What If His People Prayed?

This is a song by Casting Crowns, called “What If His People Prayed?”:

What if the armies of the Lord
Picked up and dusted off their swords
Vowed to set the captives free
And not let satan have one more

What if the church, for heaven’s sake
Finally stepped up to the plate
Took a stand upon God’s promise
And stormed hell’s rusty gates

What if His people prayed
And all who bare His name
Would humbly seek His face
And Turn from their own way

And what would happen if we prayed
For those raised up to lead the way
Then maybe kids in school could pray
And unborn children see light of day

What if the life that we pursue
Came from a hunger for the truth
What if the family turned to Jesus
Stopped asking Oprah what to do

He said that they would hear
His promise has been made
He’ll answer loud and clear
If only we would pray

If My people called by My name
If they’ll humble themselves and pray
If My people called by My name
If they’ll humble themselves and pray

I don’t know about you, but I don’t pray very much. It’s not something that I have much discipline in. My local church community that I am part of has a great heart for prayer, which I love, but it’s something I find quite difficult. And yet, prayer is an important discipline if we’re going to move with God. Jesus prayed for God’s will to be done when He was in the garden of Gethsemane. He taught the disciples to pray too:

“This, then, is how you should pray:
‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.’”

(Matthew 6:9-13, New International Version [NIV])

How often do I pray the Lord’s prayer? Not as much as is good for me, that I know for sure. Maybe I should go through it when I wake up every morning. I’ll try it – and if anything exciting happens, maybe I’ll just write about it!

 

Jesus: Not Just A Cool Guy

I was, as I mentioned yesterday, out at a friend’s house on Friday evening and met a rather interesting man. He was, to give a few more details, a skater who came off his longboard (that’s a really long skateboard, by the way, and I didn’t know that either) and smashed a hole in his leg a few months ago. He also hit his head in the accident. Please remember this important detail! Anyway, you could see his leg right down to the bone. It wasn’t pretty. And he has some interesting spiritual views.

He, talking in metaphorical terms about his spiritual position, said that he can see Allah, Buddha, Jesus and a few others sitting in a room together, and, in his words, “they’re all cool“. Interesting! Oh, but that wasn’t the best bit. He then said, “and me, little old me. I’m stardust, floating on a ship“. Wow. Fantastic metaphor, or just a bit wacky? I’ll let you decide. Anyway, the best bit was the response from someone else in the room, who said, “So you were saying, you hit your head…” No prizes for guessing what they thought…

Joking aside, maybe that’s the unspoken view of a large number of people in our times. We live in an age of consumerist choice. We don’t like right and wrong. We like scales. Unfortunately, some things don’t work out that way. Buddha, Allah and Jesus can’t really fit in the same room. I don’t think any of them would get on very well. Buddha and Allah wouldn’t be much use anyway. In the book of John, Jesus is recorded is laying down an extraordinary claim:

“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me.”

(John 14:6, New King James Version [NKJV])

Buddha and Allah do us no good. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. How do we know he the One in whom we can put our trust? We can see the prophesies that were written over hundreds of years that he fulfilled according to the Bible. We can attest to the experience of our lives. We can look at historical evidence. We can hear the testimony of others. We can ask Him to reveal Himself to us. He promises us that if we search for Him, He will reveal Himself. Scripture tells us so:

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.

(Matthew 7:7-8, NKJV)

Jesus isn’t just referring to material things. Far from it. He promises that if we seek God, we will find God. It’s promised in the Old Testament too. Isn’t it good to know that amidst the confusion of this world, God promises that if we truly seek Him, he will reveal Himself to us if we choose to listen for His voice?

 

Living For Your Glory

I love to sing songs. I can’t sing, and I don’t particularly want other people to be able to hear me, but singing songs is great. Sung worship to God can be a liberating experience and reminds us of the One to whom we are singing. If it doesn’t, it should, because it’s certainly not meant to be about us, except for us praising God, whatever that entails.

These lyrics are from a song by Matt Redman called “Living For Your Glory”:

What good is it to gain the whole world, but lose your soul?
What good is it to make a sweet sound, but remain proud?
In view of God’s mercy, I offer my all

And take my life, let it be everything, all of me
Here I am, use me for Your glory
In everything I say and do, let my life honor You
Here I am living for Your glory

The road I’m on that leads nowhere without You
And the life I live that finds meaning and surrender
In view of God’s mercy, I offer my all

Seeking first the Kingdom
Seeking first the Kingdom of my Lord

What good is it to gain the whole world, but lose your soul? We can have the whole world, but without a relationship with our Creator, it’s all for nothing, it’s all temporal, it’s all going to disappear. Just look at Jesus, when He went in to the wilderness to be tempted for 40 days and 40 nights. Satan offers Jesus the whole world, but He doesn’t take it. He first refuses to turn a stone to bread in order to demonstrate His divine power. Then He refuses to throw Himself from the pinnacle of the temple. So Satan offers Him everything He can, with a snag, of course:

Again, the devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to Him, “All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.”

Then Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.’”

The the devil left Him, and behold, angels came and ministered to Him.

(Matthew 4:8-11, New King James Version [NKJV])

What good is it for me to gain the whole world, yet lose my soul because I have not acknowledged God and have been led astray by the tempter? What good is it for me to make a sweet soun, but remain proud? God loves the humble. Scripture is full of references to the humble. The most obvious reference is probably from James, but James actually bases his passage on scripture from the Old Testament:

Surely He scorns the scornful,
But gives grace to the humble.

(Proverbs 3:34, NKJV)

James is not a book for a quick-fix, feel-good factor. The Bible really shouldn’t be used for a feel-good factor anyway, but James is a very direct, clear rebuke to our lives:

Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously”?
But He gives more grace. Therefore He says:

“God resists the proud,
But gives grace to the humble.”

Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.

(James 4:1-10, NKJV)

Why would we even want the whole world? It comes out of our selfish desire, for a desire for gain, to be better than others. But that serves us no purpose. Our purpose is fulfilled in submitting to God. Scripture promises that God, our faithful God, will not allow us to be tempted more than we can bear (1 Corinthians 10:13), and so He makes it possible for us to submit to Him and to resist the devil. He promises that the devil will flee from us when we resist him. If we choose to draw near to God, He will draw near to us. He will be our refuge and our stronghold – our very present help in our times of trouble (Psalm 46:1).

What a faithful God I have. What a good God I have. And if He’s not yours, He can be yours too!

 

Sacrificial Living

How generous are you? I like to think that I’m fairly generous. I’m not rich, but I try not to hold in to what money I have too dearly – although I admit, I could probably tithe more generously. I’d like to think I’m generous with my time, investing in other people. I’d like to think I’m good at welcoming people into my home and to helping them when they are in need. So, in that sense, do I come across as a ‘good Christian’? To some, maybe. But then Jesus comes along and talks about how a Christian should truly be marked in their walk with God:

“Here’s another old saying that deserves a second look: ‘Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.’ Is that going to get us anywhere? Here’s what I propose: ‘Don’t hit back at all.’ If someone strikes you, stand there and take it. If someone drags you into court and sues you for the shirt off your back, giftwrap your best coat and make a present of it. And if someone takes advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. No more tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously.

(Matthew 5:38-42, The Message)

Ouch. The screw tightens, my pride cries out. Do I still come across as such a ‘good Christian’? No. I fall well short of the Glory of God (Romans 3:23). It’s easy for me to be generous to people I know, to my friends. I can serve them easily because I know they will serve me too. But what about people who won’t serve me in return? I don’t serve those people quite so easily. If I do serve them, I don’t serve them with my whole heart, with willingness, with a joyful spirit. I bemoan how ungrateful they are, how they need manners, or how they need Jesus to meet them powerfully in their lives – as if I, somehow, have been perfected to a point where I don’t need Jesus myself any more (which I haven’t; I need Him as much as I ever have)!

But you see, it’s not even in the serving that I fall short. What happens when people behave unjustly towards me? I cry out for ‘justice’ to be done! I long for them to be brought to their knees in repentance! O, how I cry out that God would smite them and turn them into creatures the size of ants. Then, they would think twice before doing that again!

That puts me at the centre of everything. Suddenly, everything is about me, myself and I. It’s not about God. It’s just about me wanting some kind of sadistic penance. How very Christian of me. I lose my perspective. It’s true, those people who have dealt me an injustice have sinned, they do need to repent of their sin, but it’s not me who they need to repent to – it’s God. When I lose sight of that, when I lose sight of the fact that it’s all about God’s relationship with that person, and most certainly not about my vindictive character, I lose sight of the cross.

I’m not such a ‘good Christian’ after all. In fact, I’m pretty rubbish. Thank God for grace. Give me your grace, Lord! Give me the strength to follow your ways and your teaching! For if there’s one thing I know, clearly, it’s that of my own doing, I cannot attain those ways of my own doing.