Category: Christianity

Day Thirteen in the School of Prayer: Fast!

WithChristInPrayer

Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?” 
He replied, “Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”  (Matthew 17:19-21)

“Why couldn’t we…”; we must all share this thought of the disciples from time to time. Why do our prayers seem to bounce against the ceiling or seem impotent? Why do we claim faith in the light but question our beliefs in the night? Jesus proclaimed the answer to the disciples, then and now: we have so little faith. Our faith is not muscular but bony and frail, though we might try to portray it otherwise. Appearances have become paramount at the experience of a true sacrificial faith.

Strong faith requires prayer. Strong prayer requires forsaking other things that threaten to derail or weaken that faith. We must be people who fast in order to retrain our sights on that which forms our core. To abstain from food nourishment is to point our souls to the deep well of being nourished in prayer. We can so easily feed our sorrows, fears, and failures and then when satisfied, forget about them. Throwing that crutch aside we must rely on the only thing that will satisfy our deepest hungers for meaning and purpose. As Murray reminds us “Prayer is the one hand with which we grasp the invisible; fasting, the other, with which we let loose and cast away the visible.”

Second Sunday in Advent : Love

imageWhen the Lord brought back the captives to Zion, we were like men who dreamed.

Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy.

Then it was said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.” (Psalm 126:1-3)

Our anticipation of the coming of Christ the King should move us to reflection but the busyness of the cultural trappings of Christmas tends to deflect our meditation until Sunday. In the same fashion, the hustle and bustle can affect our joy and our feelings and actions toward others. Without our joy, our love for our neighbor becomes dry like the desert sands.

Take a few moments to reflect on Psalm 126 this week, a reading from the liturgical calendar. God through David knew that we would need to be reminded of our days in exile. The days we walked in a desert of our own making, winds of self-absorption swirling around our souls, sin directing our feet. At the moment we were redeemed by the Master, we knew a joy at being found, at being led from the desert but our Self was not willing to give in that easy. We often tread back out to the desert, sin a dangerous beast lurking in the shadows.

We must remind ourselves not just this week but every week that we are being led back home. We must allow our mouths to be filled with laughter and allow songs of joy to come from our tongues. When we observe that the Lord has done great things for us and know it, truly believe it in our deepest soul, we want others to know it as well. We will love and our steps will follow a new path.

Our anticipation looks forward to the entry of Pure Love into our world. He came for you and me, and He came for our neighbors. His love is our love and our love needs to be our neighbor’s. Help someone else find their way out of the desert and do it in love.

 

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Advent Benediction : The Blessing of Love

imageBlessed is the name of the Lord,

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

He alone is your blessing,

He alone is worthy of receiving your blessing,

He alone blesses you.

 

Blessed is the one who watches and waits,

for the Son, sent of the Father, followed by the Holy Spirit.

He alone is our light.

He alone is our salvation.

Be blessed as you wait the night of His arrival.

 

Blessed is the one who loves,

the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

May God bless you with love,

to give Love as He has,

to be Love as He is,

to know Love as He does.

 

Blessed is the one who blesses.

Blessed is the one who waits.

Blessed is the one who loves.

May you be counted as blessed.

Amen.

 

 

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Day Twelve in the School of Prayer : Have Faith!

WithChristInPrayer

“Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. “I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea, and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him.’  (Mark 11:22-23)

The last lesson of the Master taught us to believe as though we had already received the answer to our prayers, infusing our petitions with a fresh urgency and strength. Belief or trust in the response is predicated on something. It is not our natural attitude toward anything as adults and with ‘things unseen’, it becomes an even greater challenge. Jesus points our belief to its foundation in this lesson. Faith in God is the basis for our belief.

The Lord points us to the God who created all, permeates all, and who knows all in and out of our hearts. On the basis of what we know to be true about God and His consistency in upholding and delivering all He has ever promised we can place our faith. As our tenure as a friend of God lengthens He becomes more visible to us. We know His works in our lives and in the historical lives of others. We make connections between what His Word has told us and what we experience. Faith becomes more real and gradually solidified. Our faith is the core of our belief.

In this faith we pray. We approach the throne with our petitions and a mature trust. We yield and mountains move.

First Sunday in Advent 2009 ~ Watching

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“‘The days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will fulfill the gracious promised I made to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah.

‘In those days and at that time I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line;

he will do what is just and right the land.

In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety.

This is the name by which it will be called: The Lord Our Righteousness.’  (Jer 33:14-16)

On our first Sunday of Advent, we watch and wait in anticipation of the fulfillment of the promise. Our perspective however, is much different than that of the exiles. Imagine being far, far from home with only this promise to hang on to. When the Lord says that the ‘days are coming’, you don’t know if it will be tomorrow, four weeks, or forty years. You only know that He has been completely faithful to you and your people since you fell under His protective gaze.

Our modern perspective is much different. We know how the promise has been kept and we live in the danger of taking that for granted. Our anticipation is muddied, our vision of eternity filtered through a thick San Fernando haze. The Advent season can become just another tradition in which we ‘remember’ historical acts but fail to apply it to our lives. We can restore the joy and the quickening that comes with anticipation. We can restore the memory and the life of faith that comes with a Kingdom that has come, but not yet.

Let us lift ourselves out of the busyness and the stresses that the culture has inflicted on this season and aim our sight into eternity. We can rediscover our purpose and anticipate its completion. We can separate ourselves from the worry and strife of daily life and look forward into a new heavens and new earth. The Messiah promise has been kept. The promise of new life is yet to come. Celebrate both.

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An Advent Benediction of Anticipation

image May you be blessed with an eternal perspective.

To look in anticipation for the first glimmers of hope off on the horizon.

 

May God the Father be your foundation.

May you be assured that his promises are sure and His head is steady,

know that the rays are sourced in Him.

 

May the Lord Jesus be your promise.

May His life be your life, His sacrifice your sacrifice,

His love your love.

 

May the Holy Spirit be your guide.

May He quicken your heart and sharpen your eyes to know your way,

May He point your day after day to the coming light.

 

Look to the horizon and look at your feet.

God’s blessing is here now and yet still to come.

 

Amen.

 

Image by Chris Gin

Day 11 in the School of Prayer: Believe It!

WithChristInPrayer

“I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” Mark 11:23-24

“Whatever you ask.” Does our faith extend this far in our prayers? Has the Holy Spirit so fully enveloped our thought and permeated our soul such that we have absolute confidence that whatever we pray we will receive? Our pulpit speech reveals otherwise. Many Christians have heard the litany of justifications and cautions that seek to soften this proclamation of our Lord. The qualifications of this promise include its expediency and whether or not it is according to God’s will.

As we diminish the expansiveness of ‘whatever’ into smaller and smaller categories the depth of our faith and trust in Christ’s promises follows. We pray small things and hope rather than praying for the world and trusting. We claim to believe the Bible, every word, and yet we look at the promises of the Lord and somehow can’t bring ourselves to fully believe them.

Our prayers must emanate from a belief that we have already received what we ask. This is a demonstration of complete confidence in the promise of God. Though a delay may occur in reality before the event of receipt, your assurance that what God promises He does completes the prayer. In this mindset we find how little we have availed ourselves of this privilege, how small our faith has become, how much disbelief has crept into our hearts.

Trust, pray, believe!

I Am Thankful

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When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” (Mark 5:27-28)

Today across America, families will gather together and prompt one another to announce what they are grateful for. Many will include in their schedules their family members and perhaps some friends among the other milestones they voice. I too am grateful beyond words for my loving wife and best friend (one in the same) and my fabulous son, now grown into a good man. There is one thing that supersedes them but does not diminish them in any way. One thing we all share as a family and that is the privilege of being even in the vicinity of Christ.

There are many times when I am unable to be face to face with my Lord but to know that His power is so great that just a glancing brush against the hem of His garment can heal brings peace. To know that if the best I can muster is to graze my fingers over the trailing cloth and healing will be available is knowledge to be thankful for. And treasured. And shared. My hope is that all of you are able to know this same thankfulness and, if you don’t, you feel free to ask me about it. It’s not to be missed.

Image by cabezalana

Get Committed

Bishop Thomas Tobin on Sunday said he made the request because of the Democratic lawmaker’s support for abortion rights. The news prompted debate among Catholics around the country and within the bishop’s flock in the nation’s most Catholic state about whether it was right for Tobin to publicly shame Kennedy for breaking with the church on what its leaders consider a paramount moral issue.

Angel Madera, 20, a Marine visiting his home in Providence for Thanksgiving, said before attending Sunday evening Mass that Tobin was wrong to assail Kennedy’s faith.

"If they believe they’re a true Catholic, who’s to say that they’re not?" he said. From Foxnews.com

Well, Angel, God determines who is a Christian and who is not. Since God has proclaimed His human creations to be very good and He participated in the creation of that life from its first moment in the womb I imagine He gets to make the final determination.

The problem here is not the postmodern-no-fixed-point-of-truth philosophy but that we in the Church often fail to take a stand on matters of holiness. Whether Catholic or Protestant, there should be a unanimity of thought and practice regarding abortion; it simply cannot be condoned by any true Christian. Those within the Church who feel that they can sidestep this issue while keeping the others has placed one foot on ice in your Sunday shoes. Valuing life begins at the second that it becomes so.

In Evangelical pastoral circles, the Bishop’s firm stand should cause us to consider how tolerant we have become of other sin within our churches. We should ask ourselves how much the prevailing culture has wormed its way into our churches and made tolerance our driving principle rather than holiness. Confronting sin has gotten a bad rap as we fear being caricatured as foaming at the mouth Fundamentalists. We’re afraid to call sin sin and teach and preach holiness. We’re afraid to take a stand.

Whether you believe Catholic theology or not, you should respect the Bishop’s stand when it comes to profaning the elements of God and what they stand for. There is always a gnawing fear in the back of the pastor’s mind that the congregation will turn on him if he brings holiness to the altar and asks those who truly believe to kneel and allows others to step away. The greater fear should be judgment morning when he is asked why he didn’t care for the flock entrusted to him.