On Constant and Earnest Prayer

To understand the importance of constant and earnest prayer I imagine God as the conductor of the greatest orchestra in existence. Not only is He the conductor, He's also the composer and the lead violinist - He's that good.

I'm the Conductor's adopted son and He has personally taught me to play the violin. My greatest aspiration in this world is to play along with His orchestra BUT before He let's me, He asks two questions: "have you practiced?" and "are you in tune?"

To be practiced, I must have knowledge. Bible study, verse memorization, theology, wisdom, etc - lots of people have these; lots of people who never get to play in God's orchestra. The second thing is the most important - I must be tuned. As any musician will tell you, knowing every note of a song backwards, forwards and upside down makes no difference if you're out of tune. Yoyo Ma, Steve Vai, Eddie Van Halen, Beethoven, Vivaldi, or John Paul Jones, they all sound equally horrible when they're out of tune. Prayer is tuning. It's getting yourself in line with, on key  with, on the same wavelength as God. When we spend time - a lot of time - in prayer we are getting ourselves in tune with God's desires. We're setting our hearts on Him and finding out how He wants to play this song. Psalm 37:4 , when we find our delight in the Lord (by spending time with him, listening, asking and paying attention to His answers, tuning in to Him), He gives us the desires of our hearts; pay close attention to the wording of that, He does not give us what our hearts desire (e.g. if I want a million bucks, He doesn't give me a million bucks), He gives our hearts their desires. In other words, through constant and earnest prayer God changes what our hearts desire. He makes His desires our desires.

He wants to play this song in B-flat. We tune to B-flat. The song sounds great because we're in tune (and practiced).

On Hell

First let me lay out an important truth that you should realize before reading any further: Nobody really understands how good people go to Hell just because they are unbelievers, especially not me. The problem is that we are finite minds trying to comprehend an infinite intelligence. Like it or not, our souls and minds are intrinsically tied to the meaty part that we call our brains. Our thought is chained to the whimsy of protons and electrons. Our minds have a beginning and an end and therefore can never “fit around” a concept that is without end (i.e. God, Heaven, Hell, etc.). There is a very good reason that the Bible teaches us using methods like fear, rituals, commands etc.; because our minds are too small to really understand the BIG truth. For instance, Wendi and I will soon be potty training Judah. Basically we'll be saying to him “no, you can’t just go around taking a dump in your pants and then expect someone to clean you up for the rest of your life”. Why? Well the ‘why’ is a bit too large a concept for him to understand just yet but as he grows (in age) he will begin to understand naturally. Apply the same principle to our situation and you’ll understand why Jesus said ‘only through Me’. (John 14:6)

Jesus says, “No, you can’t just be a nice person and go to Heaven.” (I'm paraphrasing here)

“Why?” we ask.

“Well the ‘why’ is a bit too large a concept for you to understand just yet, but as you grow (in spirit) you’ll begin to understand naturally.”

That being said, let me try to share with you the (very) small, incomplete explanation for Heaven/Hell that God so graciously revealed to me. We’ll need to agree on some simple concepts, or ‘precepts’ if you will, in order to understand the big picture so I’ll define a few things first.

First precept: You must agree that there is a God who is eternal, meaning He has no beginning or end, He was not created, He simply IS.

Second precept: You must agree that this God created things (Birds, trees, orgasms, jam, more jam perhaps, radiators, Belgium, etc.).

Third precept: you must agree that God is love. That is to say, He is not hate. God is simply goodness; not some all-encompassing, good and evil, love and hate, light and dark, life-force of which everything is a part of and He is a part of everything. God is just love and good, He is not hate and evil too.

So, what can we draw from the statement, "there is a loving God, who simply IS, and who created all things"? Well, first we can say that there must be two kinds of stuff in existence: the kind of stuff that simply exists, and the kind of stuff that was created. God is the first kind of stuff, therefore if God is love, then love must also be the first kind of stuff. What does that tell us? That hate is also the first kind of stuff, the kind that simply exists, the eternal kind, because if there is stuff that love IS and love DOES, there must also be stuff that love is NOT and does NOT. Hate and sin and evil is this type of stuff; the type of stuff that God is NOT and does NOT. If nothing were bad, how could anything be good?

So now we have the literal definition of Hell. Hell is eternal separation from God, hence, eternal separation from love, from hope, forgiveness, justice, goodness, etc. Too often Christians get confused and frustrated because they try to define Hell by a reason for being there. It’s illogical to say Hell is a punishment for sins or unbelief. Would you say that your bedroom is punishment for not taking out the trash? Of course not. Your bedroom is a just a place, you may be there for punishment, or you may be there by choice. Hell is the same way. Hell was not created as a punishment for sins (though if we end up there I’m sure we’ll feel punished). Hell was not “created” at all¹, it simply exists because logically if you can be with God you can be without God. Yes, you can be there for punishment, but you can also be there by choice (and I believe if you really look beneath the surface you’ll find that everyone there is so by choice).

Now, on to the tricky part: why anyone ever ends up there. This is one of those things that we really can’t understand but we must learn to accept. In order to accept it, we must first accept two things: that God’s love for us is as eternal as He is, and His very first gift to us was the ability to choose to love Him back or choose to deny Him.

What exactly was the serpent’s temptation to Eve in the Garden? It wasn’t that she’d become super-intelligent by knowing about good and evil. What really got her attention was that this knowledge would make her “like God” (Gen. 3:5). At that moment she decided that she wanted to be deserving of worship; that she wanted to be in control; that she wanted to be “like God”. She could have eaten from the Tree of Life and lived forever but instead she chose to deny her Creator in order to better love herself. That is the absolute basis of all sin: that we might get what we want; that we might be in control; that we might be objects worthy of our own and other’s adoration. It’s in every single decision we ever make. When we decide to lust after one another without the bonds of marriage, when we decide to be a little greedy and buy a new video game rather than tithe the church, when we eat like pigs, when we despise our bosses and take our vengeance by stealing pens and paper clips, when those three quarters stay in our pocket for a possible Coke later rather than finding the hand of a hungry homeless man, when our jobs come home with us and make us neglect our family, when we want to beat-up our lover’s ex because we want our lover to know we are powerful, when we argue with the ones we love because we must prove that we do what we want regardless of how they feel about it, all these times we are choosing to love ourselves more than God.

It is for this reason alone that anyone ever winds up in Hell. If you were in love with someone who loved only himself and just used you for everything you’d give him, would you marry him and invite him into your family and your home? Surely not. You couldn’t no matter how much you loved him, and neither can God. He gives us ample opportunity to choose Him over ourselves. Job 37:7 and John 6:45 assure us that God makes every single person aware of His presence. He even went so far as to give us a way out because he knew that we’d never be able to perfectly love Him over ourselves (that way is belief in the Christ), but at some point God has to give up and accept that some of us will never love Him even a little more than ourselves (He gave us that choice). He doesn’t just stop loving us when we go to Hell. His love is eternal, but He cannot simply invite those who love only themselves into His family and His Heaven where love is true and true love is selfless. He’s really not sending anyone to Hell. He’s letting them go, because they’ve chosen themselves over Him and as we saw earlier the only alternative to being with God is to be without Him.

That’s why Christians are so constantly trying to share Jesus’ love with everyone we care about. Not because they will suffer for their unbelief, but because if they don’t believe we will suffer their absence in our Heavenly family!

¹There is of course the "lake of fire" spoken of in Revelation, but that's beyond the scope of this post.

Two Dangerous Things: Cars and Perspective

In a grassy patch beside westbound Interstate-40 lie two marvels of modern man's ingenuity now reduced to mangled hulking masses resembling a giant coke can crushed in the fist of some angry, unseen force. Nearby an ambulance sits, lights not flashing, rear door ajar. Farther back police cruisers idle stacked in neat rows across both lanes. In the very middle of all this - as if the very essence of this scene hinged on it's centrality - there on the paved shoulder a white sheet covers another marvel, only this one is of God's design. Officers and paramedics are milling about, talking, taking notes, examining. No one is rushing to the aid of the marvel under the sheet, no one frantically pumping it's chest, no one yelling "STAT!". There's no need. The marvel has ceased being marvelous. As I pass by headed the opposite way, this is my perspective.

But there is another one. There is the perspective of the hundreds of other travelers crawling along in the traffic created by the crash, now backed up for miles and being diverted onto side roads at the previous exit. There is no crash that they can see. They see only stopped cars, blinking brake lights. Their minds are on angry managers, missed flights, full inboxes and ticking clocks. Their mouths are full of coffee and curses - the less of the former, the more of the latter. They do not know of the marvel that has ceased.

If they did would they feel ashamed? How heavy would those curses linger in the air and on their hearts if they were made aware of the mommy or daddy or son or daughter that would never be late for work (or home) again? How often have I been the one unknowingly cursing the dead? (Enough that my shame at this moment is great.)

That's what makes perspective so dangerous - nobody really has any.

Herein lies one of the most important elements for understanding and having "faith". Faith is changing the way you look at things (your perspective) to incorporate the promise that He who has *real* perspective has your situation, whatever it is, under control. With a perspective of this sort, there ought always be more coffee than curses.

Romans 8:28
Hebrews 4:13

Another Good Quote

"Progress in holiness leads ironically to a greater lament about the continued presence of sin." -Bob DeWaay from Why The Human Will Cannot Overcome Sin

Old Testament Prayer versus New Testament Prayer

As our understanding of God changes our approach of Him must change also. The prayers and appeals of Israel in the Old Testament often read like voodoo incantations and those who prayed them often expected them to work like incantations. For example, in 2 Chronicles 14:11 King Asa, before battle, prays "Lord, You are our God. Do not let a mere mortal hinder you." To me, that's the Hebrew equivalent of a Double-Dog-Dare, and amazingly enough God seems to take the dare! Asa, though vastly outnumbered, crushes his enemy. Jesus and the Apostles make it clear that God is not a god of magic; He does as He will, not because of the words we use or the things we do but because of who He is and how He chooses to love us. So why do these Old Testament incantations seem so often to work like magic?

My son Judah is 19 months old. He has just learned the word "this" and he's not afraid to use it. When he can't reach something he points his little finger, looks you right in the eye and says in his most plaintive, desperate little voice, "dis?" He then proceeds to scream bloody murder when you won't give it to him. Judah's, like Israel's, is a problem of understanding: he does not yet understand that his incantation - pointing and begging "dis?" - is not the reason I often do as he desires. Nor does he understand that "dis" is not the most appropriate way to ask.

It's important to remember that Israel's understanding of God was very limited before Jesus, God's perfect revelation, came into history, and though our understanding of God is still limited (exceedingly so) our understanding of how He wants to be approached does not have to be. Jesus tells us in Matthew 6:5-13 exactly how God wishes to be approached. To put it briefly; He wants to be approached simply, quietly, and with the focus on Him - not us. Prayer isn't a spell to get what we want, it's communication with our Maker. Sure, we may ask for what we want and need but with the understanding that He already knows our desires and the humble attitude that He, being a good parent, will respond to our needs and desires according to His judgment, which is by definition better than ours.

To answer the original question, the OT incantations worked because God loves His people and desires to prosper them, not because of how they asked - words have no power over Him - but because they asked and because it was His will to do so.

"Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand."

The Bible and the God it reveals are truth, my heart knows that, but I often find doubt seeping in because I can't understand how sooo many people on this earth are so completely blind to that. In order to believe how very possible it is for a large number of people to be utterly (and often deliberately) incapable of accepting absolute Truth I need look no further than the number of smokers and unintended pregnancies in this world. (Even when a pregnancy is unintended it's still a blessing, don't get me wrong, it's just amazing to me how many people actually expect sex NOT to work.)

Good Quote

"Christianity is not a religion. Religion is about what you do for God. Christianity is about Jesus and what He does for us."  -Mark Driscoll