Prayer Is a Now-Conference With the Great "I AM" (PrayerLife)

Detroit

Greg Boyd, in his wonderful book Present Perfect, writes:

"God is the God of the living, not the God of the already-past or the not-yet-present. He's the great "I AM," not the great "I was" or the great "I will be." He's been present in every moment in the past, for which we can be thankful, and he'll be present at every moment in the future, which gives us great hope. But he's only alive and active now, in the present - which is, once again, the only thing that's real." (15)

God, the great I AM, is present to our experience now. This should encourage you to pray. 

Prayer is a now-conference with God.

This moment.

You and God, meeting with one another.

Moses In Connecticut

Thanks S.C. for sending this.

Coming - Ohio School of Power and Love

Go HERE to register.

NOTE: register early because of limited space.  Also any hotels needed should be booked soon because there is a big soccer event in Toledo that week and hotels will be sold out.

Understanding the Religious and Spiritual World of Today's Emerging Adults

Jerusalem

The research of University of Notre Dame's Christian Smith on the religious lives of today's adolescents corroborates my experience as a college professor and pastor who interacts with a lot of young people today. And, I listen to their music and watch the movies they watch (as much as possible) and app some of the apps they app. (I'm paying attention.) The campus pastor in me has never died! (I was redeemed on a university campus, and was an American Baptist campus pastor at Michigan State University from 1981-1992.)

Smith has a research trilogy - Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (2009; here we learned of the not-so-awe-inspiring Moralistic Therapeutic Deism), Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults (2010), and Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood (2011). Anyone wanting to understand young adults today must read these books. And remember:

1. First: understand.
2. Second: evaluate.

Because evaluation without understanding is absurd and has evil consequences.

Where are today's emerging adults at when it comes to religion and spirituality? Here are highlights from Souls in Transition, Chapter 5 - "The Cultural Structures of Emerging Adult Religion." Note: Smith knows better than to box emerging adults in. His research gives us broad strokes that cover most of the canvas. He writes: "The majority of emerging adults gives voice to certain thematic perspectives when speaking about religion and spirituality. These reflect prevailing cultural structures governing their assumptions, categories, outlooks, habits, and thought." (K3024)

WARNING: This information is for understanding, not judging (not judgmentalism; not criticizing).

PREVAILING AND LESS COMMONLY VOICED RELIGIOUS CULTURAL THEMES


Religion is Not Threatening Because It's Not a Big Deal
For many emerging adults the topic of religion is not threatening. "They generally seem happy to talk about religion, if it happens to come up." Religion "is simply not a big deal, not something of central importance that most would expect to recurrently come up in discussions. So it is also not particularly threatening or controversial." (K3045)

Some Have No Experience with Religion and Spirituality
A small subset of emerging adults "are so disconnected from anything religious that they simply have no opinions or beliefs about religion. It is not that they are antagonistic about or dismissive of religion, or are being lazy in their answers to interviewers' questions. They simply have lived lives involving such little first-hand experience of religion or spirituality that they literally do not know or think much at all about it or hold any particular views about God, faith, church, or anything else related. When asked, they simply do not have much to say." (K 3051-3055)

Religion Is Mostly a Matter of Indifference 
"Religion is fine. But for most emerging adults, it just doesn't matter that much." (K3061)

My observation is that many emerging adults want to talk about life's Big Questions. A lot of students tell their friends about my MCCC philosophy courses, and they enroll in them. A small percentage tell their parents to take my classes, and some do. This is happening this semester. 

The Shared Central Principles of Religion Are Good
"Ultimately, most emerging adults say, all religions actually share the same core principles, at least those that are important. All religions teach belief in God and the need to be a good person. These things are what really matters. At heart, in this way all religions are essentially the same, the majority of emerging adults claim, because all religions share the same basic beliefs and values. Therefore, anybody who follows any particular religion is ultimately just like any other religious person following any other religion." (K3078-3082)

My understanding is that while most emerging adults believe all religions are saying the same basic things, this belief is passively accepted and remains mostly unexamined. As to whether or not the claim is true, see, e.g., Stephen Prothero, God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World.

Religious Particularities Are Peripheral
"It is fine if different religions want to emphasize specific customs or beliefs or ceremonies, if some people want to do that. But none of the particularities of any religion, emerging adults think, are really what is important or valuable about it." (K3103-3104)

A Smaller Theme Is: "Actually, MY Religion Is true
"Some emerging adults genuinely believe that their religious faith is true, that other beliefs and world-views may have elements of truth but that their own religion expresses the best, most complete understanding of religious truth and reality." (K3131-3132)

Religion Is For Making Good People
"The real point of religion, ultimately, in the eyes of most emerging adults, is to help people be good, to live good lives." (K3143)

Religious Congregations Are Elementary Schools of Morals
It's OK to be part of a religious group for a while. But once "elementary school" is finished we move on, and away from religious organizations.

Your Family's Religious Beliefs Are Associated with Dependence
"Independent persons do not keep doing all the things that belong to their earlier dependence. Therefore—not that emerging adults normally consciously think about it in these terms—learning to stand on one’s own two feet means, among other things, getting some distance from one’s family’s faith and religious congregation." (K3188-3190)

A Smaller Number Believe Their Faith "Is Really Important to Me"
"A certain set of emerging adults are more serious about and committed to their religion than most, in a particular way that they persistently describe as “my faith”—as in, “My faith is this, my faith is that, I’m really into my faith.”" (K3208)

Religious Groups Are not A Place of Real Belonging
We all need to connect. The connecting place for most emerging adults is not some religious group, like the church. Smith writes:
"Do emerging adults feel a strong sense of belonging in any religious congregation— if they even have one—or in some other religious group? Nah, not really, actually not very much at all." (K3233-3234)

Friends Hardly Talk About Religion
"Whatever subjects friends do talk about, religious beliefs and interests are simply not among them—beyond perhaps finding out that someone else is, say, Catholic or Jewish. For most emerging adults, that is because religion is simply not important or relevant enough to everyday life to warrant any real discussion. In that, religion is like favorite family recipes: people often have them and may even love them, but they don’t necessarily want to discuss them." (K3259)

Religious Beliefs Are Cognitive Assents, Not Life Drivers
"Most emerging adults have religious beliefs. They believe in God. They probably believe in an afterlife. They may even believe in Jesus. But those religious ideas are for the most part abstract agreements that have been mentally checked off and filed away. They are not what emerging adults organize their lives around." (K3275)

And...   What about Moralistic Therapeutic Deism? (MTD)

Followers of MTD believe the following:

First, a God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth. 

Second, God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.

Third, the central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself. 

Fourth, God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem. 

Fifth, good people go to heaven when they die. 

Smith writes: "That was the dominant religious worldview the earlier survey found was held by most American teenagers, ages 13–17." (K3299)

And: "The latest wave of research reveals that MTD is still alive and well among 18- to 23-year-old American youth." (Ib.) 

It's Snowing (Again!) In Southeast Michigan

Solitude Burns Away Self-Delusion (PrayerLife)

Masada, on the Dead Sea in Israel

Solitary alone-time with God is an antidote to our culture's prevailing shallowness and illusion. Spending much time alone with God clears away the false self that we so easily construct and wear before others. This is because in solitude it's just you and God. Before God there's no faking it, no posing and posturing and preening, no hiding. Solitude is "search me O God" time.

Yes, God can and does search us out while we're in community. But true community is a function of alone-time spent with God. That is, I am better in community as a result of solo-conferencing with God.

God desires to defeat my self-obsessiveness so I can experience renewal and transformation. One way God does this is by calling me into times of solitude. This is why Henri Nouwen has called solitude “the furnace of spiritual transformation." 

If solitude is a "furnace," what gets burned away? The answer is: the negative aspects of the "self." Unless we daily practice self-denial, self-centered ideas will rise up against the ideas of God. I have discovered many negative aspects of the self. One of them is self-love.

The self-love issue runs deep. Self-love, writes Thomas Merton, "is the source of all boredom and all restlessness and all unquiet and all misery and all unhappiness - ultimately, it is hell."[1] How much easier is it to love the self before loving others and living sacrificially in relationship to them. One British politician's actions were once described as "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his friends for his life."[2] I have discovered in my heart a deep-rooted propensity to love “me” as my first priority. This kind of self-love needs to be burned away.

As a young Christian I was counseled to keep my priorities as follows:

a. Love God first
b. Love others second
c. Love self

I have found that when I live in this way the love I have for myself is healthy and godly.

A harmful love of self is called "pride." C.S. Lewis called pride “the great sin – the complete anti-God mentality.” It’s impossible to love God with all one’s being if one has an elevated love of self. Francis Frangipane refers to pride as “the armor of darkness.”[3] I like this definition of pride because it shows how this kind of self-love necessarily thwarts spiritual renewal and transformation. And, as Merton said, while all this seems counterintuitive to the proud lover of self, in reality it’s all boredom and misery.

Meet alone with God today. Pray for God to burn away prideful self-love.

[1] Thomas Merton, The Waters of Siloe

[2] Eddie Askew, No Strange Land, p. 20
[3] Francis Frangipane, The Three Battlegrounds

If Jesus Is the Only Way to God, What About Those Who Have Never Heard of Him?

Tel Aviv, on the Mediterranean Sea

(For my Redeemer family, as I promised this morning after preaching out of  Hebrews 10:26-39.)

Imagine this story. 

John does not believe in Jesus. Jason does. Jason tells John about Jesus, and John is interested. Jason feels God wants him to get back to John soon, but does not find time to get back to John. John dies without hearing more. What was John’s status before John died? To be saved, did he need more information about Jesus? Paul Copan asks: “Was his eternal destiny in the hands of [someone] who happened not to respond to an inner prompting? Could it be that God is more interested in a person’s spiritual direction or responsiveness than in his spiritual ‘location’ on a continuum?”

Theistic philosopher Paul Copan does a good job responding to the question: what if someone has never had the opportunity to hear about Jesus? The points below are from Copan’s book True for You, But Not for Me: Overcoming Objections to Christian Faith. Some years ago I read the first edition and found it helpful. This newer edition is much better, more complete and more rigorous. Read the book for greater detail and explanation, especially regarding Copan’s “middle knowledge” position.

If you don’t want to wade through my notes below here are some bullets I find relevant.

1. God’s desire is that all be saved.

2. All who desire to be saved will have the opportunity to be saved.

3. We can trust that God is loving and just. We can trust that the eternal outcome of every person is in the hands of a loving and just God.

4. Persons who have self-inflicted “transworld depravity” will not want God, or God in Christ. So God is not unjust in applying eternal justice to them; viz., everlasting separation from his presence. (1 Thessalonians 1) Note: "transworld depravity" (from Alvin Plantinga) in this case means: in any possible world X will reject Christ if offered the opportunity.

5. God has given persons free will. This is risky. Some will likely freely choose to reject god’s offer of salvation, and his revelation in creation and the moral law within (Romans 1 and 2). As C.S. Lewis wrote, re. this, there are two kinds of persons: one who says to God “Thy will be done,” and one to whom God says “Thy will be done.”

6. If God has middle-knowledge (knowledge of future choices) and knows that John will reject Him in any possible world, then God is not unjust in not presenting John with the opportunity to be saved.

7. Romans 1 says that, even without a knowledge of Christ, people have an opportunity to know God. We read: ¹⁸ The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, ¹⁹ since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. ²⁰ For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.Theologically, this is called "natural revelation."

8. Romans 2 says: (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.) 16 This will take place on the day when God judges people’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares. So it seems likely that some persons will be saved by following the moral law within.



1. The Agnostic View.

a. Alister McGrath and J.I. Packer are agnostic on the matter.

b. If God really loves the whole world, and if Christ died for all without exception, and if God commands all to repent, and if God does not want any to perish, “then it follows that his initiating grace, though resistible (Acts 7:51), is directed toward all without exception. This would include the unevangelized.” (Copan)

c. We can trust that God has the question of the unevangelized figured out.

d. Further, God has done so much to reach us all, even to suffer with us in a world filled with evil and misery, that we have good reason to believe the unevangelized are in excellent hands.

e. We can trust that God is loving and just. So God won’t condemn anyone for being born at the wrong time and place (viz., in a time and place where the message of the Gospel of Jesus was not known).

f. God is able to reach people in ways we don’t expect. For example, he can reveal himself – and has done so – through visions or angelic messengers. Copan cites examples of Jesus appearing to Muslims who had never heard of him.

g. In the end we can trust in a good God to do no wrong. “We should not think about the unevangelized apart from God’s character, motives, and good purposes.” (Copan)

2. The Inclusivist (Wider-Hope) View 

a. In Romans 2:7 Paul writes: “To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor, and immortality, [God] will give eternal life.”

b. Could some unevangelized people fit in this category?

c. Inclusivists say: Salvation is exclusive in its source – Christ alone as God’s full, final revelation. Salvation is available to every person – even those the missionary can’t reach.

d. One criticism of this view is that accepting it would diminish missionary zeal. Why bring Christ to the nations if the nations can be saved without hearing of Christ?

e. The inclusivist responds by asking why anyone’s fate should solely depend on evangelists who are not always available and/or faithful?

f. Belief in the sovereignty of God makes us think God will not really leave the destiny of unreached people in the hands of imperfect, fallible missionaries. Can’t God work beyond the boundaries of the gospel’s proclamation and our expectations?

g. What about those in the Old Testament who didn’t know about the historical Jesus and his death and resurrection? “Clearly they were saved on the basis of what Jesus would eventually accomplish (Rom. 3:25; see Acts 17:30).

h. And what about infants and those who are mentally incapable of grasping the gospel message?

i. The inclusivist believes that human beings are guilty and helpless before God, separated from him, and cannot be saved apart from Christ.

j. The inclusivist believes that God wants all to be saved. This seems to imply that he makes salvation available to all.

k. The inclusivist claims that salvation through Jesus’ “name” doesn’t necessarily imply knowing the historical facts about Jesus of Nazareth. While Jesus is ontologically necessary for salvation, he is not epistemologically necessary.

l. Natural revelation may have a positive role and may be used by God’s Spirit to show the unevangelized their need for him. For example, Romans 1:20 and Romans 2:14-15 give us two ways persons can be saved without hearing of the Jesus story. Here inclusivists are optimistic about the role of “general revelation” through the creation, and the moral law within each human heart. Millard Erickson, who is not an inclusivist, says: “If they [persons who know about God through his self-revelation in nature (cf. Romans 1:20) but still reject God] are condemnable because they have not trusted God through what they have, it must have been possible somehow to meet this requirement through this means.If not, responsibility and condemnation are meaningless… Perhaps there is room for acknowledging that God alone may know in every case exactly whose faith is sufficient for salvation.” (In Copan)

m. The Roman centurion Cornelius (Acts 10) seems to be an example of someone who seems to display the working of God’s Spirit and grace in is life.

n. John Stott summarizes the inclusivist argument: “What we do not know, however, is exactly how much knowledge and understanding of the Gospel people need before they can cry to God for mercy and be saved. In the Old Testament, people were certainly “justified by grace through faith,” even though they had little knowledge or no expectation of Christ. Perhaps there are others today in a somewhat similar position. They know they are sinful and guilty before God, and that they cannot do anything to win his favor, so in self-despair they call upon the God they dimly perceive to save them. If God does save such, as many evangelical Christians tentatively believe, their salvation is still only by grace, only by Christ, only by faith.” (In Copan)

3. Copan presents an argument against the inclusivist position.

a. Inclusivism can blur important distinctions, which can result in disastrous affirmations. For example, some inclusivists hold that Muslims whoa re seeking Allah can be saved.

b. Romans 1 seems to argue against the inclusivist position. Paul has a pessimistic view of humanity’s ability to turn to God because of God’s revelation in nature.

c. There are people who don’t respond to general revelation yet respond to the preaching of the gospel.

d. Inclusivism dampens concern for missions. “It seems doubtful that inclusivism would actually increase evangelistic fervor.”

4. The Accessibilist/Middle Knowledge View

a. God judges the unevangelized based on their response to natural revelation, which his Spirit can use to bring them to salvation. “Natural revelation doesn’t damn anyone without furnishing genuine opportunities to be saved (Romans 2:7) God’s initiative offers them prevenient (“preceding”) grace to respond. All they need to do is humble themselves before him and repent. God is not only just in his judgment, but also gracious in genuinely offering salvation.” (Copan)

b. God can’t make people freely choose to respond to the gospel. “Some might be like NYU philosopher Thomas Nagel, who said, ‘I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.’ Indeed, with every new indication of God’s reality, a person might come to resent or hate him even more.”

c. God knows all future possibilities and free choices of human beings, and whoever would want to be saved will find salvation. God knows all truths – even future ones. God knows all possible future events and human choices – what free creatures could do in various circumstance and what world-arrangements are feasible.” For example, Jesus knew (from the Father) that Peter would deny him three times. God knew that Peter would freely choose to deny Christ under certain circumstances.

d. God takes human free will seriously. Copan says: “No one will be comdemned as the result of geographical or historical accident, lack of information, or failure of a missionary to “get there.” All who want – or would want – to be saved do find salvation. Those who would always refuse salvation get their way in the end.”

e. Perhaps there’s no feasible world of persons who all freely choose Christ; this God creates a world containing an optimal balance of fewest lost and greatest number saved. Sometimes people ask: “Why didn’t God create world in which everyone freely chose to love him?” But if humans are truly free, then there’s guarantee they will use their free will to love him. Remember that God does not create out of any need. God desires that none perish; he wants us to embrace him and live. Copan writes: “So it’s reasonable to believe that he wants a maximal number of persons saved and a minimal number condemned. He wants his renewed creation – the new heaven and earth – to be as full as possible and hell as empty as possible. The only thing preventing hell’s being completely empty of people is the human will’s resistance to his loving and gracious initiative. God isn’t less loving because some people are condemned for rejecting him. So why couldn’t this world be the one that achieves this optimal balance?”

f. Some persons possess self-inflicted “transworld depravity” or “transworld damnation”; they would have been lost in any world I which they were placed.

g. Missions motivation isn’t diminished, since God has also providentially arranged fort human messengers to bring the gospel to those he knew would accept it if they heard it.

h. Some individuals may seem “so close” to salvation in the actual world without finding it. But perhaps this actual world is the very nearest the transworldly depraved ever come to salvation.

Love does Not Fashion Others Into One's Own Image

It is the height of arrogance, manipulation and control to try to make other people into one's own image. I often meet people who try to make some significant other into a "normal" person like they are; into someone who thinks their thoughts, likes their likes, wants their wants, and desires their desires. Parents do this to children, friends do this to friends, lovers do this to their beloved. What is this evil thing that wants to live vicariously through other people?

Thomas Merton writes: “The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.”

Real love lets the other be who they are, and champions them to be better than they both are. The one who can love someone just as they are is a sign of the lover's freedom. It's an insecure person who needs others to be just like them and agree with them on everything. The truth is that if both people agree on everything then one of them is not needed. That's precisely how the other will feel as the image-controller manipulates them.

Discover the reality of your own self, before God, in Christ.

Release other people to do the same.

Doing these things makes life lighter, more truthful, and more joy-filled.

Prayer and Inner Healing

Physical suffering can be horrific. As can inner, mental suffering. I have talked with people who suffer inner pain and say they would rather have physical pain than their mental torment.

Just as we all experience physical pain, so we all experience inner pain. I've experienced both. I have asked for prayer for both.

Some of my inner pain has been self-caused. Of this kind of pain, some has been willful, some has been out of ignorance. I have made bad choices that have kept me awake at night. I have failed at times and made mistakes that hurt others. In my life I have hurt other people. This has not set right in my soul.

Some of my inner pain is from the kind of less-than-heavenly world we live in. This includes other people who have wounded me. It also includes the creation in its fallen aspects, as occasionally this has impinged on me. In my life other people have hurt me. This has robbed my heart of peace.

People who hurt others are often unhealed wounders. Inwardly they hurt; therefore they hurt others, irretrievably. They cannot stop themselves. But if the bleeding within gets stopped, they are transformed into wounded healers. 

As a Jesus-follower who believes in the causal efficacy of prayer (see here, e.g.; and here for the best work available on the psychology of prayer), I've prayed with countless people for their physical and inner healing and well-being.

This Sunday evening at Redeemer, Feb. 16, I'm going to teach on Prayer and Inner Healing. I'm especially referring to Chapter 5 of John Wimber's Power Healing: "Healing the Effects of Past Hurts."

Then we are going to pray for anyone who requests it, and especially for inner soul-and-heart healing, and for our souls to be set right.

6 PM - Linda and i will lead worship.

6:30-7:30 - Teaching, with interaction.

7:30 - Praying.

Sometimes Communication Looks Like This