Day 28 - Praying and Giving Thanks

 

 

Dear Church,

Let thanksgiving fill your hearts as you pray.

I make lists of things I am thankful for. I write these in my spiritual journal. I write them on 3X5 cards, and carry them with me. I keep them before me, re-reading and re-pondering them throughout the day. The result is, I often experience a heart that overflows with gratitude towards God. This is a good spiritual place for me to be. It also affects my times of praying.

The apostle Paul says our prayers should be accompanied “with thanksgiving.” In Philippians 4:6 we read,

Do not be anxious about anything,

but in every situation,

by prayer and petition,

 with thanksgiving,

present your requests to God.

New Testament scholar Ben Witherington has written that Paul believes there is much to be said for praying in the right spirit or frame of mind. This is significant for the Roman Philippians, since pagan prayers did not include thanksgiving. Roman prayers were often fearful, bargaining prayers, not based on a relationship with some god.

Witherington adds: “Prayer with the attitude of thanksgiving is a stress-buster.” John Wesley said that thanksgiving is the surest evidence of a soul free from anxiety.

Paul's antidote for worry and anxiety is praying, with thanksgiving.

Love,

PJ

(I recognize that there are clinical, neurophysical conditions that cause anxiety and fear. The antidote for such conditions may be medications. But even when medications stabilize a person's emotions, issues of trust may remain. Medication will not fully help a person when the only chair they have keeps breaking, but it may help them access the spiritual help they need.

If you have severe anxiety I recommend two things:

1) Praying, and having people pray for you. 
2) Seeing a physician who is skilled in treating you physically. 

Combine spiritual intervention with medical intervention.)

 

JOURNAL

Write a list, in your journal, of things you are thankful for.

Look at it often.

Add to it as it happens.

From my book 31 Letters to the Church on Praying.

Day 27 - Pray for Your Enemies

 

Dear Church,

Pray for your enemies.

A pastor is a shepherd, of a flock of people. What a privilege this is! I thank God, often, for calling Linda and me to be pastors.

But sometimes, one of the sheep bites. As a pastor, I have taken my share of abuse. I’ve been doing this since 1971, and I’ve got bite marks all over by soul. Here’s one story of a man who chomped on me.

I was in my fourth year at a church in the Chicago area. I was teaching a series, on Sunday evenings, on the book of Revelation. At one point we were looking at the Second Coming of Christ. When will this happen?

I was using Jack Hayford’s Spirit-Filled Life Bible. Jack did the footnotes. In a footnote relevant to the question, Jack presented nine possible theological views of when the second Coming might happen. I showed these to the class. I remember telling them that we need to be humble about this subject, because good Christians had differing views.

Little did I know that, as I talked about the nine possibilities, a man in the class was getting angrier and angrier. He believed there was only one view of the Second Coming, and it was his.

I have not forgotten what happened as the class ended. He was a big man, over six feet tall. He was much older than I. He approached me, bent down to my eye level. The veins in his neck were bulging. His face was red. He yelled. I was, he said, wrong, a heretic, and a false teacher. At a few points I thought he was going to hit me.

I was shaken.

As I drove home with Linda, I found myself hating him. I wanted to get even with him. Vengeance was mine, sayeth myself.

I could not pray without hurting him, somehow, at least in my mind.

He was an enemy that threatened me. He was a persecutor, of me. I could not, I chose not to, pray for him. And, making things harder, I was a lover of Jesus. I knew about what Jesus said in Luke 6:28 - Bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. So God, how can I do this thing that you command me to do?

“Pray for your enemies,” my Lord Jesus says. Well, that’s easy for him to say, because he is Jesus. Not really, right? Jesus did it in the moment when hanging on that cross, as hatred assaulted him. In his darkest time, he prayed, “Forgive these people, for they don’t know what they are doing.”

How can I do Mark 11:25?

And when you stand praying,

 if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them,

so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”

Or Mark 5:44?

But I tell you, love your enemies

and pray for those who persecute you,

And what does Psalm 23 mean when it says,  

 

"You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.

You anoint my head with oil.

My cup overflows."

 While engaging with the 23^rd Psalm, one of my seminary students received a God-insight I had never thought of before. God told him that, not only is the "prepared table" visible to one's enemies, but so is being anointed with oil and the overflowing cup. My cup, said my student, overflows onto my enemies!

 That sounded like a God-thought to me. I related it to my cry for a greater love, in me. Anyone, it says in the Bible, can love people who love them back. That’s easy. The real test is to love those who assault and endanger me.

Dear Beloved of God, there is a praying life that is deeper and wider and higher and longer, which includes praying for your enemies. I invite you to pray this with me: "God, let your love so shape and fill my heart that it overflows even to my enemies."

Pray for release. Pray for the freedom to love others as Christ loves them.

 Pray to receive this love for your own self.

 

Love…,

 

PJ

 

ASSIGNMENT

Pray for a love that, like the love of God, is higher, wider, deeper, and longer 

than any earthly love you have experienced. 

From my book 31 Letters to the Church on Praying.

Day 26 - Preconditions for Effective Praying

 

Dear Saints, 

Righteousness is a precondition for effective praying. 

Imagine this (which is not an example from my family).  You have an adoscent child who has chosen to reject your counsel. You see them making choices that are destructive. Recently, they caused an accident that damaged your car, and hurt another person. They still live in your home. You decide to set some boundaries. You are not to enable their bad behavior. 

 Your son is not in a right relationship with you. One day he petitions you, saying,"I want the car keys. I need to go do something." Do you comply? "Not," you respond, "until we have a talk and get on the same page." The petition of an unrighteous son is powerless and ineffective.

It is the same with prayer. James 5:16 tells us this:  

The prayer of a righteous person  Is powerful and effective.  

"Righteousness" means being in right relationship with God. A righteous person is on the same moral and spiritual page as God is. Conversely,   

 The prayer of an unrighteous person is powerless and ineffective.  

 “Effective.”  

 The prayers of a person who is in right relationship with God “effect” things. This is about causality. Their prayers do things.

Brothers and sisters, righteous and holy living is a precondition for effective, powerful praying. 

 Love, 

 PJ 

 FOCUS 

 Righteousness 

 Holiness 

 Purity 

 Walk in step with the Spirit

If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just 

and will purify us from all unrighteousness.

1 John 1:9

From my book 31 Letters to the Church on Praying.

Christianity, Culture, and Politics - A Select Bibliography

 

SOME RESOURCES THAT HAVE HELPED ME 

(These are resources I have read and studied, and have helped me better understand the relationship between religion, culture, and politics. Surely there are more. What books have helped you?)

This color highlight means: read these books first.

• Ryan T. Anderson, Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom
• Anderson, When Harry Became Sally (This excellent book is banned from Amazon.com.)
• Francis Beckwith, Taking Rites Seriously: Law, Politics, and the Reasonableness of Faith (I read this book last summer and learned much from it. Beckwith’s chapter on human dignity is brilliant. [Christian Smith’s chapter on human dignity in What Is a Person? Rethinking Humanity, Social Life, and the Moral Good from the Person Up is stunning.] Beckwith is Prof of Jurisprudence and Philosophy at Baylor U.)
• Beckwith, Politics for Christians: Statescraft as Soulcraft
• James Beilby and Paul Eddy, Understanding Transgender identities; Four Views.
• Brian Benestad, Five Views on the Church and Politics 
• Greg Boyd, The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church
• Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning, The Rise of Victimhood Culture: Microaggressions, Safe Spaces, and the New Culture Wars
• Alisa Childers, Another Gospel? A Lifelong Christian Seeks Truth in Response to Progressive Christianity 
• Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, Christian Anarchism: A Political Commentary on the Gospel (In a discussion with Greg Boyd he strongly recommended this book of readings to me.)
• Amy Chua, Political tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations. Still reading - excellent!
• Shane Claiborne, Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals (What should Christians do when allegiances to the state clash with personal faith?)
• Charles Colson, God and Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries Between Faith and Politics
• James Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree 
• John Corvino and Ryan T. Anderson, Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination
• John Corvino and Ryan T. Anderson, Debating Same-Sex Marriage
• Patrick Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed. 
• Ross Douthat, The Decadent Society: How We Became Victims of Our Own Success.
• Rod Dreher, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation
• Dreher, Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents
• Robert P. George, Conscience and Its Enemies: Confronting the Dogmas of Liberal Secularism (George, Prof of Law at Yale U., and a follower of Jesus, is a brilliant scholar who teaches us, among other things, how to civilly discourse about hard issues.)
• Wayne Grudem, Politics – According to the Bible: A Comprehensive Resource for Understanding Modern Political Issues in Light of Scripture
• Gustavo Gutierrez, We Drink From Our Own Wells: The Spiritual Journey of a People 
• Johnathan Haidt and Greg Lukionoff, The Coddling of the American Mind (The best book I read in 2019. Haidt and Lukionoff help us understand, e.g., microaggressions and hatred and the American culture of "safetyism.")
• Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics and Religion. Everyone should read this before opening their mouth about politics.
• Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness
• Andrew Hartman, A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars (See this reviewed here - https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/that-new-time-religion/ ) 
• James Hoffmeier, et. al., Do Historical Matters Matter to Faith? A Critical Appraisal of Modern and Postmodern Approaches to Scripture
• Greg Johnson, Still Time to Care: What We Can Learn from the Church's Failed Attempt to Cure Homosexuality. Well-written, by a same-sex attracted follower of Jesus, who holds to the view that marriage is between a man and a woman.
• Robert Joustra and Alissa Wilkinson, How to Survive the Apocalypse: Zombies, Cylons, Faith, and Politics at the End of the World
• Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from Birmingham Jail" 
• Al Mohler, The Gathering Storm: Secularism, Culture, and the Church
• Harold Netland, Religious Experience and the Knowledge of God: The Evidential Force of Divine Encounters
• H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (Arguably, this is THE classic text which nicely forms intelligent discussion. How is Christ relevant to the world in which we live now?)
• Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism
• Pellegrino, Schulman, and Merrill, Human Dignity and Bioethics. Arguably the book to read on: 1) What is human dignity?; 2) Is there such a thing as human dignity?; and 3) If there is, does it make a difference? Collected essays by a great variety of scholars.
• Ronald J. Pestritto, America Transformed: The Rise and Legacy of American Progressivism 
• Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity - and Why This Harms Everybody (An excellent book on the influence of postmodern thinking on culture.)
• John Piippo, Deconstructing Progressive Christianity
• Postman, Neil, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. This book is prophetic. I've read it twice.
• Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology
• Robert Putnam, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis
• Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
• Ronald Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving from Affluence to Generosity (In evangelical Christianity, this is one of the classics. Read the four gospels as background, making note of all Jesus says about our relationship to Money. See also Ben Witherington, Jesus and Money.)
• Snodgrass, Klyne, Who God Says You Are: A Christian Understanding of Identity
• Richard Stearns, The Hole in Our Gospel: What Does God Expect of Us? (If this book doesn’t break your heart and burden you for the poor, we’re going to have to give you an EKG.)
• Christian Smith, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. This is the book where Smith, famously, introduces the worldview of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.
• Smith, Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults
• Smith, What Is a Person? Rethinking Humanity, Social Life, and the Moral Good from the Person Up. Smith’s chapter on human dignity in is stunning.]
• Steven D. Smith, Pagans & Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac
• Ed Stetzer, Christians In the Age of Outrage: How to Bring Our Best When the World Is At Its Worst. Very helpful. 
• Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited. 
• Carl Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (My book of the year in 2020.)
• Trueman, Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution
• Zeynep Tufekci, Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest 
• Dan O. Via and Robert Gagnon, Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views
• Jim Wallis, God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and Why the Left Doesn’t Get It
• Jim Wallis, On God’s Side: What Religion Forgets and Politics hasn’t Learned About Serving the Common Good
• David Wells, Above All Earthly Powers: Christ in a Postmodern World
• Jonathan Wolff, An Introduction to Political Philosophy.

• Mark Yarhouse, Understanding Gender Dysphoria: Navigating Transgender Issues In a Changing Culture
• George Yancey and Ashlee Quosigk, One Faith No Longer: The Transformation of Christianity in Red and Blue America
• John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus (This is essential reading for any who would engage in the discussion about how Jesus would have his followers respond to the political world we live in.)

And, of course, keep saturating yourself in Scripture.

Study the ethics of Jesus. Read the Gospels. Check this out - The Moral Vision of the New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics. 

Do I agree with everything written in these books? 

Of course not. I don't agree with everything you say. 

And, I have said things that, upon reflection, have caused me to disagree with myself.

***

My Books

 Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

Encounters with the Holy Spirit (co-edited with Janice Trigg)

Deconstructing Progressive Christianity

31 Letters to the Church on Discipleship

31 Letters to the Church on Praying

The Great Invasion: Thirty-One Days of Christmas 

Day 25 - Purging Prayers

 

 Dear Church,

As you pray, God will purge you of unrighteous anger.

One result of an ongoing praying life is that God removes unrighteous anger from my heart. God takes the chip off my shoulder. He softens the edge. He forms his heart of compassion, in me, for my enemies.

Remember the prayer of Jesus, when on the cross? “Father, forgive these people who are torturing me, for they have no idea of what they are doing.”

In praying, God frees me from the prison cell of hatred, and releases me to love in ways I have never done before. For me this is not a theory, but an existential reality. My wife Linda has seen the results. Because I have a praying life, I am a better husband, father, friend, and pastor. As Christ is more deeply formed in me, I get changed.

Most of this happens as I am praying. 

In praying, I am clay on a potter's wheel. I am not the agent of my own transformation, God is. Many times, I can feel Him shaping me.

This is praying as an act of resistance to the common, unholy structures of the world, which demand conformation to their will. To pray is to protest against the hate-filled standards of our culture. In praying we are transformed from reactionaries to revolutionaries.  

Henri Nouwen writes: "Entering the special solitude of prayer is a protest against a world of manipulation, competition, rivalry, suspicion, defensiveness, anger, hostility, mutual aggression, destruction, and war. It is a witness to the all-embracing, all-healing power of God's love." (Nouwen, The Road to Peace: Writings on Peace and Justice, 22-23)

 As praying becomes your modus operandi, God will save you from yourself.

Love,

PJ

 

UNDERSTAND

Anger is the emotion we feel,

when one of our expectations has not been met.

Are your expectations godly?

In your anger, do not sin.

From my book 31 Letters to the Church on Praying.

Day 24 - Prayer and Unbusyness

 

Dear Church,

I want you to slow down and be unbusy before God.

In 1981 God called me to a deeper praying life. I needed it so badly! I was doing, doing, doing, and the inner fire was leaving, leaving, leaving. God told me to take Tuesday afternoons, get unbusy, and pray. I needed to tend the fire within. 

This was a new beginning for me, a time when my doing began to emerge from my being in God. This was important, since in the spiritual life being precedes doing. 

That first Tuesday afternoon was spent sitting on a rusty tractor, in a field, in a forest preserve north of Lansing, Michigan. I remember being there, trying to pray, while my mind kept asking, "Just what the heck am I doing here, anyway? What am I accomplishing?"

The answer seemed to be: "nothing." I wasn't xeroxing. I wasn’t at some planni9ng meeting. I was producing nothing. No empirical "product" was coming from sitting on this old tractor. And yet…

…That was one of the most important days of my life. I was getting reattached to Jesus, the Vine!

Prayer is wasting time with God. The world says, “If you are not making good use of your time, you are useless.” Jesus says: “Come spend some useless time with me.”"

Henri Nouwen writes: "If we think about prayer in terms of its usefulness to us—what prayer will do for us, what spiritual benefits we will gain, what insights we will gain, what divine presence we may feel—God cannot easily speak to us. But if we can detach ourselves from the idea of the usefulness of prayer and the results of prayer, we become free to “waste” a precious hour with God in prayer. Gradually, we may find, our “useless” time will transform us, and everything around us will be different."

The world measures us by how much we do, how much we accomplish. We impress others by how busy we are, by datebooks filled with engagements, deadlines to be met, and meetings to attend. Jesus, on the other hand, calls us to do nothing, accomplish nothing, until we first spend much time with him. “Be like a tree branch,” counsels Jesus, “that stays attached to the trunk of the tree.” Then, your life will bear much fruit.

I confess to having led church meetings where we decide on what we are going to do, and then baptize our decisions with prayers. The opposite, counter-intuitive way of Jesus is to first, spend much time praying and, in that God-seeking environment, discern what the Lord would have us do.

In a sense, prayer is being unbusy with God, instead of being busy with other things. Prayer is primarily doing nothing useful or productive in the presence of God. If anything important or fruitful happens through prayer, then we work hard, and behold how God achieves the result.

Love,

PJ

 

REFUSE

Refuse to identify your worth by…

…your accomplishments, by…

…your datebook, by…

…your checkbook, by…

…your material possessions, by…

…your appearance, by…

…your performance, by…

…what others think of you.

From my book 31 Letters to the Church on Praying.

African-American Spirituality: A Select Bibliography

(One of my Spiritual Formation classes at Payne Theological Seminary)

What a blessing it is for me to be an Adjunct Faculty member at Payne Theological Seminary! 

My class is Spiritual Formation. I've been teaching this class for many years at a number of theological seminaries, seminars, workshops, both in the U.S. and in places around the world. Through the years it has been my privilege to instruct many pastoral leaders from Africa, and many African-American pastoral leaders.

My Payne teaching began (around 2007, I think) when Dr. Leah Fitchue, Payne's president, asked me to teach part of a weeklong class on Transformational Leasdership. Parts one and two were taught by James Cone and Deotis Roberts. I did part three, and led the Payne students in an entire-day experience on spiritual transformation.

Here are books that line my bookshelf, and populate my Kindle, on African and African-American spirituality. 

Michelle Alexander

• The New Jim Crow: Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (Must reading for anyone desiring to understand racism in America.)

James Baldwin

• Notes of a Native Son

Lewis Baldwin 

• Never to Leave Us Alone: The Prayer Life of Martin Luther King Jr. (This is the book to read about King's praying life, a life entirely ignored by the secular media.)
• Revives My Soul Again: The Spirituality of Martin Luther King Jr. (This is the book to read on King's spiritual life, a life entirely ignored by the secular media.)
• The Arc of Truth: The Thinking of Martin Luther King
• "Thou, Dear God": Prayers that Open Hearts and Spirits

Michael Battle

• The Quest for Liberation and Reconciliation: Essays in Honor of J. Deotis Roberts 

Taylor Branch

• America in the King Years

Flora Wilson Bridges

• Resurrection Song: African-American Spirituality

Lewis Brogdon

• Hope on the Brink: Understanding the Emergence of Nihilism in Black America

Clayborne Carson

• The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr

James Cone (It was my privilege to be one of three teachers at a Transformation Leadership week-long conference. Dr Cone taught, Deotis Roberts taught, and I was given Friday morning and afternoon to wrap the week up. [Thank you Dr Leah Fitchue!])

• God of the Oppressed
• A Black Theology of Liberation
• The Cross and the Lynching Tree 

Melva Wilson Costen

• African American Christian Worship

Frederick Douglass

• Slave Narratives Collection

W.E.B. Dubois

• The Souls of Black Folk

Stephen Ellis and Gerrie Ter Haar

• World of Power: Religious Thought and Political Practice in Africa

Cain Hope Felder

• Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation 

Walter Fluker

• They Looked for a City: A Comparative Analysis of the Ideal of Community in the Thought of Howard Thurman and Martin Luther King, Jr.  

Obery Hendricks (Hendricks is former President of Payne Theological Seminary and currently Prof. of Biblical Interpretation at New York Theological Seminary)

• The Politics of Jesus: Rediscovering the True Revolutionary Nature of Jesus' Teachings and How They Have Been Corrupted

Johnny Bernard Hill

• Prophetic Rage: A Postcolonial Theology of Liberation

Diana Hayes

• Forged in the Fiery Furnace: African American Spirituality

Dwight Hopkins

• Introducing Black Theology of Liberation
• Heart and Head: Black Theology Past, Present and Future

Rufus Matthew Jones, Kerry Walters (Note: the Quaker-mystical theology of Rufus Jones deeply influenced the spirituality of Howard Thurman)

• Rufus Jones: Essential Writings

Robert W. Kellemen, Karole A. Edwards

• Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction

Eric Lincoln

• The Black Church in the African American Experience

Malcolm X

• The Autobiography of Malcolm X

John Mbiti

• African Religions & Philosophy
• Introduction to African Religion

Esau McCauley

• Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope
• How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family's Story of Hope and Survival in the American South

Latasha Morrison

• Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

Peter Paris

• The Spirituality of African Peoples
• Religion and Poverty: Pan-African Perspectives

James W. Perkinson

• White Theology: Outing Supremacy in Modernity

Anthony Pinn

• Varieties of African American Religious Experience

Samuel Proctor

• My Moral Odyssey (Dr. Charles Brown of Payne Seminary recommended this to me.)

Albert Raboteau

• Slave Religion: The "Invisible Institution" in the Antebellum South

Luther E. Smith

• Howard Thurman: The Mystic as Prophet

Katrina Dyonne Thompson

• Ring Shout, Wheel About: The Racial Politics of Music and Dance in North American Slavery

Howard Thurman (Thurman, in my mind, is the leading African-American figure in contemporary spirituality, not only writing so profoundly in this area but living out a contemplative and active life of Jesus-following)

• Jesus and the Disinherited
• Howard Thurman: Essential Writings
• Meditations of the Heart
• For the Inward Journey
• With Head and Heart: The Autobiography of Howard Thurman

Ngugi Wa Thiongo

• Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature

Nat Turner

• The Confessions of Nat Turner

Cornel West, Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

• African American Religious Thought: An Anthology

Gayraud Wilmore

• Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Interpretation of the Religious History of African Americans 

Vincent Wimbush

• Bible and African Americans

THANK YOU, again, Dr Leah Fitchue, for the privilege of teaching under your leadership in the D. Min. Program at Palmer Theological Seminary, and the M. Div. Program at Payne Theological Seminary.