26 February: Prayer as Visioneering

OK, I’ll agree with my spell-check and dictionary.com that “visioneering” is not a word. Marketing and business books use it regardless of this fact. When these books bring up the topic, they try to convey a combination of pioneering with vision; some hopeful anticipation of the future that takes one into uncharted territory. The most successful innovators, it seems, are those who can see potential previously undiscovered or unappreciated and chase that down like no predecessor ever did.

I would like to suggest that, when it comes to prayer for others, we should be doing the same thing. Often prayers rightly deal with present concerns and pressing occasions for praise, but it’s something else altogether when we pray and love someone with hope. Something quite subtle can happen when we reach this point of asking God to do something: we make modest requests. We don’t mean to insult God or be unloving to the person, it’s just that, sometimes, we forget Who we’re talking to and what He’s capable of doing in this person’s life. If our view for God’s grandeur is fuzzy or absent, we forget to come to Him with hope He brings and end up just asking for what might naturally happen anyway. We lose a vision of God and, thus, lose our vision for anyone else.

When it comes to prayer, what we can see provides the occasion for us to approach what we can’t. So, even though it seems unlikely that our relative whom we’ve always known to be angry would ever have a gentle spirit or that AIDS in Africa will ever be curbed, we still approach Our Father with eyes gleaming with hope, unperturbed by whether or not our requests seem likely. Prayer starts by looking downward (on what is before us), but must look forward and upward to be Christian prayer. Prayer is not about the hope which is found in what is seen, but in what heaven could move the present to become.

A quote from CS Lewis’ most famous talk (“The Weight of Glory”) bears repeating:

It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor. . . . It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you say it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. . . . Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.

Visionaries see what others overlook or undervalue and confidently advance to make their hopes embodied. Go and pray likewise.

Assignment: Go and pray likewise.

27 February: That's what he said

One of the elders at church opened up our corporate time of prayer with a quick homily on the subject. 'Prayer isn't something which comes naturally. It's something we have to learn. That is why the disciples asked Jesus to teach them.' One of the ways he recommended is to join into a practice which predates the New Testament: praying the words of Scripture. One of my professors will occasionally employ this sort of prayer in class and it is great and refreshing to hear. One of the simplest ways is to use the prayers in the Bible and go from there; this is what we're going to do this morning.

First, pick out two people you would like to pray for.

Second, flip to Colossians (GEPC. If you don't get that, don't worry about it). Colossians, like many of Paul's letters, contains a disclosure of his prayer life. In 1:9-12, Paul shares what he prays for the church in Colossae and we are going to use this to pray for the people we have picked.

It's quite simple: whenever you see Paul use a pronoun to refer to the Colossians, substitute your person's name in there. For example, let's say you are praying for someone named Art and using Paul's prayer in Colossians 1. When he writes, "We have not ceased to pray for YOU, asking that YOU may be filled with the knowledge of his will," you can pray, "God, I pray for Art, asking that he may be filled with the knowledge of your will..."

Paul has other good prayers, in Ephesians, for example. This morning, follow Paul's lead and pray for people you know. Paul has some great requests, the kind of things these people will be blessed to have prayed for them.

6 February: Unpraised Hours (ii)

Read Matt. 6:1-24

Before Jesus talks about storing treasures in heaven, he talks about 3 commendable practices (giving to the poor, prayer, and fasting). You’ll probably notice a few elements repeated in each. In your journal: What do you see repeated in His address of these 3 topics?

Often we look at giving, prayer, and fasting as the sorts of things you do without any reward attached. Write out an example of how each of these practices could be done with the wrong motive (not mentioned in the text). What does Jesus communicate about the relationship between the practices and rewards? Why do you think God rewards what He does?

With the above consideration of the connection of between doing certain ‘spiritual’ practices and receiving rewards, how do you think this connects with vv. 19-25?

Yesterday we looked at the value of putting in work which no one sees, hours which no one observes and cannot, therefore, praise. Today we look at a different sort of activity, the sort which is not done for public display, but for God’s private viewing. One last question: What is one way you will enjoy God viewing your life today?