Praying for Busy People: A Response to One of My Readers

Maumee Bay State Park, Ohio

One of my blog readers, E.M., sent me a response to my post "Praying Is Ontologically Antecedent to McPraying."

I have their permission to post it with my thoughts.

E.M. writes:

Dear John,

I haven't commented in a long time however I felt compelled to comment this time. First of all let me say I can appreciate what you are trying to say. I also appreciate that you do not discredit what you have termed "Mcprayer" -cute.

On the whole I think I can agree however I just felt the need to add a little tempering and maybe some of my hopefully complementary thoughts lest some of my friends lose hope altogether.

Just as a marriage goes to different seasons so does our relationship with God I think. 

For instance when a married couple has young children they are not going to have long periods of quiet time together. However they do need some and this is where perhaps many marriages fall apart is that they don't get any during this period. It may just be one date night together once a month or 20 minutes after the children have gone to bed. The couple has to adjust and learn to get the most value out of what little quiet time they have together and the rest of the time learn to be together with their children while doing their necessary tasks. 

I think the same would go for a full-time mother and wife's relationship with the Lord. To ask anymore of her would be to ask the impossible. She can be single-minded in how she cares for her family and worship the Lord has she raises her children to follow his ways. As her children grow up and her responsibilities change she can adjust her time of quiet devotion to both her husband and the Lord accordingly. 

I think you would probably agree but perhaps you don't...?

My other thought is this. Sometimes I actually find it more helpful to occupy my hands with a mindless tasks such as washing the dishes or taking a shower while praying. I actually find it easier to listen. I have heard similar testimony from others including the minister Mark Virkler who specializes in teaching people to hear God's voice. He emphasizes journaling as a method to facilitate listening. One benefit is it gives the hands and mind a focused occupation and therefore we are less likely to wander. 

In the end I still agree with you that some amount of solitude, quietness, and quality time are necessary to nurture and sustain any relationship especially our relationship with the Lord.

I'm open to any thoughts you have on what I have just said. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to share.

-E

My thoughts:

Thank you E for sharing this with me. Here are some things I am thinking about this.

1. I agree with you that life brings certain events that make it more difficult to take extended prayer times with God. When one of our sons was in a medical emergency situation that lasted for months it was harder to find alone time with God. Linda and I were constantly in the hospital at our son's side. And of course we prayed a lot while we were there. 

2. In general Linda and I encourage parents to continue to carve out time together, without the kids. This will benefit the kids, since what they most need are a spiritually healthy mom and dad who love each other. Linda and I did this by having a regular Friday night "date," which we have never stopped. I think the same kind of thing can be done with God. I encourage busy people to begin by finding 5-10 minutes a day to get alone with God. If someone does this I believe God will meet them, and will help them break free from any busyness that is unneeded.

3. The antidote to spiritual burnout is time with God. I see pastors burning out who have taken little or no time with God. I see this with busy parents too. My calling is to help people find or recover or rediscover that "quiet place" with God.

4. I encourage "busy people" to step back and evaluate their busyness. Our world system does not promote solitude, and offers us continuous servings of more things to do and more things to buy, all in the name of "happiness." I think many people could find more one-on-one time with God (the kind of time Jesus took) if they looked at their "doing." I believe that, in a Christian's spiritual life, one's "doing" should come out of and be determined by one's "being." First meet with God. Then, do. 

5. Are you familiar with the spiritual classic The Practice of the Presence of God, by Brother Lawrence? In this book B. Lawrence prays while he washes dishes. That is good. But my understanding of this is that B. Lawrence lived in a monastery where there was a foundation of a lot of solitary praying that undergirded and fueled his praying while he was doing tasks. 

6. I am familiar with Mark Virkler. Many years ago we had him for a weekend at our church. I think journaling can, as you say, facilitate listening to God. I know it does for me!

Finally, you write - "In the end I still agree with you that some amount of solitude, quietness, and quality time are necessary to nurture and sustain any relationship especially our relationship with the Lord."

I think we are in basic agreement about this.

Thank you so much E for writing me. I hope these thoughts of mine make sense.

Blessings to you this day as you continue to draw close to Jesus,

J.P.

Leadership & the Danger of Unconscious Striving

Greencrest Manor, Battle Creek

Growth and maturity in pastoral leadership means:

1. Greater abiding

2. Less striving

It means:

1. Greater discerning

2. Less deciding

It means:

1. More God-pleasing

2. Less people-pleasing

The spiritual maturation process takes place in the presence of God. Constant abiding in God's presence provides protection for our souls. In His presence there is no burnout. As the God-connection is nurtured the inner fire is tended.

Ruth Haley Barton writes:

"Without the regular experience of being received and loved by God in solitude and silence, we are vulnerable to a kind of leadership that is driven by profound emptiness that we are seeking to fill through performance and achievement. This unconscious striving is very dangerous for us and for those around us; it will eventually burn us out (since there is no amount of achievement that will ultimately satisfy the emptiness of the human soul), and the people we work with will eventually notice that they are mere cogs in the wheel of our own ego-driven plans. (Barton, Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership: Seeking God in the Crucible of Ministry, p. 126)

More Than a Conference; It's a Family

July 2016 HSRM Conference

Linda and I have been attending our annual summer Holy Spirit Renewal Ministries Conference since 1992. We'll be there again in 2016.

Every summer we spend a week together with as many as 500 people. Of all ages. There are singles and families and couples. We have focused ministries for children and youth. We have a a variety of excellent workshops. There are great speakers and teachers, all in a beautiful physical environment in central Wisconsin with a lot of time to play, relax, and ponder the great things of God's Kingdom.

The best thing for Linda and I is that through this yearly gathering we have met and made many lifelong friends from across American and beyond. It's not too early to think about becoming part of this beautiful, Jesus-loving tribe. It's more than a conference; it's a family.

This conference's uniqueness is that we spend 5 days together, with a schedule that is ideal for learning, growing spiritually, worshiping, meditating, and playing. 

Our next gathering is June 25 - July 1, 2016. For information and registration go here.

Our main speakers will be:

Robby Dawkins

Bob Hazlett

My Redeemer Lives - Dick & Rick Hoyt

Here's some inspiration for Labor Day. We showed this at Redeemer years ago. It still works!

Nourishment for the Hungry Soul

Greencrest Manor in Battle Creek

Linda and I are just outside Battle Creek at Greencrest Manor for the wedding of Kim Cooke and Josh Thomas. This is such a beautiful bed-and-breakfast place (Grant Hill was married here). 

I woke up this morning and walked around taking photos. I also brought my copy of Thomas Merton's Thoughts in Solitude. I read it long ago, in 1988. I'm doing a slow-cook re-read. Merton is a discerner, a deep-dweller who lingers in life tasting and savoring it. 

Merton understood spiritual realities and their importance. He writes:

"There is no greater disaster in the spiritual life than to be immersed in unreality, for life is maintained and nourished in us by our vital relationship with realities outside and above us. When our life feeds on unreality, it must starve. It must therefore die." (p. 17)

I see America as largely a nation of spiritually hungry, starving people who have mistaken material things for spiritual food. Acquisition of and investment in unrealities only leave people empty. We are the perpetually dissatisfied. 

For Merton the answer is to begin "by renouncing the illusory reality which created things acquire when they are seen only in their relation to our own selfish interests." (Ib.)

Tomorrow morning at Redeemer I'm preaching out of Revelation 11:15-19. This is about spiritual reality outside and above us, and its eventual interconnection with the earth and us. Verse 15 reads:

¹⁵ The seventh angel sounded his trumpet, 

and there were loud voices in heaven, which said:

“The kingdom of the world has become

    the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah,

    and he will reign for ever and ever.”

"The heavenly voices shout out the turning point that the entire Bible has waited for - the arrival of the kingdom! Their song celebrates the reversal of the tragic earthly situation during the age of sin... Now that dichotomy [between the kingdom of earth and the kingdom of God] has ended, and the heavenly kingdom has replaced the earthly as the true reality." (Grant Osborne, Revelation) 

At this point the true nature of things will be clearly seen. Merton writes: "The "unreality" of material things is only relative to the greater reality of spiritual things." (Ib.) In other words, material things are created things; therefore their essence is discerned in and through their creators (either God, or persons). Think of the word 'inspiration' here; viz., 'spirit'... 'in'. 

Reality is fundamentally spiritual. This morning my soul feeds on this, and I am nourished.

Big Stick - The Mark Dantonio Era

This video is the sine qua non of inspiration.

Normal Christian Experience Includes a Conversational Relationship with God

Warren Dunes State Park, Lake Michigan

The story of Philip the evangelist provides a good example of how evangelism happened through the early church (Acts 21:8; ch. 6; ch. 8; Philip was one of "the 7," to be distinguished from Philip of "the 12" [Acts 1:13].) It happened the "Jesus way." Which was:

1. Hear from God.
2. Obey.

That's how Jesus did it. Peter did it that way, too. So did Philip the evangelist. By logical extension, so should we. Which means: no "evangelism program" is needed. No method or technique needed either. Just stay "in the Vine." Stay in relationship. Get your directions from God.

In one of our Sunday morning worship times I asked people to share an example of hearing directionally from God without knowing what the outcome would be. A number of testimonies were shared that went like this:

1. God told me to go ___________.
2. I went ___________. (Call this "obedience.")
3. God showed up. And it was a good, God-thing.

I hear from God regularly. Many of our people regularly hear from God. And, all of us can hear from God.

To acknowledge this seems almost like bragging on one hand, or like mental illness on the other hand. But I don't think it's either of those. It is, and ought to be, the normal Christian life. Hearing from God is, experientially, "Emmanuel - God with us." It is relationship with God; friendship with God.

While in Western culture this idea is strange, remember that concepts like "strange" and "normal" are functions of one's prethematic, mostly-non-reflected-on worldview. "Normal" Christian experience includes having a conversational relationship with God. This is called "prayer."

If you're looking for more on this I strongly recommend U. of Southern Caifornia Prof. of Philosophy Dallas Willard's Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God.

I have already heard from God this morning. 

God has much that he wants to say to you today. 

Let the conversation begin.

Longing for Transcendence (The Presence-Driven Church)

The Grand Hotel, Mackinac Island, MI

Looks like Linda and I will be traveling to Trinidad and Tobago in October. I'll lead a conference for African Methodist Episcopal pastors. I'll be sharing my materials on spiritual formation, abiding in Christ, and "Leading the Presence-Driven Church." 

I'm doing some prepping for the event and reviewing some material, including James MacDonald's excellent book Vertical Church, and Alvin Plantinga's sumptuous spiritual and intellectual feast Knowledge and Christian Belief. 

I'm with MacDonald on much of what he says here. I am part of a Presence-Driven church. Not all churches are this way. MacDonald writes:

“Church leaders raised on rationalism lead ministries where the supernatural, the Vertical, is suppressed and where God Himself is at best an observer and certainly seldom, if ever, an obvious participant in church.” (MacDonald, Vertical Church: What Every Heart Longs for. What Every Church Can Be., Kindle Locations 533-535)

A pastor who suppresses God? Been there, done that, myself. It is the worst place to be, pastorally. Remember that Jesus shut down the Temple because the religious temple leaders "shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to." (Matthew 23:13)

This whole thing called "church" is really about God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Not just theoretically, but experientially. What people need is Emmanuel, God with us, existentially. 

The movement of God's Spirit is a felt, discernible thing. Pastors must nurture and cultivate God's presence. We must be very, very open to it. 

The Horizontal Church is the godless church; Vertical Church is the Presence-Driven Church. It's all about "entering in." The word is Christ in you, not as some epistemically distant object.

John Calvin, who is often inaccurately portrayed as being spiritually cold and aloof (don't mistake Calvinists for Calvin himself), had as his emblem a flaming heart with an outstretched hand. On it was the motto: Cor meum quasi immolatum tibi offero, Domine ("I give my flaming heart to you, Lord, eagerly and honestly.") Calvin had these words carved over the pulpit in Geneva where he preached. Alvin Plantinga writes:

Of the Holy Spirit, [Calvin] says that “persistently boiling away and burning up our vicious and inordinate desires, he enflames our hearts with the love of God and with zealous devotion.” The Institutes are throughout aimed at the practice of the Christian life (which essentially involves the affections), not at theological theory; the latter enters only in the service of the former. (Plantinga, Knowledge and Christian Belief, p. 72)

Jonathan Edwards wrote:

"There is a distinction to be made between a mere notional understanding, wherein the mind only beholds things in the exercise of a speculative faculty; and the sense of the heart, wherein the mind doesn’t only speculate and behold, but relishes and feels. That sort of knowledge, by which a man has a sensible perception of amiableness and loathsomeness, or of sweetness and nauseousness, is not just the same sort of knowledge with that, by which he knows what a triangle is, and what a square is. The one is mere speculative knowledge; the other sensible knowledge, in which more than the mere intellect is concerned; the heart is the proper subject of it, or the soul as a being that not only beholds, but has inclination, and is pleased or displeased." (Quoted in Ib., p. 73.)

There is a great longing in the human heart for something more. For something beyond us, that will complete us. We see this in the Psalms.

My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord;

my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.

Psalm 84:1

O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; 

my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you. 

Psalm 63: 1 

One thing have I desired of the Lord, that I will seek after; 

that I . . . behold the beauty of the Lord. 

Psalm 27: 4

As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. 

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. 

Ps. 42: 1-2

I open my mouth and pant, longing for your commands. 

Ps. 119: 131

Plantinga writes:

"This love for God isn’t like, say, an inclination to spend the afternoon organizing your stamp collection. It is longing, filled with desire and yearning; and it is physical as well as spiritual: “my body longs for you, my soul pants for you.” Although eros is broader than sexual love, it is analogous to the latter. There is a powerful desire for union with God, the oneness Christ refers to in John 17." (Ib., 75)

In The Weight of Glory C.S. Lewis wrote:

“We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words — to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.” (Lewis, The Weight of Glory, p. 8)

Presence-Driven leaders understand this and cultivate this, in themselves and in their people. Presence-Driven leaders have met Emmanuel, and introduce others to him. 

Knowing about God is not enough; knowing God is.

Praying and Miracles

Monroe County

A friend from Brazil asked me - "Do you remember the first miracle you saw and what was it like?" I do. It was like this.

I was five years old. My mother came in my bedroom and told me that our pet canary had died. The birdcage was in another room. I went, followed by my mother, and saw the canary. It was on its back lying on the floor of the cage. It was not moving. I was crying.

I went to my bedroom and was sobbing and praying "God, please make my canary live!" I can't remember how long I was doing this. My mother came into my room and said, "John, come with me and look!" I followed her to the room where our dead canary lay. I was afraid to go and have to see it again. We went into the room and there was the canary, sitting on its swing, like nothing had happened.

I went back to my room, happy, and after a few minutes it was like this sad incident never happened.

Here's what I know.

1. My mother and I saw the canary on the cage floor, on its back, legs pointed skyward, not moving. We were eyewitnesses of this.
2. I prayed, asking God to bring my canary back.
3. Minutes later we saw the canary alive and sitting on its swing. (More eyewitness testimony.)

Was the canary really dead? I can't prove this. We didn't check its heartbeat. Did it die and come back to life? That's what mother and I thought. Again, I cannot prove this. But what I do know is that 1-3 above are true.  

I also know one more thing. I came out of that day believing God can raise the dead, and that where my praying focuses God's power falls. 

***
See: 

Craig Keener, Miracles: The Credibility of New Testament Accounts

Eric Metaxas, Miracles: What They Are, Why They Happen, and How They Can Change Your Life

Love, Power, Knowledge, and Post-Christianity: How to Turn Things Around

Redeemer sanctuary before Darren Wilson premiered "Holy Ghost Reborn" tonight.

Any who do not have their head in the sand can see that secularism is growing and more U.S. Christians are not showing up on Sunday mornings. See, e.g., "Secularism Grows as More U.S. Christians Turn "Churchless."" Greg Kinnaman of the Barna Group says that "nones," the unchurched, and skeptics number 38% of the population. By Kinnaman's count, "roughly four in 10 people living in the continental United States are actually “post-Christian” and “essentially secular in belief and practice.”"

Kinnaman says:
“We are far from becoming an atheist nation. There are tens of millions of active believers in America today. But the wall between the churched and the churchless is growing higher and more impenetrable as more people have no muscle memory of what it means to be a regular attender at a house of worship.”

That feels correct to me. I've seen this trend in my past 15 years of teaching hundreds of college students in my philosophy classes. How can it be turned around? I suggest by revisiting and returning to the Christian corporate distinctives of love, power, and knowledge.

Love

Followers of Jesus must get radical and return to: 1) loving God, and 2) loving one another. I've met too many "ex-Christians" who left the church because of what they experienced in the church. We must get back to the root of our faith, which is God's love, expressed within the community of God's people (AKA "church"), and then love towards those who don't know Jesus. 

Begin with community re-studying and re-meditating on the book of 1 John, which essentially is about abiding in Christ and having hearts of love within the community. Note that the word "love" (agape) is used 27 times in 1 John 4 alone. 

It's time to rediscover and reclaim our true identity as deeply loved children of God. I John resolves our individual and corporate identity crises. This happens as we return to the John-thing of abiding in Christ (John chapters 14-15-16) and a life of praying, out of which relevant and authentic doing emerges.

We must not lose sight of the cultural fact that skepticism and atheism provides a weak life-narrative. Most of what I see in the skeptical community is a thin bond of what we are against (a-theism), not what we are for. I see the lack of community in secularism as being intrinsic to secularism. Community (koinonia) is our thing, and we must cultivate it.

Remember that this crazy big thing called "love" comes from us, from Christianity, and not the other world religions and definitely not from secular culture. Sheer atheistic materialism has no metaphysical place for "love"; the atheist's love-impulse is religious, whether they know it or not. As Jesus's followers we must own this and wear this and abide in this and understand that "love" is the DNA seed that God that has planted in our hearts (1 John 3:9).

Power

When the apostle Paul talked about wanting to "know" the power of Christ's resurrection, he was using "know" in the Hebrew sense of an experienced reality. The early church knew, and therefore believed, that there was a power from God that was not only available for the emerging church but was foundational to its growth.

Demonstrated power, done in love and not showmanship, marks the true "seeker church." The sick person needs more than coffee and donuts and a band on a stage. Recently at one of our Sunday morning worship events a young man who was visiting told me, "I've been trying other churches. Another pastor told me to try your church. I am here this morning because I am hoping to find God. If I don't find God soon I am going to be in deep trouble." 

I suggest that this is far from an isolated instance. People need the inner healing which secularism cannot provide. Where can today's growing number of young heroin addicts turn but to God, since our medical resources, as commendable as they are, lack an answer to the beast-addiction of heroin? The church must reacquaint itself with God's available resurrection power, administered in love. This is our arena, our distinctive. We must not let secular metaphysical naturalism overwhelm us in this area.  

On Sunday mornings and throughout the week our people are praying with other people expecting to see God's transforming and healing power operative. God's power, exercised in love, is its own apologetic. 

Knowledge

My experience with young people who rarely gather with the church but self-identity as Christians is that they are Jesus-illiterate. We must teach our young people and children about Jesus. We must teach them that they are the church. Be creative in teaching - yes! But forget trying to water it down or make Jesus culturally palatable. To reduce the biblical Jesus to a "safer Jesus" only fuels post-Christianity. 

In my college logic classes I teach "critical thinking." The text I use states that knowledge is empowering. Thinking for yourself is good. Being able to formulate and evaluate your beliefs and the beliefs of others strengthens you. Secular institutions of learning focus on this. But note: there's a lot of literature out there pointing out the failure of high schools and universities to empower students with critical thinking skills. This syncs with my teaching experience. Most students do not because they cannot think for themselves. (See, e.g., Robert Arum, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses.)

This means that a lot of the current skepticism and atheism and irreligion and the "nones" exists, not as a result of being examined and thought-out, but because it is trendy. Most of the "atheists" in my classes are sheep without a shepherd. It's not that they are cognitively incapable. They just have not been taught to think otherwise for themselves.

I predict that there will be an eventual cognitive backlash to post-religiosity. The religious and metaphysical impulse is never going to go away. We must remember that, as wonderful as science is, it cannot say anything about value (good, bad, right, wrong, beauty, truth, etc.). This is our turf. The church must teach it, go for it, and build disciples who know why they believe what they believe.

A final note: we must discover the church's distinctives and nurture them. Forget, to a large degree, trying to be relevant to culture. This will not entail isolationism, with the church hiding behind its walls, trying to protect itself from culture. Instead, it will be the church as it was always intended to be; viz., a culture-influencing movement of people call out to follow Jesus.

As Yale University's Miroslav Volf writes:

"Reconstructions of the Christian faith guided by the strategy of accommodation carry in themselves the seeds of possible Christian self-destruction. After they have accommodated, for the most part what remains for Christian communities to do is to appear after a non-Christian show and repeat the performance in their own way for an audience with Christian scruples. The voice of the Christian communities has become a mere echo of a voice that is not their own... (Ib., 85)

... Alas, in leaning over to speak to the modern world, we had fallen in. We had lost the theological resources to resist, lost the resources even to see that there was something worth resisting...  

... Christian communities will be able to survive and thrive in contemporary societies only if they attend to their “difference” from surrounding cultures and subcultures. The following principle stands: whoever wants the Christian communities to exist must want their difference from the surrounding culture, not their blending into it. As a consequence, Christian communities must “manage” their identity by actively engaging in “boundary maintenance.” Without boundaries, communities dissolve." (Volf, Miroslav. A Public Faith, pp. 85, 81)