Learning How to Pray Meditatively

Detroit

How can I learn to listen to God, to hear God's voice, as I pray? Richard Foster's counsel on this is excellent. He writes:

"I suggest you begin with one verse from the Bible. Say, Psalm 23:1: "The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want." Read it over prayerfully two or three times and then wait quietly, listening for anything the Lord may want to teach you or any experience God may desire to give you. It is quite straightforward, really. We are simply learning to develop a conversational relationship with talking with God and God talking with us." (Richard J. Foster, Sanctuary of the Soul: Journey into Meditative Prayer, Kindle Locations 855-857)

(More On) Woody Allen's Atheism

As I wrote in a previous post, I like Woody Allen. I have long admired his films. I'm an Ingmar Bergmann fan, too, and Allen is indebted to Bergmann. (See "Ingmar Bergman Slips Into the Darkness...")

Allen is (as Bergmann was) an atheist. He brings (as did Bergmann) his atheism into his films, overtly and covertly. Allen is not hiding the fact that: God does not exist (for Allen, not for me); therefore life is absurd, pointless. But of course. Any atheist who thinks otherwise is just another village atheist in denial. I find Allen's atheism honest and lived-out.

The Wall Street Journal recently interviewed Woody ("Older, Mellower, but Still Woody").
Allen is asked:

Some say your view is that life is pointless, and others say you're a romantic realist who believes in being true to yourself. Which is it?

Allen: "I think that's the best you can do, but the true situation is a hopeless one because nothing does last. If we reduce it absurdly for a moment, you know the sun will burn out. You know the universe is falling apart at a fantastically accelerating rate and that at some point there won't be anything at all. So whether you are Shakespeare or Beethoven or Michelangelo, your stuff's not going to last. So, given that, even if you were immortal, that time is going to come. Of course, you have to deal with a much more critical problem, which is that you're not going to last microscopically close to that. So, nothing does last. You do your things. One day some guy wakes up and gets the Times and says, "Hey, Woody Allen died. He keeled over in the shower singing. So, where do you want to have lunch today?""

Allen is correct on the following points:

• With no God, our true situation is hopeless. Why? Because "nothing does last." "The sunn will burn out." "The universe is falling apart." "At some point there won't be anything at all."
• Your stuff, your little creations, are not going to last.
• When you die, not only will there be no "you," but no one or nothing is going to care (relatively speaking, in a massive sense).

Philosopher-atheist Bertrand Russell, in his famous "A Free Man's Worship," concluded the same things. (See "Bertrand Russell - A Free Man's Worship & the Logic of Atheism")
Russell wrote:

"Such, in outline, but even more purposeless, more void of meaning, is the world which Science presents for our belief. Amid such a world, if anywhere, our ideals henceforward must find a home. That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins -- all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built."

A Week of Intercessory Prayer

This morning at Redeemer I spoke on intercessory prayer. I preached on one verse - Colossians 1:9. Which reads: ⁹ For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives...

Paul is praying for the Colossian Jesus-followers. This kind of praying, for others, has been called "intercessory prayer." To "intercede" means: to come between. The word "intersection" is helpful here.

One mile north of our church building is the intersection of Telegraph Road and M-50. If a person's car stalled in the middle of this intersection, would their car be on Telegraph Road or on M-50? The answer would be: both. Because, in this intersection, the properties of Telegraph Road and the properties of M-50 are shared, or are the same.

Something that illustrates this is set theory, in mathematics. In the following diagram there are properties or attributes or elements of Set A that intersect with Set B.

Now imagine that Set A equals the being of God; viz., all God's attributes, God's desires (God's will), and God's character. Imagine, further, that Set B equals the Colossian Jesus-followers (and, by extension, Jesus-followers today). Intercessory prayer is about the intersection of God and God's people. Paul is kneeling at the intersection of A and B, in the place where heaven intersects with earth, and asking God to bring heaven into the earthly existence of the people he is interceding for.

I am defining an "intercessor" as follows: a Jesus-follower who abides in Christ, in prayer, and upon whom God places His heart for others. The prayer is: "God, fill these Colossian Christians with your very heart and strength." The prayer-impetus is from God; it's not something Paul thinks he has invented. These people were first on God's mind, which God then placed on Paul's mind.

This idea makes sense of what is coming next in Col. 1:10; viz., that a revelation and infusion of God's heart inexorably leads to holiness, which is a being-set-apart for God. That's what I'm going to preach on next Sunday.

I felt very strong about this today, and called our beautiful people to a week of intercessory prayer. We've got more people on the prayer team today than we had yesterday. Thus I am filled with much expectation and promise.

Woody Allen's Atheism

Linda and I have enjoyed, over the years, watching every movie Woody Allen ever made. He is so intrinsically funny and clever, and he brings to his movies a pervading existentialist dread that is philosophical and psychological.

I'm pointed to Allen this afternoon, as I'm sitting on our back deck reading more of Jim Holt's Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story. Holt's very fun book is a quest to find some answer to THE BIG QUESTION, which is: Why is there something rather than nothing? This question is one of the few that has lit my path since encountering its force in the early 1970s, as a young philosophy major.

I just finished Chapter 11 - "The Ethical Requiredness of There Being Something." It's on philosopher John Leslie's theory of "axiarchism." And what might that be? The Greek word "axiology" is "the study of value. Goodness, in a Platonic sense, is responsible for there being something rather than nothing. This is axiarchism's answer to the BIG QUESTION.

Holt writes:

"To take axiarchism seriously, you have to believe three things. First, you have to believe that goodness is an objective value— that there are facts about what is good and evil, and that these facts are timelessly and necessarily true, independently of human concerns, and that they would be true even in the absence of all existent things. Second, you have to believe that the ethical needs that arise from such facts about goodness can be creatively effective— that they can bring things into existence and maintain those things in existence without the aid of any intermediary agent or force or mechanism. Third, you have to believe that the actual world— the world that we ourselves are a part of, even if we can only see a very tiny region of it— is the sort of reality that abstract goodness would bring into being. In other words, you have to believe that (1) value is objective, (2) value is creative, and (3) the world is good. If you buy into all three of these propositions, you’ve got your resolution to the mystery of existence." (pp. 209-210)

In discussing 3 Holt brings in philosophers who doubt that the world is good. And, he mentions Woody Allen. Allen expresses his doubts that this world is good in an interview in Commonweal, in 2010. So, sitting on my back deck, I again discover some of the delightful goodness of our world which no longer needs to drive miles to a library, locate the edition of Commonweal in the periodicals section, and read. It's all online. I'm so historically interested in the filmmaking of Allen that I pull it up, while taking another sip of my Tim Horton's coffee (more evidence that our world is good). 

Allen says that he makes films to give him "some kind of relief from the agony and terror of human existence."

He continues:

"Human existence is a brutal experience to me…it’s a brutal, meaningless experience—an agonizing, meaningless experience with some oases, delight, some charm and peace, but these are just small oases. Overall, it is a brutal, brutal, terrible experience, and so it’s what can you do to alleviate the agony of the human condition, the human predicament? That is what interests me the most. I continue to make the films because the problem obsesses me all the time and it’s consistently on my mind and I’m consistently trying to alleviate the problem, and I think by making films as frequently as I do I get a chance to vent the problems. There is some relief. I have said this before in a facetious way, but it is not so facetious: I am a whiner. I do get a certain amount of solace from whining."

This world, Allen believes, is "overwhelmingly bleak." His films grant him and maybe some viewers a speck of relief in the vast darkness. Ultimately, his movies don't help at all. Life is "horrible," with a few "oases" here and there, like listening to a Mozart symphony. "Everybody knows how awful the world is and what a terrible situation it is and each person distorts it in a certain way that enables him to get through. Some people distort it with religious things. Some people distort it with sports, with money, with love, with art, and they all have their own nonsense about what makes it meaningful, and all but nothing makes it meaningful. These things definitely serve a certain function, but in the end they all fail to give life meaning and everyone goes to his grave in a meaningless way."

As much as I disagree with Allen's worldview, this is why I like him as well. He's dealing with the big questions, foremost among which is: What is the meaning of my life? Though I'm not an atheist, I admire his logic of atheism, which concludes that life has no meaning, ultimately, and that the shadow of this conclusion is cast over all of life and its ultimately trivial ways of unconsciously coping with this.

In Allen's movie "Whatever Works," the protagonist "murders his pregnant mistress and a bystander whose death he views as “collateral damage.” He explains to their ghosts that there is no justice in the universe because there is no Intelligence directing it. If there were no God, surely Allen’s extreme pessimism—and the extreme language in which he expresses it—would be right on target." (See "Woody's Cold Comforts," by Robert Lauder)

"Everyone," says Allen the thoughtful atheist, "goes to his grave in a meaningless way." (In Holt, 213) So true, if there is no God.

The Best Book On Photography Is...

The best website on photography is Ken Rockwell's. If, e.g., you want to know "How to Take Better Pictures," or "Recommended Cameras," hit on those links. Ken's website is fresh - it's constantly updated and revised. And, he is a great teacher.

The best book on taking photographs is Bruce Barnbaum's The Art of Photography: An Approach to Personal Expression. Ken writes: "The Art of Photography is the best book I've read in over 40 years of reading about photography. Bruce Barnbaum goes further and deeper into explaining the intangibles that make a great photograph than anyone else ever has. If you want to learn how to create powerful photographs instead of just snapping away and hoping something turns out later in your computer, this is the one book that you must read."

I got this as a gift a year ago, and have been slow-cooking through it. Barnbaum's chapters include:

• 1 - Communication Through Photography
• 2 - What is composition?
• 3 - Element of composition
• 4 - Visualization
• 5 - Light
• 6 - Color
• 7 - Filters
• 16 - Thoughts on Creativity
• ...   18 chapters in all, with two appendices.

I read a small section this morning. What a beautiful, and scholarly (= learned) book, that is about more than meets the eye.

I've got the hard copy, not the Kindle copy. This is a book you must hold in your hands as you read.

Ben Witherington's Personal Journey in Biblical Criticism

Unlike Bart Ehrman, whose faith journey led him to distrust the New Testament documents as historically reliable, Ben Witherington's journey in the scholarly study of the NT texts has led him to trust more and more in their historical reliability.

Here's a nice little 4-minute video where Ben expresses this. He says: "Here is what I really want to stress. No one needs to be afraid that, lurking beneath the surface of the Bible, is a book that has deceived us for two thousand years about Jesus or about the truth about Jesus Christ."

Note: "biblical criticism" does not mean being critical of the Bible, but studying the Bible critically; i.e., looking at the biblical texts through scholarly eyes, the original languages, the socsio-cultural and socio-rhetorical contexts, and so on.

Getting Connected With People at Redeemer

A main way to get connected with people at Redeemer is: begin a Home Group (HG).

What is a Home Group?

• a weekly (or bi-weekly) gathering of 6-12 people
• who meet in the homes of 1 or more people (our HG), often rotating homes
• study the Bible together - our HG Bible studies are available in the lobby of the church building; they are based on the Scriptures we preach on Sunday mornings
• pray together; support one another
• share snacks or a meal together
• meetings last 1 1/2 - 2 1/2 hours

If you are interested in beginning a HG I can assist you. Please contact me at: 734-242-5277, or talk personally with me.

Pastor John Piippo

The Highest Form of Seeking God

Linda has really enjoyed reading Francis Frangipane's And I Will Be Found By You. It's a slim volume, and she's going through it very slowly, because she doesn't want it to end.

I picked it up today and began slow-cooking in it. Francis writes:

"The highest form of seeking God is not for personal needs or even for other people. There comes a time when we seek God for Himself. Maturity comes as we break the cycle of seeking God only during times of hardship. A touch from God is wonderful, but we are in pursuit of ore than just an experience - more than "goose bumps and tears." We are seeking a place of abiding in Christ, where we are keenly aware of His presence within us." (12-13)

I so agree. To seek God only on behalf of one's own self or only out of one's own neediness would be self-motivated. It feels like using God, depending on one's circumstances. Something central and important is missing here. A mature spirituality seeks the interior castle where God dwells. To be discovered by God Himself is the greatest thing, and the goal of all of life.

To know God and be known by God. Great and true blessedness comes from that encounter.

Does God Want You Part of Redeemer Ministry School This Fall?

If you join me this fall for 9 months in Redeemer Ministry School you will be challenged in your heart and mind. You will be stretched, in a good way, and you will never be the same.

The foundation you now have will be strengthened. If your spiritual and intellectual foundation is shaky, you will gain a solid platform to build and live and minister on.

You will go deeper into the things of worship than you thought possible.

You will discover what real leadership is.

You will learn how to rightly handle the Word of God.

You will grow in your capacity to defend your faith.

You will understand and operate in spiritual gifts of healing, deliverance, and prophecy.

You will become a preacher, a communicator of God's Word.

You will discover the deep abiding-life in Christ.

You will experience spiritual formation, transformation, restoration, and ongoing renewal.

Spiritually, you will be green and growing, not ripe and rotting. (It's either one or the other.)

You will learn about and be able to recognize authentic moves of God's Spirit.

You'll grow in discernment and humility.

Creativity will come forth from you, by God's Spirit.

You'll make many new friends.

And, because God is God, I know you will grow and learn and experience God-things that are unplanned and amazing.

Is this for you this fall? Is God leading you to spend 9 months of your life with us?

We'd love to have you come and be part of what God is going to do in 2012-2013.

redeemerministryschool.com

johnpiippo@msn.com

The Shortcomings of McPrayer

(McDonalds, somewhere in Israel)

Prayer is a slow cooker. Because it is a relationship. The preliminary to effective, relational prayer is the decluttering of the heart. This is true of all relationships.

I come home after a day of work and my mind is filled of many things that I cannot yet let go of. I sit in the same room with Linda, looking at her as she shares with me, and I am not there. I am not with her. Physically, of course, I am with her. But at once my mind is replaying the discussion I just had with this person, and the situation regarding the difficult decision that must be made, and who-know-what-else. All such things, at the time, burden me. The result of a burdened heart is inattentiveness. The same is true of God. This is but one reason "McPrayer" is ineffective, because such "drive-thru prayers" do not allow for the requisite de-burdening.

Joyce Huggett writes: "When we enter our prayer place, we need to give ourselves time to relax in God's presence. One of the best ways of doing this is to recognize some of the reasons why we are tense: worry, pressure of things to be done, the quarrel we just had with our spouse or a colleague. It will be impossible to contemplate until these pressures have been handed over to God. When we transfer them to him, we find ourselves gloriously free with an uncluttered expanse of time in which to be met afresh by him. perhaps that is one reason why Peter invites us to "Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you." (1 Peter 5:7) (In Richard Foster, Spiritual Classics, 13)

Anxiety-casting takes time. I have found, especially over the past 30 years, that as I have spent innumerable long times of prayer that God de-burdens me. It sometimes takes an hour or more to recognize the anxieties in my heart. Without consistent de-burdening these anxieties accrue and collect interest, and have a toxic effect on the soul.

Cease McPraying

• Slow-cook in God's presence
• Let all anxieties be stripped away
• Enter into the freedom of relationship with God, with all its take-and-give