Spiritual Antennae

Every time a group hunkers down to a really good discussion on prayer, it seems to inevitably be about petitions, whether your own or interceding for others. I wish people would remember, or realize, that listening is a very large part of prayer. I know we know that prayer is so much more than asking for things, but whenever it's discussed, those other things seem to disappear.

But when Paul says to "pray without ceasing", does he mean that we should walk around continually muttering about things? Does he mean that we keep up a constant stream of "do this, do that, bless hims" every minute we're awake? "With all sorts of prayers and requests"...

Or does he mean something else entirely? A while ago I came to think of it as always referring everything to God, eventually a sort of "always on" mode. Filtering it through Him, what He thinks about it. Kind of like having spiritual antennae, always testing, testing, to see what the Lord says about this or that. Constantly listening, constantly sensitive to when we do something wrong or when someone speaks error.

Again, though, that's probably only part of it, even though it's a constant.

Seek Ye FIRST...

Sheesh, I've been going about it all wrong this time. Ever since October...no, before that. Last summer, I think. Ever since then we've been working towards going back "out there".

Only now I keep coming across passages and columns saying, "Seek ME". I've found I've been pursuing missions more than Jesus Himself. I see it in an Oswald Chambers daily reading, in a magazine article, and especially in the "Perspectives" book/course. (If people want some meat to sink their teeth into, that's a good one to go to.) Yes, "The true greatness of any church in not how many it seats but how many it sends," (unknown), but anything can become an idol, even very good things. Pro-life crusades, songwriting....missions. Anything that gets our main focus. As P.T. Forsyth said, "the weakness of much current mission work is that [we] betray the sense that what is yet to be done is greater than what [Christ] has already done. The world's gravest need is less than Christ's great victory." (emphasis mine)

"And step by step you'll lead me....and I will follow You all of my days." (Rich Mullins)

Back By Popular Demand

Actually, it was more like, "You should have said 'so-and-so' and 'this person'", etc. So I have added those suggested names to my "who do you think of?" Character associations, thus:

1. Brad Pitt
2. Angelina Jolie
3. Johnny Depp
4. Catherine Zeta-Jones
5. Matt Damon
6. Cameron Diaz
and one extra:
7. Renee Zellweger

He is Risen!!!

Character Association

I'm just curious. I can't remember now why I thought of this, but I idly wondered about it and now want to as idly ask:

What character comes to mind when you think of these actors/actresses?

1. Harrison Ford
2. Kate Winslet
3. Tom Cruise
4. Keira Knightly
5. Russell Crowe
6. Nicole Kidman

"Mama Killed a Chicken...

...she thought it was a duck
she put it on the table with its legs stickin' up"

The past few days we've been putting a bunch of songs off of old albums onto CD's. I tell ya, people just do not know what they're missing if they have never heard some of that earlier Christian music. If they've never heard the original "He's Alive" (despite his "dolphin voice"--ask if you want clarification on that--it's a powerful rendition), or the early Christian alternative stuff, before it got monotone; the 77's, old DA, that kind of thing.

They've been so good to re-live, and I can't wait to play these things in the car as well! Why have we let them languish so? (Probably because it's easier to pop a CD in than take all the stuff off the crates our albums are stored in, hunt for the song you want, then put everything back when it's over.)

Just Musing

It recently occurred to me that I often hear people speaking on the armor of God, on "not flesh and blood but rulers, against the authorities". It also occurred to me as I was reading Ephesians that I don't often find stuff on Eph 4:29 (unwholesome talk, building others up), on I Cor 4:9, "For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like men condemned to die in the arena", or farther down, v 13"...when we are slandered, we answer kindly. Up to this moment we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world." Hmm. I probably have heard, "Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others," but I know not often enough. Nor very much on Phil 1:9 and discernment.

Love Askew

Over a decade ago I had an astonishing three months, months during which, I'm thinking now, we were probably under a special benediction since we were being prepared for our overseas life.

The starting point of the wonder began with something quite small, though. It started with an eye- and heart-opening temperament seminar. During this seminar I found out that I was liked. By people. By...God.

See, as someone who has never managed to keep friends interested in being friends with me for more than a couple or few years, I also internalized that to reflect on what I thought God must think of me. I'd had this subconscious feeling that God saved me because He had to, because He'd promised to save anyone who called on His name. But after that I was kind of left to drift to the back of the crowd.

But to realize He actually liked me, and wanted to be with me...that was earth-shattering. It was mind-boggling -- really! But I'm now wondering, why? Why did it seem so much more meaningful to feel liked than loved (as I technically knew I was)? As Beth Moore says as well in one of her studies: "...try to fathom that God doesn't just love us. He also likes us!"

Doesn't just love us? What definition have we come to for "love" to lower it so? Have all our well-meaning efforts to convince people that "love is not a feeling, it's an act of your will"; "feelings of romance don't last, love is acts" made it...duty or something? Is it that we have only one word for 'love' using the same one to describe our relationships and our feelings for chocolate, whereas the Greeks have at least five; storge, agape -- what about "phileo"? That's the friendship one; liking love. Liking and loving. Have we squeezed the phileo out of our love here?

There are times when, as they say, loving doesn't necessarily involve feelings, sure. But it seems to me that maybe in our effort to keep it from meaning what the media suggest it means, we've swung too far the other way, as we are wont to do. I don't know. Maybe I've missed something here. But I want some of the glory of love to be restored to it. And I want my love of God to have a lot of liking in it.

um...

If "...it takes more than one gallon of fossil fuel -- oil and natural gas -- to produce one gallon of ethanol," then how is that saving gas?

(emphasis mine)

Easter Thoughts

When "The Passion of the Christ" came out in theaters, we went to see it. The theater was very still throughout (though I know I was only just keeping myself from wailing). We filed out silently, rode home in silence, and continued on that day in a somber vein.

This was not the sweet, beckoning joy that most people think of when they think of love. This was a tremendous presence, something almost solid, landing in the room with the impact of a meteor.

That's what stunned me. Not the violence, the violence was barely endurable (but probably underdone in the case of the scourging); rather, the overwhelming love of someone willing to go through the horror for. . . . .us. That's someone worth following to the ends of the earth.

And that’s what I wanted to do when I got home. Just get up and walk out of the door, the house, and keep walking until I could walk up to Jesus.

"The Passion of The Christ" ripped me in half, like the veil in the temple. I had expected to be ripped, because I am an intensely empathetic person. What I hadn't expected was how it also rocked my soul, rocked it in a way it hadn't been rocked since the conference that led us overseas. No sermon I've heard since coming home has had that much power.

What I'm thinking this year is: Should we watch it on Good Friday again this year? I couldn't bring myself to one year, did watch it another, and last time I found movie standpoints creeping in.

I don't want that. I don't want to think of movie things when I watch it. I also know that His followers only saw His death once. Is it therefore wrong for us to watch a facsimile once a year, or is it instead a good reminder?

Asleep in the Light

is the name of a Keith Green song. It also seems to be the national theme. K.P Yohannan says that whenever he comes to America (which he doesn't much like to do), he is amazed by how saturated the country is by the gospel. We have so many books on so many subjects, so many Bible translations, and so many people analyzing minute points on Scripture that maybe it takes a visitor to see its overkill.

Why?

The image that comes to mind is that of a clogged drain. The Gospel isn't getting out, so it's building up here with nowhere to go. If the analogy runs true, it's also stagnating with its lack of flow.

I don't know if that's really the case, but I do know that the Gospel which is so freely, freely available here to virtually everyone is completely inaccessible to large parts of the world. America has approximately one Christian worker for every 230 people, but those who have never heard the Gospel even once have one worker for every 450,000 souls. 9% of the world's population speaks English, and yet 94% of all ordained preachers in the whole world minister to the 9% who speak English. I have to look up these statistics when I want to refer to them (I got them from "Why You Should Go to the Mission Field" by Keith Green, so they're probably somewhat outdated), but there's one illustration which stays with me much more easily:




the rice grain in the middle representing the number of Christian worker(s) among the unreached (only the sea of rice I saw was much bigger).

It was that same Keith Green tract which first convicted us and eventually led us overseas, and we've been longing to and working toward going back ever since we came back here. It saddens and frustrates me to hear people say (as we did before the first time we went out) things like, "I want to stay here and shake up the Americas". If all that engorgement hasn't done the job by this time, then his staying here is going to change all that single-handedly?

Of course huge things can happen from one person. Look at Open Doors, started by one man. Operation Mobilization, started by one. Jim Elliot and his four partners. (And look what else they have in common...they went.) But you know what's gonna "shake up the Amercias" the best?

Obedience. As Keith (yet again) said, "They have a rule in the Armed Forces that says, 'Always obey the last order received, until a new order is given". The last order we received was "Go into ALL nations...'" It may seem strange to say leaving the country is the best thing for it, but so often it's something like that. The best thing to do for your kids is to love their father/mother; the best thing you can do for your spouse is to love God more than them; the way to write a better song is not to go to songwriting classes, but to serve others.

But instead, while "we talk of the Second Coming; half the world has never heard of the first." -- Oswald J. Smith

Walking in the Dark

Whoever thought up this starting of daylight savings time earlier, and lasting longer, certainly never consulted mothers of young public-school-aged children. When my daughter still went to public school, I would fervently long for daylight savings to be over so I could walk her to her bus stop in the daylight. We used to have to use a flashlight, for crying out loud, to see our way to our rural waiting post. At least we were in a slightly civilized neighborhood; I feel doubly sorry for those whose houses are all by themselves surrounded by trees and who-knows-what animals.

And now they want me to start getting up in the dark again! Ok, so I don't have to walk her to a bus stop anymore, but others do. I just happen to like to wake up when there's at least a glimmer of dawn on the horizon. Sheesh, March 9th??? Give me a break!!

Maybe we should all move to Arizona.