Archive for category: Prayer

True conversation is a give and take. It is an act of hospitality. We suspend our own agenda and invite someone else’s in. Conversation also changes us. It re-forms us as we honestly engage with the ideas and feelings of others. We may not agree with everything we hear, but it helps us think through our own preconceptions and biases. Prayer is conversation. Unlike our human conversations, we don’t have much room to disagree with God. We can choose to, but that is usually a dangerous game. Like other conversation, prayer also forms us. As we spend time with God, wrestling through what is important to him, the Holy Spirit re-forms us into the people he desires us to be.

I spent a few minutes this morning googling “forgiveness”. I wanted to step outside of my viewpoint to see a different understanding of the concept. According to Google (or at least the first several websites listed), forgiveness seems to be about an individual’s well-being. Forgiveness, for the most part, is defined as an intentional and voluntary process where by an individual undergoes a change in attitude and feelings toward someone who has caused offense. Almost immediately after defining it, most websites highlighted the release of tension, bitterness, and the personal peace and well-being this would bring.

All of the above is certainly true. Yet, is this Jesus’ point about forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer? The phrase is, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” This has always sounded a little strange to me. Is there a conditional element to the forgiveness here? Would that clash with what we read elsewhere in our Bibles? Does it really mean if we don’t forgive others, we won’t be forgiven? I certainly don’t have all the answers to those questions. I do wonder though, if these kinds of questions stem from an individualistic interpretation of the prayer as opposed to a more communal interpretation. Which leads me to ask, “What was Jesus’ purpose in asking us to pray these words”?

As I think of this phrase in the Lord’s Prayer, I wonder if this isn’t a re-forming conversation. Is Jesus giving us another way in which he can mold us into His image? As we pray these words, do they help to form us into healthy community? I think so. Here is how I could see that working:

– we intentionally pray for forgiveness, in doing so we hold up a mirror to our lives,
– we begin to see our sin and failures more clearly thereby humbling ourselves,
– in this humble posture we realize the offenses against us are not greater than our own,
– this makes extending forgiveness to others easier (not easy),
– which, through the power of the Holy Spirit, brings healing into our relationships,
– helping us grasp a greater appreciation, and appropriation of the forgiveness we have in Jesus.

It’s a big circle. Yet, the benefits of forgiveness are not mine alone. An entire culture of forgiving develops and a fellowship of the forgiven forms. James encourages us to “confess our sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.” The context of that verse is in the middle of a passage on the power of prayer and healing, and the verse just prior to it speaks of forgiveness. So why do we not see this as a common practice in our churches?

This last week, as I have watched the news, and listened to the events in the Christian world, I am deeply disturbed. More than ever, it feels like our communities and churches are fragmenting. Unity seems next to impossible. I might be crazy, but I’m thinking praying through the implications of, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” as formational conversation would be a huge step in the right direction.

Neil Bassingthwaighte
National Mission Director

As I write this, a street in my neighbourhood is closed. The bomb squad is investigating. A university in the area also has all five campuses shut because of a bomb scare. You probably think I should move.

Bombs are destructive. They do incredible damage. What if that was not always the case? Imagine a bomb that could reorder matter for good; that could deconstruct what ought not to be, leaving what should be.

What if God were to take our prayers, which ascend to his throne, and hurl them back with divine power? A prayer bomb of God’s will, done on earth as it is in heaven.

The book of Revelation gives us so many great images. The problem is we don’t spend much time looking at them, because we don’t quite know what to do with this particular piece of literature. One of those images in found in Revelation 5:8, where we see golden bowls of incense in the throne room of God. In Revelation, John usually just relates what he is seeing. Yet here John gives us a brief word of explanation about these bowls. He explains that they are the prayers of God’s people. Is he making sure we don’t miss the point about prayer? That all of those fervent, and sometimes despairing, words offered to God are stored up before the throne. They are known! They are heard! They are precious! That is an awesome truth. Yet if that’s all there was to the story, it would end in disappointment.

It is not the end of this image, however. We see it again in Revelation 8:3-5.

Another angel, who had a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all God’s people, on the golden altar in front of the throne. The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of God’s people, went up before God from the angel’s hand. Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and hurled it on the earth; and there came peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake.

God puts prayer into action in a powerful way. Prayer Bombs! The prayers of God’s people ignited by the divine power of God destroying what ought not to be, and bringing about what God desires. Did you notice where those prayer bombs landed? Right back on earth. This is the image that always comes to my mind when I read the words in the Lord’s Prayer, “Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven”.

Do we really pray with this picture in mind? I suspect not. Instead, I often find myself in Annie Dillard’s famous quote:

“Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”

I would say it’s us who need to wake up. God is at work, powerfully. He desires us to join him. We have the privilege of doing that in a variety of ways. One of them is life-altering, earth-shaking, prayer. Strategic prayer strikes from the throne room of heaven. Bomb blasts that will significantly further God’s plan of lovingly caring for, and redeeming all things. Do you want to join the bomb squad?

Neil Bassingthwaighte
National Mission Director

Recently in Alabama, President Trump scrawled giant autographs across the covers of Bibles.

Shocking? Hardly! Sad? Yes!

However, whatever sadness I feel does not come from the actions of the President, as much as it comes from the possibility of God’s people putting their adoration and maybe even their trust in a name other than the hallowed name of God.

We might be tempted to stand on our soapboxes and point fingers at the people in Alabama who clamoured for Trump’s name to adorn their Bibles; but we shouldn’t! We might be guilty of the very same attitude, even if our actions are different.

When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he said, “Our Father, who is in heaven, Hallowed be your name…”: One translation says – may your name be kept holy. My concern as I read this phrase is twofold: we don’t keep God’s name holy, set apart, and secondly we raise up other names to take his place.

We live in a world that thrives on name recognition. Making a name for one’s self is a big deal (we looked at this last month). Companies understand how important it is for consumer confidence that you maintain a good name. As we play the name game, it is relatively easy to replace the one name that is above all others.

Psalm 9:7-10 says, “But the Lord reigns forever, executing judgment from his throne. He will judge the world with justice and rule the nations with fairness. The Lord is a shelter for the oppressed, a refuge in times of trouble. Those who know your name trust in you, for you, O Lord, do not abandon those who search for you.”

What an awesome description of God’s greatness. Did you catch that last part? “Those who know your name trust in you.” When we truly recognize God for who he is, our trust in him grows. Inversely, our need to find other names to laud diminishes. There is more. Out of knowing the name of God (putting him back in his rightful place), and building our trust in him, grows the bedrock truth that he will not abandon all who continue to seek after him.

This has huge implications for our prayers. It reminds us that God is always with us in the midst of our everyday turmoil. No one else walks with us in the same way. No one loves and cares for us as deeply as he does. No one else can do what he can. No one else has the answers that we long for. No one! I’m truly grateful for an abundance of wonderful loving people that surround me and care for me, but they are still human. They are not God and I need God. As our need for God – the one and only “set apart” ruler of the universe – grows; our prayer deepens.

Neil Bassingthwaighte

National Mission Director

Jesus gave his disciples a prayer. We call it “the Lord’s Prayer”. Since Jesus said, “pray like this…”, I suspect it is actually a model for us. Over the next number of months, I want to centre our thoughts on this model. I believe we can glean some good reminders from it.

The prayer begins with two simple words, “our Father”. Just two words! Yet what a depth of riches. We could spend a lot of time unpacking those two words. More than we have space for here.

Maybe the most applicable reminder that grows out of “our Father” is simply this; prayer is about relationship and family

When Jesus used the address, “Our Father”, he actually flipped the prevailing perception of God on its head. No Jew at the time was addressing God in such down to earth ways as “Abba” (word in original language). The overwhelming tendency was to address God with titles that would display his greatness, sovereignty, or glory. This title was a stark contrast that brought God close and familiar. I have often joked that we need a Grover-like understanding of God. You remember Grover from Sesame Street? He is the Muppet that made “far” and “near” famous.

He was trying to draw a contrast between the two words, but always used them together. I think we need to put them together as well, but not as a contrast. When we pray, we like the far aspect of God – he is big, bold, great, sovereign, over-all. We appeal to that because we desire God to act in ways that we cannot. However, we must hold on to the nearness of God. He knows us, cares for us, longs for the best for us, desires to be deeply involved in our lives, and even celebrates over us like a proud dad. We need this “near” picture of God.

I suspect Jesus gives us this picture because we naturally default away from it. We are fiercely independent. We are human after all. We really don’t want God messing about in the stuff of our every-day lives. We often turn to God only when things are too problematic for us to fix. And then…we want the big bold God who can soar in like Superman, not the close intimate one that shows up to care for us like dad. Yet, Jesus reminds us we get both.

There is one more aspect that I want to add in here. Its not, “my father”, although that would be true; but “our father”. We have the same father. We are family. In the family, we care for one another. Well, we ought to. Sadly, Christians all too often are outraged like the rest of our world, instead of being graciously Christ-like. Open Facebook or Twitter and you will see Christians screaming about the smallest things. Recently one pastor in the States got in trouble from some of his fellow pastors because his large church cancelled services one Sunday of the year, and he tweeted that the congregation should spend time worshipping at home with their families. The horrible assumptions and personal accusations that were thrown his way for this choice were ridiculous.

May it not be so among us EFCCers, please!  We are able to lift up brothers and sisters to “our father” and let him care for them in ways we never could. Let us make the most of the opportunity.

Neil Bassingthwaighte
National Mission Director