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Prayer

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Are any of you suffering hardships? You should pray. Are any of you happy? You should sing praises. Are any of you sick? You should call for the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well. And if you have committed any sins, you will be forgiven.
Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results. Elijah was as human as we are, and yet when he prayed earnestly that no rain would fall, none fell for three and a half years! Then, when he prayed again, the sky sent down rain and the earth began to yield its crops.
I read a very interesting piece out of the most recent Relevant Magazine yesterday. It was an article entitled, “Just Great…We’re The Most Anxious Generation Ever.” This article of course talks about a lot of things, but one part that really struck me was the following:
Modern life doesn’t give us as many opportunities to spend time with people and connect with them, at least in person, compared to, say, 80 years ago or 100 years ago,” Twenge told New York Magazine. She also pointed to millennials’ tendency to desire fame and money as a possible contributing factor. “There’s clear evidence that people who focus on money, fame and image are more likely to be depressed and anxious,” she said. But another study, also led by Twenge, may offer another clue. Not only is belief in God at an all-time low, but the amount of people who say they pray is five times less than the number of individuals who prayed in 1980.”
This study led by San Diego University social psychologist Jean Twenge definitely brings up some excellent points for us to consider. It’s worthy of us noting in our lives how connected as we? Also what is the connection between anxiety, isolation from community, and a down trend in our prayer life?
We would naive if we thought these are not connected because they are most definitely connected. From the beginning of time God has designed us to be beings that connected to nature, others in community, and of course to God himself. That design is everywhere in our lives and in creation.
The rise of social media and technology itself even speaks to our need to be in connection with others.However, we can be so connected to everything that we are really not connected to anything. Being connected in the sense that Jesus was speaking about in community is being all things for all people, but being intentionally connected to what or rather who matters.
As disciples of Jesus Christ our first and foremost connection should be lived out through prayer in the presence of God. By actively engaging in conversation with God through prayer the Holy Spirit molds us, convicts us, and empowers us to be more and more like Christ. If we are not connecting to that then we will stagnate and again will be controlled by anxiety, our will, and ultimately fear.
The argument is that we have too much going on to invest in this time with God and with our community the church.
I completely agree. It all comes down to intentionally connected to what or who really matters. We will have to sacrifice some things to invest in this connection and THAT IS A GOOD THING, becuase our connection with God should supercede everything, but it doesn’t because it’s easier or more comfortable to put God on the back burner than ourselves or others.
I pray that we will be in prayer with each other, and at times confess what we need and what God needs us to be and to do. And may we do what the Holy Spirit guides to do.
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Bring it All

Bring your mess, bring your brokenness, because all Christ wants is you. We find this new life, this new love at the cross, because we cannot get to easter unless we go through the cross. As hard as the cross was Jesus endured it for you and for me. And yes there will be trouble in this life, but because of Christ we will not be defined by our brokenness or our mess, we are defined by the mercy on the other side.

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Thin Places

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely,[a] and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of[b] the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

3 Consider him who endured such hostility against himself from sinners,[c] so that you may not grow weary or lose heart. (Hebrews 12:1-3, NRSV) 

Yesterday was a hard day. This past weekend a tragedy struck the community of Benbrook, TX with the death of two young girls that left this world all too soon and last night at Arlington Heights UMC we opened our doors to the family to give them a memorial service for the two young girls.

In the midst of the memorial service I thought of this scripture that I had been trying to write a post for all day, but for some reason never got around to it. Barbara Brown Taylor one of my favorite authors once this following quote in an interview Flycatcher Journal.

Thin places are transparent places or moments, set apart by the quality of the sunlight in them, or the shadows, or the silence, or the sounds—see how many variations there are? What they have in common is their luminosity, the way they light an opening between this world and another—I’d say “between this world and the next,” but that makes it sound like one world has to end before the next one can begin, and a thin place doesn’t work like that. It works to make you more aware of the thin veil between apparent reality and deeper reality. It works to pull aside the veil for just a moment, so you can see through.

The author of Hebrews is illustrating for us a thin place in Hebrews 12. A place where we are cognizant of more than we can physically see. I have felt this type of place two times in my life, when my Papaw (my dad’s father) and when my grandmother (mom’s mother) passed away and I was at their bedside in their last moments. Words can’t express these moments, but there is a tremendous feeling of community in these moments. It’s when God blurs the lines between Heaven and Earth that we truly see who God is, when Jesus was born and when He died on the cross.

Just like my previous experiences, last night I felt a tremendous community among us, a priesthood of all believers, a cloud of witnesses that were and are with us in all times of our lives, but sometimes I guess its more thick, or more apparent than others. These moments are precious gifts to us from God himself, saying that we are not alone and we are never alone. And we never will be.

It’s Holy Week and Easter is coming, but Easter is not here yet and its in these moments that we need to realize more and more that to get to Easter you have to go through the Cross. There is no other way. Why does it have to be this way? No, it’s not because God wants us to feel pain before we feel love, it’s because God wants us to know that even though there is pain, anguish, and death, that God has the last word.

Not pain

Not regret

Not anguish

Not even death will have the last word.

As it turns out as Frederick Buechner says, “Resurrection means that the worst thing is never the last thing.”

So, wherever you are, whatever you are doing know that God is bigger than what you are facing, and God and God alone will have the last word, and that word is Love. Because that is the whole point. Jesus came and died not for himself, but that we, through Him would have life and have it to the fullest. Not just exist, but to live life fully now and forever.

So let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

Amen.

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Jesus Heals Us

But this was all a signpost. When Jesus came to town, it meant that healing, deliverance, joy, celebration, forgiveness, transformation, and rescue soon followed. This is the consistent testimony of the Gospels. Jesus healed, He forgave, He celebrated through feasting with people (usually the outcasts of society), He delivered, and He transformed lives— not by changing the outside of the cup, as the Pharisees did, but by curing hardened hearts and cleansing them from the inside. Jesus’ healings demonstrated that the arrival of God’s rule over evil was breaking into the present. For Jesus, healings and the casting out of demons were signs of the dawning kingdom. They indicated that God’s future had arrived. They were tangible signposts that the kingdom of God was coming to earth as it is in heaven. “But if I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” 49 By healing the sick and casting out demons, Jesus was effectively saying, “This is what happens when God is running the world. This is what it looks like when God is King of the earth. The time has come; the dominion of God is breaking into the present. This is what happens when God becomes King on earth as He is in heaven. (Sweet, Leonard; Viola, Frank (2012-10-02). Jesus: A Theography (p. 169). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.) 

 

 

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Day 17: Prophet

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(John the Baptist, from the Action Bible by Sergio Cariello)

Find the Action Bible by clicking here.

John the Baptizer, a prophet of the Lord. He is most commonly known for the many baptisms he did at the Jordan River, one of which was baptizing our Lord Jesus Christ, even though he protested saying:

I need to be baptized by you, yet you come to me? Jesus answered, “Allow me to be baptized now. This is necessary to fulfill all righteousness.”

So he baptized Jesus. John was also known to be the man that said “prepare the way for the Lord; make his paths straight.” To put it simply in all of John’s preaching I believe he was simply pointing towards what the Risen Christ would be and do for all time. John is one of my favorite prophets in the bible for this reason alone because I believe that most disciples do that the biggest accomplishment I can achieve in life is by effectively living my life in such a way that people are pointed to Christ.

To put it simply: “It’s not about us. It’s just not.”

I praise God everyday that it’s not about us, but about Him and everything that He has done for the world, and when we commit to live our lives for Him and his love and grace we actively commit to not point to ourselves and what we have done, but point directly to the Risen Christ for not just what He did, but for what He continues to do everyday that we are on this earth!

So I ask you to take a moment sometime today and think about what your life would be like if Christ had not died for you and me. What would our life look like? Take this moment to be thankful for all the blessings that God rains down upon us, but at the same time think about the many ways that we can point to Christ and why that matters to the world.

Father God,

Rain your love down upon us and help the world to see your Son through your disciples in the world. May they see you and your love and grace and not ourselves. In Jesus’ Name.

Amen.