Bon Appetit

Is it like a Krispy Kreme doughnut hot off the conveyor belt, oozing and dripping with hot, sticky icing, waiting to bulldoze your bloodstream with blasts of liquid sugar?

Is it like school cafeteria or youth camp food, sometimes tasty sometimes bland, but often lacking sufficient seasoning?

Is it like chugging a schooner of freshly squeezed lime juice, all the while feasting on an appetizer of lemon peels?

Or is your prayer life like the most mouth-watering steak, simmering in the juiciest marinade, fork-tender, falling off the knife, and topped with the tastiest, zestiest, most flavor-accentuating sauce?

It’s not that Jesus didn’t teach us how to pray. He did. We just don’t follow His teaching. Like the Pharisees, we often think we will be heard for our many spiritual-sounding words.

The knee-jerk reaction to following Jesus’ teaching is that “Jesus surely doesn’t mean we have to repeat his model prayer word-for-word every time we pray. Wouldn’t that be vain repetition, and didn’t Jesus condemn vain repetition prior to teaching the model prayer?”

Absolutely. But notice His exact words: “In this MANNER, therefore, pray.”

Automobile manufacturers do not create the same car over and over again. They use the basic components of a car to craft a variety of makes and models. The basic components of the car are the blueprint by which all other cars are made. In order for a car to be considered a car, it must have all the basic components of a car. Otherwise it cannot be considered a car.

The same is true of prayer. In order for God to consider a prayer pleasing, or even for God to consider it a prayer, it must be constructed from the blueprint He provides. If it is not constructed from this blueprint, it cannot be considered pleasing to Him.

True prayer follows this format:

You are our Heavenly Father

You are King over all Creation

All glory belongs to You

Expand Your kingdom on earth

Accomplish Your will on earth

Meet all our needs

Forgive us our sins

Protect us from sin

Rescue us from sin

All kingdoms belong to You

All power belongs to You

All glory belongs to You

So where do specific requests for healing fall? “All glory belongs to You, Expand Your kingdom, Accomplish Your will.” And sometimes, if the sickness is largely sin-induced, “Forgive us our sins.” And in the event the burden of sickness is laid heavily upon a family such that weekly provision is severely affected, “Meet our needs.”

What about requests for someone’s salvation? “All glory belongs to You, Expand your kingdom, Accomplish Your will, Rescue them from sin, Forgive them of sin, Protect them from sin.”

What about temptations, tribulations, persecutions? “Meet our needs, Forgive us our sins, Protect us from sin, Rescue us from sin, All glory belongs to You, All power belongs to You.”

Use these words as a springboard from which to launch your own prayer. Just keep your prayer within the proper guidelines of each category and perspective.

The best part of God’s prayer blueprint is that you can use as much or as little of it as needed at any given point in time before going to His throne of grace. And the best part of using God’s blueprint is that the more you use it, the closer you come to tasting that perfectly prepared steak for which you have yearned so long.

Big Jesus

Just made an interesting discovery. The magnitude of it still has yet to hit me. I had heard it mentioned many times before, but every time a pastor said something about it, they would never back up their claim. So I always had a hard time teaching it, because I could not validate its veracity. But now I absolutely can because of John 6:46: “Not that anyone has seen the Father, except He who is from God; He has seen the Father.” Notice the comprehensive finality of Jesus’ words: Not a single human being who has ever lived on planet earth, save for Jesus, has ever seen the Father. It was Jesus who walked in the garden in the cool of the day with Adam and Eve. It was Jesus who called to Moses from the burning bush. It was Jesus who guided the children of Israel as a pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. It was Jesus who gave the Ten Commandments in fire and smoke. It was Jesus to whom David referred as God, Lord, and LORD throughout the Psalms. With whom did Abraham bargain for Sodom and Gomorrah? Jesus! Who sent the ravens to Elijah? Jesus! Who fought for Israel as they sought to take the Promised Land? Jesus! Not a single human being who has ever lived on planet earth, save for Jesus, has ever seen the Father. That means Jesus is both the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament. So the Bible is truly all about Jesus! So where does the Father come in? In everything He did throughout both testaments, Jesus MANIFESTED the Father, serving as His agent and messenger. He did nothing on His own and could do nothing on His own. He simply did what He saw the Father do and spoke what He heard the Father speak. But His person was the one with whom all divine-human interactions took place. If we teach our students that Jesus is the God of the Old Testament as well as the God of the New Testament, and we use His name when teaching some of the more–well–severe passages, our students will quickly realize that having a personal relationship with Jesus is not something to take for granted but something for which to be extremely grateful. They will also be able to unify the entire message of the Bible in the person and work of Jesus Christ, thus becoming more astute Bible students. And they will ultimately develop a big, balanced, mysterious, accurate view of Jesus, confessing their limited understanding and bowing down to Him as their one and only king.

Lick the Click

Don’t settle for anything less than a full, bona fide, genuine click. And when you get the click, keep pursuing the click. If you have been in student ministry long enough to become thoroughly frustrated with the biblically illiterate, technologically savvy teenage subculture, that’s okay. What you do know for sure is that the “click”–that eureka moment when everything you have been teaching from Scripture suddenly comes alive and make sense to your students–hasn’t happened yet. But it will, in God’s time and in God’s way. What God wants you to do in the meantime is exhaust His creativity to continue making Scripture come alive for your students. Eventually something will hit them right between the eyes and knock them down, leaving them temporarily culturally paralyzed. And once that paralysis sets in, they are ready to listen with open hearts and open ears. Remember: Unpredictability breeds imbalance, imbalance breeds discomfort, and discomfort precedes open hearts. Get their hearts open, and you can get the truth in.

Ways and Means, Part 2

Came across an interesting quotation that reminded me of my “Ways and Means” post. Its imagery was just too good to pass up. From George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss: “He was often observed peeping through the bars of a gate and making minatory [menacing] gestures with his small forefinger while he scolded the sheep with an inarticulate burr, intended to strike terror into their astonished minds.”

Contrast this image with the image of another shepherd, this one from John’s gospel: “I am the good shepherd; and I know my sheep, and am known by My own….My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me…The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep.”

Leading sheep–and especially Jesus’ sheep–does have some room for trial and error, but it is an informed trial and error in that it is based on whether we keep God’s commands. And the more errors we make in keeping God’s commands, the more we need to own up to them. That’s what God’s law was all about. People taking personal responsibility for the social crimes they perpetuated against each other, confessing them to the judge or priest, making restitution, and then not repeating their offenses.

God’s church has no room for leadership that thinks more highly of itself than it ought to think instead of with measures of sober judgment, according to the grace-gifts God has given. Concerning such shepherds, God says, “Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will require My flock at their hand; I will cause them to cease feeding the sheep, and the shepherds shall feed themselves no more; for I will deliver My flock from their mouths, that they may no longer be food for them” (Ezekiel 34:10).

The standard-bearer for any and all ministerial leadership, lay or professional, is only the Good Shepherd. The more we imitate Him, the more we will lead like Him. But the more we imitate worldly, me-first, step-on-whoever-I-want-to-step-on-and-blame-my-errors-on-others- to-preserve-my-ego leadership philosophies, the farther away we will grow from the Good Shepherd, and the more difficult it will be to be effective in our places of service.

Think Thanks

St. Ignatius of Loyola taught that we can readily and accurately determine God’s guidance by asking ourselves a two-part question: For what moment am I most grateful? For what moment am I least grateful? The first question measures our level of spiritual consolation: the times we feel closest to God and the times we feel most connected to others. The second question measures our level of spiritual desolation: the times we feel farthest from God, and times we feel most disconnected with others. What happens when, upon reflecting on an experience, we come to realize that that experience caused more desolation than consolation? We need to cut that experience from our lives just as soon as we possibly can. What happens if the opposite is true, and our recent experience brought a greater sense of consolation to our lives and ministries? Then we need to repeat that experience just as often as we can.

The key to successfully and beneficially determining the Holy Spirit’s movement is to refrain from a superlative outlook on our lives and ministries. Don’t settle for the answer that you are grateful for everything and everyone in your life at all times and all places, with the same degree of extreme appreciation for each. If we want to absolutely and finally determine God’s guidance for our lives and ministries, the question we MUST answer is the moment for which we are MOST grateful, and moment for which we are LEAST grateful. This means we have to pick ONE moment. No ties, no second places.

If we have difficulty selecting a singular moment at the outset, that’s just part of the growing process of learning how to discern God’s movement. But if, after repeated reflection, we start seeing patterns of inability emerge, and we are continually least grateful for the same moment each week, then drastic measures must be taken to cut that experience out of our lives. Had I not done that with the first pastorate I obtained immediately following seminary graduation, I and my family would still be living in misery, doing what God has not called us to do. And had I not done that with planning events for student ministry in my current place of service, the student ministry would still be stuck in a rut on the path of quickening nonexistence.

Realizing, understanding, and staying open to the moments wherein the Holy Spirit moves mightily in our lives and ministries and then making every effort to continue in those moments is the key to keeping our lives and ministries fresh and flowing and in sync with the dynamic, adventurous, awesome, and perfect will of God.