Pray Specifically by Name

Just reading Colossians 1.9-12 in accordance with Charles Stanley's devotional for the day. How often do you read scripture, praying through it, with a specific person's name in it? I remember working in the restaurant business and learning how to say "Please", "Thank You", "Hello" and "Good night" in about a dozen different languages. A total of 48 phrases, if you do the math, made a world of difference to the people who were native speakers of those languages. Now, while God knows every word on our heart and is not moved by flattery, don't you think it honors Him when we speak His language?

Try praying through His word and see what power meaningful specifics have in prayer over the blandness of wandering generalities.

9. For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding.
10. And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God,
11. being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully
12. giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light.

He is faithful.

Hope = confidence?

Recently, I was reading in Romans 8 where Paul describes hope and asks "But hope that is seen is no hope at all. For, who hopes for what he already has?" And, then, he expounds in verse 25: "But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently." So, hope = waiting patiently.

But, I felt God leading me deeper into that definition. For some reason, I felt a pressure in my head that made me think about the word "waiting". I thought about some of the things we wait for and the attitude surrounding our wait. We wait for the light to turn green. Okay, I can see the choice to wait patiently or impatiently. Hope would be active in this moment. We wait for the bus to come. We can wait paitently or impatiently. That makes sense, too.

But, when we cross the line from patiently waiting to impatiently waiting, I think we begin to lose hope, not only by definition, but by absense of a certain assumed quality: confidence. Sometimes, I'm waiting at a red light that just won't turn, I'll do that mythological high beam flash so the light will think I'm an ambulance and then change for me. Other times, impatience leads me to roll over the sensor again... and again. "Did you notice my car here?!" These actions are all outpourings of a loss of confidence. Doing this is a key indicator that I'm not confident the light will ever change. No confidence, no patience. No patience, no hope. Suddenly, I've crossed the border of waiting and moved to wondering.

This morning, during quiet time, I was mulling over a few things about the wedding, the move, the bills, and all that comes with an impending marriage. I found myself doing something I have done four or five times this week, and caught myself doing. Sighing. Immediately, Romans 8 came to mind when Paul talks about the creation being subject to frustration and groaning inwardly with anticipation. My betrothed has said repeatedly - "I just want the wedding to be over [so we can enjoy being married]." I found myself in a sympathetic echo.

I looked up, and did the only thing I could do, I laughed. "Father, you have such a clever sense of humor." For God to have brought me through these verses so much in the past month and then to catch myself groaning, it was like an "I get it." moment. We laughed. God and I laughed together. I in spite of myself and God in a sort of "now, you understand what I go through with you?" kind of way.

"Now, wait patiently. Be confident that I will do what I said I would do. Hope in me."

The Lord makes me laugh and He gives me confidence to wait...

patiently.

To Hell and Back

Ever feel like the phrase "Go to Hell." is a bit overused in our culture? If you saw what I saw tonight, I am confident that even if you're not a "church person", you'd eliminate that from your vocabulary. I have seen Hell, or at least enough of a glimpse of it to break my heart.

Tonight, I attended "do.justice", a "stylish singles event to celebrate freedom". In a converted industrial building in downtown Atlanta, several hundred of us were ushered in groups of 30 into a long, dark hallway filled with huge movie screens. On the first screen, we saw the story of a young boy named "Patrick". At age 12 soldiers came into his Ugandan village with AK-47s and machetes and unleashed an indescriminate attack on all in their way. They beat him and handed him a gun, telling him to shoot the man and woman in front of him or he would be shot instead.

Heads up: this gets a little graphic.
After he shot them, they did spare his life, only to force him to carry the severed head of the man he shot and wear the intestines of the woman around his neck as they marched him 20 miles that day. When asked why he would carry them he said, "because they were my parents."

The next story was about a child named Srey. She was given away by her parents for money, then sold to a brothel in Southeast Asia, where she was "employed" and beaten daily. Once, the police came in and shut down the brothel, freeing her, until the appropriate bribes were paid. Then, the proprietor moved them all across the street and resumed business as usual.

There are roughly 27 million people in the modern day slave trade. No, that's not the people running the trade, those are the actual slaves. Yes, in 2007, there are enough people enslaved worldwide today to populate the state of New York one and one half times.

In the midst of all the "where is God?" talk following the horrid shootings at Virginia Tech, comes an echo of the wake up call "God is watching. And I don't think He's impressed." In fact, when I left the event tonight, I thought I was heartbroken, but I'm sure God's heart is broken even more. The Bible teaches that He is not a God who employs mindless puppets, that our every move should be decided for us on our behalf, stripping us of free will. On the contrary, He has given us a will of our own, and starting with Adam, we've made some of the worst choices that could be made.

Further, the Bible teaches that sin entered the world through one man [Adam], and death through sin, that is, we live in a broken world ruled by God's enemy. In this fallen world, trials, disease, and unspeakable terrors coexist with the Biblical promise of redemption. There is a Heaven. There is a Hell. Sadly, millions of children are forced to live in Hell even today. The church, the government, and the secular movement, for their own unique and divergent reasons must leverage every ounce of power they can to expose and stop this sadistic industry. (Yes, if you brought in $5 billion a year globally, I'd call you an industry, too.)

Below are a list of websites that you may choose to visit. I urge you to visit them, even if you don't have the time to. Put them in your favorites bar and refer to them as often as it takes to get you to do something on behalf of these tortured souls.

Go to Hell.

Once you have a glimpse of it burned indelibly into your mind's eye, come back, and do something about it.

Not For Sale Campaign
Sam Childers: Saving the Invisible Children
Addressing sexual exploitation in Atlanta, Ga

May you never be the same again. May you live a life unfettered. May you take action today that echoes through eternity and impacts the life of a child fettered by the evil in the hearts of sinful men. May you show a hellbound human being a glimpse of the light of heaven in what you do and fall in love with the God who redeems you both. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Reprint - Weaker Than WHO?!

In light of a few debates I've been sucked into lately, I've decided to republish an old post I wrote last summer. Enjoy.

"In the same way, you husbands must give honor to your wives. Treat her with understanding as you live together. She may be weaker than you are, but she is your equal partner in God's gift of new life. If you don't treat her as you should, your prayers will not be heard." 1 Peter 3.7 NLT

I think the NLT gets the Greek word "time" right here - it is often translated "respect" or "value". But, "honor" is a word often used reciprocally in reference to the relationship husbands and wives should have. But, there is no need for offense. This is not a "barefoot and pregnant" command. This is not in any way meant to be misogynistic. Hard to believe?

Let's give credit where due - we men, as a whole, tend to be rough, brash, more focused on logic and solutions than women. Oops. Just lost credibility... Am I painting with broad strokes? So was the apostle Peter in this verse. Does he leave room for exceptions? Clearly. However, as a general rule, if you were God for a moment and you knew how stubborn men were on the whole, and you had seen them screw up this relationship thing over and over, wouldn't you give them a clear and clamorous caveat about their bumbling approach to relationships?

Boys, what do we do when carrying an object of great value? I'm thinking a priceless Ming vase filled with Philippe de Rothschild's finest wine. Are we a bit more careful where and how we step? Do we take into consideration every edge, corner, and surface of the objet d'art we hold in our hands?

Notice, though, that the apostle Peter urges us in indefinite terms first and then comes back to definite status "she may be weaker... but she is your equal partner". In other words, "you are equally yoked, but will have a tendency to pull at different speeds - in emotional situations she will walk more steadily than you, but you may have a tendency to drag her through logic when she really needs nurturing. Take care - heed her mood, read her mood, lead her mood in the way she needs her mood to be lead, and then you will avoid unnecessary relational damage, scars, and bruising - your prayers will not be hindered."

Am I reading too much into this? Are these generalizations degrading to women? What if God knew something ages ago that we still struggle with and stumble over to this very day - that men and women are different and we must learn how to treat each other to avoid the relational chaos that so permeates our broken, selfish world? If He didn't know that, do you think He'd have put so many pairs of relational counsel in His word? Notice how often advice is given first to one sex and then to the other? For fun, look at the two lines He commands for women in chapter 5 of Ephesians that preceed the four lines that follow directed right at the men. No pressure, guys...

We have the potential to come together with the word of God between us, or to let our misunderstandings of it divide us. But, if God's greatest commands are to love Him, and love others as ourselves, wouldn't it make sense that his warning to men would be - treat her tenderly, with honor, value, and respect, as you would if she were a weaker partner or your hard, unflexible heart will connect to me like a bogged down dial-up connection in a busy chat room?

Simply stated: "Treat her as if or I'll make you wish you did." - God

Or, in the words of my favorite Haiku

"Oh, she wants me to
love her just like she would love
her if she were me..."

In, but Not Of

We are told to live in the world but be not of it.

Sounds like symantics to me. At least, that's what I thought the first few times I heard it. Then, I ignored or forgot it for years. The next time I heard it, it was from someone trying to sell me something. And then again, I heard it from a preacher who was able to make sense of it - Father Robert DeNiro.

Heat is not a movie I'd recommend to someone trying to avoid violence and four letter words. But, DeNiro's character, a professional heist orchestrator, preaches to a career larcenist played by Val Kilmer, to never get attached to something or someone "you can't walk out on in 30 seconds if the heat comes down."

Christians believe in a god, God, who desires their undivided attention. His enemy seeks to divide their attention. If we realize that we live in a temporary world, we must acknowledge that some day we'll be freed from math class (the adding up of dollars and accomplishments) and given an eternal recess/gym class/lunch, where we'll get to be with an interesting, vibrant, exciting god for ev er.

But, if Christ's claims are true, the Bible is authentic, and you were the CEO of hell, you'd know that those who Christianity states have been "adopted as God's children" are impossible to take away, wouldn't you at least try to distract them from Him for the 70 years you can?

God's call that we should not love the stuff that so often owns us is not unlike DeNiro's warning to Kilmer, not unlike refusing to leave math class. What if the Bible is true? What if God really knows better than all we could ever know? What if there is something sinister in loving our stuff that takes away from the experiential richness that could exist in our lives, our relationships, our souls?

I have set goals this year for what I intend to accomplish. My New Year's resolutions are written down and will be read monthly, updated quarterly, and accomplished with God's grace and my effort. But, what if we all wrote down the things we intend, vow not to do this year?

"I don't need another payment. I don't need a new computer. I'm going to intentionally choose not to buy x, y, and z."

Is it possible that in filling this command, by setting high and lofty goals, leaving them to the work of our hands and the favor of God, and guarding ourselves against the stuff that so silently weighs us down, we may set ourselves free from what we thought was freedom, and truly discover what freedom really means?

Again, I could be nuts, but at least these chips are out on the table.

Total Cost of Ownership...

Q: What have you paid for today?
A: "Lunch", "gas", "my cell", "the toll on GA 400", "my drycleaning"...

I've never interviewed people on their spending habits. But, if we posed that question to 100 people on the street, we'd get very few answers like "a lie that I told" or "a lie I was sold". And, yet, I'm willing to bet you and I have bought and paid for more lies than gas, food, or cellphone bills.

31 days ago, my younger brother shot and nearly killed himself in a dark, depressed, and angry moment. But, therein lies a lie that I'm newly passionate about dispelling. While the attempt at suicide happens in a moment, the act itself does not. The word "world" appears in the book of John roughly 50 times, and is used there as "moral climate". Suicide is not an event, it's a symptom of the climate inside of us. It is akin to the greenhouse effect - the buildup of contaminants that reflects energy back inward until everything gets so hot that all life suffocates under the weight of its own detritus. Convenience comes at a cost.

Not a one time purchase, a payment plan. Not an event... a process.

I'm not here to debate the veracity of global warming, merely, based on the assumption that everything has a price, to pose the question "what kind of interest are we paying on the convenient monthly payment of hydrocarbon use". Or, more apropos to our discussion here:

"What is the total cost of ownership of silence over critical life issues?"

For my brother, it nearly cost him his life. But, not everyone is willing to talk about their "private" stuff, the stuff that's "no one's business". And, therein lies yet another lie. Privacy, in a world where two or more people interact, is a myth.

The Bible explains that none of us live in a vacuum, that we are all potentially part of "one body". James is very blunt about the consequences of buying this lie. When things go awry on multiple levels: financial, relational, emotional, physical; and we tuck them under the carpet in our head or the catch all closet in our hearts, the process of death begins. Yes, death. Relational death? Financial death? Emotional death? What more accurately do we want to call it? Suffocation of the soul? That works, but it's still a process

Everyday our lives brush against the lives of others and the climate inside us comes into contact with the climate inside them. We can try to keep things private, but as our private stuff brings or destroys life within us, how can it not affect those with whom we come into contact? If we relent when hurt people around us retreat to their carpets and catch all closets to stuff away their stuff, we are allowing them to suffocate themselves. They have bought the lie, it's up to us to show them the fraud.

So, today, in my email update to friends regarding my brother's "miraculous" recovery, I have charged them with this prayer:

"God, I'm trusting in the notion that You know everything and, in the midst of what seems random and frightening and huge, have a plan that's far too big and ornate for my eyes to see or mind to comprehend. Thank You for the people in my life, and indeed my own life. Thank You for my unique and complicated problems and great triumphs and talents. Please, help me to trust that all I see is not all there is, and through this, gain enough perspective to see and pursue the relationships that really matter while there is still time. I trust you to guard and protect me/those in need and pain, even when it seems their path is going amiss. That would make you a pretty ginormous God, and that's the kind of God this world needs. Thank you for being ginormous, however big that is. Amen."

Calling All Prayers

I'd like to ask, something I've often been loathe to do, for the help of those whose eyes and minds tread on this space. I'd like to ask for a few prayers for myself and those around me.

The singles ministry in which I serve at church, (little "c"), is going through some great new changes. I have opportunities to serve therein in leadership capacity, as do nearly 50 to 100 others who have seen the cast vision of this new environment. I also, having taken a season off from leading a small group, am leading a new weekly group of 8 guys for bible study, accountability, and prayer, or as we say "doing life together". I also have a job. A bit more than a job, really - a career opportunity wherein I have the chance to grow in my current skill set, develop a new set of skills, and allow the ebb and flow of pressure and time at God's direction, to mold me in the man He has envisioned.

I cannot do this alone.

I covet your prayers for leadership, courage, self discipline, and purity as I step into the gap that He has made visible to me. Would you pray that I would be attuned to His will, desire to know His loves and concerns, so that I can test and approve what His will is and respond as a servant leader of the Leader of leaders? Would you pray that I could stand in the face of fear, not desiring for fear to go away, but that I would press on in spite of it, because He is with me and I with Him? Would you pray that I would love my Lord not only with my words and songs, but with my actions, doing what needs to be done dutifully, yet out of respect and love for the God who has made them all possible? And last, would you pray that I could continue to be "man without mixture", pure in my heart, will, and body in respect for the righteousness I have inherited as a child of God through Christ?

For those of you that are not "followers of Christ", this may seem like a whole lot of God-speak, and it is. But, I would ask you for purposes of taking our debate and relationship to the next level that you would verbalize these thoughts, even silently, and ask them in the name of Christ. I guess I'm asking you to "try it, you'll like it" of the ancient Thinker that I believe to be the one, true, living God. This may seem a bit strange. I appreciate that, and thank you all the more for stepping out of your comfort zone.

Pray, also, for His blessing over this blog (even more wierd, huh?), that the conersations that come from He to me would continue to be loud and clear and that I may effectively communicate them in this cyberspace. Pray that my plans for updating this internet real estate would coincide with His plans and that I would create enough margin to approach it without hurry or a lack of care.

Be well, and may the love of Christ be a stone in your shoe until the truth that irritates your foot causes you to run to him for relief.

Peace.

Aarron