It's about a trust fall

Have you ever participated in or experienced a trust fall? I have been reading about and studying prayer for the last couple months and the other evening, the image of a trust fall came to mind as a metaphor for prayer.

As I thought about the trust falls (A trust fall is a trust-building exercise in which a person deliberately allows themselves to fall backwards, relying on someone else to catch him or her) I had experienced, it came to me that they were not always good experiences. I can remember being half-caught, being hurt a little when the person did grab for me or being scared when it seemed like they were letting me fall a long time before they actually caught me.

Then I thought about what it would feel like to do a trust fall with God, to just fling my arms back and fall into his arms. I think it would feel like falling into cotton candy, not that it would give way, but his arms would be so tender, so open and sweet. It would be a place of such relief and absolute pure joy and safety. Hmmm, I think that praying, truly trusting God with our burdens, should feel a lot like that.

Then a verse  came to my mind, I Peter 5: 7 Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you. That's what one aspect of prayer is, casting all your burdens, your cares, fears and worries into the hands of God, and when you do that, leaving them there. Can you imagine the relief and joy that you could experience doing that? It is God after all - he can certainly handle any of my problems.

As I imagined what it would feel like, to do a trust fall into God's arms - really thinking about what it would feel like - it was amazing.  I think I would be filled with laughter, with the kind of joy that chased away any kind of concern.  I wonder if that is what God wants us to experience when we go to Him with our boatloads of needs and concerns.  He just wants us to throw ourselves and our junk into His arms, and then just laugh out loud to express the relief and joy we find trusting Him with it all.

Been thinking about prayer and love

Seems like they do go together.

 

• John 15: 12-13 This is my commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.
• Gal. 6:2 Bear one another's burdens and thus fulfill the law of Christ.
• James 6: Therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.

 Last night in class, we were talking about passions, what constituted a passion and what our own particular passions were. As I mused over the answers our students came up with I was challenged as to my own passion....and it suddenly became very clear: I want people to know what it means to be loved by God and to live out that knowing.

  

It all seemed to come together: the last few weeks I have spent in the gospel of John, reading over and over again the words of Christ ( I do appreciate my red letter Bible), and as I reviewed His words, the conviction that rose about what it meant to love like Jesus.

 

I have also spent my "before bed" time reading about prayer, and this morning it all came together in the above three passages. God simply wants us to love one another. That's how we show Him and the world that we love God; it is the evidence of that love. Then that love for others will manifest itself by our own desire to bear other's burdens, to see what we can do to help others, to lighten their load. And finally, real love will manifest itself in our prayer life. If we love someone, God will hear from us about that person.

 

And I wonder if the measure of our love for God is most clearly seen in or heard in our prayer life. The prayer life that is limited to our own personal concerns seems to reflect a self-centered life. Could it also be that the greater the world encircled in one's prayer life, the greater the love demonstrated, and the more intimate our relationship with the Father? Just thinking out loud.

 

 

 

 

It’s not a book about gays,

though one of the two main characters is gay, kind of like a lot of television lately. The book’s title is Out of a Far Country by Christopher (the gay son) and Angela (the straight mother) Yuan. Chapters alternate voice, one Chris’s voice telling how he experienced a certain period of time, and the next chapter is his mother’s experience of the same time.

Chinese-American, Chris Yuan was one of two brothers brought up by successful, hard-working and sacrificial first generation Chinese Americans. Angela and Leon Yuan wanted only for their two sons to go to college and join the family dental practice, a dream that would bring great heartache as the two sons had other dreams.

Chris, as he was known as a boy and young adult, knew for a long time that there was something different about himself, something he came to know and embrace as his gay identity, something his parents could not ever embrace. You can imagine what happens next: Chris leaves home, ends up in the gay world of sex and serious drugs, finally in prison for selling drugs.

His mother, never a God-fearing woman, meets a believer who introduces Angela to God and disciples her into a different way of thinking. And here is where the book takes a right turn out of darkness and death into light and hope. I want you to read the book, so I’m not going to tell you everything, but what you must know is that it’s not a book about gays. It is instead a book about God and how He works, about faith and what life looks like for someone who is seriously searching for God. It is also a book about the seriously and miraculously changed life.

Chris becomes Christopher (and that's a story), yanked from the brink of death, as his own mother was, and he goes from criminal to Christian. But he does not become straight. However, he does recognize that regardless of how some people use Scripture to justify the gay lifestyle, Christopher cannot. To his surprise, Christoper comes to understand that God loves him, the sinner, and that God hates only the sinful activities the gay person may embrace.

Easily read, this book is one that begs to be discussed. In fact, it comes with an eight session study guide in the back.

In today’s world, where the gay lifestyle is viewed only as an alternative, Christians must see it as one more tool to deceive and deprive believers of God’s richest blessings. It grieves me as I type these words to think of the number of former, and perhaps current, students that I know either living in or considering the openly gay lifestyle. Perhaps, as some claim and believe, they were born this way. A lot of people are born with all kinds of challenges, the results of a fallen world. But God’s design remains the same, and the gay lifestyle does not fit. Still, the gay man or woman can live in the same godly lifestyle as the straight man or woman who has not found the right mate – a celibate lifestyle, with God’s help and bringing glory to Him.

OK, I got sidetracked - the book is really about much more than a comment on gays - it is about faith and perseverance and most of all, about the love of God.

Ordinary Heroes

Sunday our pastor’s message was about ordinary heroes.  Pastor Mark talked through Ehud, the left hander’s life, as an ordinary man, perhaps a disabled man because in the Hebrew ‘left hander’ really implies that the right hand could not function normally. So maybe Ehud was also looked upon as disabled and probably was bullied as a child.  The right hand was used for clean chores, the left for other chores – like picking up dirt or  cleaning up after using the bathroom.

Despite his left handedness and all that it meant, Ehud killed the ruling king freeing the Israelites after 18 years of slavery. I could repeat the message here; it was fascinating, but the point is, Ehud took risks and was greatly used of God despite his low status.  We remember him as a hero.

Then we were challenged to be ordinary heroes, but what stuck with me, beside that challenge, was the ordinary heroes in my life.  I think of the student who, when asked for constructive criticism after I led a panel discussion, took the time to give me very thoughtful and very helpful counsel.  He didn’t have to do that, but he did, and as a result, I have to believe we were better able to communicate a serious message about integrity. Thanks Austin.

I think of Eleanor Mosher who has been a faithful prayer warrior for BBC, and I would hate to think of what Satan could have accomplished without faithful prayer warriors like Eleanor and Peggy and Helen – heroines, like the women in Romans 16.

Funny, the things God brings to your mind like John, mentally and physically disabled. I see him at work in a fast food restaurant and I see him at church, and his faith encourages me. And then there’s Ken, retired from the police force and serving at BBC, loving and protecting and mentoring students, and I have to say, more than one adult – even if it is a side-ways mentoring, an accidental mentoring that occurs only as we watch and work with him.

I think of the young man who came to visit one of our freshmen girls, and I gave them permission to go to church and dinner and shopping alone – unusual for freshmen.  He came to me before he left campus to thank me for the special permission and to tell me about the great church they had gone to - encouraging me to send anyone looking for a church to that one.

OK, I could go on and on, but today, I am grateful for the ordinary heroes in my life, young and old.  Thank you God for such sweet gifts.

 

 

September 28, 2012 Thoughts about burden-bearing!

Matt. 23:37  O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the propets and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings and ye would not.

Luke 19:41 And when he was come near, he beheld the city and wept over it.

I have been studying the prayers of Jesus, and I encourage you to take a look at them as well.  You can find a good study guide at http://www.askpastor.org/prayers.html

As I read the verses above, I was impressed with the  idea that I have my own Jerusalem - this campus here at BBC, and with the idea that I have always said that this was my calling, as much as it was to go to Africa years ago.  With all my heart, I believed God had appointed us to the ministry at BBC.

Anyway, as I was thinking through all of this, I felt the weight of the burdens people at BBC are carrying: family loss, impending family loss, the burden of caring for parents, the burdens students are carrying from parental struggles with cancer, suicide of family or friends, physical needs, family and friends who do not know or embrace Christ, and a myriad of other burdens. 

This last week a couple of students came to me about starting a support group for abused women.  Can you imagine that?  Having experienced sexual abuse of some kind, and trying to look normal and be a college woman with that hovering around the edges of every day?  One student told me she cried when she found the other woman who shared that in her past and how comforting it was to know she was not alone.

I guess today my heart is just very heavy, feeling the pain of my students and colleagues.  And I think that is the way it should be; it is pretty hard to minister genuinely if you never enter into the suffering of others.  The challenge is to not allow their suffering to overwhelm and discourage you. 

Jesus wept, but he talked to the Father and he kept at it - getting up a great while before day to spend time in God's presence without distractions, and from that place, doing great things.

September 14, 2012 On Listening to God

John 10:3 To him the porter opens: and the sheep hear his voice and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out

I used to get so frustrated with these words, "Just read your Bible and pray." Those words were somehow supposed to be the solution to every problem, the prescription for spiritual growth, and the recipe for devotions.

But it didn't work! I came to understand that these words as advice for building a relationship with God were a lot like telling a young woman that all she had to do to develop a relationship with her husband was read his old letters and talk to him. That wouldn't work either. A relationship, by definition, requires two people to share, to communicate meaningfully, a listening and replying with the other's values in mind.

So when I think about having a relationship with God, there has to be some listening on my part as well as the listening I assume He is doing in response to my prayers. The problem is we don't do all that much paying attention to what He might be trying to say to us.

James Martin says the "Emotions are a key way that God speaks in prayer. You might be praying about a favorite Bible passage, and suddenly you feel happiness over being closer to God, or anger over how Jesus or the prophets were mistreated, or sorrow over the plight of the poor. God may be speaking to you through the emotions...These invitations to listen can be easily overlooked because they are often fleeting. If we're not careful, we'll miss them."

As I read this, I thought about how little time I give to paying attention to what is happening when I pray. Too often, I think we go to prayer with our list in mind, and then we sort of pay attention to other things God brings to mind.  However, I am not sure that we are listening or paying attention to how He might be guiding our response to our prayers or anticipating His desire to guide us in life.

I am not sure we even expect to feel all that much when we pray. Oh, certainly we feel when we pray out of desperation we are feeling and hoping for something, but how many of our prayers are uttered out of desperation. Even then, in our desperation, do we listen for God to respond?...or do we just feel better because we have gotten our pain off our chest?

I guess I am concerned about how real we are when we pray - we expect to feel something when we talk to a human. I expect to feel loved when my husband listens to me and responds with caring gestures and words. I want that, and I look for or anticipate it. I expect to feel grief and loss when I talk to someone about a death in their family or friend circle. I am just not sure that we go to prayer anticipating that we might recognize God's communication to us, and feel something. And as I feel affection for my husband when he listens carefully to me, I want to love him back in some way meaningful to him to show him my appreciation. Do we return God's love that way?

Well, now I am rambling, but this is what I have been thinking about.

September 12, 2012 Because He Loves You

I John 3:1 Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God, therefore the world knoweth us not because it knew him not. KJV

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. ESV

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. NIV

What marvelous love the Father has extended to us! Just look at it - we're called children of God! That's who we really are. But that's also why the world doesn't recognize us or take us seriously, because it has no idea who he is or what he's up to. The Message

I love it how things come together when you are loving God back. I am leading a Bible study on prayer here at the college...and as I think about prayer, I think of it as one part of any relationship - communication. When you love a human, you want to hang around them and with them and you sure do want to communicate with them - in lots of ways. And since God loves us and desires our love - that means a lot of communication should be taking place.  So all of that has been perking around in my mind.

Then, I am always on the look out for resources, books and articles, that will be helpful in my own spiritual journey. Some time ago I came across The Jesuit Guide to (almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life. I have to say it was the last few words that caught my attention, and as I stood there in the store browsing through the book, I found more and more in it that spoke to my desire for another voice in my growth. Not that the Bible was not enough, nor the dozens of believers that surround me at work every day, but I'm always open to more somehow.

Please don't stop reading, just because it is a Jesuit guide. I believe that God does give us discernment, so I read and process in light of what I know the Bible says. And this book, read slowly and not straight through, has been a blessing in my life, especially right now as I have been studying prayer.

Let me share a few things that caught my attention this week. In the chapter on Friendship with God, the writer speaks to ways God responds to or communicates with us. I am going to list them because it is way too much to tackle in depth today. He suggests that emotions are a way that God speaks in prayer. Insights and memories that float to the surface during prayer are also tools God uses. Feelings, both emotional and physical are also ways that God communicates with us. As we pray, God responds and in that stillness, I do believe God's Spirit moves...

I will talk more about this another day, but I wonder what you think.