It was easier on our faith not to pray.¹

just one of the many windows from our online search

This line caused me to put the book down and examine my own journey of prayer. Yesterday afternoon, one of our team members called me to ask if his parents should just purchase their airline tickets because the price might go up in June. They had found tickets online for about $200 higher than what I had found 6 days earlier and felt it was time to jump on it. They would be reimbursed by the funds raised in the following weeks. During a quick online search and some back-and-forth on the phone, I kept trying to pause to receive direction from the Holy Spirit.

This suggestion by our team member’s parents was a new factor in our faith journey. Maybe God was using them to provide for this team? Or maybe it was the typical parental instinct kicking in and wanting to do everything possible to lower risk? I am so grateful for such supportive parents for our team members! It would be a load off my mind to think their tickets were covered. I confess I’ve been concerned and a little weary of trying to figure out how this will all work. It would be easier to just buy the tickets and get it over with. No praying necessary.

But there was also a growing part within me that was unsettled about taking this route.

Just that morning, I mentioned to a friend at church that our other team had recently raised enough for their airfare and, “coincidentally”, gas prices had been dropping…which is exactly what our teams and I had been praying for. Realizing we didn’t have the funds to purchase the tickets at the beginning of their support-raising, I felt the Lord (who is in control of the global economy) challenging me to trust Him to be gracious to our teams as they raised support in faith. I was getting the sense He wanted to delight our teams and show His lavish love on them by (as they worked toward their support goals while deepening their faith in Him) reversing the price of oil and dropping the ticket fares back to or lower than the quote we received in March by the time we had enough funds to purchase them. How could I ignore that? The bottom line was, I couldn’t.

I asked our team member what he felt God was saying, and we came to the conclusion we should wait at least until his team could meet the following evening to make a decision together, even though we know airfare can change in a matter of hours. In the meantime, he, his teammates, and I would be praying throughout the next 24 hours for direction from God. We want to have a testimony of hearing God, obeying Him, and then watching it all come together…just as He told us.

It would be easier to have his parents purchase the tickets now. I don’t know how I’ll be able to explain our faith venture and experience within the theology of a good God if, as they are fearing, the ticket fares rise in June (or in the next few hours). But maybe that’s part of the lesson. A good God — loving, holy, wise, and so much more — doesn’t owe us anything, not even what we ask for in faith. Yes, His Word says if we ask for anything in His name, He will provide it,² and I want to be more consistent in taking Him at His Word. But I need to factor in the reality my faith isn’t perfect, nor is my knowledge of Him. I may be asking in faith, but I might not be asking in His name.

The emphasis in this instance, perhaps, should be on God, not good. Do I trust Him to be God, or do I trust Him to be good? While it’s not an either/or situation (He is both God and good), my first desire needs to be Him as Supreme God, not Him as my probably-flawed definition of good. A song we’ve been introducing on Sunday mornings to our congregation has been encouraging me in this…

As we pray throughout today for wisdom and discernment (and try not to freak out), I hope my heart and the hearts of our team members grow in a significant way today to desire what is better, not necessarily what is easier.³

As I write this, I admit I am uncomfortable with the fact I need to leave this post unresolved…so far. It scares me to know I could be completely wrong in all of this, in what I’ve been sensing from the Lord. But I have full confidence He remains the same as His Word claims Him to be: gracious, loving, wise in desiring His best for us…a good God. Please pray with me throughout today, that the team and I will choose what is eternally better, even if it isn’t what is easier.

…only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.
Luke 10.42

1. A Praying Life, pg 15 [↩]
2. John 14.13-14 [↩]
3. “Better” and “easier” (by the world’s standards) aren’t mutually exclusive, but they aren’t always compatible, either. However, by Kingdom standards, I wonder if “easier” — as in “my yoke is easy” (Matthew 11.30) — is synonymous with better. [↩]

I recently came across a book simply entitled Sabbath. The all caps title initially caught my eye, but the first few pages drew me in because they spoke to a hidden need I almost didn’t recognize. Despite my plans to be otherwise productive, I enjoyed the entire 200+ pages that afternoon and evening — something I almost never get to do anymore unless I can justify it as work-related. Fortunately, that day had already been designated as my Sabbath day, and it lent to what I hope will be a growing fruitful practice of the Sabbath principle.
Continue reading…

In The Hidden Face of God: Finding the Missing Door to the Father Through Lament¹ Michael Card entitles the 30th chapter, “The Disturbing Faithfulness of God.” I was uncomfortable through the entire reading because he was relevant and right. Even the discussion and meditation questions at the end were timely. He begins with a quote from Walter Brueggemann.

You are not the God we would have chosen. (137)

I appreciate that: it’s religiously incorrect, and it’s real.

Toward the end of the meditation, he asks,

Could it possibly be true that the miracle is not provision, but Presence? (140)

I know His presence is what I should choose, but there are times when my limited understanding would rather choose His provision.

When I think of my most faithful friends, the first one that comes to mind is one I met through youth ministry. We’ve both since stepped down, but she has remained a faithful friend. Her faithfulness, though, isn’t revealed by what she does for me (which is already enough), but more clearly by her presence. Why do I hold one definition of faithfulness for my friends, and another for my Father?

Thankfully, God is not only faithful, but relentlessly so.

…if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself. 2 Timothy 2.13

1. Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2007. [↩]

My heart is not proud, O LORD, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel, put your hope in the LORD both now and forever more. Psalm 131 (NIV)

The opening of Psalm 131 has always caused some cognitive dissonance for me. On one hand, I don’t want to settle for mediocre. I want to constantly do it better, to meet the highest standards and demands…and to understand what just happened! My aversion for regret refuses to let me settle for less, even when it’s better to count my losses and get out. Although I’ve never read it, Bill Hybel’s book title, Holy Discontent, resonates with me.

On the other hand, this Psalm and Paul’s example of being “content in any and every situation”¹ are always in the back of my mind when crazy ideas and hopes to change things for the better pop up.² Robert Browning wrote, “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” Being a creative and a visionary, I gravitate toward that sentiment. Being a Christian, I want to keep that sentiment in the context of God.

Definition

One of my favorite definitions of humility comes from a former high school student who returned to our youth group to deliver a lesson.

Humility is remembering your rightful place before God.

Eugene Peterson quotes another similar definition in the introduction to his chapter on Humility.

Humility is the obverse side of confidence in God, whereas pride is the obverse side of confidence in self. John Baillie

I like those better than the more common definitions of “thinking less of yourself,” “thinking of yourself less,” or “not thinking of yourself.” Those definitions seemed contradictory to the reality that we exist and are created in the image of God, thereby carrying some inherent (albeit sin-scarred) value. Besides, it’s impossible to not think of the very vehicle through which you depend on to work out your salvation, whether it is your physical body or your emotional state or your intellectual understanding.

Peterson addresses this in his analysis of verse 2.

But if we are not to be proud, clamorous, arrogant persons, what are we to be? Mousy, cringing, insecure ones? Well, not quite. Having realized the dangers of pride, the sin of thinking too much of ourselves, we are suddenly in danger of another mistake, thinking too little of ourselves. There are some who conclude that since the great Christian temptation is to try to be everything, the perfect Christian solution is to be nothing. And so we have the problem of the doormat Christian and the dishrag saint: the person upon whom everyone walks and wipe their feet, the person who is used by others to clean up the mess of everyday living and then is discarded. These people then compensate for their poor lives by weepily clinging to God, hoping to make up for the miseries of everyday life by dreaming of luxuries in heaven. (154)

So, it seems humility is about focus, not ignorance. On our path toward God, we grow in humility when we emphasize focusing on God rather than ignoring ourselves.

Application

Something that has recently been bothering me more is the comparison that happens in ministry and among ministry leaders. In particular, almost every cross-cultural ministry team I’ve been on included some comment during debriefing (or training) about how much more difficult it is to be a Christian “over there.” While that sounds compassionate, I’ve always sensed an undercurrent of pride that I couldn’t quite explain. Even though the conclusion usually ended up being, “they are some of the strongest Christians I’ve ever met…far stronger than we are in the United States,” the spirit of comparison seemed out of place.

I think it has something to do with this:

All cultures throw certain stumbling blocks in the way of those who pursue gospel realities. It is sheerest fantasy to suppose that we would have had an easier time of it as Christian believers if we were in another land or another time. It is no easier to be a Chinese Christian than to be a Spanish Christian than to be a Russin Christian than to be a Brazilian Christian than to be an American Christian — nor more difficult. The way of faith deals with realities in whatever time and whatever culture. (150)

Every humanly developed culture has its challenges to the ones who want to live according to God’s Kingdom culture. For most Eastern cultures, it is overt idolatry: another god. But for Western cultures (or, at least, major metropolitan United States), it’s more covert idolatry: still another god. Peterson thinks it is ambition (p.153), and I’m inclined to agree.

Ambition is aspiration gone crazy. Aspiration is the channeled, creative energy that moves us to growth in Christ, shaping goals in the Spirit. Ambition takes these same energies for growth and development and uses them to make something tawdry and cheap, sweatily knocking together a Babel when we could be vacationing in Eden. (153)

There are other gods, I’m sure, but ambition is pretty high on the top of our list, even for Christians. We just euphemize it and call it “pursuing God’s best.” The challenge, and one mark of mature faith, is to be able to live at the edge of aspiration without crossing over into ambition.

Personal Challenge

In the beginning of the chapter, Peterson calls this psalm a “maintenance psalm” (p. 149) and compares it to pruning.³

…it gets rid of that which looks good to those who don’t know any better, and reduces the distance between our hearts and their roots in God. (149)

In between the paragraphs, I wrote a quick prayer almost 9 years ago that God would help me recognize and release that which looks good because I don’t know any better. Not too sure how often I’ve followed up on seeking Him in that…it seems my life has recently gotten busier with good things, “God things.” Am I willing to let go of the things that look good but am really doing for my security, not His purposes? Am I willing to cease activity and take the time to even ask Him about that?

1. Philippians 4.12 [↩]
2. Ironically, Paul is one of the most far-reaching people I’ve every come across. Still, there’s a difference between the apostle Paul (who was by no means perfect) and the earlier Saul. Other character comparisons to look at: Peter in the Gospels and Peter of 1st and 2nd Peter; Paul and Peter? [↩]
3. interesting…another reference to a garden, along with Eden in above quote [↩]