More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Tyler Staton
Read between
July 4 - July 22, 2023
When we pray, we step out of the fundamental reality of the world and into the fundamental reality of God, so we must begin by inviting God to reorder our affections.
Biblically, we are commanded to “remember” more frequently than to “obey,” “do,” “not do,” “go,” or even “pray.”
What we know for sure at this point is that powerful prayer begins with adoration—adoration when it flows from our lips effortlessly and adoration when it’s gritty, willful, even defiant.
But the God who is Immanuel is equally in those moments we would never choose as in those we would always gladly choose.”
When they sang in a jail cell, they were dragging heaven into a dark corner of earth, and it changed the atmosphere.
The hymnal of ancient Israel is found right in the middle of the Bible. Here we find the 150 psalms—prayers that have given language to generations of our spiritual ancestors. Read a psalm slowly (I prefer to read aloud, even when I’m alone). When you reach a line that resonates, allow it to be a springboard for your own prayers. Let a single verse or phrase from an ancient prayer become a foundation for praising God as Creator, Redeemer, Savior, or Friend.
examen begins by reviewing the day with God, playing back the events of the day like a movie and thanking God for every good thing along the way—the first sip of coffee that morning, the moment of laughter with your daughter, the insightful conversation with a colleague, the progress made on a big project, and on and on it goes. Next, invite the Holy Spirit to illuminate the day, showing you the moment when God’s presence felt nearest and the moment his presence felt most distant. While God is always with us, our awareness of his presence wanes. Finally, pray a simple prayer of intercession
...more
I’ve also found that God has flooded my life with people who have been right in the thick of an identical secret struggle because it’s our wounds that God often uses to heal others, not our competencies.
And that is what the Bible calls sin—good desire channeled through the wrong means. Sin is shorthand for any attempt to meet our deep needs by our own resources.7
Sin, defined by the biblical imagination, is not an accusation or a condemnation; it’s just a diagnosis.
The issue with sin isn’t that God has a tight moral grid, and coloring within the lines is how we prove we’re on his side. It’s that sin inhibits us from doing what we were made to do best—love—to receive love and to give it.
Eugene Peterson defines it, “Sin is a refused relationship with God that spills over into a wrong relationship with others.”11 Sin is always personal, and it’s always against God. The way our sin hurts others is the collateral of that first refusal.
He’s not lowering the standard of holiness, but he is coming after us. The biblical story isn’t one of a compromising God; it’s one of a pursuing God.
What if every time I find myself facedown in shame, it’s an opportunity to again hear his voice say, “Neither do I condemn you”? What if the parts of our stories we’d like to erase become in the end the parts we tell forever? What if when you find yourself there, it isn’t an opportunity to clean yourself up but instead to see yourself as you really are, as he’s always seen you, and still hear him call you “beloved”?
God’s end game isn’t to make us into robots that execute flawlessly but feel nothing. Salvation redeems every human emotion as a reflection of God’s divine image.
We live deepest from the gut, not the head. The love I have for my child, the way I felt during the first dance at my wedding, the doubled-over weight I’ve held as I stared into the casket of a lost loved one, the laughter that came as I watched my niece open a gift on Christmas morning—none of that emerges from an intellectual equation I’ve solved. It comes from somewhere deeper, somewhere more instinctive, some emotional place, something like my gut.
These things are instinctive. Don't overthink.
Jesus is nearest to us in “our weaknesses,” not our strengths.
He is drawn to our sin, not intellectually like a mathematician who has worked this equation in a thousand different ways and knows that grace is the only solution that satisfies the variables. It’s instinctual. From his gut, his primal instinct, Jesus wants to run to us in our weaknesses, to meet us there.
confess is to say, “I want to name my symptoms, completely and comprehensively, because I want healing, completely and comprehensively.”
Dane Ortlund, a Chicago area–based pastor and author, writes, “If you are in Christ, you have a Friend who, in your sorrow, will never lob down a pep talk from heaven. He cannot bear to hold himself at a distance. Nothing can hold him back. His heart is too bound up with yours.”
God deals with sin by forgiving us, and when he forgives us there is more of us, not less.”
Only this—the psalms he authored were peppered with personal confessions—honest, unfiltered, raw nakedness before God. He was a long way from perfection, but he refused to hide. When he realized he was naked, he didn’t pick up fig leaves; he ran to the Father.
That’s confession—to excavate down into the layers of your own life, uncovering not just what’s obvious on the surface but the layers of personal history underneath that continue to inform your present.
Spiritual maturity means more confession, not less. Maturity is discovering the depths of my personal brand of fallenness and the depths to which God’s grace has really penetrated, even without me knowing it.
When we come in and out of God’s presence in gathered communities with our deepest needs and secrets hidden, we are essentially saying, “Jesus’ victory is not enough. It’s not enough for me. Not enough for this. I just need more time. I can sort this out on my own.”
The very parts of our stories we most want to edit, or erase altogether, become the very parts of our stories we’d never take back and never stop telling. That’s the kind of author God is.
Confession is two parts: searching and naming. Searching is God’s part; naming is ours.
Prayer is, I believe, the most profound invitation God offers us on the other side of grace. And this invitation is not just for the pious or the lucky; it’s for all of us.
The motive behind all true intercessory prayer is love for the other.
He’s talking about the kind of prayers that start with love for someone else and end with inviting God’s activity into places where that love is lacking.
We are Christ’s body on earth,11 but the line of communication was broken in the fall.
We carry the image and authority of a perfect, loving God. It’s all still there. But we are paralyzed by a communication breach.
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”14 God won our authority back. He restored the very position for which you and I were created. He stepped into the tension we feel all the time and cut a way through. He made us intercessors again.
Prayer is the pathway God has made to get us back to his original plan. Prayer is the way we can rule, manage, intercede for this world. Prayer is the repair of the communication breach that paralyzes us.
To pray is to experience the very same access to God the Father that Jesus has.
But what if, according to Jesus, you’ve never really prayed? “Until now you have not asked for anything in my name.”22 What if you’ve never come before the Father, wearing the robes of the heir, carrying the standing and status of Jesus? What if you’ve never plundered the riches stored away in the heavenly vault? What if you’ve never pushed back the curse alongside God? It’s already been defeated. He’s just looking for intercessors to implement the already-secured victory.
He’s got this. God doesn’t need intercessors; God chooses intercessors.
We dream of a God who brings heaven to earth; God dreams of praying people to share heaven with.
Pete Greig writes, “Intercession is impossible until we allow the things that break God’s heart to break our hearts as well.”
Sometimes God will move heaven and earth, bending space and time to weave a supernatural narrative in response to our prayers. But God always purposes prayer to change the heart of the intercessor themselves.
Intercessory prayer is often about what the intercessor has become after they’re finished praying.
Intercession is nothing more than ordinary love combined with sober humility.
If we really took Jesus seriously on the invitation to prayer, what would happen? What would happen in you? What would happen to your community? What would happen in your city?
This is how Jesus teaches us to intercede. There are two movements to intercession: releasing and asking.
Think of something in your life you’re wrestling for control over. Name one thing you’ve never released to God, or perhaps released in the past but are trying to grab back. When you’ve come up with it, name it and release it. Ask for filling from the Spirit in place of releasing, peace in place of anxiety, trust in place of fear, and so on.
We tend to pray wordy, vague prayers when asking, almost like we’re afraid to lay our requests before him boldly. Resist the urge to cover for God or make it easy on him. He can handle your requests. Just ask.
When the language we use in our prayers stays grounded, our prayers tend to stay grounded too. Ordinary language keeps us from lofty prayers that usher the activity of God into some far-off imaginative place and instead invites God into the here and now, into the concerns of today—what I’ll eat, who I’ll meet, what I’ll do, and how I’ll feel about it all along the way. “On earth as it is in heaven” prayers. Daily bread prayers.
If we pray for environmental sustainability but fail to whisper thanksgiving at the summit of a Saturday afternoon hike, our God is smaller for our trouble, not larger.
And if we effortlessly judge the parking space prayers of someone else, sure that we know the priorities of an incomprehensible God, our spiritual lives are suffocating and restricted while their God is ever involved, interested, present.
When we pray the Jesus way, keeping our prayers as common as our everyday small talk, we put one foot in front of the other on the pathway of gratitude.
