What Would God Pray For?

During prayer time at church, we focus on the safety, success, and health of our loved ones, and it’s usually a rather lengthy list of children, parents, siblings, cousins, neighbors, longtime friends, and fellow church members. We express thanks for their good fortune and achievements and more often we’re anxious about their welfare. 

Now turn it around and think about God’s concerns

What does God care about? Look through the scriptures and see that he is concerned for the poor, the children, and the elderly. He cares for the suffering and the ones we often write off as unimportant.

Just as we bring our concerns to him, he shares his concerns with us. 

“I’m worried about my child.” I say. 

“I’m worried about the child that no one sees. There is probably one on the street you live on.”

“I’m worried about my finances.” I share.

“I’m worried about the person who will die today because he is starving. For that matter I’m worried about the family that lives within a block of you that didn’t eat today.”

“Please watch over my nephew who was arrested last night.” 

“Please consider the man who was arrested for worshipping me.”

“Protect our youth group while they’re on their band/athletic/church mission trip.”

“Help the innocent who are caught in the violence of war.”  

Okay, I don’t really think God is trying to play a game where he trumps our every request. I think he cares for the things that affect us personally.  But I think he wishes that we showed a bit more concern for the people he cares about. 

Here’s a challenge: When you pray, ask God what’s on his mind today. See where that leads you. 

Wanting More

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Romans 12:2). 

It’s not exactly news that people hate change.  In church we bump against this tendency if we try to change the music, or the position of the furniture, or the color of the carpet, and other superficial issues.  Tragically, we often can’t get past those to the more important issues.

As a pastor, I’m interested in helping all of us go deep to discover a greater relationship with God.  Doesn’t it make sense to assume that there is always more to see and know and experience, and that we could discover things that have never been articulated before?

Am I making anyone nervous yet?

The Church, not just our congregation, not just our denomination, but the whole Church, has expended an enormous amount of energy in establishing doctrines and then debating the finer points of them with each other.  Each church reminds its members over and over as to “what we believe.”

It’s not wrong to review church doctrine, but we need to recognize that it is an attempt to have conformation rather than encourage transformation.    

I want to learn new things. I want new insights. I want to be more than I was yesterday. I want to know God more. 

I want transformation.

Jesus wants nothing less for us, and frankly, I won’t settle for less.  

Hosea 6:6

Publicans, prostitutes, and lepers--swindlers, tempters, and the disease ridden.  These were the riffraff with whom Jesus spent time.

The refined, educated people were indignant, even outraged.  They demanded that the rabbi explain himself. 

But Jesus never answers to others. He made them answer to him.  He told them to go back to school and learn their scripture again. He quoted Hosea 6:6

For I desire mercy, not sacrifice. (Hosea 6:6).

                       

Mercy is more important than any religious trappings we might display.  

How well we understand God depends on how kind we are to those who don’t deserve it. 

On Hosea 6

God instructs Hosea to marry a prostitute who continues to be unfaithful when they’re married. It’s kind of a live action sermon illustration to describe Israel’s unfaithfulness to God, and which God is justified in punishing.  

Yet the prophet holds out hope that all can be restored if they go back to a God who waits for them. 

The words of verse 1 trouble me:

He has torn us to pieces
   but he will heal us;
he has injured us
   but he will bind up our wounds.

It bothers me that God is on record as being vengeful. 

There have been times when I thought God was hurting me deliberately. It wasn’t that he was standing back to let me reap from what I had sown, but as Hosea wrote, he was actively punishing me.

In order to find my spiritual equilibrium I had to forgive God for hurting me just as God chooses to forgive me for hurting Him. 

That sounds presumptuous in the context of my Christian theology, and no doubt people will want to straighten out my thinking.  But I doubt they’ll say anything that I hadn’t already considered. 

It’s what I had to do to be friends again with the God I serve.

On Psalm 150

 ¹ Praise the LORD.

  Praise God in his sanctuary;
   praise him in his mighty heavens.
² Praise him for his acts of power;
   praise him for his surpassing greatness.
³ Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet,
   praise him with the harp and lyre,
⁴ praise him with timbrel and dancing,
   praise him with the strings and pipe,
⁵ praise him with the clash of cymbals,
   praise him with resounding cymbals.

 ⁶ Let everything that has breath praise the LORD.

   Praise the LORD.(NIV)

The urge to praise is especially strong when I am very happy or very sad. 

Perhaps praise during time of celebration makes sense, but it’s when I’m grieving that the need to praise becomes acute.  Loss makes us feel helpless and defeated. Praise reminds me that I’m neither. 

I remember when a death in the family hit me hard that I cranked up the stereo to play “The Hallelujah Chorus,” along which I sang with my voice cranked up at full volume, too.

It was my way of defying darkness and declaring my loyalty. 

It felt right. 

Two Different Agendas

I want to expand on something I said in the pulpit on Sunday. I said that we needed to avoid expending our resources on exerting political muscle and instead focus on the truly powerful qualities that stem from the grace of Christ. 

I did not mean that Christians should avoid being part of the community at large. Certainly, Christian individuals need to exercise their right to vote and speak freely and even campaign for things about which they feel strongly. 

But the church as an institution needs to focus on the mission of Christ which has a different perspective from political agendas of a government.  We change the world through the word of Jesus and acts of grace, which is different from a government’s perspective.

I wanted to be clear on this because in our congregation we have people who hold positions in the government and do a terrific job in their service to the community, and I do not want to devalue them.  In fact, I appreciate them very much.

And no, no one came to me with a complaint. I reviewed my sermon on Sunday afternoon and decided I needed to be more precise.  

What Will the Children Think?

I heard a parent on television object to taking her children to church because she wants to allow them to make up their own minds about religious stuff.  

That’s what I want for my kids, too. But to make good decisions, children have to have some information, starting with what their parents believe.

This is true about money matters, driving, dating, work, marriage and family, exercise, hygiene, lawn care, food, car maintenance, etc. 

Children do indeed grow up to think their own thoughts and make their own decisions about everything.  When they're young, we give them information, guidance, and structure, so they’ll be equipped to make the best choices they can.  

So why not help them with religion and spirituality? 

To put it bluntly, I think some of us have gotten pretty lazy about having spiritual convictions. If we are going to teach the children, we have to have something to teach them. If we don’t read, pray, think, meditate, show appreciation for God, and practice spiritual values, then we don’t really have anything to teach the children.  
 
And they’ll HAVE to find it on their own. 

I hope they’ll do better than the generation before them.