Wesley Report

Connecting With God... No Really

I have a love-hate relationship with prayer. I feel a powerful call to explore this frequently neglected spiritual activity, and even to teach others about the things I discover. But praying is hard work sometimes. Okay, most of the time. And the best prayer times only happen when I pray before I feel like doing it. Why is that?

I have a "prayer balcony" just outside my bedroom with a killer view of the University of Texas campus and downtown. It's my place to talk to God alone. It's not that I can't talk to him anywhere, but this is the place where I shut out the rest of the world and meet with God uninterrupted. (I take my BlackBerry sometimes, but not often, because it seems rude responding to text messages while I'm meeting with the creator of the universe.)

There are a lot of reasons to pray. For me, the primary reason is to change the reality around me. I know that answer doesn't score high with you spiritual formation types. Yes I pray to get closer to God, to know him better, to become more disciplined, to change my own heart, to renew my spirit... all those things. I also meet with God to experience his presence, keep my sanity, and occasionally, even to vent. There's nothing wrong with any of that.

But prayer is conversation with the one who can change the bad things in this world. Those who learn how to pray have mind-blowing access to the most powerful being in existence! Those who use that access responsibly will not only grow closer to God, they have the potential to change the course of history. It's not that we have the right to demand anything from God. He isn't a genie or a celestial Santa Claus. But the more time we spend in his presence, the more we realize just how much power is there. That's why listening to God and using scripture in prayer is so important. Sometimes figuring out what God is saying means finding out what he has already said.

God works through prayer. I'm not sure why he set it up this way because at first glance it looks terribly inefficient and seems too dependent on us doing our part. Wise people will learn how to pray well. And those who have a special gift for praying will learn how to push the limits. But expect opposition. You can choose to be one of those Methodists who don't believe in a devil, demons and spiritual conflict, and you might be blessed enough to live a safe, predictable life in your own little religious bubble. But you probably won't pray with much urgency, and you won't see many supernatural things happening around you. You also won't be as likely to get attacked. Hey if there is a literal Satan, why would he bother with you? There are bigger fish to fry, and you aren't much of a threat to his kingdom anyway.

Jesus started his ministry by announcing that the kingdom of God is near. Christians have access to that kingdom, and through prayer, we can bring that kingdom to the here and now, so that God's will is done "on earth as it is in heaven." Don't be one of those people who believes that everything that happens is the will of God. In one of the Back to the Future movies, the great theologian Emmett Brown told Marty McFly that "the future hasn't been written yet." We may never understand how God knows what he knows about future events. In fact, I think exploring that question too much makes us complacent and keeps us from fulfilling our unique role in history. Prayer changes things. It alters the timeline. That's exciting stuff, and those of us who explore its possibilities are in for an exciting life.

Boldness Before God

Call this a follow-up to last week's post, "The Bold and the Shameless" if you want. I suppose that article was arguably more about shamelessness and less about boldness, but you have to admit that it was pretty bold for Moses to try to persuade God to change his mind. And it was also bold to almost knock down someone's door at midnight to borrow food. This week I was reading in 1 John, and I ran across this scripture:

Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him. 1 John 3:21-22 (NRSV)

So naturally, I started thinking about the whole boldness, "shameless audacity" thing all over again. (By the way, if you go back to the original article, Guy Williams offers another perspective on the Luke passage in the comments section.)

The NRSV uses the word boldness in the passage from 1 John. The KJV, ESV, HCSB and TNIV use confidence. The NLT uses bold confidence! The underlying Greek word is parresia. (I'm using the transliteration because I'm not sure that the Greek letters would show up in your web browser, and if they did, I'm not sure that they would mean anything to you.) Since I'm not an expert in Koine Greek, I have to rely on language tools and commentaries to help me get a sense of what was going on in the original text. The main definition in Thayer's Lexicon (I'm too cheap to spring for the Bauer-Danker, even in software form) is freedom in speaking, unreservedness in speech. Strong's Dictionary gives this meaning: all out spokenness, that is, frankness, bluntness, publicity, but also lists confidence near the bottom of the entry. Call it a crazy personal preference, but I like the NRSV's rendering best here. I may lack knowledge of Greek, but I know English, and boldness is a couple of steps beyond confidence, at least in the way I use the terms. Confidence, to me carries an implication of relying on something about myself to get me in the door. Boldness, on the other hand, doesn't have that baggage attached to the word. And considering that parresia is used in at least five places in the NT to describe preaching, boldness just seems to make more sense to me here. 

If you look at the verses above, there's a certain amount of cause and effect. IF our hearts do not condemn us [THEN] we have boldness before God. That part I understand, but the next clause gets complicated. AND we receive from him whatever we ask, BECAUSE we obey his commandments and do what pleases him. So us receiving depends on us obeying. Got it. But is our obedience the reason our hearts don't condemn us? Is it safe to say that this is the progression?

1. obedience produces an
2. uncondemning heart which produces
3. boldness before God which produces
4. answered prayer

I'm not sure. I don't usually like to derive formulas from scripture, but maybe this "four-step program" could be used as a loose set of guidelines for living and praying. I admit that I tend to overanalyze these things sometimes.

The danger is that we might think that we can approach God because of something we did to earn that privilege. That's not what this scripture is saying. It's telling us that obeying God will keep our conscience clean and will keep sin from building a wall between us and God. Even though on God's end, we can still approach him because of the blood of Christ, on our end we still try to run from God when we sin. It's hard to be bold in prayer when we're feeling guilty about something we did wrong. It's like this passage is saying, "Stay clean so that your own guilty mindsets don't cause you to avoid God or cause you to hold back in prayer." Is it possible that we are the ones who block the blessings that God wants to give us?

The Bold and the Shameless

Are you satisfied with the quality of your prayer life? I'm not talking about "goose bump" exuberance, monastic contemplation or spiritual disciplines, although those certainly have a place in Christian experience. I'm just throwing this out there: Are things changing when you pray? Is history being shaped? Are people's lives taking new courses? Are sick people getting well?

How we pray is shaped by how we view God. Some people believe that prayer is inconsequential. That God has already decided the course of things and he can't (or won't) change his mind. On anything. Ever. Prayer, according to those with this view serves to bring us more in line with God's will than to actually have an effect on any outcomes. While I agree that prayer often does help us see what God wants and persuade us to get on board, I reject the idea that our prayers don't change anything. In fact, I believe God does change his mind on some things. Or perhaps prayer moves God to do what he really wanted to do all along, but for reasons we don't understand, he waited for us to ask.

Maybe the open theists have been getting to me. Or maybe it's Scripture.

I love the scenario Jesus sets up in Luke after the disciples ask him to teach them to pray. After he shares a model prayer (the short version of the Lord's Prayer), Jesus says this:

Suppose one of you has a friend. Suppose you go to him at midnight and say, "Friend, let me borrow three loaves of bread. A friend of mine on a trip has dropped in on me, and I don't have anything to serve him." Your friend might answer you from inside his house, "Don't bother me! The door is already locked, and my children are in bed. I can't get up to give you anything." I can guarantee that although he doesn't want to get up to give you anything, he will get up and give you whatever you need because he is your friend and because you were so bold. So I tell you to ask, and you will receive. Search, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened for you. (Luke 11:5-9 GW)

We have here a picture of someone wanting to do something for a friend, but not having the resources, so he goes to another friend (one who presumably does have the resources) and bugs him until he gets what he needs.

And Jesus uses this story to illustrate how we should pray? So much for reverence. So much for resigning ourselves to accept as God's will everything that comes. Jesus just turned all that on its head by pretty much telling us to get in God's face and get serious with our praying or we won't see doors opening. Now that doesn't mean we can tell God what to do. (A healthy respect for the one who controls lightning is still in order here.) But how many of us are boldly and passionately making our case to God to change the world around us?

Without God revealing it to us, we can't know what's going on in his head. Should we accept a circumstance or a perceived lack of answer to prayer as the final word? Not according to Scripture. In this passage, the human friend finally opened the door, because of a friend who was bold. Shameless even. I'm not sure if there were neighbors close by in this story, but I'm sure there was the potential for making a late night scene. According to some scholars, the last part of the story, where Jesus says to ask, search and knock, would be more precisely translated as "keep on asking, searching and knocking." I did a quick spot check of the major translations and found that the HCSB is the only one that makes this clear. So we're not supposed to pray once for something and stop. Unless of course God says stop. But even then...

The LORD added, "I've seen these people, and they are impossible to deal with. Now leave me alone. I'm so angry with them I am going to destroy them. Then I'll make you into a great nation."  But Moses pleaded with the LORD his God. "LORD," he said, "why are you so angry with your people whom you brought out of Egypt using your great power and mighty hand? Don't let the Egyptians say, 'He was planning all along to kill them in the mountains and wipe them off the face of the earth. That's why he brought them out of our land.' Don't be so angry. Reconsider your decision to bring this disaster on your people. Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. You took an oath, swearing on yourself. You told them, 'I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky. I will give to your descendants all the land I spoke of. It will be their permanent possession.'" So the LORD reconsidered his threat to destroy his people. (Exodus 32:9-14 GW)

Moses didn't stop, even when God said, "Leave me alone." Some of you are thinking, "Well that's Moses. We're not as close to God as Moses was, so we don't have that kind of clout." Granted, Moses was a close friend to God, and scripture says that God spoke to him personally as someone speaks to a friend (Exodus 33:11). But let's not forget that we have the Holy Spirit living inside of us, and because of the New Covenant, we can potentially reach intimacy with God that Moses never realized. In Matthew 11:11, Jesus says, "I can guarantee this truth: Of all the people ever born, no one is greater than John the Baptizer. Yet, the least important person in the kingdom of heaven is greater than John. (GW)" John Wesley explains that this could possibly mean that "the least true Christian believer has a more perfect knowledge of Jesus Christ, of his redemption and kingdom, than John the Baptist had, who died before the full manifestation of the Gospel". Boldness in prayer is one of our privileges as believers.

I wonder how many opportunities there will be in my life where circumstances can be different if I pray until I see a breakthrough instead of simply giving up. I want to be like Moses, and keep praying for things that everyone else has written off as lost causes, even when God seems to be saying, "No, move on to something else."

That's boldness. Shameless audacity. Living on the spiritual edge. And I think it will bring results.

Praying Against the Hurricane

Jesus calmed the storm, but we overlook that little eccentricity. After all, he's the son of God and he's entitled to get a little crazy from time to time. Besides, the rebuke worked. How do you criticize something that worked?

When I was in middle school, Pat Robertson led prayer on his cable network hoping to change the path of Hurricane Gloria, which was heading toward Virginia Beach at the time. (After hitting Cape Hatteras, NC, Gloria actually did turn northeast, finally making landfall on Long Island, NY.) Not surprisingly, Robertson was ridiculed in the press.

Houston's KHOU-TV reports that United Methodist megachurch Windsor Village has a team of people in its congregation praying against hurricanes: 

“We speak to Hurricane Ike and we command the winds and the storm to dissipate,” prayed the parishioners on Tuesday.

“We are people who do believe in miracles and healing and Godly intervention, but we didn’t know that we might have the authority and the power to effect the weather,” said Pastor Suzette Caldwell.

So are Christians operating outside of our authority if we pray about weather or speak to a storm? Was Jesus setting an example when he calmed the storm? Does God control all weather or do evil spiritual forces have any influence?