“2Ch 7:14  If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. “

The practice of personal, at home prayer is at an abysmal low.  Prayer at church cannot replace prayer at home, in fact, prayer at church does not lead to prayer at home but prayer at home does lead to prayer at church.  And when Christians do pray during the week they mostly do it on the run.  A quality relationship cannot be maintained this way.  Investing so little time and effort in a relationship does not make, or keep, it fruitful.

We say things like, “I know I should pray.”  “To grow in Christ I have to pray.”  “For this revival to happen we must pray.”  We make it sound like prayer is some sort of spiritual castor oil.  Not very pleasant but essential.  And it is essential.  But it is also so much more.  Prayer should be a delightful session of closeness with a Father who loves us and not just something we try to ration out just enough time to get a desired result.

We often treat prayer as nothing more than a transaction.  “Well Lord, I’ve served you and I’ve asked you, so now it’s your turn, God.”  But prayer as transaction will turn into either dissatisfaction, or be seen as a duty, when it actually is a privilege.  It is a privilege that Jesus died for.

Sometimes we want to use prayer as just a method of establishing Gods presence, but instead we should use it as a way of responding to His presence.  He is there, whether you feel him or not.  We cannot have awesome mighty experiences of His presence every time we pray, but if we are of the mind that we are to just spend enough time with God to get what we want, not only will we probably not get what we want, but we will never have that awesome experience in His presence.

Sometimes we tend to reduce prayer to a mere component of worship, but it should be a natural demonstration of our love for the One who loved us first.  Prayer should be passionate because love should be passionate.  We think that loving the church, or our ministry, is the same as loving God, but it is not.  These things are just vehicles for service.  We serve the church, but our passion belongs to Christ.  When we pour out our hearts to God with passion we will end up praying through our objections, overcome our disobedience, become able to confront our doubts and overcome our fears.

We must understand that we are dependent on God.  We must realize how very weak we are.  Prayer is a declaration of that dependence.  An admission of our weakness disarms our pride and prepares us for grace.  By trying to be strong in ourselves we can actually block God’s presence and practice.

Devout Buddhists use a prayer wheel.  They believe that every rotation sends up prayers.  They do it all day.  Some tech savvy Buddhists have prayer wheel programs on their computers that spin at 5400 revolutions per minute.  That’s a ton of prayer every day.

In Japan some pay priests at Shinto shrines pay up to 50 dollars to have a priest offer up prayers.

In Taiwan they have “ghost money” which is fake money offered up to ghosts for good fortune.

Hindus in India appease the gods with offerings of food, flowers and animal sacrifices.

Muslims pray five times at least a day, every day.

It is amazing to me that there are more people praying to nothing than those of us who know the real God.

God said that if we humble ourselves and pray and seek his face, He would heal our land.  Our land is in much need of being healed.  So we must not be praying.  God has the power; He just wants us to ask. As I said earlier, He wants us as partners in creation.  He also wants to share His love, dry our tears, allay our fears, lighten our load, and fulfill our needs.  To do all of this, we must pray.  We must share our lives with Him.

Have you prayed today?

Love you all

Tags: castor oil, God, jesus, muslim, Personal, Power, Prayer, presence, privilege, quality relationship, relationship, Sin

“It’s a sanctuary where they don’t get shot, they don’t get stabbed, they don’t have to worry about somebody trying to sell them drugs.”

Can you guess who made this statement?  The man who said this and is the one behind the “school of rock” that it references also wrote and sang the following lyrics:

Welcome to my nightmare
I think you’re gonna like it
I think you’re gonna feel that you belong…

He is also known for his horrific theatrics in the performance of his shock rock shows.  Songs about necrophilia and tearing apart baby dolls, snakes and spiders, lots of fake blood and torture; all of these made many parents pray their kids would not listen or see this man perform in the seventies.

But now that man is praying with us.  He is a brother in Christ and has been since the eighties.  I remember hearing about it back then and thinking he had sold out.  His music changed a little (most of you would not recognize it but promiscuous sex, alcohol, satanic glorification, and others are not a part of his show or songs) and he started performing less.

Alice Cooper, yes that is who I said, Alice Cooper teaches a Wednesday night class at his church, has never cheated on his wife of 32 years, has three children, loves golf and is pretty good at winning for charity, and in 1995 started the Solid Rock Foundation which provides money for children’s causes and Christian student scholarships.  He also conceived and initiated The Rock which is a 20,000-square-foot recreational hall on the urban campus of Grand Canyon University. It will be open to children 12 to 18 at no charge; the prime target is at-risk teens, whose parents may be in jail or on drugs, and whose brothers are thugs.

Cooper says alcohol and tobacco will be banned at The Rock. There won’t be a chapel, but counselors will proselytize by example and offer religious guidance to kids who want to learn about the faith.  He says, “We are overtly Christian, but we’re not going to beat you over the head with a Bible.”

Praise God for using any and all of us who are willing.  I so wish that we would learn to stop judging and leaping to conclusions about people because of what they look like or do.  Coopers shows are still bloody, ghoulish and sometimes shocking.  But read some Shakespeare if you think this is new.  He is not a “Christian celebrity” but is open about his faith and wants the focus to be on Christ and not on Alice.

If Alice Cooper had cut his hair, quit performing and singing, and had started a church like a lot of us would have wanted and a lot did, in the eighties, he probably would not be relevant at all today.

Serve where you are.  Be who you are.  God wants you for these very reasons.

Love you all

Alice Cooper’s Solid Rock

Tags: alice cooper, brother in christ, Christian, ghoulish, God, grand canyon university, Praise, proselytize, Relevant, risk teens, school of rock, shock rock, solid rock foundation, welcome to my nightmare

I was just sitting here reflecting on this holiday, New Years Day.  I asked some questions about it a couple of days ago and it seems that this day is really not that big of a deal to all the people of faith that I am in contact with.

A small group of us were at our church until a little after midnight and we just saw the New Year start with a little fellowship and fun.  It was good.  But it was not like the world celebrates it.  The world seems to think we should usher in a new year with a bang.  Loud, raucous, drunken parties are what I remember from the past, if I attended any.

What exactly is going on in this holiday celebration anyway?  I really don’t know but have some suspicions.  We say we are welcoming in a new year but what is January first really?

It is all about time.  And time is something I have had on my mind for awhile.  What is it?  How does God exist in relation to it?  Is it something tangible and real or just a method of measuring sequence as my friend Heath wrote about?

I am not sure but I think it is actually the last for most of us.  Even if time is something that can be affected by the speed of light or our proximity to a black hole, I doubt very seriously if any of us will ever experience any of that.  So let’s agree for a few moments that it is just a method to measure and record sequence.

So this day is all about newness.  A new year starts.  But, actually, any individuals real new year starts on their birthday, not January 1.  If we really have any resolutions that we think we need to make, then shouldn’t it be on our birthday?  But for people of faith, we have a new birthday.

We became a new creation the day we accepted Christ as Lord, King and Savior and went into service for and with Him.  So shouldn’t that be the date we use for our new year beginning?  Individually, yes, I believe so.  There is no more important day in our lives than the day we were saved.

But all of that is personal.  Someone was born and someone was born again on everyday of the year but we can’t have every day off from work, so we have New Years Day.  And it is a good day to be celebrated as a new beginning because it is the first day of the year in our method of marking time.

Our celebrations of this day are as much about saying goodbye to the old as looking forward to the new.  Auld Lang’s Syne is about saying goodbye and we sing it on New Years Eve.  In each of our lives we are always looking ahead, imagining the future and hoping it gets better.  And we should.  Even if the last year was amazingly good, we believe it can only get better.  And for most of us this past year, 2008, decidedly needs to be better and I certainly pray for that.

So we say goodbye to the past and relish the opportunity to move forward into the future.  We reflect on our mistakes and shortcomings and make resolutions and commitments to do it all differently.  We waste our time, in my opinion.

There is a truth that we often overlook and it is that the future never gets here.  Tomorrow will always be tomorrow.  And what we perceived as tomorrow yesterday is in fact today right now.  We need to live in the now.  We should plan and strive to do better, be better but, if we try more to be better right now, tomorrow will reflect that so much more than all the planning about tomorrow.

My resolution for today is to be a better man right now, to be more Christlike right now, to love more right now, and to contend for the faith more right now.  And that will also be my resolution tomorrow and the next day and the next.  No one knows what tomorrow holds, not even God for sure, so we really need to stop dwelling on it.  (I made that statement so most of you could berate me on my wrong theology on purpose, by the way.  But I really believe it is true.)

Just reflect on this.  The past is gone.  Use it for its educational properties.  The future will never get here so stop waiting and get on with it.

Start living and loving and serving right now.

Happy New Year and I Love you all

Tags: Beginning, black hole, celebration, Christlike, Church, drunken parties, Faith, God, Love, Personal, speed of light, Theology, Time

I just realized it was Tuesday again.  Time really does fly sometimes.  I wonder if God feels this way sometimes.  That is for another discussion though.  Things seem to get messy and involved whenever I mention God and either time or foreknowledge.

Since we are still in the “holiday season”, I realize a lot of you are still very busy with friends and family so I want to keep this Tuesday Town Hall discussion light and easy again.  So I will once again focus on the holiday that will arrive in a couple of days.

We call it New Years Day.  There are some traditional ways that people have ushered in the first day on our calendar, but some of them just do not line up with the biblical worldview we should all have.

I know that most of the times that I did celebrate this holiday in the past was by spending half of it in bed with a hangover.  That is not the case now.  So here is what I would like to know:

How important is this holiday to you?

If you celebrate it, how or what do you do?

If you do not, what do you do on this day off?

I just now realized that a lot of us get the first day of the year off from work every year.  That is a good thought, at least.

What say you?

Love you all.

Tags: biblical worldview, Discussion, foreknowledge, God, hangover, Knowledge, Love, new years day, season, Time, Townhall