How many times are we bold to share what God contributes to the conversation we call prayer? Prayers that ask for many things and have no actual outcomes or at least a word about the expected outcome(s) are are plenty and popular. Prayers are not decrees and declarations of things we want, and especially are not one-to-one, even when private. Prayer is at risk when no community appears in the process, the one addressed is more Santa Claus than divine Father, and the object is not finding God’s will but erasing human situations we find uncomfortable.

A prayer can be a simple cry for help: Peter sinking beneath the waves says “Save me!”. A prayer can have extensive affirmations of God, recapping of His dealings with our forebears and our own personal requests, as did Solomon’s interaction at the inauguration of the temple. Prayer can have few words like Elijah’s success on Mount Carmel or be lengthy and dramatic like the futile chants of Baal’s prophets.

It is highly inappropriate to repeat and circulate a “prayer” that is unrecognizable as a Christian connection to God, or follows the pattern Christ taught. Many prayers that are circulating have the following features.

1. Fails to recognize that God has a plan for each of us that includes spiritual growth in grace,
2. Does not affirm God’s love in all of our circumstances
3. Centers on self
4. Avoids what God has promised and programmed

Stop praying like a false prophet

Praying with a lot of words and useless repetitions is strictly forbidden. Our Lord said “Do not even start using empty repetitions…” (me battalogesete). Since we are doing it our response is to cease.

But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him. Matthew 6:7-8

There are far too many heads of state, of corporations, and of families who are heartless. When they promote and enforce policies that serve selfish human pride and insularity they stand out like water in olive oil. Inhumanity is streaming like sunshine at a time when public and private regard for basic human dignity and needs are at an all time low. Immigrant policies and social justice are not political choices. They are the seedbed of higher civilized behaviour.

No People Movement, No Utopia

The stories of both the Old and New Testament are witness to the surprising excellence of hospitality to strangers and kindness to widows and orphans. There can be no leading of humanity without practices and policies that are saturated with human kindness. Patriotism and nationalism are the tools of heartless heads. Increasingly we are coming to the conclusion that there is not much of facts and reality in the heads of many leaders.

Land, Empire and Commonwealth

“Jews will not replace us” is a chant we dismiss as devilish and pray that speech like that be criminalized. It could not come from anything that we can define as fine. Most states are reverting to the ugliest and most sickening periods of their development: cruelty to widows and orphans, mistreatment of foreigners, dissing of parents by their children, children abandoned to society’s shifting sands, and irrelevant loyalties. Immigration has been the fuel and the test for civilized behavior in the most riveting story of human development.

Stories of the heart

No better story exists. No seismic activity in the area of human conscience and responsibility to community compares to the Mosaic and prophetic traditions of Israel. The migration of Asian tribes to North America did not create a global paradigm neither did the arrival of Europeans in their migration to North America.

Abraham would be surprised to find that the people he called friend and neighbour were being targeted for annihilation. This is evidence that the ancient arrangements need to be sifted (we Christians call this the correct division of the message), to separate the outdated instructions.

I suppose that the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25ff) illustrates the existence of leadership without a heart and a leadership obsessed with compliance without love or compassion. Obeying the Sabbath command is futile and hypocritical when compassion for others is absent.

But the ruler of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, said to the people, There are six days in which work ought to be done. Come on those days and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day. Then the Lord answered him, You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it away to water it? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day? Luke 13:14-16

Incredibly this cry from Isaiah is the only sentence in the Hebrew scriptures containing a pairing of rise and shine.

Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you. Isa 60:1

Upgrades are ready!

It is an upgrade and reversal prophecy. The rising light brings the following surprises, reminiscent of Paul’s exhortation (Eph. 3:20-21) to be ready for God to provide answers that exceed our requests.

1. Instead of bronze I will bring gold,
2. and instead of iron I will bring silver;
3. instead of wood, bronze,
4. instead of stones, iron.
5. I will make your overseers peace
6. and your taskmasters righteousness. Isa 60:17

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, Eph 3:20  to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. Eph 3:21

 

Since when did truth and justice matter for Canadians? When did politicians learn to do the right thing? Since Quebec’s sovereignty gamble and the Russian grip on the USA has not roused the sleeping call girls of Europe and the Middle East we need to understand what credibiity is driving the predatory calls for investigations and resignations. Canadian media were duped by the Ontario Conservatives now the Liberal Party cannot make up its mind about the integrity of a whistleblowing officer of the Crown in the justice arm of government.

We can hardly hear of wrongdoing without swinging the gavel indignantly, but colleagues who conspire to unseat their leader outside of a leadership contest have yet to learn about the dangers of flirting with compliance with the law and amorality. The loyal opposition is all too ready to throw stones and the media follows like a trained canine.

Woman Power

Female power is gravely important and underestimated. The issues seems to coalesce around equality and lordship. Contemporary events moved by truly heroic women, successful protests in antiquity (Numbers 27:1-8), the witness of women in New Testament times, provide the assurance that the end of misogyny is a worthy goal even while it has little informed popular appeal.

Equality and lordship

The gospel has no place where both are not functionally relevant. Whenever dysfunction appears there is a tendency to lay down rules and in the wider political context there is usually legislation to make sure the problem does not recur. No society has successfully brought about an end to misogyny, racism, and the violence of of religious bigotry. The church, government and the global community depend on best practices and zero tolerance regimes to appear to be accountable, but officers of the church, crown or global institutions are not paragons of virtue. It is not surprising that the Canadian government is facing a women-led media attack highlighting interference in the administration of justice.

Just when we thought our glass house was safe

It is required of stewards that they keep their heads above the water. We are not comparing the PM with his colleagues. The woman at the centre of the assault on the Prime Minister’s Office wants to be a hero of war against her leader while enjoying the privilege of cabinet. Attacking interference by the PM in public is a close relative of surreptitious recording of private conversations.

Right wing and no wing

Politics in Canada may be a kind of religion for the media and the women’s movement just took a dive with the revelations by a cabinet member and the sheer malice of the leader of others. There is a lack of insight and humility that plagues the politics of both the left and the right. What next? Call the Republican Party of the United States to help us sort out what the shuffled and resigned females of the Liberal Party have foolishly thought was the spark for the rise of a new political environment? Sic the RCMP on the Prime Minister’s Office?

Right! On the 33rd of February.

Listening to understand is a discard from a nobler time. Imagine a whole movement based on setting the date of Yeshua’s return. Imagine libraries full of books of exegetical notes and the creeds of most groups adrift from the things one needs to get saved and live with confidence.

We have to stop pretending that we understand, especially when we have neither heard the matter nor have the ability to work with the texts nor the aptitude to interpret them.

Words to use with care

There are words that we abuse regularly to our detriment: totally, always, never, and true.

Isaiah 29:11-12 lights up this problem.

And the vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I cannot; for it is sealed: And the book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I am not learned.

Church leaders need to acquire the tools of make understanding happen and those tools are not materials that say the things we want to hear.

Practice: ancient and modern

Nehemiah 8:8 records that the priests and Levites read from the book, from the Law of God, clearly, and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.

Luke tells us that conflict and blindness attended the preaching of the gospel.

For those who live in Jerusalem and their rulers, because they did not recognize him nor understand the utterances of the prophets, which are read every Sabbath, fulfilled them [the Scriptures] by condemning him. Acts 13:27

What Scriptures might we be fulfilling by putting Christ in second or third place?

Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. Galatians 6:7

In all our seeking of God’s will we are often eager to jump into the narratives, usually on the side of or into the person of the victors. This brings the seeker to the drama and hopefully to the pixels of a high definition embedded Christ.

It is normal for readers to see themselves in the stories they read, and the more they think about the daily lives of people in Bible times as primitive and unsophisticated the less likely they are to be realistically benefited with a “takeaway”.

Avoiding and dodging

1. When the evangelist tells us that Yeshua is the good shepherd he is stating a fact that does not change.
2. When the evangelist tells us that the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep he is telling a story that is not recurring and that too does not change.
3. When the evangelist tells us that the good shepherd describes all who preceded him he is giving us a condition that does not change.

• Sheep is us, never God
• Good shepherd is never human.

The new Testament material outside the Gospels and Acts is replete with real actors that we are slow or loath to embrace.

Empty places at the table

Who am I in that Romans 7 picture?

Who is it that, after dying to law and sin, commits him/herself to adultery with the law?

Who am I in the 1 Timothy 4 last day unbelief picture?

Have you seen any set of believers who are stepping up to to be identified as the departed and doctrinally demonized in 1 Timothy 4:1ff

The reason most Christians grow so little is that we keep committing to the same thing that started our journey, and we avoid the confessions that authorize God to change us.

Why does God say things about Israel and Judah that make us shudder? For one, they are true. Secondly, if they were not said all we’d have is the word of dead prophets. When God says you are shallow and incorrigible then offers you a 490 year grace period you know you are in quicksand most terrifying.

What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away. Hosea 6:4

I made them cling to me

The intimacy of the relationship ebbs and flows. Watch what Jeremiah was observing.

For as the loincloth clings to the waist of a man, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, declares the Lord, that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory, but they would not listen.

Jeremiah 13:11

How far, how near!

As close as underwear, but alas, Ephraim and Judah have no intention of going Yahweh’s way. The promises of restoration are waterless clouds. With evidence like the exposure of the temple trade and the ignorance about God’s lifegiving power on the part of the leaders in New Testament times we have little reason to hope.

We should be aware that there are promises which will not see the light of day without the relevant compliance and there is nothing left after the land becomes home.