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October 27, 2022 - August 11, 2023
Start asking. Don’t just ask for spiritual things or “good” things. Tell God what you want. Before you can abide, the real you has to meet the real God. Ask anything.
WE SHY AWAY FROM PRAYERS THAT INVITE GOD TO RULE OUR LIVES. THEY MAKE US VULNERABLE.
We need to ask the body of Christ, Jesus’ physical presence on earth, the same questions we ask God.
God humbles you. We’re scared of such prayers because we want to remain in control of our lives. We don’t trust God.
Because I acted on my own, independent of my heavenly Father, my words by themselves had to do all the work.
If I had been in touch with my self-will, then it would have opened up the door to prayer, to abiding. The great struggle of my life is not trying to discern God’s will; it is trying to discern and then disown my own. Once I see that, then prayer flows. I have to be praying because I’m no longer in charge. Either I see all of life as a gift, or I demand that life have a certain look to it.
Jesus begins the sermon by telling you he is going to go through your life and close all the doors to human power and glory.
Argh! How do I do life?
Prayer is the positive side of the surrendered will. As you stop doing your own will and wait for God, you enter into his mind. You begin to remain in him . . . to abide. This is the praying life.
Notice Sue’s underlying assumption: “It all depends on me. If I don’t show him, no one else will.” God is absent from her thinking; consequently she believes it’s up to her to make her husband hear her words. If he doesn’t, she fears she’ll be swallowed up by his forgetfulness. Sue speaks on her own, using the word again to control her husband. In contrast, Jesus says, “For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak” (John 12:49). Sue is using her words to do her own will. She refuses to accept the
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Self-will and prayer are both ways of getting things done. At the center of self-will is me, carving a world in my image, but at the center of prayer is God, carving me in his Son’s image.
If Sue surrenders her self-will, she will join Abraham walking up Mount Moriah with Isaac. She will join David as he puts down his knife when Saul is within his reach in the cave. Sue is abiding. She has lost control of the story.
Instead of trying to create her own story, Sue will be content to let God write his story.
Instead of singing Frank Sinatra’s song “My Way,” we enter into God’s story and watch him do it his way. No one works like him.
I often find that when God doesn’t answer a prayer, he wants to expose something in me. Our prayers don’t exist in a world of their own. We are in dialogue with a personal, divine Spirit who wants to shape us as much as he wants to hear
Most of us isolate prayer from the rest of what God is doing in our lives, but God doesn’t work that way.
If you are on the road of Good Asking, you have also given up—but in a good way. You’ve given up on your ability to change other people. Instead, you cling to God and watch him weave his story.
Her goal for her child was tied to the child’s accomplishments. Our goal was tied to Emily’s faith. Because of that, we saw sports as just another venue where she could learn to sink her roots into God. I saw the bench warming as an answer to my daily prayer that Emily would not love the world or the things in the world.
God permitted mild pain in her life in order to grow her soul into his. No one works like him.
God, you have got to give Emily faith this year. You have no choice. I was keenly aware of my inability to grow faith in her heart. God just had to do it. He didn’t have a choice. He was bound by his own covenant.
When times were good, I ignored God, but when times were hard, I blamed God. But nothing that I did separated me from the love of Christ.
In contrast, people of faith live in the desert. Like Abraham, they are aware of the reality of their circumstances but are fixed on hope.
God customizes deserts for each of us.
God takes everyone he loves through a desert. It is his cure for our wandering hearts, restlessly searching for a new Eden.
The first thing that happens is we slowly give up the fight. Our wills are broken by the reality of our circumstances. The things that brought us life gradually die. Our idols die for lack of food.
The still, dry air of the desert brings the sense of helplessness that is so crucial to the spirit of prayer. You come face-to-face with your inability to live, to have joy, to do anything of lasting worth. Life is crushing you.
Suffering burns away the false selves created by cynicism or pride or lust. You stop caring about what people think of you. The desert is God’s best hope for the creation of an authentic self.
Desert life sanctifies you. You have no idea you are changing. You simply notice after you’ve been in the desert awhile that you are different. Things t...
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The desert becomes a window to the heart of God. He finally gets your attention because he’s the only game in town.
The clear, fresh water of God’s presence that you discover in the desert becomes a well inside your own heart.
The best gift of the desert is God’s presence. We see this in Psalm 23.
We had thought the harm was a daughter with disabilities, but this was nothing compared to the danger of two proud and willful parents.
When we don’t receive what we pray for or desire, it doesn’t mean that God isn’t acting on our behalf. Rather, he’s weaving his story. Paul tells us to “continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving” (Colossians 4:2). Thanksgiving helps us to be grace-centered, seeing all of life as a gift.
Watch for the story God is weaving in your life. Don’t leave the desert. Corrie ten Boom’s father often reminded her, “The best is yet to come.”[2]
That’s what makes laments so messy. They bring together two things (reality and promise) that recoil from one another. A lament connects two “hot” wires—God’s promise and the problem. When that happens, sparks fly.
Laments might seem disrespectful, but in fact they are filled with faith—a raw, pure form of faith that simply takes God at his word. Every child is a professional lamenter, as in, “Mom, you said you’d take me to the pool this week! Why haven’t you? I want to go today.” The child is bringing together promise and hope (“Mom, you said . . .”) with reality (“Why haven’t you?”)
Cynicism moves you away from God; laments push you into his presence. So, oddly enough, not lamenting leads to unbelief.
sure sign of their wandering hearts is that no one is in God’s face. No one takes hold of God and pulls. This idea is so strange to our ears that I must repeat it: God is upset with Israel because they are not lamenting. We think laments are disrespectful. God says the opposite. Lamenting shows you are engaged with God in a vibrant, living faith.
We live in a deeply broken world. If the pieces of our world aren’t breaking your heart and you aren’t in God’s face about them, then you’re becoming quietly cynical. You’ve thrown in the towel.
The Greeks called this ideal “Stoicism” (see chapter 14). A Stoic would never make a whip to clear out a temple or wail over Jerusalem’s coming destruction.
The Israelites lamented because they longed for a better world, the way the world is supposed to be. They believed in a covenant-keeping God, one who keeps his word. That’s what makes laments so passionate, so in-your-face.
A lament connects God’s past promise with my present chaos, hoping for a better future.
Jesus is not a Stoic, gritting his teeth until the Resurrection; nor is he a determinist, saying, “I know God is going to raise me from the dead. I just have to get through this.” He is fully alive to both his situation and his Father’s love for him.
Many laments begin with an emotional dump, not unlike the beginnings of an argument between a husband and a wife when one of them has been bottling things up.
Isaiah connects the reality of Israel’s desolate state with the hope of God’s power. He believes not in a distant God, but in a God who incarnates, who acts in time and space.
Isaiah remembers how God delivered the Israelites under Moses and how God met them at Mount Sinai. Isaiah is in God’s face because God has rent the heavens in the past.
Isaiah and I both know a God “who acts for those who wait for him.”
Now the tone shifts from passionate asking to quiet repentance. In effect Isaiah says, “We’re the problem. We’ve blown it.”
He begins the lament naked before God, pouring out his heart. Then he reinterprets those feelings in the reality of God. He gradually opens up his heart to God. In a kind of a pilgrimage, he begins feisty, in God’s face, then he slowly reveals his faith and his heart. Isaiah’s faith drives this lament.
