The one who is able

One of my wife's favorite passages of Scripture:

"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen." Ephesians 3:20-21. 

I have a complicated relationship with these words. I think more often I've prayed and God did significantly less than I asked for. I can remember praying in the 70s that Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev would come to Christ. It didn't happen (as far as I know). In the 2000s I prayed that Osama Bin Laden would come to Christ. That didn't happen (as far as I know). When I told my wife how I was praying for Osama, she said that sounds good, but don't get disappointed if it does not happen. She knows me well.

I notice Paul clearly does not say God will give us more than all we can ask for or imagine. He says God is able to do more than all we ask or imagine. 

But I have seen God answer with more than I asked. In 2001 right after a conference which had talked about mentoring, I was in church thinking I wasn't sure anyone had ever mentored me. And I prayed, God mentor me. I don't quite remember what I was expecting, but I look back and realize God has been answering that prayer for years now. I believe I have been mentored now. Yet keep it coming, Lord, I need more. 

And I'm sure when I see God face to face, I will see how much more he has done, far beyond what I have asked for or imagined. Saying he is able won't be such a theoretical exercise as it often feels now. 

“However, as it is written:

“What no eye has seen,
    what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”—
    the things God has prepared for those who love him— 1 Cor 2:9, also Isaiah 64:4

My identity in God

In light of God's truth, what should I believe about myself?

 I believe that by God's grace I have been chosen, imperfect as I am, to be a member of God's family and to have a significant role in his Kingdom. He has chosen me and takes on himself the complicated task of qualifying me for this. I will pursue this calling in relationship to God, opening my heart and laying bare my soul with its imperfections to him. He knows about them already, and has chosen me anyway. I believe that his grace in my life is bigger than my shortcomings. I can lay my longings and frustrations, both good or evil, before him, and experience his peace, even when the good longings are not yet met and the evil longings have not yet gone away. I will continue in this faith I have learned, to walk in emotional honesty with God and seek his peace in my difficulties. The peace of pleasant circumstances is good when it happens but cannot be relied upon. This same grace and calling I rejoice in is also given to my brothers and sisters. So I will not disbelieve in their calling when I perceive them as imperfect. I will seek to understand their hearts, consider that I as well as they might be imperfect in the issue at hand, and pray for them that God helps them in their weaknesses, as I pray that God helps me.

 I see this in many Scriptures, here are three:

 Paul's thorn in the flesh (2 Cor 12). God did not remove it but said his grace was sufficient. God doesn't promise that he will always remove problems and distressing circumstances from our lives, sometimes he leads us through them.

"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer." 2 Cor 1:3-6

Jeremiah's promise of the New Covenant (Jer 31:31-34). God's people didn't keep the first covenant, but rather than write off his people, God rewrites the covenant so they will keep it. God's commitment to his people endures in spite of their shortcomings.

How good and pleasant it is

How good and pleasant it is when brothers and sisters come together in unity,
Giving thanks for one another, making new treasures from old memories.
May I remember this day when my brokenness surfaces again,
When I ought to know better but don't.
May I remember this day when my brother, my sister, disappoint me.
May I be patient as you are, O God, shining the light of truth and grace on our messy mix,
Good and evil jumbled together.
O God, who will receive whatever harvest we do yield,
And cast into the fire whatever thorns have choked us,
Give me wisdom to see and be like you today.

My prayers

It dawned on me today that God might find my prayer life rather annoying. He invites me to come because he loves me and knows I need his inspiration, comfort and strength. But often I go to God thinking I only need him because of this sudden problem in my life. If he would just fix that, I'd be happy and go back to not needing him more. Cause I basically have "normal life" under control, it is only these crises when I need his help.
How shortsighted my heart is. Open my eyes, Lord, to see your great willingness for me to draw near, and my great need to draw near.

Paul's prayers and ours

Paul's prayer for the Colossian church struck me anew the other day.

We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. Colossians 1:9-12

Paul prayed for these believers to be filled with the knowledge of God, that they would bear fruit in every good work, be strengthened with all God's power for endurance and patience, and that they would be thankful.

I often pray, for myself or for others, for a problem free life. When there is a problem, God, take it away!

Last night as I prayed, I focused on that first clause. Fill us, fill our brothers with the knowledge of his will. I thought of several other things we all needed to be filled with the knowledge of. Fill us, God, with the knowledge of your presence with us. Fill us, God, with the knowledge of your grace. Fill us God with the knowledge of your holiness; that you are so totally and awesomely yourself, and invite us to know you and be like you.

Habakkuk's story

A man of God prayed for God to heal the nation. God said he had a plan: things will get a lot worse before they get better. The man cries "how is that a solution?" God says "trust me." Then the man gets a fresh glimpse of God in his majesty, he says "I trust you, whatever you choose to do."

The story step by step:
Habakkuk the prophet cries out to God because the nation of Israel is corrupt, and God is not answering his prayers. "How long must I call for help, but you do not listen. ... the law is paralyzed and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in the righteous."

God answers that he has a plan -- the Babylonians will rise up and conquer Israel. "I am raising up the Babylonians, that ruthless and impetuous people, who sweep across the whole earth to seize dwelling places not their own."

Habakkuk then asks, "You have chosen them to punish us, but why? Why are you silent when the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves." I think Habakkuk is thinking "we're bad, but those Babylonians are worse. Why use them to punish us."

God replies to write down the revelation and hang onto it, you may have to wait a long while but it will come true. Justice will come upon those who do evil. The Babylonians will be judged in turn.

Habakkuk then prays for God to show himself. "I have heard of your fame, renew your deeds in our time." Do again the great things we read about that happened in the past.

God then shows himself to Habakkuk in a vision. "His glory covered the heavens and his praise filled the earth. His splendor was like the sunrise; rays flashed from his hand, where his power was hidden." One part sounds like Armageddon. "You came out to deliver your people, to save your anointed one. You crushed the leader of the land of wickedness, you stripped him from head to foot."

Habakkuk, now having seen God's greatness, responds that whatever God chooses  to do is OK.  "I will wait patiently for the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us. 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."

Those last words, to rejoice even if everything goes wrong, are sometimes quoted in isolation, as a challenge to be thankful even in hardship. While that is a good principle, I think it short-circuits the point of the story. The point is Habakkuk sought God, and when he saw God, when he understood who God was, he was able to be content even when everything goes wrong. We should seek the same kind of knowledge and experience of God, so that God produces in us the same kind of faith Habakkuk had.

Prayer for the suffering

Lord, open their eyes to see the compassion in your eyes.

The story behind this:

My mother in law passed away in November 2007. My wife and I went up for the funeral, and stayed for two weeks as she began putting her mother's house in order. On my first day back at work, I thanked my supervisor for letting me stay away for two weeks, and told him about the funeral, the grieving and the celebration. Another colleague listened to our conversation, and I was struck by the compassion in her eyes. Weird, I thought, sympathy without words actually happens. I'd thought it was a literary cliché, a cliché from the kind of books I don't like to read much. But in real life, it's actually pretty neat!

A year and a half later our son was in a bad road accident while we were traveling in California. We got the phone call from the police that he'd been airlifted to the hospital. As we booked a quick flight home and hurriedly prepared to drive to the airport, wondering just how bad things might be, I thought of my colleague's compassionate glance and wished I could sign up for another one. Then as we got on the plane, a new thought came to me. James says that all good gifts come from God the Father. So that meant that the glance of compassion I still wanted but couldn't have because my colleague wasn't nearby, really came from God. What I'd appreciated in her eyes that day was a reflection of the compassion in God's eyes, if I could see them. That was a comforting thought. And ever since, in times of sadness, I've thought about God's compassion as I saw it reflected in my colleague's eyes that day. (As it turned out, our son had broken legs and a broken finger plus a dislocated elbow, but no head injuries and no internal injuries).

Another aspect of this story came to mind a couple years later. One of the common generalizations about men and women is that men always want to fix a problem, while women want compassion. We men are supposed to learn to listen to our wives and respond to how she feels, not just suggest how to fix it. But what, I thought, do we want God to do? God, revealing himself as "he" not "she," should be a fixer right? And who could be better at fixing things? Don't we always pray for a quick fix? An instant healing, a new job right now! But what if God chooses to not fix all our problems right away, but expresses compassion with us as we endure the problem?

So I pray for those in distress, that the eyes of their hearts would be opened to see God with them in their distress.

Sometimes prayer feels unreal

At another prayer meeting someone prayed so earnestly. “We’re yours Lord, we just want to belong to You, You alone.” And I was quiet. Do I really want first and foremost to live for God and not myself? I wasn’t sure.

As I went home I did open up to God. “Lord, I’m willing to make a few sacrifices for your kingdom. I went to that prayer meeting didn’t I? I’ve gone to some other meetings, I’ve taken a few risks to try to serve you. I've worked in hard climates for you. But don’t ask me to do anything really painful, like getting tortured or imprisoned. Then I felt a flash of joy, as if God whispered “Thanks for leveling with me. I knew it already, but thanks for not pretending.”

But as I write this I'm wondering, shouldn't I be willing to do anything to serve God? I do sense in me a longing, a readiness to press in closer to God. Lord, enlarge and strengthen this longing to be closer.

Prayer: when the familiar isn't boring

Group prayer can feel routine. A couple weeks ago, I was feeling bored as our prayer meeting started. Then we rea some familiar passages about the importance of prayer. Nothing new, but afterwards, I felt content, perhaps even "strangely warmed", to a small degree.

There is a mystery. The words of Scripture are not just words, but are pointers to God, life himself. I think he came to us and gave us a fresh bit of life last night as we read together. And I had asked for that. I had written on my yellow prayer request card that we'd be encouraged and inspired again for prayer.

That night I hadn't wanted to pray. I'd thought I had nothing new to say, that there was no point in me saying the same things once again. But I was reminded that night how the familiar, the "same old" could still bring life.

Prayer is not like calling the help desk

I call the help desk when the product or the documentation fails. It should just work without me needing to ask how.

But our life in God is not supposed to "just work" without us asking for help. Our life in God is our life with God, with our Abba Father, our elder brother who laid down his life for us, and the Spirit living in us.  The best part, the key part of this life is the relationship. We're supposed to call him, praise him, interact with him, tell him where we are, listen to his responses. In short, we should be with him.

How should we pray?

Our prayer meetings usually become lists of people in crisis. People who have lost loved ones, people in the hospital near death, or other crises. I was wondering how this fits with how Jesus told us to pray. What does he tell us to pray for? "Father, give us what we need today. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who've sinned against us." 

I'm wondering, when I go to prayer meeting and say "Let's remember Joe in the hospital," and don't mention that I'm feeling grumpy about stuff at work; or don't admit I focus on entertaining myself much more than I do on being like Jesus in my world, am I missing the point? Am I thinking we only need God in the crises, not in the everyday messes? That I'm managing my life OK, it's only Joe that needs help?

Or am I thinking that God has only a limited ability or desire to answer prayers, and Joe's cancer is a higher priority than my messes? Scripture does tell us to bear one another's burdens, so putting Joe's burden ahead of mine is probably a good thing. But if I never mention my burden, maybe that isn't a good thing. Because prayer is not a lottery with only a few winners.

Compassion for others worse off than ourselves is a good thing. But the airline safety talk always says to put your own oxygen mask on before helping someone else. If you pass out trying to help someone else you haven't helped them. Is prayer like that? If we don't bring our own needs and life before God, we can't really help others? I think that could be the case. I think we need a balance of praying for ourselves and praying for others.

Prayer -- we can't know what will happen

Sometimes we pray and God lays on us the thing we really wanted or needed, or lifts away the thing we wanted to get rid of. This is what we usually mean when we say "God answered my prayer."

But God doesn't always do this. Sometimes I pray and the circumstances don't change but I find myself calmer, at peace with the situation. This too is an answer to prayer.

And sometimes too, I pray, the circumstances I prayed about don't change, and how I feel about those circumstances doesn't change either. This is when prayer feels most unanswered. But maybe the answer is "trust and wait."

But let me not base my strategy of prayer, or my desire to pray, on thinking one and only one of these three things is the norm. Paul Miller presented this issue in the first chapter of A Praying Life. He's camping with his daughter, and she tells him she's lost her contact lens. He looks at the ground covered with leaves and twigs and says "lets pray." His daughter says "what good will that do," in despair because her prayers for her autistic sister to speak had not been answered. Paul prayed silently "Lord, this would be a good time to come through," then prayed aloud to find the lost lens, and then they saw it, sitting on top of a leaf.

Paul and his daughter saw God respond by revealing the missing contact, showing them he could and would answer some prayers with a quick fix, even though in the situation with the autistic daughter, he was not doing so.

Remembering God

Now I remember what I had learned, that you look on me with compassion, not just for the great crises but in the ordinary awkwardness of life. Life, this intricate gift of yours that I often get wrong, pursue a momentary comfort or distraction rather than embrace and ask for your grace in this day, these circumstances you've given.

Forgive me when I doubt that prayer works when I look at life and see so much you haven't fixed yet, as if fixing was all you do. Remind me of those moments when I've known the peace of your presence standing with me in the unfixed mess; when I've said "I don't know why I should feel OK in this, because its so obviously not OK, but you're here with me, and the OKness of your presence is greater than the nonOKness of this circumstance.

Meditating on the Lord's Prayer -- complete

Our Father who is in heaven,
the Holy One, the Father of all Fathers, There, in heaven, You are intangible, yet not distant. Master of that unseen realm where our happiness will be complete, where the current hints of goodness in our hearts will be fulfilled and made whole, our contradictory desires reconciled, and the current ravages of evil in our hearts will be cleansed and removed.

May your Name be holy
Your name is holy, I cannot make it holy, but may I understand how holy it is, may I set myself to living out the awareness of Your holiness. May I remember that as often as you grant me success and keep me from failure, my success or my failure does not really add or detract from your wondrous nature or the glories of your plans.

Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven
May your agenda, your mystery of reconciling all peoples in Christ go forward today. May there be a measurable step in that direction this day. May your intricate plan to overrule the powers and practices of this world advance and spread. May the secret of the eternal Word lovingly written on each heart, no matter how weak or lowly or despised, advance until the awareness of You fills the world as the waters fill the sea.

Give us this day our daily bread
Today I have new needs. Give me today what I need today. Grant me wisdom to see that I need you again today. Grant me understanding when you supply my needs but not my wants.

Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us
Remind me my worst enemy is not my fellow human, but my own heart marching to the old music of autonomy and the refusal to admit dependence. I yet believe the old old story that all will be well if I could have what I want. Remind me that the one I call enemy is as loved by You as I am, and that if I understood his circumstances, I might understand what he does. Grant me the wisdom to see where I'm not any better than he.

Lead  us not into temptation
The publicity of this seen world would draw me in still if I did not pay careful attention. Give me the clarity of a mind longing for that unseen realm, already tasting the life of the world to come

But deliver us from evil
I am not yet strong enough to bear much adversity as I await your deliverance, grant that I not be overcome. But as I have reminded You of my weakness, remind me of Your strength in my weakness.

For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever
Once there, in that realm, the torments and difficulties of this world will be like a bad dream that I start forgetting as soon as I wake up

A praise and a prayer

God, I asked you to mentor me, and you did.
You taught me to claim your promises, not complain they aren't fulfilled.
You hold me together when circumstances threaten to break me,
You lead me to peace instead of perplexity.
You make more of me than I can of myself.
I trust myself to you again.
Give me your joy, remind me of your presence and how much I need it.