Some Reflections Of Praying For Justice In A Contemplative Conundrum
How do I pray contemplatively the enormous structural implications of our current economic and political realities? I want to be hopeful and resist cynicism. I want to be trusting and not be filled with fear about the economically driven political policies and decisions that are becoming almost hard-wired into the system. I want to walk with you, my Love.
How do I pray contemplatively from my heart and with my actions as I watch the present unfolding of our world?
Psalm 62:8, “O my people, trust in God at all times. Pour out your heart to the Lord, for God is our refuge.”
OK then Loving One, let me pour out my heart to you.
Some Reflections Of Praying For Justice In A Contemplative Conundrum
How do I pray contemplatively the enormous structural implications of our current economic and political realities? I want to be hopeful and resist cynicism. I want to be trusting and not be filled with fear about the economically driven political policies and decisions that are becoming almost hard-wired into the system. I want to walk with you, my Love.
How do I pray contemplatively from my heart and with my actions as I watch the present unfolding of our world?
Psalm 62:8, “O my people, trust in God at all times. Pour out your heart to the Lord, for God is our refuge.”
OK then Loving One, let me pour out my heart to you.
Continuing to expect Jesus’ healing here and now is often harder than writing it off as unrealistic or something to be awaited on the other side of death. Everywhere I travel lately I meet people and communities crippled by disappointment.
A man in Iceland prayed for days that his sister would come back to life after a drug overdose. A pastor of a church in the UK died of cancer in spite of massive prayer efforts. A close friend’s Pakistani Christian friend who advocated for minorities was gunned down in Islamabad in March. I myself have been discouraged by the slew of revenge killings in a Honduran community dear to my heart—and now by a close friend’s decline in a long prayer-bathed battle against cancer. What disappoints do you have, small or big?
“How many of you have been disappointed by God?” I asked a group of inmates back in July. Many were honest enough to admit frustrations at God not apparently answering prayers: their girl friends’ refusal to turn away from drug habits or the courts denials of their requests to be admitted into drug court rather than going straight to serve long prison sentences. Others were afraid to admit their disappointments—especially at a time when they really need God’s help. Many assume that being honest with God might get you on God’s bad side.
In recent days I have been thinking about our dialogues with God and how we weigh them. I started noticing that when the prayer conversation alternates: God, then Brad, then God, then Brad, and son on, I was diligent to test what God is allegedly saying. I test to see whether the voice of God is really God or not God. I check that voice according to the three-legged stool of the Word, the Body and the Spirit, as recommended in Can You Hear Me? Tuning in to the God who Speaks.
But I neglected to test MY voice. And why should I? After
all, it’s my own voice, isn’t it? Or is it? But when I began to categorize the
themes that came under the umbrella of ‘my voice,’ I noticed something. On the
one hand, there was the voice that agrees with and responds to God in faith. We
could call that the voice of my ‘true heart,’ or the voice of the ‘new
creation,’ or the ‘new me.’
On the other hand, there are these other voices that I
assumed were my own as well: The voice of condemnation (beating myself up) that
would then trigger the voice of self-pity (feeling sorry for myself), and the
voices of shame, self-hatred, fear, worry, anger, and so on. In my head, I
would hear and say, ‘I am afraid; I am angry; I don’t like myself; I’m not
worthy,’ etc. Perhaps you know those voices as well.
My friend, Kevin Miller, spoke at church last Sunday. He shared about some of the joys and sorrows of being a movie screenwriter. I laughed as I heard about his encounters with some famous characters: shaking Chuck Norris' hand, getting eye-contact with the pope, duking it out with Ben Stein, and getting sued by Yoko Ono. But when he shared from the heart about how a series of deep disappointments can lead to a sense of broken trust with God, I sobered up quickly. He was preaching right to my sadness.
In my disappointment, I know that I lost confidence in God's way of running this buggered up world and at times, took it upon myself to take his place--with disastrous effects. I have seen my capacity to fail others miserably and know the hellish pride of self-loathing. It's easy for me to get stuck there, because that place opposes the very core of God's message. Kev related how our old friend, Tyler, had challenged him to stop and to just spend time "soaking" in worship and just listening to God. Sounds simple, but the resistance to engage that way was itself instructive. He recommended sitting quietly and listening to Kim Walker's "Oh How He Loves Us" ... repeatedly, until a message came through.
As the apostolic / prophetic movement has
become increasingly bizarre, many who were told to simply bless everything are
now deeply disillusioned. In these days when renewal meetings, alleged
outpourings and flamboyant leaders have reached a point of crisis, it is
tempting to throw up our hands, become cynical and opt to retreat to a safer,
saner spirituality. And yet we know in our hearts that we can't go back to a
Christian faith without the presence, power and voice of God. Neither dead
orthodoxy nor practical deism can provide a harbour for us. Some are simply
walking away from the faith altogether. Is that really our only option? How do
we stay open to the Spirit? How do we restore prophetic purity? How can we
continue to engage in authentic experiences with God without becoming wacky?
What if we were to recalibrate our faith practice and renew prophetic purity?
I’ve felt compelled to preach
lately on a story in the gospels that I’ve always disliked and wished I
could delete from the Bible. I’ve called it a toxic text in that it
seems to depict Jesus as exclusive, unfair, even mean. Now I’m finding
this text extremely challenging and even inspiring.
In Matthew 15:21-18 a Canaanite woman comes to Jesus desperate for
help for her daughter, who is “cruelly” demonized. Jesus ignores her,
rejects her and humiliates her by referring to her as a dog, and then
finally relents and delivers her daughter. What is happening in this
story? What does it mean for us?
The Syrophonecian woman approaches Jesus desperate for
breakthrough. Not a Jew herself, she “comes out” of her region, leaving
her allegiances and securities to enter into Jesus’ Jewish world. She
exercises exemplary prayer protocol. She cries out, and the text uses
the same language as Exodus, where Israelite slaves cry out to God (Ex
3:9). She addresses Jesus by the Greek equivalent of the proper name
for Israel’s God, YHWH, Kurios. “Have mercy on me Oh Lord!” She
identifies Jesus as “Son of David,” a title that identifies him as
Israel’s Messiah.
For those who haven't heard yet, we made quite an important and
wonderful announcement at Fresh Wind on Sunday, Sept. 15. For those who only have a
moment, if you just skim down to the bold letters below, you'll get the basic
idea. Let me begin by sharing a visitation that I experienced the
night before the announcement that finally gave me some perspective on it.
I came before the Lord in prayer and engaged with something he had
been speaking to me through the writings of Hans Urs Von Baltasar. I
sensed him say, 'Gaze on me and I will gaze on
you. I will see you and see through you and into every part of you. I will
open up every door and every drawer of your soul and I will evaluate you. I will
judge you thoroughly, even where you would not dare judge yourself. I
will see and know what you cannot even see and know. And I will render
my verdict of mercy, my sentence of kindness, and my gaze will be
adoration.'
“I pass the test
… I will diminish, and go into
the West, and remain Galadriel”
(Lord of the Rings, II.7, p.357).
“The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends
the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the
bridegroom's voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. He must become greater; I must become less”
(John the Baptist, Jn 3:29f).
I think the most ironic phrase in the
English language is, “I was humbled.” When we use it, we might as well say, “I
felt really proud.” But I get it. I was humbled recently to have lunch with pastor
and author, Vern Heidebrecht. I.e. I felt proud
to be invited into his company. In fact, I was
actually humbled in that I had that “I’m-not-worthy” feeling to have someone I
consider as a seasoned man of God treat me so graciously. And this will be part
of my point in this article.
The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends
the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the
bridegroom's voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. He must become greater; I must become less. Jn
3:29f
One of the great difficulties for truly prophetic people is
when they hear from the Lord and are called to deliver a message, if the church
leadership doesn't receive the word or respond in the way that the prophet sees
fit. In those moments, it can feel like the church is rejecting the word,
rejecting the prophet and rejecting the Lord's will. And this may even be true.
There’s something about this
bit of proverbial wisdom that sounds so right, so refreshing, so healing. To
those who’ve shaken free of the restraints of religious moralism or experienced
the bankruptcy of rationalism, the rediscovery of one’s heart is a thrilling
find indeed. To uncover this precious gift from beneath a thousand layers of
emotional limestone is, in a deep way, to be born again. And what a wonderful
surprise to find out that perhaps the human heart is, at its core, not some
monster to be destroyed, but a pearl to be reclaimed and cherished.
And so we hear this anthem,
this slogan—Follow your heart!—from
the impassioned lips of many an anointed guru or [self-]appointed prophet these
days.Yet something about this
popular phrase has given me pause.
I'm frequently asked what I've been reading lately and what books might be worth curling up with by the fireplace. As I manage my mental health through the trials of winter drizzle, seven books came to the fore. Some made my heart warm, others made my blood boil, all of them made me think and feel in important ways. The following are my very brief reflections (and aha! moments) on:
Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict XVI The Shack by William Young The Evangelical Universalist by Gregory MacDonald God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens God at War by Gregory Boyd The God of Intimacy and Action by Tony Campolo and Mary Albert Darling Covenant of Peace by Willard Swartley
Many of the newsletters and articles that I’ve written
throughout 2007 have been a repetitive reminder to the church that these days
call for an upgrade in our discernment. I’m convinced that we must vigorously
test the spirits (1 John 4:1-4) to see whether their messages originate in God.
We do this both to guard ourselves from swallowing that which is toxic AND to
avoid dismissing that which is essential. Sifting for truth enables us to watch
for and watch out: we want all that
God has for us—we want only what God
has for us.
That being said, one of my intercessors alerted me to the
distinction between two types of discerning watchers. In prayer, she was shown the
vast difference between those whom God has appointed as “watchmen” and those
who’ve appointed themselves as “watchdogs.”
In recent years, I’ve had the joy of pastoring many fine
prophets, some highly gifted, some deeply wounded, and some with a potent
combination of gifts and grief. I’ve know the sorrow of watching broken prophets
decline into cynicism and the joy of walking cynics forward into their true
calling as prophets. In some ways, cynics and prophets are exactly opposite; in
other ways, there are virtually identical. Maybe they are the flesh and spirit
manifestation of the same gift.
I was having one of those wonderful father
moments chatting with my son at bed time when I asked him if there was anything
that he would like to pray about. His
answer startled me in its raw honesty. He asked, “Why should I pray when God
never answers my prayers?” This comment brought to mind many faces of others
who have expressed similar disappointment.
When people talk to me about disappointment
in their prayer lives, I might ask them to also describe the God to whom they
pray. Over the last few years as I have listened to people praying and to their
disappointment in prayer, I have come to wonder if they need to rethink their
theology concerning the god to whom they pray. Is the God to whom they are
praying in fact the God that has revealed himself in Scripture? Just because someone says they pray to god
does not necessarily mean they are praying to the God of Scripture.
Society is geared to respond to sound. To pick up cues for their entry into conversation, often layering personal comments over those of a companion. Interrupting one another and oneself. Call waiting, the modern brother of a kid tugging at his mom’s sleeve while she chats with a neighbour on the phone.
CD’s can be purchased not just of music but of background noise. Traffic, nature, the general bustle of life provides a sound track for our existence.
In this busy atmosphere silence gets little respect. It is labelled awkward, icy or dead. The song “Sound of Silence” by Simon and Garfunkel highlights themes of isolation, lack of communication and lack of intimacy. Likewise when we approach God and hear silence it is often misconstrued as getting a celestial cold shoulder.
I
was meditating on perceptions about God's voice that float around out there. To
some, their experience of the prophetic message has been harsh, judgemental,
and condemning. They relate strongly to wrath-of-God texts and visualize
roaring, hairy prophets and flying spittle. Indeed, I’ve run into many a
bleeding lamb who suffered abuse at the rod of messengers purporting to speak
for God.
Others
encounter a version of God's voice that seems too nice, continually evoking
God’s love in syrupy forms that seem as banal as a “Precious Moments” figurine
(and just as apt to sit dusty on a shelf). I received two emails this week that
challenged me on that, warning me against hearing and teaching a sugar-coated version
of Christ as we engage in “listening prayer.” As I’ve tried to discern the real
issue in the company of some wise counsellors, what came was a balanced
acknowledgement that the voice of Christ is both sweet and salty, but neither
bitter nor sour (Rev. 10:10 notwithstanding).
When it comes to discernment, we are and should be like the mysticeti. What are the mysticeti? Some sort of mystical magi? Not at all... that's just the technical name for our friends, the baleen whales. I believe that with those great baleen strainers of theirs, they have the corner on discernment and we might learn from them.
I was thinking about the distinction that’s been drawn between the prophetic gift and the sheep hearing the voice of God
themselves. It seems to me that
Scripture does draw a distinction of sorts, but that we are prone to struggle
over what that is.
I. False distinctions:
A. The
prophets hear and the sheep don’t. When God first pours out the
prophetic spirit
upon a church, there can be the impression that the prophets can hear
God and
the rest cannot. Even though there is now
a recognition that all the sheep can hear, we still occasionally use
exclusive language. I.e. “there was jealousy and resentment because
some could hear and some couldn’t.”
In Hamlin town, long long ago, Nobody was happy, no, no, no Their pretty little town was full of rats! In everything they ate big holes And drank their soup from the big soup bowls And even made their nests in people’s hats
Along came a fellow slim and tall, And said to the man at the city hall, My dear, I think I have a cure. I’ll rid your town of every rat But you have to pay me well for that, And the mayor jumped up and down and cried, why sure…
I would like to give a clarifying word about where I stand personally
on the question of “the prophets.” Some folks believe that my teaching
on "listening prayer" negates any need or place for prophets in the
church today. Occasionally I hear that I've even said, "we don't need
prophets anymore," and so I'd like to share my heart on this particular
question:
When I lead prayer seminars on finding a visual “meeting place” with
God, I often bump into fear that this is a version of "guided imagery"
or “visualisation”--a psychological or New Age technique that can be
spiritually hazardous. How does this differ from meeting Jesus in some
internal picture? Have we crossed a line into enemy territory? Or have
we surrendered ground that was created for us and belongs to us?
One of the features
that first drew me into the late 20th century renewal movement was
my hunger and thirst to be “touched” by the presence of God. Feeling dry and empty, I began to earnestly
seek after an experience of the living presence of Christ wherever I caught
wind of it. I found a home with renewal
groups and leaders who expressed this same passion to pursue the “manifest
presence”. Initially, we would bounce
from one conference to the next, hoping to get “zapped” with ever fresh
encounters of the power of God. As we
kept seeking, we found that the Lord was just as likely to gently “soak” us
with his intimacy and rest on us with his peace. His “deeper work” was not always dramatic,
but it was certainly precious. I
embraced this journey wholeheartedly and always will.
2 Samuel 22:20 (NIV)
He brought me out into a spacious place;
He rescued me because he delighted in me.
The picture I see when imagining the spacious place is of a beautiful
mountain meadow. It stretches as far as the eye can see with beautiful
vistas of spacious places beyond the one I find myself in. Mountain
peaks and valley depths both visible from this vantage, remain at a
distance. The spacious place is neither a lofty height nor a dreary
depth. It is a wide-open field, a safe place (2 Sam 22:20 MSG), a place
of comfort, a place without restriction (Job 36:16 NIV).
I find myself in the jaws of distress and danger once again. I have
left the spacious place with all its benefits and blessings, and have
traded it for the precarious jaws of distress. But I hear God calling,
wooing me from that dangerous place to the table that is in the
spacious place. (Job 36:16)
I turn from my distress and I follow the Good Shepherd back to the wide
open spaces of safety. There in the midst of freedom is the table. I
sit down, still stinging from the wounds the jaws of distress
inflicted, and I survey the table. All those same wonderful things are
still in abundance on the table only I’ve lost my appetite in the midst
of what I’ve just gone through. So while the blessings on this table
are exactly what I need, I’m not able to partake, I can’t seem to
consume the very things I need the most.
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