It's Prayer not Masturbation

I have seen and heard quite a few prayers in my time, as short as that may be, prayers from Pastors as well as members, Adults as well as children, believers as well as non-believers but the most shocking type of them all Is one type that I experienced in full force here and it made me drastically rethink my understanding of Prayer. But what brought this on? Well I’m glad you asked.

This week we have been having a bit of a Conference at LPC (Lefkosa Protestant Church) and one of the topics being tackled by one of the speakers is Prayer. A lot of this has been eye opening stuff, as all good preaching must be. In my thinking over what I have learned from all of this I thought upon the prayers I have heard and one in particular hit me. You see this one time I was in the presence of a guy who was praying, he wasn’t going anywhere and neither was I so he got started while I was doing my own thing.

He started off by playing what could be called ‘worship music’ which John MacArthur would call 7/11 music. Seven words repeated eleven times then repeat the cycle. He literally worked himself into a frenzy that had him crying apologising to God for his frailties and failings. He was in such a state it was as though he forgot I was also there or even that he was where he was, it was a private place by the way not out in the street.

My problem with all this was not him crying, I am all for brokenness before the lord though not all the time after all there is a time for everything. My problem was not in him doing all that while I was around or him raising his voice, considering the circumstances such actions were not that far-fetched. My problem was in the need to work himself into a frenzy in order to pray, almost as though you need to be in a specific zone to feel as though your prayer is having any effect. My problem was the need he felt to force himself into a feeling that he was not having.

I see prayer as a conversation between a believer and God and whether the prayer is happening in public or in private it must be remembered that at the end of the day it is the Christian talking to God. I don’t know about you but when I am having a conversation with some other person I am not always ‘hubbly bubbly’ nor am I always broken. I could be one of those or any in between but when I go into that conversation I do not go in pretending to be/feel what I am not after all the listener prizes sincerity. This applies even more in prayer, God wants us to be sincere in our prayer not faking something we do not feel.

There are times when I do not feel like praying, there are times when I feel tired, frustrated even hungry. Sincerity with God is bringing all this before him and not pretending to be something I am not. Sincerity is very important because God knows our hearts after all so we are fooling no one. All attempts at faking a feeling are like trying to water a lawn behind a brick wall by pouring water onto the wall, completely and utterly pointless.

But why the comparison to masturbation? Isn’t that more crass a comparison than is needed. No, in fact I think it rarely comes any closer to the truth. Masturbation is working one’s self into a frenzy or a feeling of sexual arousal without the actual partner, in short it is a profanity of the God given act of sex. It is the individual forcing a situation that does not actually exist in order to feel a closer connection or feeling but at the end of the day there is no satisfaction from that because no proper satisfaction can be gotten from the profane.

Prayer is not to be treated as such. It must be something that we come to honestly, with what we have, baggage and all. God gives us the opportunity and the avenue through which we can go to him and pour out our hearts to him because he is the only one who can truly understand what we are going through. What benefit is it to us if we go in faking what is actually going on with us. Who are we fooling anyway, God is not fooled. If I can make one more conjecture and this one is more personal in nature. Not all poor use or abuse of prayer involves working one’s self into a frenzy, the other type is the need to hide what we are truly feeling from God. The thought that we should not pray since we are not in the mood, or tired, or feel utterly sinful.

The best time to pray is now. Whatever situation you may be in you need God and the need for God means that you must pray, whether you feel up to it or not. And if there is one thing that I know and often forget, much like a lot of us, it is when we feel far from grace that grace comes and wraps its arms around us and in that moment there is very little that can surpass that knowledge

Killed By Their Dreams

 

I was reading Joseph’s story, you know the one in the bible, the guy who was his father’s favorite and got sold by his brothers for being a dreamer and a tattle tale, yeah that guy. It’s a bit unfair to call it a story because the idea of a story is something that did not happen when this one actually did, let’s call it a narrative. So as I was reading the narrative of Joseph I came to the part where he is in prison falsely accused of sleeping with Potiphar’s wife. Anyhoo so Joseph is in prison falsely accused and soon finds favor in the eyes of the chief jailer and is given a role in the prison. It was though this role that he meets the two guys who this is all about.

 

The baker is almost always bald in pictures, this has always puzzled me

 

Enter Pharaoh’s Chief Baker and Cup Bearer, I’d like to call the first guy the Baker in Chief, it sounds a little more promising. These guys had pretty good jobs, one of them had a pretty sweet gig in my opinion, the cup bearer. He would go everywhere with the Pharaoh and make sure Pharaoh had a cup in his hand when he got parched, turns out it was a pretty high risk job because the guy was in prison as a result of the job. So both of these guys get the sack around the same period of time and probably stuck together because of their similar backgrounds. They probably stood out like sore thumbs among the general population.

So Joseph would probably meet up with them while doing his rounds and this one time he is walking passed and they are more sulky than usual, he asks what’s wrong, him being the helpful guy that he was and they open fourth like a fountain of words about their dreams. He helps them out with his interpretation, strictly speaking it was God’s, and they eventually come to pass, as all of God’s degrees do. The reason you my one reader are here is the ‘why’ of it all.

As you may know the narrative the Baker was killed and the cup bearer was restored. Logically speaking this is a stupid move. You kill of the guy who is more skilled, probably has more traction with the people in his field and has the more useful task, after all bread and all baked goods should be more essential than wine and even more than a guy whose very job is to hold a glass before it is taken from him. The baker was more useful than the cup bearer.

Which ever way you think about it, food trumps wine

These two guys had sucky lives after their demotion to prison. Serving a Pharaoh who sounds bipolar to me must not have been a walk in the park. The man would hire, fire, kill or pardon at a whim. So whereas their lives at this point sucked there was hope, small, but there was hope. Then came the dreams. I’m sure they struggled to think of the dream as a mere dream or something that should be taken seriously. I can personally imagine them meeting each other on the day post having the dreams and both would be absent minded, Around noon they would discover that the other guy was not looking spry either at which point they would spend the rest of the day denying anything was wrong. Only to confess the real deal to the other guy the next day. I figure the baker caved first, he strikes me as the softy.

Now each would have not just his own sucky dream to figure out but his friend’s too. SO when Joseph walked in with his solution things must have looked up a bit. Things changed very fast after Joseph told them the meaning of their dreams. You can imagine how tricky it was for the cup bearer, hoping that the prediction was true yet trying to convince his friend it was not. It must have been a weird wait. Come the day Joseph’s interpretation proved to be right. One was exalted and the other was demoted. Where am I getting with this? Well I’m glad you asked.

God’s choosing of who and what he wills is not based off of the human view of what is important. It is based off of what he wills, period. And what he wills always comes to pass. We all have our hopes and dreams and the world encourages us to dream “shoot for the stars”, they say. “Nothing can hold you back” uh…. Wrong. God owns and controls it all. Dream as you might there is a serious flaw in all you plan on doing if you do not make him paramount because at the end of the day he is paramount. It is he who says to this happen and it does or to the other do not happen and it does not, whether we think something is to our good and benefit or not.

Uhhhh... WRONG! Completely wrong!

It is the way of the sinful nature to have you think that you are the main determining factor in the way of your life but everything in the world is telling you contrary. You cannot change time, make it move fast or slow. You cant even determine all that you will do with your time, no one is that free, a lot of your movements are determined for you by people who have their moves determined for them. The student has his movement determined by the lecturers, who have their movement determined by some sort of chancellor, who has his movement determined by an owner of the institution, who have their moves determined by a government who have their moves determined by the people. It’s an endless cycle of a lack of power and control.

The illusion of control is sold at every corner by the world yet disproved by the world itself. God on the other hand is the determining factor of all. Knowing that God controls it all is only step one unfortunately. The main step is submitting to this and living with this, in the words of the song ‘At The Foot of The Cross’, forever in your view.

The Awesome Fact with the Terrible Derivative

There are a lot of things that have shocked me in my twenty odd years on planet earth, there are a number still that have appalled me and yet the number that have done both are not so many. The topic of this “speech” is one of the few. It is something that is religious in nature so if you are not religious, I highly recommend you keep on reading and if you are religious I highly recommend you keep on reading. Basically just keep on reading. Back to topic, this awesome fact is one that has been taken to unreasonable extremes by the Charismatic denomination. A lot of you are familiar with it, it goes kind of like this: Some man or woman starts speaking about some topic that no one knows, a lot of the time not even the person who is speaking then they get to a point were in order to justify wanting the unreasonable, unrealistic and often things that would do them no good they talk about how their father, God, is the richest there ever was and will be and how he will give them stuff because they are his children. I do not doubt there is truth in the statement, however I would like to point out the folly in an unnecessarily large amount of thinking on that.

God is the father of all Christians, not Christians by religion but those who are Christians by faith, that is those who have come to understand that they are sinful and that their only hope of any sensible life both in this life and the one after is to put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ, who came to die on the cross for their sins and is now in heaven interceding on their behalf. That is the core of the Christian faith and if you notice we, as humans, are only involved at one level and that is the believing and putting our faith part, for those who zoned out. My point is that the Christian life is God centered and not man centered and this is seen even in the core of it. Now back to him being our Father, it has to be noted that he was not always our father for we are sinful and he cannot stand sin. So something had to be done in order to bring us who were utterly sinful and filthy to him who is holy and precious. When it was done we were then adopted. Now to look at from the point of view of the adopted, which we all should. Why would the king of glory and he who has it all even want us/you/me as his children/child? Its borderline ridiculous. Having been in a family that has had a number of people brought in I know that it takes a while to settle and a frequent question that is asked is “will I ever be loved as much as the true children?” or even “what am I really doing here, I don’t belong” Such questions come because of a realization of unworthiness and yet there we are in the position of favor. One question that comes up in the mind of the ungrateful and the foolish is “how can I milk this of all its got?” and statements like “now that this man is my father I can get anything that I want”. I do know that some of those thoughts come up every once in a while and it is expected but the main thought should not be that of milking the rich man of all his got but an appreciation that though I come from the lowest of the low he still calls me child.

Where God found us is a lot worse than this. Try this to the power infinity, that's still not close enough

The reason why I am appalled by such a reaction to the awesome fact is that not only does it lead a number of people down the wrong route in terms of their thinking pattern, which has the potential to damage a lifetime of service, but it leads to a man centered view of Christianity which is the downfall of so great a thing. The moment we make ourselves the center of our relationship with God we damage and taint it. Everything that has man at its center is dying, everything. If we always think of life as a what can I get from this all or how does this benefit me, or God will give me this much money or this many friends or whatever it is that you most desire apart from him you use God as the means to an end and not the end in himself which is one of the biggest insults you can ever throw at him. You tell him that Yes, you are my father, and yes, you picked me up when I was nothing and deserved nothing but I want you to get me this and that because you can do it and that will make me happy. How selfish of you to displease he who gave so much for you. And there you are talking about how you want a big car and you deserve it because God is your father. Or how you deserve to be the top of your class because God is your father or how you deserve a certain job and will get it because God is your father. You selfish, ungrateful child. I bet if you heard a child talking like that you would smack him/her so hard they would have their facial structure changed, I think I would.

Such thinking is folly and folly is the biggest characteristic of a what?? You guessed right

I have said a lot and at times have digressed but I will end with this. We spend so much time looking at what will get from God when God does not promise us everything first he promises us himself and says he is enough, why can’t we take that? I am not saying do not reach to be the best and have the best but what I am saying is all that is secondary because the time will come when tittle and riches will be no more and all that will remain is you naked before a holy God, then What? Where will your life’s ambitions that were aside from him be? If we look through the bible at a number of people who God used in a mighty way, there are more who did great things for him  who relied and saw in him all that they wanted and needed than those who served him and where painfully rich or popular. There are more petitions of the “more of you God” than the “more of the stuff you can give me God” in the entire bible. Lastly I will say this, God is not his stuff, God is God. The sooner you learn that the better and if you want to learn that to its fullest or get as close as you possible can here are two ways for you to do it. One pick your bible up from wherever you leave it when you are busy doing unnecessary things and read it, you won’t believe how much it can speak. Secondly and equally as important talk to God in prayer, who else better to tell you how awesome he is than God himself. And if you don’t know how to pray look at the first point, you will find great tips on how to get started there.