Although I’m sure I’ll revisit the subject of prayer again in the future, I want to turn my attention to a different topic in this entry. In a recent conversation, I found words escaping from my mouth that showed the true color of my heart for a moment; and the color was green.
I was talking with someone about the French courses that I’m presently taking, and found myself commenting on another student who is in several of my classes with me. I began by speaking some words of praise for this student, but very soon shifted to recounting a recent experience that made him look bad. As I wrapped up the story, I felt uncomfortable with myself. My gut seemed to be talking to me, telling me, “something just went wrong.” And indeed it had.
As I reflected on the words I had just spoken, I realized that they revealed an envy of this person that I had not previously acknowledged to myself. He happens to be a doctoral student at Boston University, studying to be a literature professor. He is exceptionally intelligent and seems to have a photographic memory. His mastery of the English language and near mastery of French leave us all in awe at times, professors included.
So, perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised at the appearance of some jealousy in my heart. But the truth is that I was surprised; not just at the jealousy, but at the ugly way that, in this particular moment, I had taken pleasure in his pain.
I’ve been thinking for several days now about a passage from James chapter 3. It says:
Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such ‘wisdom’ does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness.
I’m struck by several things in these verses. First, it is interesting that James contrasts the humility that comes from wisdom with the envy that comes, ultimately, from the devil. He links envy to selfish ambition, and says that it is rooted in an earthly and unspiritual way of thinking. Another way of looking at this is simply to say that envy and selfish ambition come from pride.
And that doesn’t surprise me at all. The student that I mentioned above is strong in areas that I think I am strong in as well. The problem is that he is stronger. Why does his superior strength threaten me? Because I think I’m something special. The pride within me would like me to believe that I have reason to boast about certain qualities that I possess. When the value of these qualities is diminished in comparison with someone else, this can undermine my self-esteem . . . which makes me feel sad.
When this happens, I am faced with several possibilities. I could simply be depressed. I could look for ways to forget or drown out my sense of inferiority. I could work really hard to assert myself in some area in such a way that would enable me to feel superior once again . . . at least until someone comes along and out-does me in that area as well.
Or, I could let the appearance of envy remind once again of my need for grace. This apparition calls to mind the reality of pride in my heart. If I’m honest with myself, I know that I am powerless to combat this problem; incapable of changing my condition. So, I cry out to the Lord for grace. I remind myself that this battle is his, and I ask him to fight it on my behalf. I confess my sin to the Savior and invite him to cleanse me once again through the blood that he shed for me on the cross. I ask him to fill me with his Spirit, his life-giving Spirit who transforms me from the inside out with resurrection power. I trust him to help me walk in lowliness for the remainder of this day.
One other contrast from this text that caught my attention was that of envy as opposed to peace-making. The envious person is consumed with himself. The peace-maker is concerned for others. The envious person is incapable of communicating peace, because his neighbor, whoever that may be, is always a potential threat to his sense of self. The peace-maker’s sense of self is rooted in the fact that he is accepted in Christ, a reality that is never in peril, that is never threatened by the success or greatness of others. The envious person is on the lookout for weaknesses and flaws in others, which give him a basis for feeling superior over them. The peace-maker is on the lookout for the evidences of God’s grace in others, so that he can call their attention to the Lord’s loving presence in their lives.
I must admit that it disgusts me to see envy in myself. However, even this evidence of sin in my heart is redeemed when I give it over to my Good Shepherd. He uses it to draw me closer to himself, to convince me that I need him just as much today as I did when I first believed.
My Lord, please deliver me of all envy and selfish ambition. Fill me with your peace. Fill me with that security that comes from knowing I have been chosen and adopted by a loving Father through faith in his Son. Empower me today to communicate your peace to others around me, I pray. Amen.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Friday, November 2, 2007
beyond breakfast
If the gospel is the “power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes,” and I believe that it is, then I could use a heavy dose of this power multiple times a day. Why? Because I find that my old, dead self has a way of popping its head up out of the grave in one shape or another, not just daily, but numerous times each day. I am haunted by the ghost of my old man, and the evidence of this paranormal activity can be seen at times in my actions and my words.
Unfortunately, for quite some time, I saw no connection between the power of the gospel, which we might also call “grace,” and my daily struggle against sin and carnal living. The gospel, for me, was simply a set of propositional truths that applied primarily to people who didn’t know Jesus yet.
You have been separated from God because of your sin. Because of His love for you, God sent His Son, Jesus, to die on the cross and rise from the dead, paying the penalty for your sin and conquering sin and death. If you put your faith in Jesus, you may enter into relationship with God and be guaranteed eternal life.
When a person decides to believe this Good News, they become a Christian and then (I assumed) move on to bigger and better things, spiritually speaking. It wasn’t until just a few years ago that I was challenged to reconsider my understanding of the gospel, and more specifically, of the on-going role that it plays in my Christian life. This was a kind of spiritual awakening for me; a revolution that has changed the way I live as a follower of Christ.
As I read and studied God’s Word, I started to find that His grace jumped out all over the place. This grace that lies at the heart of the gospel message turned out to be an essential component for my survival as a believer. I have come to understand the grace of God as, at least in part, the manifestation of His power in my day to day living: a power that I can’t live without.
Let me give you two examples of what this looks like for me: one that shows a recent failure to walk in the grace of God, and one that shows a recent victory.
First story
Two weeks ago, both Annie and I started our day with some time reading in God’s Word and praying. I considered a passage in Ephesians 4 which says, “I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” This passage is loaded with key words that I was praying for myself, and for my family and for several people that I know, words like: humble, gentle, patient, love, unity, peace.
Now, it is not every day that both of us get a chance to start our day in time alone with the Lord like this. Anyone who has little children knows that this can be a major challenge for parents. So, what could go wrong on a day like this? Well, it wasn’t two minutes after I left my room to start getting ready to leave for class that all hell broke loose in our home; and it was mostly my fault.
Annie asked me if I could take Crystelle to school because Micah was sick and she didn’t want to take him out in the cold. I only had a short window of time before I would be late for class. I let her know how I felt about the fact that she had waited until the last minute to ask me to do this. She let me know how she felt about my tone of voice and attitude. I accused her of something and then she accused me of something and down, down, down we went into the pit of muck. I packed up my things, grabbed my astonished daughter by the hand, and out the door we went.
Where is the life of Christ in that? Where is the evidence of the new creation in that? Where is the humility, gentleness, patience, love, unity, peace in that? I had done what I was supposed to do that morning: quiet time. I should have reaped the benefits in godly living. But, instead, I somehow found myself sprawled out, face first, in the mud. I had operated under the false impression that fifteen minutes of prayer and bible reading would be sufficient to carry me through the day. What went wrong? Should I have spent thirty minutes instead?
No, that’s not it. What I realized later that day as Annie and I reconciled and revisited the events of the morning together, was that I had not put my hope in the gospel, in the grace of God that empowers me for godly living. Instead, I had put my hope in my quiet time. The fact is that I am in need of God’s grace each moment of my day. And my recognition of this on-going need for grace, a grace that works powerfully in us enabling us to live the life that we most profoundly desire to live, is a motivation for what Paul refers to as “prayer without ceasing.” To the extent that I recognize my need for Christ’s “salvation” moment by moment throughout the day, I will find myself turning to Him with my needs in prayer, even if that prayer lasts only a few seconds.
Second story
Last Sunday, we were all getting ready to head out to church. I had some documents to print that I needed to bring with me. Annie was getting herself ready in the bathroom. The kids were starting to get a little nuts. Doors were slamming. The volume of their voices was steadily rising along with my blood pressure. I was nearing boiling point when my son let out a window-rattling yell. I was out the door of my room in a flash, heading for the living room where the kids were, to give them a piece of my mind. But as I made the brief trajectory between rooms, a thought crossed my mind: I need grace now. I am lost in this moment. My anger is threatening to carry me away. I need grace now.
I entered the room, and before speaking a word of correction to anyone, I gathered the kids together and we all sat on the floor in a circle. I asked my daughter, Crystelle to pray for her daddy that the Lord would give him grace. That the love and patience and gentleness of Jesus would shine through him. Crystelle prayed that for me. And then I prayed, and told the Lord how much I needed His saving grace in that moment.
My friends, something changed radically in the atmosphere of our home in those 3 minutes we spent asking the Lord for grace. Even Annie could recognize it in the next room over (where she was drying her hair). My sin and weakness had shown themselves once again, threatening to drag me down into another pit. But, in this moment, I turned to my Savior for grace, for the power of the gospel that is the salvation for all who believe.
I’m finding that my spiritual breakfast, time spent in the Word and prayer at the start of my day, does not make me spiritually bullet-proof for the rest of the day. Instead, it is an opportunity for me to orient myself toward the cross in preparation for the warfare that will inevitably come my way. It is a chance to remind myself that I am lost today without the life-changing power of God working in and through me. It is a means of opening the door of my heart to the resurrection power that was unleashed when Christ emerged from the grave, and that is made available daily to me through the indwelling presence of His Holy Spirit. It is the starting point for my on-going conversation with the Lord throughout the day, a conversation that is fed by the challenges, hardships and even failures that I face as the day unfolds.
So prayer is rooted both in the will of God (discussed in the previous entry) and in the power of God. And if I hope to become a person of prayer, I need to move beyond a simple reliance on my spiritual breakfast, my quiet time, as a protection against the spiritual threats of the day. The fact is that I need the powerful grace of God working in me and through me throughout the day, and prayer is my way of accessing this grace; a grace that God, by His Spirit, is anxious to give me; a grace that enables me to live a life worthy of the calling that I have received; a grace that saves me from sin not just when I first believe, but every day from then until I stand before my Savior in glory.
Unfortunately, for quite some time, I saw no connection between the power of the gospel, which we might also call “grace,” and my daily struggle against sin and carnal living. The gospel, for me, was simply a set of propositional truths that applied primarily to people who didn’t know Jesus yet.
You have been separated from God because of your sin. Because of His love for you, God sent His Son, Jesus, to die on the cross and rise from the dead, paying the penalty for your sin and conquering sin and death. If you put your faith in Jesus, you may enter into relationship with God and be guaranteed eternal life.
When a person decides to believe this Good News, they become a Christian and then (I assumed) move on to bigger and better things, spiritually speaking. It wasn’t until just a few years ago that I was challenged to reconsider my understanding of the gospel, and more specifically, of the on-going role that it plays in my Christian life. This was a kind of spiritual awakening for me; a revolution that has changed the way I live as a follower of Christ.
As I read and studied God’s Word, I started to find that His grace jumped out all over the place. This grace that lies at the heart of the gospel message turned out to be an essential component for my survival as a believer. I have come to understand the grace of God as, at least in part, the manifestation of His power in my day to day living: a power that I can’t live without.
Let me give you two examples of what this looks like for me: one that shows a recent failure to walk in the grace of God, and one that shows a recent victory.
First story
Two weeks ago, both Annie and I started our day with some time reading in God’s Word and praying. I considered a passage in Ephesians 4 which says, “I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” This passage is loaded with key words that I was praying for myself, and for my family and for several people that I know, words like: humble, gentle, patient, love, unity, peace.
Now, it is not every day that both of us get a chance to start our day in time alone with the Lord like this. Anyone who has little children knows that this can be a major challenge for parents. So, what could go wrong on a day like this? Well, it wasn’t two minutes after I left my room to start getting ready to leave for class that all hell broke loose in our home; and it was mostly my fault.
Annie asked me if I could take Crystelle to school because Micah was sick and she didn’t want to take him out in the cold. I only had a short window of time before I would be late for class. I let her know how I felt about the fact that she had waited until the last minute to ask me to do this. She let me know how she felt about my tone of voice and attitude. I accused her of something and then she accused me of something and down, down, down we went into the pit of muck. I packed up my things, grabbed my astonished daughter by the hand, and out the door we went.
Where is the life of Christ in that? Where is the evidence of the new creation in that? Where is the humility, gentleness, patience, love, unity, peace in that? I had done what I was supposed to do that morning: quiet time. I should have reaped the benefits in godly living. But, instead, I somehow found myself sprawled out, face first, in the mud. I had operated under the false impression that fifteen minutes of prayer and bible reading would be sufficient to carry me through the day. What went wrong? Should I have spent thirty minutes instead?
No, that’s not it. What I realized later that day as Annie and I reconciled and revisited the events of the morning together, was that I had not put my hope in the gospel, in the grace of God that empowers me for godly living. Instead, I had put my hope in my quiet time. The fact is that I am in need of God’s grace each moment of my day. And my recognition of this on-going need for grace, a grace that works powerfully in us enabling us to live the life that we most profoundly desire to live, is a motivation for what Paul refers to as “prayer without ceasing.” To the extent that I recognize my need for Christ’s “salvation” moment by moment throughout the day, I will find myself turning to Him with my needs in prayer, even if that prayer lasts only a few seconds.
Second story
Last Sunday, we were all getting ready to head out to church. I had some documents to print that I needed to bring with me. Annie was getting herself ready in the bathroom. The kids were starting to get a little nuts. Doors were slamming. The volume of their voices was steadily rising along with my blood pressure. I was nearing boiling point when my son let out a window-rattling yell. I was out the door of my room in a flash, heading for the living room where the kids were, to give them a piece of my mind. But as I made the brief trajectory between rooms, a thought crossed my mind: I need grace now. I am lost in this moment. My anger is threatening to carry me away. I need grace now.
I entered the room, and before speaking a word of correction to anyone, I gathered the kids together and we all sat on the floor in a circle. I asked my daughter, Crystelle to pray for her daddy that the Lord would give him grace. That the love and patience and gentleness of Jesus would shine through him. Crystelle prayed that for me. And then I prayed, and told the Lord how much I needed His saving grace in that moment.
My friends, something changed radically in the atmosphere of our home in those 3 minutes we spent asking the Lord for grace. Even Annie could recognize it in the next room over (where she was drying her hair). My sin and weakness had shown themselves once again, threatening to drag me down into another pit. But, in this moment, I turned to my Savior for grace, for the power of the gospel that is the salvation for all who believe.
I’m finding that my spiritual breakfast, time spent in the Word and prayer at the start of my day, does not make me spiritually bullet-proof for the rest of the day. Instead, it is an opportunity for me to orient myself toward the cross in preparation for the warfare that will inevitably come my way. It is a chance to remind myself that I am lost today without the life-changing power of God working in and through me. It is a means of opening the door of my heart to the resurrection power that was unleashed when Christ emerged from the grave, and that is made available daily to me through the indwelling presence of His Holy Spirit. It is the starting point for my on-going conversation with the Lord throughout the day, a conversation that is fed by the challenges, hardships and even failures that I face as the day unfolds.
So prayer is rooted both in the will of God (discussed in the previous entry) and in the power of God. And if I hope to become a person of prayer, I need to move beyond a simple reliance on my spiritual breakfast, my quiet time, as a protection against the spiritual threats of the day. The fact is that I need the powerful grace of God working in me and through me throughout the day, and prayer is my way of accessing this grace; a grace that God, by His Spirit, is anxious to give me; a grace that enables me to live a life worthy of the calling that I have received; a grace that saves me from sin not just when I first believe, but every day from then until I stand before my Savior in glory.
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