"...a light-radiant cloud enveloped them, and sounding from deep in the cloud a voice: 'This is my Son, marked by my love, focus of my delight. Listen to him.'” (Matthew 17:5, The Message)
Listen...for wisdom.
Before making any decision.
Before choosing any direction.
Before taking any opportunity.
It may all feel right.
Or wrong.
But there is a much better compass...
"Can you hear the Voice of wisdom?...
At the place where pathways merge,
At the entrance of every portal,
There she stands, ready to impart understanding."
(Proverbs 8:1-3, Passion)
"Every happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message."
…Not could be, might be, perhaps under certain conditions, or in theory. Is.When the Bible says, and says so countless times and in countless ways, that “God is…” or “The Lord is…” it means just what it means in everyday life:
To “be.”
Some definitions say it even better, with clarifying words like “present.” The Lord is…as in not a far-off, aloof, go-figure-it-out-yourself-and-call-if-you-need-anything God, but a “God with us” 24/7 God. And then there are some jaw-dropping "is" synonyms that are much more than just clarifying words...
Abide
Act
Breathe
Continue
Do
Endure
Hold
Inhabit
Last
Live
Move
Obtain
Persist
Prevail
Remain
Rest
Stand
Stay
Words can be amazing. But a picture paints a thousand words. And so the veil of familiarity and casual head-nodding dissolves once and for all while hiking through favorite brookside woods and fields. The accompaniment, which seems to come out of nowhere (yeah, right), is a familiar Psalm but set to a different tune…
"The Lord is…my best friend and my shepherd.
I always have more than enough.
He offers a resting place for me in His luxurious love.
His tracks take me to an oasis of peace, the quiet brook of bliss.
That’s where He restores and revives my life.
He opens before me pathways to God’s pleasure and leads me along in His footsteps of righteousness so that I can bring honor to His name.
Lord, even when Your path takes me through
the valley of deepest darkness,
fear will never conquer me, for You already have!
You remain close to me and lead me through it all the way.
Your authority is my strength and my peace.
The comfort of Your love takes away my fear.
I’ll never be lonely, for You are near...
...You become my delicious feast
even when my enemies dare to fight.
You anoint me with the fragrance of Your Holy Spirit;
You give me all I can drink of You until my heart overflows.
So why would I fear the future?
For Your goodness and love pursue me all the days of my life.
Then afterward, when my life is through,
I’ll return to Your glorious presence to be forever withYou!"....
“I am the Alpha and the Omega—the beginning and the end,” says the Lord God. “I am the one who is, who always was, and who is still to come—the Almighty One.” - Revelation 1:8
“Make your life a prayer.”—1 Thessalonians 5:17, Passion
It can take a lifetime to dispel the image of prayer as being folded hands and closed eyes in a hushed atmosphere. Sure, it can be that. But more often than not, prayer seems to take you by surprise in the practical way that it just happens—with eyes wide open, while minding your own business, and seemingly while you’re on the way to doing something else…
…I was running late to an early morning meeting and determined that stopping for coffee as usual was out of the question. Even five minutes to run in and run out would be five minutes too long. And yet a stronger impression within kept saying, “stop anyway, just to say hi.” A few months earlier, when stopping for coffee as usual and carrying on smalltalk with the employees, one of them responded to “How’s life?” with “Not great. I found out that I have congestive heart failure and that only a small portion of one of my chambers is functioning properly. I can’t go to work for awhile."
At a loss for words, I think my response was something along the lines of “well, hang in there, kid. I’ll be praying. God can do anything.” And while walking across the parking lot to my car, I remember telling God that I would pray, and in fact I did right then and there, not very loudly or eloquently, with eyes wide open while on the way to doing something else, but admitting “wow, this is a big one, but I’m going to pray that you give them a new heart.” Transplant was not what I had in mind…
…so, five minutes that I really didn’t have to spare to stop in and say “hi, how’s life?” Might as well grab that coffee after all. And while pouring, the employee with the broken heart who had been out of work but was back again responded, “I’m feeling great! I went for a checkup with my cardiologist the other day, and I hadn’t even gotten out of the driveway when my phone rang. It was him. He said, ‘are you sitting down?’ And I laughed, ‘well, yeah, I’m driving!’ And he said, I can’t explain it, but that chamber is now functioning at 50 percent!”
And there was much “Woohoo!”-ing, and high-fiving. I made the sign of praying—hands together pointing upward, and said “amen” to the employee’s casual “by the grace of God” comment. And while walking across the parking lot to my car, I remembered that prayer from months earlier and said thanks, but then quietly pushed the envelope once more: “still believing for a new heart, but I’ll take 75 percent for now.” ….
And all the while, common sense keeps tapping you on the shoulder: "Is this even biblical?!"
Jesus, we are told in the Gospels, would often get away by himself to pray—to talk with and listen to and be with His Father. He told His disciples it’s a good thing to pray in a secret place with no distractions. But Jesus also told His disciples to always pray wherever they are and never give up, and not only that but to believe for seemingly impossible things like telling fig trees to wither and mountains to get up and move.
Jesus also gave a pattern for praying when the disciples asked for one, but never do we read about Him following up with, “so, how are you guys doing with studying those books on prayer and the course manual?” Helpful tools as they are, the Master’s day-to-day example from His coming and goings and routine encounters with people and situations seems to have been more supernaturally natural prayer—putting into practice an overflow of Heavenly conversation and relationship that works well beyond Sunday mornings.
Something you take with you on your way, even to being late for a meeting.
“And as you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’”—Matthew 10:7, NIV
Because you never know when the answer to your activated, feeble-faith, “just getting coffee" praying for seemingly impossible things could be just a heartbeat away for someone in need.
“I don’t know how people pray who don’t believe in the sovereignty of God to do the impossible. Because all the things I want to happen are impossible. If they’re possible, I’ll do them.”—John Piper
“The main thing that God asks for is our attention.”—Jim Cymbala
It’s been said that if you attend a conference of a million topics and come away with just that one takeaway that you can apply to your own situation, then it was worth it.
Sometimes, that takeaway can be for a lifetime.
Several years ago, sitting at the back at a packed conference of church worship musicians, leaders, and pastors looking for fresh ideas and that one takeaway that could take their ministries to the next level, a lone voice shook the room. The topic was about platform layout—how to set it up to look pleasing and uncluttered, and especially how to make that layout most effective for helping to lead the congregation in worship based upon the amount of people and equipment that needs to fit on that platform.
There was much buzz in the room. You could almost hear the wheels turning inside the heads of hundreds of participants, dreaming how they could make things work better when they got home. Until with one raised hand, everything changed…
“I have a question: What if you don’t have all these instruments and equipment and people? At my church, our platform has one upright piano. No microphones. Me and maybe a couple other singers.”
The seminar leader could have encouraged the questioner to go recruit more musicians or put in a budget request for this piece of electronics or that one. Instead, with the same heart of Jesus spoken to the woman at the well in John 4, the leader replied:
“Then give it all you’ve got.”
“Believe me, dear woman, the time has come when you won’t worship the Father on a mountain nor in Jerusalem, but in your heart…From here on, worshiping the Father will not be a matter of the right place but with the right heart. For God is a Spirit, and he longs to have sincere worshipers who worship and adore him in the realm of the Spirit and in truth.”—John 4: 21, 24 Passion Translation
Takeaway.
Instruments and equipment and technology can all be helpful and powerful communications tools that help worshipers in a modern society better “connect” to the God of the universe who put those ideas for powerful communications tools into man’s heads in the first place.
But that lone voice that shook the room at that conference many years ago has stayed with me. In a good, re-calibrating, what-really-matters sort of way every single Sunday morning.
That if one Sunday you walked in to church and all of that good stuff was gone, could you still worship? Would you?
If there was no buzz or a pump-it-up vibe, would you be afraid that people would go elsewhere next week?
If you found out that, until further notice, church would held be in some local community hall with uncomfortable folding chairs and nothing but a piano on the platform, could you still worship? Would you?
Even if there was no overhead projection that fed you all the scriptures being read?
Even if the coffee would be instant instead of fresh-brewed?
“If you build it, they will come,” so says the oft-quoted promise to Roy Kinsella (Kevin Costner) in the 1989 movie “Field of Dreams.”
A logical argument for having all the conveniences and gadgets known to modern man. Except, after all these years in trying to prove a point, we’ve gotten that line all wrong. The lone voice that shook an Iowa cornfield was “he,” not “they.”
Which seems to make the line a lot less powerful and motivating. Or maybe, more powerful than ever.
Because whether we are blessed with church services filled with the latest and greatest, or with just very limited resources, as long as the Gospel is being preached and people are seeking to "follow Me," then Jesus’ response to the woman at the well in John 4 and the seminar leader’s response to the worship leader are what matter most—even on the first Sunday of Daylight Savings Time when it would be easier to stay home and recover from one hour of lost sleep...
“If you simply build your lives on My life, I will come...
