Boldly asking God for my needs

At the moment our church is doing the New Zealand Bible Society's Six Month Bible Reading Challenge, reading through the New Testament section of the Bible over the course of six months.  At the moment I'm most of the way through Mark, the second book within the New Testament.

As I've been reading, I've been struck by how often Jesus seems to commend people for boldly asking them for what they need.  The first time I noticed it was this:

but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him [Jesus], and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”  Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

 Mark 7:25-30, NRSV

I'm familiar with this story but have always found it a bit distasteful, to be honest.  I don't like the way Jesus refuses to help the woman because of her ethnicity or that, in framing his refusal, he compares her to a dog.  Some people argue that Jesus only did that because he knew it would prompt her to answer in this way.  He pretended to hold the views common to those around him in order to allow the case to be made that his 'good news' wasn't just for the Jews but also for the Gentiles.  I haven't worked this properly through for myself, but I do hope they're right!

Regardless, what impressed me this time was what Jesus' response.  For saying that...  The great teacher has come, a 'nobody' woman has asked for his help and he's said no.  But the woman won't leave it at that and boldy pushes back against his 'no'.  For saying that, Jesus gives her what she wants.

That's just not how I've been taught to approach God.  I've been taught to ask for what I want, yes, but then to accept whatever answer he gives.  But here Jesus commends bold and shameless asking - asking that wouldn't accept a simple 'no'.

Ideas that guide how we live

Over the years we've come up with a bunch of key concepts that we refer to whenever we make decisions.  We've found it really helpful to have worked these through, as that means we can often easily see what the right thing to do is in a given situation.  I'd like to share them here :-)

In the Biblical book of Matthew, we read of this exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees (religious teachers):

one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”  He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’  This is the greatest and first commandment.  And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Matthew 22:35-40

We often refer to these two commandments and our 'key ideas' flow from them.

We also refer frequently to another idea: the Kingdom of God.  This is something Jesus refers to frequently: the world in which he is King and where things are run on God's lines.  We believe that God calls us to join him in redeeming the world and creating 'islands' of that Kingdom in the here and now.  So, running through many of the ideas we reference day to day, is the idea of doing our bit in building that different world.  We believe you get the world that we all, collectively, build; and we want to make that a Kingdom of God world!

So, here are our 'key ideas', as they currently stand!  It's kind of long, so I start with just the ideas themselves, then flesh them out in detail below.

Reflections on the book of Job

Recently, I've really enjoyed the Thomas Burns Memorial Lectures 2016 from Otago University School of Theology.  This year they were given by Professor Choon-Leong Seow, a scholar of the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East with a delightful Singaporean accent.  He's been lecturing on the Old Testament Biblical book of Job (pronounced to rhyme with 'robe'), through which he's introduced me to a number of ideas that have furthered my thinking on what the Bible is.

I found lectures one, two and four particularly helpful: if you can spare four hours or so, I highly recommend them.  And if you don't, here's what I've taken from the series :-)

Resting to love

During Lent I'm doing the daily reflection I've used previously (and which you can find at the bottom of this post).  In recent days it's given me a new commitment to take good rests during the day.  I've realised that, if I don't rest, it's harder for me to hear from God, harder for me to reflect with Him throughout my day, and harder for me to love my neighbour.

I've heard people say that the command to 'love your neighbour as yourself' contains an implicit command to love yourself.  I've always been uncomfortable with that: it's felt like an interpretation that takes the sting out of a really challenging call.*  But, in the last few days, I've realised (again?) that, if I don't take at least basic care of myself, I'm less patient with people, less humble in my interactions, less generous etc.

* There's a wee video here of me reflecting on this call a few years ago.

So now I'm approaching my days with a renewed commitment to:

• my 5 daily 'special rests' (where I do absolutely nothing - not even staring out the window);
• avoiding playing Solitaire in my 'down times' (unless I need to to avoid doing more tiring things like surfing the internet);
• to listening to my body and slowing down or going back to bed earlier than scheduled if that's what it feels like I need.

Today's gone well :-)  Let's see about tomorrow!

I don't believe in Bible verses

Earlier this week, Martin and I came across this in our morning reading:

²² The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,

    his mercies never come to an end;
²³ they are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.

I know these words as part of a popular hymn/song: one that I have always taken as affirming that things will generally go well for me because of God's love for me.  And yet look at where they show up: in the middle of one of Jeremiahs' laments following the destruction of Jerusalem.

Located there, those words are so very powerful.  Jeremiah is trusting in God's steadfast love, mercy and faithfulness in the midst of destruction.

That song I know so well certainly contains Bible verses but, by taking them in isolation, it makes them sound as if they say something ever so much safer than the original.

I've come across so many examples like this in recent years and they all make me a bit angry.  I no longer believe in Bible verses.  You can find verses that say more or less anything.  The truth of the Bible is contained in bigger chunks: paragraphs, chapters, books.  Verses are just too small.

Thoughts from Isaiah

Over the last couple of months Martin and I have been making our way through the book of Isaiah in the Bible's Old Testament.  As we've read I've been struck by Isaiah's contemptuous dismissal of idols and of those who put their trust in them.  Idols are described, in essence, as 'gods' in which people put their trust, but which are actually so powerless that their worshippers look after them, rather than the other way around.

Isaiah is talking about literal idol statues: 'gods' that rely on people to make them, to carry them from place to place, to put them down carefully so they don't fall over etc.  Not many 21st century Pakeha worship such gods, yet we still put our trust in things that require us to tend them.  Money is a common one - requiring us to invest a lot of time and effort carefully making it grow so it can later protect us from hard times.  Houses can be this way, too, when they become more than shelter and morph into a repository of 'equity'.  Reading Isaiah this morning I realised I've allowed Martin's income protection insurance become such an idol.  There's an exclusion on the policy for a medical problem he's had in the past.  If by July 2013 he hasn't had the problem again, the exclusion comes off.  I realised that I've become anxious about that deadline: concerned that the problem musn't come back, even wondering if he should go to the doctor (and hence admit to it) if it does.  I realised today that I've been carefully managing the insurance so that I can put my trust in it, rather than just having insurance but putting my actual trust in God.

Our God is quite different from the idols.  He's not just more powerful, He's also more 'willful'.  Take this, for example, from Isaiah 45:

⁹ “Woe to those who quarrel with their Maker,
    those who are nothing but potsherds
    among the potsherds on the ground.
Does the clay say to the potter,
    ‘What are you making?’
Does your work say,
    ‘The potter has no hands’?
¹⁰ Woe to the one who says to a father,
    ‘What have you begotten?’
or to a mother,
    ‘What have you brought to birth?’

We are the clay, God is the potter.  We can't question how he chooses to act - even if He chooses to act, as He is here, through an army who is raping and pillaging their way across the landscape. In a way, Isaiah presents us with a simple choice.  We can put our trust in idols, who might look like they do our bidding but who really don't do anything at all; or we can put our trust in God, who will do what He wants rather than what we want, but who is, at least, all-powerful.

It reminds me of this bit of Psalm 115:

² Why do the nations say,
    “Where is their God?”
³ Our God is in heaven;
    he does whatever pleases him.
⁴ But their idols are silver and gold,
    made by human hands.
⁵ They have mouths, but cannot speak,
    eyes, but cannot see.
⁶ They have ears, but cannot hear,
    noses, but cannot smell.
⁷ They have hands, but cannot feel,
    feet, but cannot walk,
    nor can they utter a sound with their throats.
⁸ Those who make them will be like them,
    and so will all who trust in them.

You can put your trust in the God who does whatever He pleases, or you can be as blind, deaf and immobile as an idol statue - how's that for a choice!

Living the Proverbs

In our Bible reading Martin and I are currently going through the book of Proverbs.  It's a bitty collection of sayings but, when you put them together, the overall message seems to be that the wise person lives a faithful, disciplined and humble life, caring for other people and not seeking either riches or honour.

At the same time, through the season of Lent I'd been doing a daily reflection/self-examination* that includes praying through the list of the 'fruit' that God grows in the lives of those who follow Jesus:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

Galatians 5:22-23, NIV.

Suddenly, something dawned on me. These character traits that God grows in his followers are exactly the kind of character traits you need in order to live the kind of life described in Proverbs.  In other words, God himself actually gives us what we need to live the kind of life he requires of us!  I found that really exciting and encouraging :-)

---

*In case anyone's interested, my Lent reflection was based on two of the exercises from this study from Lyfe in the UK. Most days I spent about 15 minutes going through the following:

Spend some time with God each day, ask him to purify your heart and mind through the power of the Holy Spirit.  Be willing to surrender to God.

You may want to ask him questions such as:
- What words have I used that have hurt others?
- What actions or activities have I engaged in that are unhelpful or block my relationship with you?
- What ‘fruits’ needs to grow in me: characteristics such as love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control?

Holiness grows out of prayers like these.

Looking to tomorrow, take time to consider who or where God might want you to serve.  What opportunities might arise where you can resist being the first, best or most important person?  Are there situations at home, work or in everyday life where you can serve others tomorrow?  Are there times where you can allow others to be first?  Pray for the grace to be able to lay aside pride and take the place of a servant.

 I found it a really helpful and productive process.

Carrying your cross and counting the cost

The more I read the Bible, the more I find in it!

At the moment, Martin and I are making our way through the book of Luke: the second of the four books that tell us about Jesus' life on Earth.  Today's reading was from the end of chapter 14:

 Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you,  saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish

Luke 14:25-30, NIV

This passage contains two ideas that are very familiar to me: "take up your cross" and "count the cost before you take the plunge".  However, as seems to happen depressingly often, it now seems clear that neither of them mean quite what I thought they did.

In the society that Jesus' first hearers lived in, only one group of people went around carrying crosses: condemned prisoners.  When Jesus asked them to take up their crosses, he wasn't asking them to endure hardship, he was asking them to die, or at least knowingly take on that risk.  The earlier sentence actually says it even more clearly.  To put it in my own words, Jesus is saying "if you aren't willing to risk both your own death and that of the people you're responsible for looking after, then you just can't follow me".

Goodness!

As a matter of fact, I found reading these words on this morning to be oddly comforting.  In the last fortnight, our household has felt called by God to do something that carries a small risk of exposing one or all of us to considerable physical harm.  I'm disproportionately likely to be the recipient of any such harm, should such harm come.  This passage affirms my conviction that accepting such risks (and Martin and I allowing each other to accept them) is a normal part of following Jesus.

Once you've grapsed that that's what following Jesus is like, the bits about counting the cost before you start make perfect sense!  However, while I was familiar with the idea of counting the cost, I don't think I'd ever noticed just when you're supposed to do this.  You count it before you start following Jesus at all and not, as I had thought, before you agree to accept each particular risk.

Have you ever been in an evangelistic situation where people have been encouraged to do that?  Encouraged to count the cost, not of rejecting Jesus, but of actually following him?  I don't think I have.  Is that one of the reasons why so many people start following Jesus but then give up - that it was never made clear to them just what following Jesus might entail?  And peversely, would more teenagers and young people be interested in following Jesus if any expression of interest on their part was greeted with an exhortation to consider the potentially life-threatening consequences before making any rash choices?!

Exciting (and disconcerting) stuff, this Bible-reading!

Praying the psalms

This morning, when I was praying about the political crackdown in Syria, I found myself thanking God for crushing the oppressors there.  I was a bit surprised at myself: even asking God to crush oppressors is a relatively new development, and I'm pretty sure that thanking Him for something He hasn't done yet is a first.

I know where both bits of this way of praying have come from, though.  As I've mentioned earlier, I now pray through a list of people and situations most days, and I've also read a psalm a day since near the beginning of this year.  Often I've seen the psalmist pleading that God will bring down or crush those who are oppressing the poor, the weak or the righteous.  More surprisingly to me, the psalmist also frequently thanks God for doing whatever he is currently asking God for - i.e. he is thanking God for doing something God hasn't done yet*.  It seems that these ways of praying have gotten into me and are coming out in my own prayers now too!  Yay :-)


* one example I've read in recent days is Psalm 39

Good news to the poor

Near the middle of the Bible is a collection of 150 'psalms' or poems.  I've never really known what to make of them, but I while back I decided to try and read one each day and see where that took me.

I've recently completed my first cycle through them and finally, just in the last week or two, Ive noticed thing that a great many of them seem to have in common.  Psalm after psalm celebrates or holds onto the notion that the oppressors won't get away with their oppressing forever.  God cares for the poor and downtrodden and one day he will crush their oppressors and set them free.

Good news for the poor, indeed.  But what about for me, a follower of Jesus but also a member of the priveleged elite responsible for most of the oppression these days?

Sobering stuff.

Suffering

This is my response to a comment I got by email after my recent post on prayer.  My friend said:

You say you pray for daily bread for people. I have struggled to understand how God - who loves us more than the sparrows and who promised to provide for all our needs, can let so many many people die of starvation every single day.

Here was my response (unpolished and mostly off-the-cuff with my trademark never-ending sentences) in case anyone else has been wondering similar things.

Those are big questions, and ones that I have thought about a lot since getting sick. Not just in relation to myself, but also as I have realised that someone in my condition in at least 1/3 of the world would die of it because resources are so tight where they live.

My first answer is that God didn't want it to be this way. He made us a perfect world that was 'just right', and his plan was for us to always live in that world that was perfect. However, we/Adam and Eve stuffed it up and now there is all manner of suffering. In the book of Romans, Paul talks about all creation 'groaning', and [my friend's close relative]'s sickness and mine, as well as all those people dying of starvation etc., are all part of creation groaning.

My second answer is that God has bigger priorities than ending suffering in the here and now. Martin and I read a chapter or so of the Bible together every morning and in the last couple of years we've mostly been reading from the Old Testament. In our reading we've been really struck by how different God's perspective on mortal life is from ours. It seems to be terribly hugely important to God that people are in a good relationship to Him, but not hugely important whether they stay alive or not. I guess that makes sense in the context of eternity.

So in the New Testament it says that Jesus' death was the first step towards fixing what was broken in the world, but it won't be 100% right until Jesus comes back to live here permanently and everything is made new again. That hasn't happened yet, and I think the Bible says it won't until everyone on earth has had the chance to hear the gospel (e.g. Matthew 24, Mark 13), although I'm not 100% sure that's what those texts mean. Assuming that is the meaning it then seems that, even though he's completely capable of healing all that suffering, God has decided to limit himself and not do so in the light of the greater good of giving people the opportunity of living with him in eternity. I don't 100% see why fixing what's gone wrong in the world would get in the way of that, but it appears that it does.

And my third and final answer is that God has given us the job of dealing with suffering on earth. We (the Church) are the 'firstfruits' of that new world. As I understand it, one of the things the church exists for is to show people what things will be like in the New Heaven/New Earth so that they are attracted to it and want to be a part of it. We are also Christ's body on Earth, so we have to carry on Jesus' work. In Luke 4, Jesus described his work like this:

¹⁸ "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, ¹⁹ to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." (NIV)

Because we are his body, that's our calling, too. Perhaps one reason why there is so much suffering, so many people dying of starvation, so many people with chronic and terminal illnesses etc. is because the Church isn't doing it's job.

When I pray for 'daily bread' for people, I'm asking that they will have the resources they need to get through the day. That doesn't always happen, but I still ask! Not infrequently, God then asks me to be the means of answering that prayer: I get a strong sense that God wants me to phone someone up, offer that they can stay at our place, take them muffins or whatever. I also ask God to make them aware of him going through the day with them.

Prayer

At our church we have a slot in the service most weeks called 'Journeying with God'.  Anyone who wants can come forward and share something with the congregation at this time.  As I can't actually go to church, occasionally I record a little video to be played at this time.  Here is my latest one:

 

 (I couldn't actually make the video work this time, but I also couldn't figure out how to put up audio on this blog, so this is an audio recording accompanied by a static picture of me sitting where I was when I made the recording.)

In it I share that I've never really prayed much for other people but recently I've realised that I need to, even though doing so doesn't really make sense to me.  As I've prayed I haven't seen it making a difference for the people I pray for but I have seen it make a real difference in me!  It's made me more involved in my community and more open to God prompting me to do things for the people I pray for, and it's reshaped my view of many of the situations I'm praying for in line with the Bible.

God speaks through the Bible

While I have questions as to just what the Bible is, one thing I am sure of is that God speaks to people through it.  I am grateful to live in an age and a country where Bibles are readily available to me and to practically everyone I know.  I believe that anyone who reads the Bible carefully and in its entirety will meet God in its pages and will be challenged to respond to Him.

I also believe that God uses the Bible to critique (and judge) the way we live.  In a society where Bibles are freely available and are being read, people can only keep on claiming wrong is right for a limited time: eventually the truth will out!

I was reminded of this yesterday, listening to an episode of Outlook (the BBC World Service's daily 'human interest' show) that I had downloaded earlier.  One of the stories* was of Joan Mulholland, one of the many 'freedom riders' who were part of the US civil rights struggle.  She told how, as a kid, she had ventured into the black part of town.  She was shocked by the primitive conditions she found there because she had been taught at Sunday School to love her neighbour as herself.  She saw what her elders hadn't noticed: that her neighbours included black people and that it wasn't loving to treat them so badly.  When she grew up she worked to change the system that she realised was at odds with the teaching of the Bible.


* this link will only work till the end of June 2011

What is scripture?

I've often heard the Bible described as a 'manual for living' or 'God's roadmap for your life', and I think that that's often how I've used it.  I've looked for guidelines to tell me how I should live, how I could expect God to interact with me etc., as well as looked for things to inspire me to keep going in hard times.

Reading through the books of 1 and 2 Chronicles in recent months I've found very little that can be used that way.  I've started to ask: why are these stories here?  They must be important to have made it into the Bible, but I can't see the point of many of them.  That's led to the question 'what is Scripture?'  If it includes these bits, then it can't quite be what I've always thought it is!

I don't have much of an answer to this question, so I'd love to hear your thoughts!  A recent post by Tim Bulkeley from Carey Baptist College provides a partial answer.  He says that the Bible is written for you but not about you, so you shouldn't expect to be able to take Bible passages and simply map them onto your own life.  That's at least a partial answer to what scripture isn't, but what is it?

An obvious place to look for answers is in the Bible itself: what does it say that it is?  The only direct answer I know to this is in 2 Timothy 3:16-17:

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (NIV)

So it is useful for forming you into the kind of person who can do good (God's?) work.

In this light Martin's take on Chronicles makes some sense.  He thinks we need to look at these stories of the kings of Judah as a whole, and as such that they show the steady decline in fortunes of the kingdom as its kings steadily move away from God's law.  Understand that is probably helpful in the individual's formation, but it hardly seems to need to be said in quite so many words!

So I'm largely left with my original question.  What do you think scripture is?