Time for prayer

The election is over, and I have no trouble in affirming that the candidates who won are those whom God ordained to their positions, and that God so ordained them for his purposes. I do not, however, believe that those purposes are for what most people would conceive as our blessing as a nation; I do affirm that times of trial and judgment are part of God’s blessing, but that’s hard to see when we’re in them. I feel, at this moment, rather like the prophet Habakkuk: I don’t like what I see coming, but I believe that God is sovereign in it, and I am committed to prayer and praise.Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior.
The Sovereign LORD is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
he enables me to tread on the heights.
—Habakkuk 3:17-19 (TNIV)Therefore, I will be praying for those who will be hurt by the resurgence of the abortion holocaust in this nation. Theologically, I don’t believe in praying for the dead, and in any case I trust in the grace and the love of God for those who will die unborn as a result of the policies of the incoming Democratic government; but I will be praying for the mothers who will bear the guilt, felt or unfelt, of planning and consenting to the deaths of their unborn children, and for those who bear the active responsibility for killing them. I will be praying as well for those whom God has called to particular roles in resisting this holocaust, both that they will stand firm and that they will find ways to do so which will communicate the grace and the love of God and the caring support of his church to those considering abortion, rather than merely warnings of judgment.I will be praying for the media of this country, reporters and editors alike, that they will report on the Democratic administration with the diligence and honesty which they did not show in reporting on the Obama campaign. I’m tempted to pray that they will remember their adversarial role with respect to the incoming administration and pursue it with as much vigor and determination as they did with respect to the Bush 43 administration, but that would be vindictive of me; as it is, I will pray that they will have the intellectual and moral courage never to quash a story for ideological or financial reasons, but that if a story deserves to be reported—in God’s eyes, not necessarily in mine—that they will report it, no matter how much it hurts their own political agendas. I’ll be praying for this for their own sake as much as anything, since if they don’t, they’ll regret it in the long run.I will be praying for the Republican opposition, that they will learn (and learn the right lessons!) from this; I will be praying that they repent of their surrender to business as usual and their accommodation to power and money and the corruption that come with them, and return to a principled conservatism. After all, for at least the next two years, they will be irrelevant regardless; they might as well use the freedom that comes with irrelevance to reclaim the conservative agenda (and, one hopes, find ways to convince people that they actually mean to stick to it this time).And, neither last nor by any means least, I will be praying for Barack Obama, who has won what may well turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory. He has won the highest prize of all by putting himself in hock to his party’s machine and creating incredibly high expectations among a majority of the American electorate; he simply cannot keep all the promises he has made, and the ones he can keep—and indeed, will have to keep, will he or nil he, to the party machine—will only accelerate and worsen his breaking of the rest. Disillusionment is inevitable with any politician, and particularly with any new president, but he’s set himself up for a particularly severe response, when it turns out that his election does not in fact mean that “the oceans stop their rise, and the planet begins to heal”; for Barack Obama, there is nowhere left to go but down.This means that he needs the grace of God in an extraordinary way in order to succeed, and I will be praying for him that he will receive that extraordinary grace. I will pray that he will govern with the wisdom of Solomon and the integrity of Nehemiah, and that he will seek the righteousness and justice of God ahead of the best interest of his party or his own political future. In a sense, he too has won a peculiar freedom: the freedom of having no higher aspiration left to him. If he claims and uses it, rather than becoming the slave of his desire for re-election, he might be able to break free of the chains his party believes it has on him, and actually become, to some degree, the figure of change he claimed to be in his campaign. I will pray this for him. I will pray for him that God will give him wisdom, courage, and resolve in dealing with the enemies of the nation he has been called to serve, that he would do so in ways that will be for the blessing of this country and the world, and that he would stick to his guns and not back down in the face of opposition. And most of all, I will pray that the Holy Spirit will convict his heart on the matter of abortion, bring him to repentance for his past actions, and raise him up again as a defender of the most powerless and vulnerable among us: those who, like the slaves of centuries past, are denied the most basic human protections, in this case not because of the color of their skin but because they have not yet been born.I will be praying. May God’s will be done.

Reflection on the mystery of prayer

Life is filled with mystery, and, much to our chagrin, claiming to know God does not shed any light upon certain dark recesses of our world. In fact, God often appears to cast a very long, very dark shadow, a shadow that can conceal more than we like to admit. Perhaps one of wise King Solomon’s more astute observations is found in the introduction to his own prayer recorded in 2 Chron. 6:1: “The LORD has said that he would dwell in a dark cloud.” God shows himself in darkness. He invites us to meet in a place where he cannot be seen. Divine self-revelation may obscure as much as, if not more than, it illuminates.Nothing brings a feeble human being face to face with spiritual conundrums as quickly as prayer, especially petitionary prayer. For many, balancing the prospect of a divine response to our cries for help against the disappointment of heavenly silence in the face of our suffering tips the religious scales in favor of skepticism, atheism, and renunciation. Knocking on heaven’s door, asking for an audience with the cosmic king, and then making our requests clearly known is a mysterious enough activity for those of us consigned to inhabit the physical limitations of flesh and blood. But then tracing answers through the fabric of life’s chaos, drawing even tentative lines of heavenly connection between the pleas of human uttering and the course of subsequent history—that is a prophetic role for which few of us seem to be qualified. Admittedly, there are always those eager to claim the prophetic mantle, but my experience with life suggests that the longer you live and the more you pray, the less prone you are to give quck, self-assured answers. This is not to deny the possibility of answers; it is merely to acknowledge that nothing in this life, including the realm of the spirit, is automatic, and precious little is ever self-evident. Putting a coin in slot A does not immediately guarantee a Snickers Bar from chute B, especially when the pocket accumulating my spare change belongs to God. The Creator also has his own purposes, which may include sending me something totally unexpected through chute G once I have surrendered the requisite number of quarters.Prayer comprises the interface between human frailty and divine power. Yet, connection and comprehension are two very different things. Trying to peer from our world into that other domain is a bit like opening your eyes underwater. It is possible to see, somewhat, but not easily, not far, and not without considerable distortion. Light is refracted, distances are difficult to judge, size is deceptive, sticks appear to bend at the surface, brilliant underwater colors vanish when raised to the surface. We may be able to explore both worlds, but it is painfully apparent that we are better suited for the one than the other. This should not stop us from trying to understand how the two realms relate; it ought, however, to curb our human penchant for dogmatism, replacing heavy-handed solutions with a healthy dose of humility and a very gentle touch.

—David Crump, Knocking on Heaven’s Door, 14-15

Persistent prayer and the faithfulness of God

Hap has a really good post up on prayer, as of yesterday, which I commend to your attention. I’ve written about some of this before, here and here; for some people, faith and belief and persistent prayer come easy, but I’m not one of them. I don’t know whether the man in Mark 9 meant the same thing when he cried out, “Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief” that I do—but it’s something I find myself praying a fair bit anyway, because trust comes hard, and I just have to believe that God’s answer to prayer is dependent on his faithfulness, not on my faith. And I do believe that, because prayer isn’t about us changing God, but God changing us, and his faithfulness is neither contingent nor in short supply: it is unending.

A bruised reed he will not break

and a smoldering wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice.So it is said of the Servant of God in Isaiah 42:3; so it will be when he comes again. Right now, though, we live in a very different world. I was reflecting on this this morning, thinking about the state of affairs in Zimbabwe. If you’ve been following the news, you know that it looks like Robert Mugabe’s succeeded in hanging on to power (though he said he’s “open to discussion” with the opposition), since the opposition party pulled out of Friday’s presidential runoff in the face of the Mugabe government’s terror campaign, and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai sought refuge at the Dutch embassy in Harare. Freedom and justice in Zimbabwe are smoldering wicks, indeed.There is one small, very small, bright spot, though: at this year’s meeting of the PC(USA)’s General Assembly, the Peacemaking and International Issues Committee approved a resolution in support of the church in Zimbabwe, and against the Mugabe government. I hope and firmly expect to see the whole GA approve it; and I further hope that this encourages the Uniting Presbyterian Church of Southern Africa (UPCSA), to which the Presbytery of Zimbabwe belongs, to take a similar stance at their General Assembly in September. I miss being a part of the relationship between Denver and Zimbabwe—it’s perhaps the biggest thing I miss from having left that presbytery—and I wish I could have been there. I’ll have to get on top of the schedule and see if I can at least watch the plenary session when this resolution comes to the floor; I suspect my friends from Zimbabwe won’t speak then (since they’d be on video for the whole world, including Mugabe and his thugs, to see), but I’d at least be able to share the moment with them a little.Please, keep praying for Zimbabwe.

Praying on the front line

Something else I’ve been meaning to post is this passage from Tim Keller:

Biblically and historically, the one non-negotiable, universal ingredient in times of spiritual renewal is corporate, prevailing, intensive and kingdom-centered prayer. What is that?

  1. It is focused on God’s presence and kingdom. Jack Miller talks about the difference between “maintenance prayer” and “frontline” prayer meetings. Maintenance prayer meetings are short, mechanical and totally focused on physical needs inside the church or on personal needs of the people present. But frontline prayer has three basic traits:

    a. a request for grace to confess sins and humble ourselves

    b. a compassion and zeal for the flourishing of the church

    c. a yearning to know God, to see his face, to see his glory. . . .

  2. It is bold and specific. The characteristics of this kind of prayer include:

    a. Pacesetters in prayer spend time in self-examination. . . .

    b. They then begin to make the big request—a sight of the glory of God. That includes asking: 1) for a personal experience of the glory/presence of God (“that I may know you”—Exod. 33:13); 2) for the people’s experience of the glory of God (v. 15); and 3) that the world might see the glory of God through his people (v. 16). Moses asks that God’s presence would be obvious to all: “What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” This is a prayer that the world be awed and amazed by a show of God’s power and radiance in the church, that it would become truly the new humanity that is a sign of the future kingdom.

  3. It is prevailing, corporate. By this we mean simply that prayer should be constant, not sporadic and brief. . . . Sporadic, brief prayer shows a lack of dependence, a self-sufficiency, and thus we have not built an altar that God can honor with his fire. We must pray without ceasing, pray long, pray hard, and we will find that the very process is bringing about that which we are asking for—to have our hard hearts melted, to tear down barriers, to have the glory of God break through.

This is the kind of prayer the church needs to practice, and the kind of prayer meeting it really needs to hold (not that there isn’t value to maintenance prayer meetings as well, as part of the pastoral care of the church); it’s the kind of prayer which I’m working to encourage in the congregation I serve, which means first of all in myself. It’s hard; it takes faithfulness and commitment and attention; but I do believe the fruit is more than worth it.HT: Joyce

Morning prayer

For the first showings of the morning light
and the emerging outline of the day
thanks be to you, O God.
For earth’s colours drawn forth by the sun
its brilliance piercing clouds of darkness
and shimmering through leaves and flowing waters
thanks be to you.
Show to me this day
amidst life’s dark streaks of wrong and suffering
the light that endures in every person.
Dispel the confusions that cling close to my soul
that I may see with eyes washed by your grace
that I may see myself and all people
with eyes cleansed by the freshness of the new day’s light.

—J. Philip Newell, Celtic Benediction: Morning and Night Prayer, 40

Morning prayer

In the beginning, O God,
when the firm earth emerged from the waters of life
you saw that it was good.
The fertile ground was moist
the seed was strong
and earth’s profusion of colour and scent was born.
Awaken my senses this day
to the goodness that still stems from Eden.
Awaken my senses
to the goodness that can still spring forth
in me and in all that has life.

—J. Phillip Newell, Celtic Benediction: Morning and Night Prayer, 26.

Belated thoughts on prayer

Over a month ago now, Barry put up a post on prayer asking, essentially, if prayer changes things, why does so little seem to change? I meant to respond at the time, but for a variety of reasons, didn’t get to it; but then I was reminded of his post during a conversation last week with several colleagues in ministry. The question of why our prayers so often don’t get the answer for which we hope is a live one for most pastors, and it’s one for which I don’t have any kind of truly satisfactory answer; but I do have two thoughts.First, I don’t believe that prayer changes things. I believe God changes things. I don’t believe there’s power in prayer, I believe there’s power in the God to whom we pray. I do believe Pascal was right, that prayer is the means by which God gives us the dignity of causality—of doing something other than just passively absorbing his actions—but even if in prayer he allows us a voice in what he does, that doesn’t mean there’s any power in us or our actions, let alone enough power to compel him to do as we want.Second, I’m learning to trust that God knows what he’s doing. One of my colleagues last week, musing on all the times God has not given him what he’s prayed for, made a statement to the effect that “I’ve come to see all those refusals as my salvation.” Experience had taught him that God was right not to grant him his requests. The longer I go, the more times I see in my own life where that’s clearly the case, and the more I learn to trust him for his “no” as well as his “yes.”So why doesn’t God heal more? Why don’t we see people raised from the dead? I don’t know. I’ve been a part of churches where that happened; I’ve seen remarkable healing take place right before my eyes as I and others prayed. I’ve also been a part of other churches that were, as far as I could tell, no less faithful in following God—but prayers for healing were rarely granted. I don’t know why. I don’t suppose I ever will know why. Maybe it has something to do with challenging our modern emphasis on cure over care, which has certainly reached the point of being theologically problematic. But whatever the reason, I’m learning to trust God who has promised that whatever we may bear in this life, in the end, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”