The Mystery of Prayer

Greetings All,

     After two weeks away I am back from a relaxing vacation! Time spent in nature, in the woods and mountains of New England, has its benefits in refreshing the soul!
     This morning a friend asked a question about prayer.  It was a question many ask, since prayer is something that takes time to understand, even though we will never fully comprehend the mystery of it. After all, there are so  many different views and opinions and approaches people have toward praying.  Therefore, I decided I would send out this "thought" on prayer by Gary Thomas, entitled: "The Mystery of Prayer."  It is found in his book, "Sacred Pathways."  It does not address the question asked this morning, but given the fact that most all people struggle at one time or another in their prayer life, I thought some might find it helpful and encouraging -- especially those who have encountered the often confusing dilemma called "unanswered prayer."  Enjoy.

The Mystery of Prayer

     "Is there anything more mysterious than prayer? Prayer moves us to call on a Being we cannot see and ask him to altar that which we can see.  Formulas do not work; rituals cannot guarantee success. Neither the length nor the form of prayer makes the prayer potent. This is why we need to create pockets of prayer in our lives, learning to trust God to come through in unexpected ways. There is an element of mystery, however, against which we sometimes rebel -- the mystery of unanswered prayer, or, perhaps more appropriately stated, prayers that receive the answer "no." 

     Because God sometimes answers our prayers with a yes, it can become intoxicating, and this intoxication can become so addicting that we begin to demand that God answer every prayer with a yes When a prayer doesn't get answered in the way we want it to be, we may mistakenly assume there must be hidden sin, lack of faith, or some other buried obstruction, which then sends us into hours of fruitless introspection.  But to demand that God answer all our prayers with a yes is to ask for his omnipotence (power) without having the benefit of his omniscience (knowledge).

     Looking back, I'm thankful that God said no to some of my prayers. The mystery of faith calls us to love and serve a God whom we can't always understand. We love this when the result satisfies us and God answers in ways that make our knees weak. It is much less exciting, however, when the mystery leads us to believe that God is silent, indifferent, or even cruel. Mystery is mystery. It has its exhilarating elements as well as frustrating ones, and we can't expect one without the other.

     The pursuit if maturity will lead virtually every one of us through this canyon of unanswered prayer, where expectancy runs dry and the only mystery seems to be where God is hiding. Understand that this is a necessary avenue on the destination to holiness and that it usually has an end -- in God's timing however."

     Some thoroughly enjoy prayer.  Some struggle with snags and disappointments in prayer.  And some have dispensed with prayer -- at least in the more formal sense -- though I do not believe it's possible for the true believer to dispense completely with conversational interaction with God. Few will go an entire lifetime without the "why's" of both answered and unanswered prayer, yet there is blessing in persevering. Just as a child passes through phases of equilibrium and disequilibrium in their trek to maturity, so also the person maturing in prayer goes through such phases. The key, in the famous words of Winston Churchill, is to, "Never, never, never give up." 

     With you in what is often the struggle to find God, and the pathway to the throne of His grace, in prayer, Pastor Jeff

Five Reasons Church Members Attend Church Less Frequently

Greetings All!

     This weeks "thought" has to do with a problem that is becoming increasingly worse and very alarming to those who love and cherish the Church of Jesus Christ, as well as it's God-given mission to the world.  It's the lack of commitment among believers to gather together for worship, sharing, instruction, encouragement, accountability and joint-effort in carrying out the commission Christ gave to His Body to bring the gospel to those across the street and across the sea.
     There is a very good reason the author of Hebrews 10:25 says, "Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing..."  That is, let us not give up meeting together as the gathered church, or the congregation of the faithful, for worship and celebration.  (Yes, it was even a problem back then!)  And the reason he called them to gather was not a legalistic effort to gain more of God's favor by doing so, but because of what such gathering does for us, and the others in the body, in terms of our spiritual health and the strengthening of the Church.  In the immediate context verse 23 suggests it helps us, "hold unswervingly to the hope we profess."   Verse 24 suggests it's one of the ways we can, "spur one another on toward love and good deeds."   And the rest of verse 25 suggests that our gatherings do the opposite of what being absent does -- it enables us to, "encourage one another, and all the more as we see the Day approaching."

     My presence (and yours) on a Sunday morning, encourages others. It gives us an opportunity to carry out our God-ordained ministry of serving, encouraging, and bearing the burdens of others.  If I view my gathering with others as I should (as a time to minister encouragement to others through my words, heart-felt worship, prayers, listening ears, and actions) I have the blessed honor and privilege of being able to love others with brotherly affection, help to the struggling, listen to the lonely, assist the elderly, encourage the young, and share in people's growth as believers.  So let me share the whole verse:  "Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, BUT LET US ENCOURAGE ONE ANOTHER, and all the more as we see the Day approaching."

     That leads us to today's entry from the blog of researcher, Thom S. Rainer, entitled, "Five Reasons Church Members Attend Church Less Frequently." (His small but very good book, "I Am A Church Member," only 77 pages long, is also a great read for further discussion on the reality and effects of this phenomena.)  Enjoy.

FIVE REASONS CHURCH MEMBERS ATTEND CHURCH LESS FREQUENTLY

     "About 20 years ago, a church member was considered "active" in the church if he or she attended three times a week. Today, a church member is considered active in the church if he or she attends three times a month. Something is wrong with this picture. For 2,000 years, the local church, as messy as it is, has been God’s place for believers to gather, worship, minister, and be accountable to one another.

     Yet every time I write something about church membership and attendance, I inevitably hear cries of “legalism” or “the church is not a building” or “the church is a messed up institution.”  But the local church -- the messy local church -- is what God has used as His primary instrument to make disciples. But commitment is waning among many church members.

Why?

     1.) We are minimizing the importance of the local church. When we do, we are less likely to attend. A few drops of rain may keep many folks from attending church, but it won’t stop them from sitting three hours in the downpour watching their favorite football team (and often pay a hefty price to do so).

     2.) We worship the idols of activities. Many members will replace a day in their church with a day at kid’s soccer or softball games or sleeping off the hangover of the previous day’s activities.

     3.) We take a lot of vacations from church. I am not anti-vacation. But 20 years or so ago, we would make certain we attended a church where we were taking a vacation. Today, many members take a vacation from church.

     4.) We do not have high expectations of our members. Any purposeful organization expects and gets much of it members, whether it’s a sports team or a civic organization. It is ironic that most churches do not come close to being a high expectation church.

     5.) We make infrequent attendees leaders in our churches. When we do, we are making a clear statement that even the leaders of the church do not have to be committed to the place they supposedly lead.

     I heard a leader of an organization tell the members he did not want them if they were not fully committed. They could not be AWOL if they wanted to be a part of the group. He expected full commitment [Sounds a bit like Jesus - Luke 14:25-33]. He is a high school football coach. And all the team members follow that high expectation of commitment. If we truly expect to make a difference in our communities, and our families, members of local churches need to have at least the same level of commitment as members of sports teams.  After all, the mission of each local church is far more important.  At least it should be..."

     One of my favorite hymns since becoming a believer is one written in 1800 by Timothy Dwight, "I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord."   You don't hear it much any more, and many would even struggle to sing it if they were required to be totally truthful and honest before doing so.  Yet, although the church is messy, and it's members are (as the Word assures us) sinners in the process of being sanctified, and thus there are and always will be problems (as in any human gathering of diverse souls), it is still the Bride Christ loves. The ones He chose to join to Himself in holy union. The objects of His sacrificial joy and affection, and His chosen means to continue carrying out His work on earth (feeble as we often are at that task).

     That's why this hymn resonates with me. Because when I am loving His church, I am loving those He loves, has redeemed, has laid down His life, and is preparing for an eternity in His presence (Eph. 5:25-27). See if you could sing these words:

"I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord. The House of Thine abode. 

The Church our blest Redeemer saved, with His own precious blood.

I love Thy Church, O God!  Her walls before Thee stand, 

Dear as the apple of Thine eye, and graven on Thy hand.

For her my tears shall fall; For her my prayers ascend; 

To her my cares and toils be giv'n, Till toils and cares shall end.

Beyond my highest joy, I prize her heav'nly ways, 

Her sweet communion, solemn vows, and hymns of love and praise."

     Oh for more members of the Bride who felt the same way about the Bride!  It would be "self-love" of the best kind!  Not because the Church is perfect (it never will be, at least in this age), but because in doing so we are loving those Christ chose as His Bride. We are doing as He commanded when He said to His disciples: "Love one another as I have love you."

Just more food for thought...

In His Service, Pastor Jeff 

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

Greetings All,

     This week's 'thought' is a bit different than most any one I have sent out before. The reason?  Because unlike the others I've sent which I have found edifying, challenging, or comforting -- and agree with -- this is one I send along because I find it rather sad. That is, I find the quote by Andy Stanley (in red) rather sad, not Carl Trueman's response to it (in blue). And the reason I find it so sad is because many pastors share Stanley's view.
     Thus I offer this post to you as both a heads up, and the critique of an attitude which I feel pastors and churches should not embrace (Stanley's), regardless of the number of people it may bring into their building.

Andy Stanley                                          Carl Trueman

 



    

     For the sake of space I have shortened Mr. Truman's response. If you desire to access the article in its entirety you may go to: www.reformation21.org, under, "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie," by Carl Trueman, Professor of Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary.

     His point is well-taken: Truth has never been popular (I Cor. 20-31), yet it is of utmost importance, and must be preached, even if the entire culture considers it irrelevant and boycotts the church until we change it to suit what they want to hear.  Enjoy.

     "For this month's column, I thought I would offer a few reflections on Andy Stanley's recent book, 'Deep and Wide: Creating Churches Unchurched People Love to Attend.'  Here's a classic passage [from his book] which represents in miniature an entire universe of erroneous thinking.

     'People are far more interested in what works than what's true. I hate to burst your bubble, but virtually nobody in your church is on a truth quest. Including your spouse. They are on happiness quests. As long as you are dishing out truth with no 'here's the difference it will make' tacked on the end, you will be perceived as irrelevant by most of the people in your church, student ministry, or home Bible study. You may be spot-on theologically, like the teachers of the law in Jesus' day, but you will not be perceived as one who teaches with authority. Worse, nobody is going to want to listen to you.

     Now, that may be discouraging. Especially the fact that you are one of the few who is actually on a quest for truth. And, yes, it is unfortunate that people aren't more like you in that regard. But that's the way it is. It's pointless to resist. If you try, you will end up with a little congregation of truth seekers who consider themselves superior to all the other Christians in the community. But at the end of the day, you won't make an iota of difference in this world. And your kids... more than likely your kids, are going to confuse your church with the church and once they are out of your house, they probably won't visit the church house. Then one day they will show up in a church like mine and want to get baptized again because they won't be sure the first one took. And I'll be happy to pastor your kids. But I would rather you face the reality of the world we live in and adjust your sails. Culture is like the wind. You can't stop it. You shouldn't spit in it. But, if like a good sailor you will adjust your sails, you can harness the winds of culture to take your audience where they need to go. If people are more interested in being happy, then play to that. Jesus did." (Andy Stanley, Kindle 1216-1234)'

     To be sure, as grateful as I am to the Rev. Stanley for the offer to pastor my children, and for providing me with fascinating insights into the philosophical convictions my long-suffering wife, I cannot help but see this as a remarkably naïve piece of muddled thinking.

     With so much promising material, where should one start the critique? Perhaps with the unintended irony of a man warning his readers about feeling superior while at the same time assuring them that he has better insight into the way their spouses and congregations think than they do?

     Or with the odd way in which he berates his audience for making the mistake of assuming that other people are just like them rather than realizing that they are actually all just like Andy Stanley?...  One might also look at the travesty of scriptural teaching it contains. The problem of the teachers of the law, for example, was not that they were spot on; it was that they were completely wrong. That is why Jesus spent such a lot of time berating them for their errors of interpretation. And as to Jesus playing to people's expectations of happiness, one wonders why he made such 'play' of the havoc which following him would wreak on families, of the need to take up one's cross, and of the expectation of persecution to come...

     I will concede that Stanley is certainly right in his basic contention: people are not on a search for truth. The Apostle Paul articulated that well in Romans 1.  Stanley is also correct that truth is irrelevant to people, or at least they think it is irrelevant to them. Compared to Paul, Stanley 's statement on this issue is rather bland. Paul goes much further, declaring the truth, the message of the cross, to be intellectual foolishness to some and a moral offense to others (I Cor. 1). 

     It is not, however, Stanley 's blandness which is the real problem; it is the practical conclusion which he draws from this. For Paul, the offensiveness and irrelevance of the message of the cross demonstrate the fact that those who think in such ways are perishing. The problem is with them, and with their 'cultures,' not with the cross. For Stanley, by way of contrast, it is the 'culture' which is to set the agenda and to which the church must thus conform or die.

     Stanley 's pragmatism, in a manner analogous to the soft relativism of certain evangelical post-moderns  looks attractively plausible; yet this is only because it operates within the framework of... modern middle America... But if Stanley had the imagination to set this pragmatism in Nazi Germany or in a country where female circumcision is de rigueur, some place where middle class American tastes and preferences do not apply, then the cost of such intellectual and moral laziness would immediately become apparent. If you cannot stop culture and should not spit in it, what happens when the culture tells you that happiness comes about by gassing Jews or lacerating young girls' genitalia?  That is somebody's culture. No point trying to resist it for that would risk irrelevance, empty pews and feed an isolationist Pharisaism. And we couldn't have that, now, could we?

     Of course, one can already hear the pat responses of, 'It could never happen here!' or 'But that stuff is obviously wrong!'  Touching in its innocence and predictable in its complacency, such mewling would yet betray a shockingly shallow understanding of both human nature and history. No one in 1900 would have predicted that the most technologically and culturally advanced nation in Europe would elect a man like Hitler and be the centre of previously unimaginable genocide. Interesting what national military defeat, adverse economic conditions, and concerted anti-Semitic propaganda can do to a nation, is it not?... In the field of human ethical behavior, one should never say 'it' can never happen here, wherever you may be.

     And that is ultimately the saddest aspect of the Andy Stanleys of this world. It is not their patronizing attitude to others. It is not their arrogant assumption that they represent the culture or that they have the right to tell the rest of us how we should think. It is not the sloppy way they bandy words like 'culture' and even 'happiness' around without ever offering a definition of what they think they mean. It is not their crass prioritization of raw numbers. It is not their complete lack of imagination regarding the moral possibilities of 'culture.' Rather, it is the fact that what they confidently present as radical insights are really nothing but lazy, insipid, prosaic, and predictable capitulations to the values of the spirit of the age. In short, they are simply dressing up their society's tastes as absolute truth. Unimaginative, respectable, lazy and lethal. The discreet charm of the bourgeoisie, is it not?"

     To add to Mr. Trueman's critique it must be pointed out that Jesus did not "play" to the predominant relativism of Greco-Roman culture. To a culture that thought there could be no definitive or universal truth (a belief summed up so succinctly in Pilate's words to Jesus at his trial, "What is truth?" ) Jesus continually said, "I tell you the truth...," "I tell you the truth...," I tell you the truth..."

     Despite their dislike for truth, and the fact that they also considered it irrelevant, Jesus continued to declare it throughout His ministry.  In fact, I believe His response to the issue of happiness would still be, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free."

     What we need and what we think we need are often two different things -- which is why Jesus never did "play" to the relativism of the surrounding culture, but confirmed right to the very end: "I came into the world to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me."

Promises

Greetings All,

This weeks 'thought' has to do with two dangers that we as Christians can often fall prey to as we share our faith with others. They are the dangers of religious over-promising and religious under-promising. (As a preacher I find myself constantly struggling not to do one or the other as I proclaim God's truth from the pulpit.)

The wise counsel in today's thought comes from a man named Don Posterski, who was the director of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship in Ontario, Canada, and associate director of Project Teen Canada.

His book is entitled: "Friendship - A Window On Ministry to Youth." His advice (gleaned from polling Canadian youth) is a good reminder to those of us who know and have accepted the fact that we have a divine imperative to share the gospel. Enjoy.

Over-promising

"Religious over-promising can lead to disillusionment... It can shatter faith and push young people away from God. Over-promising results from enthusiastic but unrealistic teaching. Young people are told God will answer all their prayers. Yet God doesn't answer prayers according to our will but according to His.

As a result of over-promising, if God is perceived as being silent, he is suddenly thought to be unreliable. Disillusionment with God (and the person who over-promised) is a certainty if He is offered as a giant Aspirin tablet to deal instantly with lust, greed, selfishness, inferiority, temptation, and ruined hope in the midst of anxiety about the future...

[We] need to avoid giving simplistic responses to the complexities of life (another problem with religious over-promising). There is no question that Jesus is the answer, that God has a wonderful plan for each life, and that the Holy Spirit is a companion who will never leave or forsake the believer. However, the Bible itself takes a more subtle approach to these same truths. We are told that in this life we see through a glass darkly, and that part of following Jesus is being persecuted for righteousness sake. Constant communication from the bright side is simplistic and lacks biblical integrity. It is blatant salesmanship, not helpful ministry. In the end, the purchaser is likely to return the product for a refund.

Under-promising

Religious under-promising is the reverse of over-promising but the result is the same. Disillusionment gradually gains and faith dissolves into indifference or hostility toward God.

Religious under-promising occurs when the essentials of Christian belief are discounted and drained of their dynamic force. When God is robbed of his miraculous power and Jesus is reduced to simply being a good moral teacher, young people eventually conclude, 'Why bother?' If the Bible is just good literature about God it has no special authority. Where over-promising is blatant salesmanship, religious under-promising is selling out to the competition. The apostle Paul equated the Gospel with power. Although he was brilliant and well educated, he scrupulously avoided preaching "human wisdom," knowing full well it would empty the cross of Christ of its power (I Cor. 1:17)...

Modern young people live with an orientation to the supernatural even if their beliefs are unorthodox or even un-Christian. Many of them are open to experiencing God. Adults who convey their belief and reliance upon God's power both in theory and practice will be influential among teenagers."

I have seen the result of both extremes -- especially in regard to youth. Young people were promised with an enthusiastic and unconditional verbal guarantee: "God will...!" And thus when He does not come through as was promised, they conclude (and some have told me so) -- "I tried Christianity and it doesn't work." They were unable to distinguish between true Christian faith and the version of the faith presented by the overly-zealous salesperson.

Others, as Posterski points out, have indeed reduced the faith to little more than moral guidelines for tempted teens (and God to the superlative high school principal who walks the hallways looking for defiant rule-breakers). The result is kids that walk away from the faith convinced it is devoid of supernatural power and lacks the possibility of a God who cares enough to intervene in their daily lives. I have spoken with them also.

With prayers for wisdom to be able to live in the tension produced by avoiding both extremes, I offer you these thoughts.
Pastor Jeff

Dr. Jeffrey F. Evans