Praying and Waiting

One of my favourite psalms articulates our deepest feelings when we sincerely pray:

Psalms 5:1-3 NLT

1)  O Lord, hear me as I pray;  pay attention to my groaning.

2)  Listen to my cry for help, my King and my God, for I pray to no one but you.

3)  Listen to my voice in the morning, Lord.  Each morning I bring my requests to you and wait expectantly.

If you’ve been praying and nothing seems to be happening, consider these explanations offered by Bill Hybels in a sermon many years ago:

If the request is wrong, God will say “No” to your request.

If the timing is wrong, God may say “Slow,” go slow; wait.

If you are wrong—a distinct possibility for some of us—if something is amiss in your life, or we simply aren’t ready for what we’re asking for, God may say, “You need to grow.”

But if the request is right and the timing is right and you are right, chances are God will say, “Let’s go,” and grant the request.

Passionate about God

In Australia, we can be passionate about all kinds of things.  Some are crazy about sports.   Others have a thing for reading great books.  There are the guys who can’t talk enough about classic cars.  Not a few are passionate about computers or electronic gadgets like mobile phones and ipods.  Last week I got caught up listening to someone talk incessantly about their pets.

The remarkable thing about living in Australia is that it’s OK, even laudable, to be passionate about almost anything - as long as it’s not God.  I can go to just about any sporting event and scream my head off, jump up and down, raise my hands in the air and express all manner of emotions when my favorite team wins or loses.  People watching will simply say, “Now there’s a fan!” 

But if I do any of that when talking about Jesus and His work in my life, people will say, “There’s a fanatic!”  And they probably won’t mean it as a compliment.  In the culture we live in it’s acceptable to get excited, be enthusiastic, have a passion for just about anything, as long as it’s not related to faith or religion.  

That’s why following Jesus takes courage.  He taught over and over that you can’t follow him incognito.  He used word pictures like “light on a hill” and “salt of the earth”  to describe the kind of passionate commitment required to stand up to the cultural pressure to leave your faith at the door.

One day a man walked up to Jesus and said, “What’s the most important commandment out of the whole Bible?” Jesus responded, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength and love your neighbor as yourself.  There is no greater commandment than these.”   I like the way Eugene Peterson paraphrases this verse in The Message. “Love the Lord your God will all your passion, all your prayer, all your intelligence, all your energy.”  

Being a Christian requires an all-out, totally surrendered, fully leveraged commitment to Jesus Christ and the values he taught.  Anything less is just playing.  If you really want to experience God in your life, you need to give him everything you’ve got.   Nothing less than a passionate surrender will do. 

  

Coping With Change

How do you cope with change?   

Change comes in all shapes and sizes.  From switching jobs to moving house, from dealing with new health challenges to new financial circumstances. New relationships require adjustment, as do the loss of loved ones.  Change is a part of life, whether we like it or not.

The good news is God can help us cope with change.  The Bible’s full of stories about people who leaned on God in the most turbulent of times.   Ordinary people facing dramatic change they didn’t ask for.   They could lean on God because of his immutability.  

Immutability is a fancy word that describes God’s permanency.  Malachi 3:6 quotes the Lord saying,   “I, the Lord, do not change.”   God can help us cope with change because his immutability gives us stability. 

Are you facing change right now?  Trust God to get you through it.  He will anchor your life like nothing else.

Who's the Judge?

  One of most commonly ignored commands of Jesus originated in his Sermon of the Mount.   Matthew 7:1-2 (NLT) records it:   "Do not judge others, and you will not be judged.   For you will be treated as you treat others.  The standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged."

Jesus reveals a spiritual warning worth paying attention to. When you evaluate someone’s intentions, motives, performance, or value,  you potentially ratchet up the performance benchmark for yourself.  As Jesus put it, “the standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged”.

Now I don’t know about you, but I’m the first to admit my need of mercy from the Judge of the Universe.  I’m well aware of my imperfections and weaknesses, and know that without heaps of grace from God, I’m in real trouble.   So it’s enormously helpful to be warned of what could diminish God’s amazing grace in our lives:  When we judge others harshly, unfairly, ignorantly, God judges us in the same manner.

In spite of this clear word from Christ, most Christians seem to  love playing judge.  In their book Unchristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity, authors David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons share research suggesting the vast majority of people outside the church believe most Christians to be very judgmental.  So believers who habitually judge others are not only making it harder for themselves in terms of experiencing the grace of God, but they’re also giving a bad impression of what Christ followers should be about.  

The Question For Every Christ Follower

     It’s a question that punctures the inflated ego of anyone coasting on the status of being a Christ follower.  At the end of Jesus’ sermon on the mount, he confronts the people who know him best with a rather judgmental question.  It’s recorded in Luke 6:46.  “So why do you keep calling me ‘Lord, Lord! when you don’t do what I say?”

     I’m not sure what Jesus was thinking when he uttered this sharp, rhetorical question.  He may have been teasing his listeners with just the right amount of humor and sarcasm - the brilliant teacher at work.  Perhaps he wanted them to share his bemusement at the apparent disconnect between their talk and walk.  Or maybe Jesus was genuinely frustrated by their inability to recognize that their own hypocrisy was leaving them defeated in life.

    Whatever was behind the question, the meaning was clear:  How can anyone expect the amazing blessings that flow to Christ followers without obedience to Christ’s teachings and commands?  Jesus’ question challenges us to go back to the Bible and investigate afresh the primary teachings of our Lord and Savior.