Dad replied, "No, you're liable to twist it off." He had barely gotten the words out of his mouth when there was an odd little sound and the wrench began to turn with sickening ease. The bolt head fell from the wrench with a slight clang against the spring steel and the jagged silver of the shaft stared up at us in leering brightness. Dad's reaction was completely understandable. He began to whale upon the baler with his wrench in a rapid, regular, if not rhythmic time. I think he was also speaking curses upon John Deere and that person's misformed progeny for many future generations, but the clanging tended to make his utterances less than intelligible, which was not necessarily a bad thing. It went on for quite some time like a synchronized stampede of belled cows or a coked-up speed metal drummer in a blacksmith shop.

As an aside, we tried drilling into the the shaft and extracting it with a spiral Easy Out. The Easy Out snapped, and the shaft of that thing was so hard the drill bit skidded off, so we laborious drilled around it with a very small bit and eventually punched everything out piece by piece.

All of us are overwhelmed at times by circumstances that catch us completely by surprise and block us from moving in our chosen or necessary direction. A flash of anger under those conditions is not terribly detrimental to us. When I spend good money on a piece of equipment, I have the reasonable expectation that it will perform as expected. If it breaks or fails or does not in some way live up to my expectations, it frustrates me. I have done all that I could to ensure success, but I have not achieved my goal. When we allow ourselves to experience frustration every day, however, we are on the path to bitterness.

Many of us set ourselves up for frustration by expecting breaks and benefits and advantages that never come. Especially here in America we are told that things ought to go our way. We should expect to have the best and be the best. The better among us understand that to mean that we can overcome every obstacle and meet any challenge. Many of us, though, are apt to think it means we won't encounter obstacles, that we won't suffer pain. When we do, more often than not, we start letting the failures wound us. Loss and defeat no longer merely sting the surface but penetrate to our "innermost being". If this happens once in a while, we can overcome and heal, perhaps; when it happens continually, the cumulative effect makes us hopeless and joyless.

Evidently the Psalmist did not own a dog or he would have never characterized his foolishness as making him an "unthinking animal". I have never met a bitter dog. I have met mean dogs and broken dogs but never a bitter dog. No dog thinks that the world owes it anything. Any tidbit of special food or kindness or attention is relished. Dogs are possibly the most consistently grateful creatures on the planet. Gratitude is the antidote for bitterness. Of all peoples who have ever lived from the dawn of humanity until now, we should be the most thankful. Need I say that we are not? We are spoiled; we are cynical, and we are bitter.

Spiritual disciplines are necessary for most of us — probably for all of us — if we are not going to be "conformed to this world" by the pressures and fears that surround us. There's no legalism in discipline. We are not performing to please or manipulate God but to refresh, exercise, and strengthen our spirit-man over the self. Practicing thankfulness is about as simple as it gets yet few disciplines are more beneficial.

Give thanks in everything, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus (1 Thessalonians 5:18)

Happy Thanksgiving

Shout triumphantly to the LORD,
all the earth.
Serve the LORD with gladness;
come before Him with joyful songs.
Acknowledge that the LORD is God.
He made us, and we are His –
His people, the sheep of His pasture.
Enter His gates with thanksgiving
and His courts with praise.
Give thanks to Him and praise His name.
For the LORD is good, and His love is eternal;
His faithfulness endures to all generations.

Psalm 100