A Story about Praying and Obeying

I took my son to McDonald's the other day. I didn't want to take him to McDonald's, but we were having a special daddy-son day to celebrate his fifth birthday, so he got to pick the place. I tried to convince him that he wanted to eat at a pizza buffet, but he knew he would get a free toy at McDonald's, along with an hour or so in the indoor play area, so he wouldn't budge on the issue. 

As we sat down with our food to eat, another man with another young child, a girl who looked younger than my son, sat down nearby. I overheard her tell the man--whom I later learned was her grandfather--that they had to pray before they ate. This reminded my son and I that we, too, needed to pray prior to eating. So we did. And they did. And our two tables ate at about the same pace, and we all ended up in the play area at about the same time. My son cautiously entered the maze of French-fry-grease-coated plastic tunnels into which the little girl had already charged. I sat down at the last empty table while the little girl's grandfather stroked his chin and paced in a worried manner, constantly craning his neck to peer into the tunnel windows to catch a glimpse of his granddaughter. I ignored him. I am on my third kid, and remembered my own worry the first time my eldest had climbed into those tunnels--before she was even two. She had gone inside and we didn't see her for over 20 minutes. (She is still alive.)

Just to pass the time, I started praying for the people in the play area. I looked at every single person, every boy and every girl and every adult, and prayed over them from my seat, that they would experience God's salvation. I prayed for the grandfather and the little girl last; I already assumed they were Christians, so I wasn’t as worried about them, but I had overheard him tell someone that she had leg braces and couldn't walk very well, which was why he was distraught over her time spent in the tunnels. I had already felt the presence of God as I prayed over other McPatrons, but when I started praying for the little girl and her grandfather, the Holy Spirit told me to approach the man and pray for him and the little girl.

Instead, I kept praying quietly--ceaselessly but also motionlessly. I wanted to boldly approach the man, but suddenly I thought, “He's going to think I'm crazy.” I wanted to do it, but I kept going through a mental list of reasons not to. After about 30 seconds of this inner-battle, the grandfather (Barry) approached me.

He told me that his granddaughter’s name was Abby. She was born with stage four brain cancer. St. Jude's Children's Hospital had sent her to a hospice because they said nothing could prevent her from dying in less than a month. They found a surgeon who performed brain surgery on the infant and cut out the cancer, and followed it up with chemotherapy when she was five weeks old. It is a miracle that she is alive at all. Now, she's been cancer-free for four-and-a-half-years. After I heard the entire story, and had heard Barry give glory to God several times, I boldly stood up and told him, “I felt earlier that the Lord was leading me to pray for you.”

I am thankful to God that he caused Barry to come approach me and made it easy for me to pray with him, but I can't help but think about how much more rewarding the experience would have been if I had stepped out in faith the moment God had impressed His will into my heart. After that initial faith-filled step, it would have been a breeze. I have been praying that God will give me another chance, and that next time I would immediately obey when God tells me to share His love with a stranger.

Don't be a Tithe-wad

I know someone who tries so hard to do God’s will that he’s miserable. This someone--let’s call him Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious--is careful about what he and his wife and two daughters watch on television, what music they listen to and what books they read. His wife wears a scarf over her head at church (1 Corinthians 11). He doesn’t force her to do that; she is just as pious as he is. He even quit attending a church he liked because the person who leads worship is a woman (1 Timothy 2:12). Most of the Church today considers these verses culturally specific to those to whom Paul was writing. Culture has changed, and the cultural reasons for giving those orders don’t exist anymore.

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious follows his conscience in regard to those verses, but his conscience is strangely seared when it comes to tithing. It’s easy to put a scarf on your head when you pray, and it’s even easy to find a church where everyone on staff is male. It’s not as easy to give ten percent of all that you make to God, especially when you’re only making enough to scrape by as it is--even when you know that God has promised to bless your finances when you give the first ten percent to him.  

When God first gave the command to tithe (Leviticus 27:30), it was measured in grains and spices and wool and sheep and cattle and donkeys and anything else that an agricultural society could raise or grow. The world’s economy long ago switched from a barter system to a monetary one. Now our ten percent is measured in money. Can you imagine hauling a couple of sheep to your local church once a month? The Israelites didn’t even get to take them to the local church; they all had to take their tithe to the temple in Jerusalem. It wasn’t an easy task, and so they didn’t do it. In Malachi 3, God tells the people that their crops are dying because they aren’t tithing.

The Jews in Jesus’ time did tithe. The Pharisees loved tithing, because they could tithe in front of everyone else and prove how godly they were. What did Jesus have to say about that? “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former” (Matthew 23:23, NIV). Here Jesus reemphasizes the importance of tithing even while condemning the Pharisees for not following “the more important matters of the law.” So, we know from the Old Testament that the tithe is ten percent, and that tithing was a command from the Lord, and we know from the New Testament that Jesus told the Pharisees not to stop tithing, even while he condemned everything else they did.

Tithing is never easy, but it gets more difficult as you get older. When my wife and I were first married we felt poor. Three kids later, I look back on those days and realize that I will never again have that much extra cash. Now, my wife and I never have enough money, and yet we always have enough money. Hopefully you’ve heard this cliché before, and hopefully you’re listening this time: God can do more with 90 percent than you can do with 100. Make a good habit now; it won’t get any easier. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious will tell you that.

How to Stay Saved

Until recently, every time I came across one of Paul’s lists of the Fruit of the Spirit, I would pause and check them off like items at the grocery store. “Love, check. Joy, check. Peace, check. Patience, check -- just don't ask my sister.” I say “until recently” because my pastor has been going through the book of Galatians, and really preached to us what Galatians actually says instead of what we all thought it said when we skimmed through it.

Paul wrote the book of Galatians to the people of Galatia because some Christians came to the region from Judea and taught that to be saved they had to believe in Jesus PLUS follow some of the Jewish ceremonial laws. Paul writes to tell them this is wrong, and he tells them why it’s wrong. Only one thing saves you: faith in Jesus Christ. 

Jesus died for our sins, and there is nothing we can do to help Him save us. He did it all, once for all. So, what do you have to do to stay saved? Nothing! He took care of your sins, past present and future. The freedom we have in Christ is not just freedom from Hell, but freedom from the law, freedom from a to-do list. In fact, Paul goes so far as to say in 1 Corinthians chapters 6 and 10 that while not everything is profitable, “Everything is permissible.”

“But,” you argue, “James says, ‘Faith without works is dead’” (James 2:26, NKJV). And he's right. Of course he's right. You didn't think I was going to pull a Martin Luther and call James a heretic, did you? If your faith doesn't produce good works it is dead. The important question now is, what motivates a Christian to do good works? Is it fear? No. Is it obedience? Obedience is certainly not a bad thing, but that’s not our motive, either. We don’t do good works to stay saved, but because we are saved. Christians are motivated to do good works by the Holy Spirit.

Many Christians view the Fruit of the Spirit as their to-do list. Two misconceptions accompany that view. First, the Fruit of the Spirit is not a list of fruits: it’s a description of one fruit. The one fruit is described as being love, joy, peace, patience, etc., just like an apple is red, round, sweet, crisp, juicy. Second, it's the Fruit of the Spirit, not the Fruit of the Christian. If I am a farmer, and I plant a field of corn, it is not the field's corn. It's my corn. I am the farmer. I did the work. All the field did was lay there and get rained on. In the metaphor of the Fruit of the Spirit, we are the field, not the farmer. The Holy Spirit is the farmer. So, it's not a list, and it's not your non-list.

What does all this mean? It means you don't have to focus on rule-following. You don’t have to work at staying saved. All you have to do is love God. Your faith will have works because the Holy Spirit will produce His fruit in you.

We are Buried with Him

Disciplining yourself is a constant struggle, whether you are trying to discipline your academic habits, your diet or your spiritual habits. I, for instance, try not to eat sweets, but my wife does not try not to eat them. In fact, she keeps candy and cookies around the house at all times. Last night I came home from work and ate seven Oreos. Seven Double-Stuffed Oreos. I was ashamed of myself. I was so ashamed that I proceeded to drown my inner fat guy with chocolate pudding.

It’s not always easy to stick to the plan. This is especially true spiritually because we cannot see the immediate results of the plan. Aside from reading the Bible and praying, it’s not even always clear what God’s plan for us is. But there is one thing mentioned in the Bible that is both clear and easy, and chances are pretty good that you haven’t done it yet.

Matthew 28:19 records Jesus’ command that believers be baptized in water. “Go and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit” (NIV). The Word (John 1:1), through whom all things were made, tells us to get baptized. He said "Let there be light," and there was light. And then He said, “Get baptized.”

What is baptism? Baptism is a proclamation of your faith; it is a first step in telling the world that you are a Christian. In some countries baptism is a crime punishable by death, which is terrible but also ironic, because baptism is a symbol of death. “Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life” (Romans 6:3-4, NIV). We go under the water, representing death to our old ways (pre-salvation, not pre-baptism) and come back up representing our new life in Christ.

Look back at Matthew 28:19. Notice that Jesus said to baptize the disciples, the believers. He did not say to go and baptize the babies of the believers. Nowhere in the Bible is an infant ever baptized; baptism follows a conscious decision to follow God. And if someone who was not yet saved did want to symbolize their spiritual life in a giant tub at the front of a church, they would just walk in, stand there for a while, and walk back out. Without salvation, there is no death to sin, no new life in Christ, no testimony, no symbolic dunk and no obedience. But, if you have confessed with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord, baptism is a clear and easy way for you to stick with God’s plan.

Be Still

I don't like to give my mind peace. When my mind is unfocused, it inevitably wanders to either an embarrassing incident in my distant past or a day-mare about possible tragedies in my near future. My mind is apparently a bleak place. As a result, If I'm not working, writing, reading or praying, I listen to a constant stream of podcasts. I listen to sermons, sports shows, comedy shows, lectures, anything to keep me from slipping into a depressing side-stream. Even music doesn't usually hold my attention enough to keep my mind from tripping over the wrong kind of thought.

I have no idea what most people think about when they daydream; I don't know if everyone is trying to avoid mental snares that will depress them. I do know that no one likes to be alone with their thoughts. Why else would everybody be on the phone all the time?

One of the keys to living the strongest Christian life possible is being still in the presence of God. That is something that isn’t easy for me to do, but I know that my prayer life is enriched through it. So, I have to turn off the television, the phone and my iPod, close my bedroom door, and spend time in silence with God. While intercession and supplication are aspects of prayer, silence is, too. Prayer is not just the time to air grievances; prayer is a conversation with God. We get to talk, but we also have to listen.

In Jeremiah 42, the remnant--the poorest of the poor who were left in Judah by Nebuchadnezzar--asked Jeremiah to ask God what they ought to do next: stay in Judah or run to Egypt. Verse 7 says, “Now, at the end of ten days the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah” (NASB). I don't know why God waited 10 days before He answered, but I do know that Jeremiah was listening when He finally did. Unlike us, Jeremiah did not bring the request to the LORD and then get a text message that distracted him from listening for God’s answer.

Imagine if this scenario took place in your life. Let’s pretend that you are trying to find out whether you ought to go to college in your home town or go to a university away from your town. You have added the question to your list of prayer requests that you read to God daily. You follow the A.C.T.S. acronym: Application, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication. You say “Amen,” and turn on the television. You usually watch "Judge Judy," but you have the remote ready to switch it to ESPN in case anybody comes into the room. You do this everyday, and [Your Name Here] 42:7-8 says, “Now, at the end of ten days the word of the LORD came to [Your Name], but he wasn't listening, so [Your Name] decided to become a politician and helped speed America toward its doom.” (Read Jeremiah 42 to see the parallels.) If only you had remembered that quietly listening for God’s voice is an important aspect of prayer.

Read the Bible

The book of Judges switches back and forth between mind-numbingly evil behavior and action-hero awesomeness. (If Judges wasn't in the Bible, your parents wouldn't let you read it.) Judges 11 relays to us one of the Bible's most disturbing stories. In Judges 11:30-31, Jephthah--one of the judges of Israel -- makes a deal with God: “If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the LORD’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering” (NIV). That sounds pretty good at first, until you think back to what the Israelites were supposed to sacrifice as burnt offerings: bulls and rams. Even if Jephthah, for some reason, let his bull stay in the house with him, bulls are not known to be attached to their masters in such a way that they come out of the house and low “Hellooo.” A ram might come out and give a friendly head butt. That might be irritating enough to make Jephthah want to burn that stupid pet ram. Maybe Jephthah's wife had a dog that constantly chewed Jephthah's sandals. Or, maybe Jephthah's sister lived with them. But dogs were unclean animals–unacceptable as a sacrifice--and human sacrifice was forbidden. Anyone who sacrificed a person was to be stoned to death. Unless Jephthah kept a bull in with his China, this story is not going to end well.

Jephthah won his battle against the Ammonites, and his daughter, his only child, came out of the house to greet him. Jephthah was heartbroken. He could not break his vow to God, so--in his attempt to please God--he sacrificed his daughter as a burnt offering.

What is going on here? How could Jephthah think that this would please the LORD? Moses told them many times that God hated this practice. Judges 10 gives us some insight into Jephthah's warped mind. The Israelites were worshipping the false god of the Ammonites, Molek. And they worshipped Molek through human sacrifice. Now, Jephthah was worshipping the one true God, but he was worshipping Him the way the culture around him worshipped Molek. He had taken his culture's values and applied them to the LORD.

While we live in a culture that has a higher view of life than Jephthah's culture had, our culture is also more deceptive. It is easy to see the line between sacrificing a bull and a daughter, but even this bold line was blurry to a man living in that culture. Where are our lines? What accepted practices in our culture have we adopted into our lifestyles without recognizing what God thinks of them?

Clearly, we cannot rely on our culture's standards to lead us into a life that brings worship to God. But how can we know what God desires? If Jephthah could be confused by something so blatantly evil, how can a Christian living in today's Western culture keep from being deceived by the world? If only God had written down everything He wanted us to know. Wouldn't you read that over and over and over again, to make sure that your life is "holy and pleasing to God" (Romans 12:1, NIV)? Wouldn't it be great to be able to read it and "not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Romans 12:2, NIV)? I would read something like that everyday, wouldn't you? 

Prayer and the Imagination

Celebration of Discipline is a book that I have been forced to read twice in my life. When you are forced to read something, you tend to go through it as quickly as possible. I speed read it both times, and I don't really know how to speed read. I picked the book back up and started reading it again the other day. One of the suggestions the author, Richard Foster, makes is to use your imagination while you pray. He says that while he prays, he imagines God doing the thing he is praying. For example, if he were praying for God to heal someone's broken leg, he would imagine Jesus coming into the room and straightening the leg out. As I read it, I thought, That's weird, and immediately tried it out.

Imagining God acting as you pray is not an exercise in positive thinking; it is a way to focus your whole mind on God. I have discovered that my mind does not wander as much because every part of my mind is engaged in the prayer, not just the part of my mind that makes my mouth move. Now, should you imagine God, or Jesus, and start worshipping the image in your mind? Obviously not. God is much more than anything you can imagine.

As a freshman in college, I did not have any friends on campus. I lived on campus, but I was still within 35 miles of my home and continued to go to my home church where I saw all of my home friends. I am also an introverted person who could not approach strangers at all, at that time, and would rather be alone than have to meet new people. I started to get lonely at school. I felt like I was stranded on an island with sharks in the water and snakes on the land. I started spending all of my leisure time with God. I imagined Jesus walking with me between classes. I imagined Jesus sitting with me at lunch. Did this time help me make friends? No. I walked around campus talking to myself; everybody thought I was nuts. But I look back at that time with envy for myself. Jesus was not just a metaphorical friend to me. He was my best friend because I focused my whole mind on my conversations with Him. I can’t wait to start doing it again. I’m married now; I can act as weird as I want.

Who Are You?

American culture gives mixed messages regarding our identity. On one hand, our identity is based largely on how we look and (on the same hand) on the prestige we can earn through what we do. Why else would anybody get calf implants? Or become a lawyer? Even regular people who can't afford to have silicone or collagen injected or implanted into their bodies work hard to attract positive attention. While we do some things because we enjoy them, part of the enjoyment comes from the applause. A certain level of praise is earned from peers and parents through being on the football team, the chess club, the honor roll and even in Christian clubs. Different groups of peers have different values for each of these activities, but every activity we do will be socially rewarding through a certain set of people.

On the other hand, American culture also tells us that our self-esteem has to be based on how we feel about ourselves. If no one likes your new barbed-wire tattoo, you are to say, "That's OK. I like my tattoo, and my self-esteem is based on how I feel about myself. So, nyah."  But, as the pastor Tim Keller once noted, if you feel better about yourself by using your own standards instead of someone else's, it means you have lower standards than they do. How does that make you feel? (And on a side note, if you get a tattoo around your bicep, please commit yourself to doing arm curls, at least with that one arm. Nothing looks more pathetic than a muscle tattoo around a stick arm. And if you disagree, it's because your standards are lower than mine. )

We are to base our identities solely on how Jesus sees us. Maybe you already knew that. But, I know you chose your clothes this morning based on how you wanted someone else to think of you. I know you choose the music you listen to partly based upon how you want other people to think of you. And I know that getting some appreciation from that exciting woman will make you feel better about yourself. I also know focusing on that exciting woman will lead to you doing something stupid. Focus instead on your value to God, remembering that it is His grace, not your actions, that has saved you, and you will make good choices, and even have good fruit. (For the importance of having good fruit, read James 2.)

So, how does God see you? Well, here's a hint: Jesus died for you. Think about that for a while. Contemplate it. Know it until it becomes like fire shut up in your bones. Now, don't you want to please God? And don't you want to please him out of appreciation to Him rather than out of duty? That knowledge might not change which shirt you wear tomorrow, but it will change your reaction when that exciting woman tells you that you look like a dork.

Rebellion

When I was about 13, my dad told me I needed to shower every day. I hated that. And then he told me I had to wear deodorant. He was really getting up in my business. I didn't realize how right he was until I started to smell myself. And I should have listened when he first suggested I learn to shave. I had some pretty wacky hairs coming in on my face. I wouldn't call them whiskers, too soft. I was definitely growing a nasty, creepy fuzz-stache. I knew I had waited too long when someone at school asked me if I was trying to grow a mustache -- from across a crowded hallway. Nothing against teenage mustaches, but I wasn't going for that. I was just afraid I would slice my lip off.

These are just a few examples of simple things that my earthly father had the wisdom to advise me on. He also gave me both orders and advice on much more important matters: dating, driving, eating, exercising, studying. I didn’t always recognize how right my dad was at the time, but my life could have been simpler if I had paid closer attention to the words that came out of his mouth. God set up the cycle of generations so that the older generation has more wisdom and knowledge than the younger. One of the results of the fall of man (you know, when Adam and Eve got snaked by Satan in the Garden of Eden) was that young men and women, when they most need the advice of their elders, will want to reject that advice.

Think about Sampson. That guy was called by God before he was even born to be the leader and judge of all Israel. Sure, his parents weren’t Mensa material: an angel appeared out of nowhere twice, but they had to watch him ascend to heaven on a plume of smoke before they realized who they were talking to, and the Angel of the Lord had to tell them twice that Sampson was to be a Nazarite. But do you remember how Sampson’s life went from super-strong judge to super-strong super-jerk with a ponytail? He told his parents he wanted to marry a Philistine woman. They told him it was a bad idea, but he insisted. Sampson was still used by God to punish the Philistines, but I think God’s original plan — before Sampson went all rebellion on it — probably would have been even more incredible, and Sampson could have lived out a long life with two eyes and multiple arm wrestling championships. If only he had honored his parents.