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More and more I find that a satisfying and comforting answer to the question ‘Why pray?’ is the fact that Jesus prayed. The eternal Son of God, agent and sustainer of creation, felt a compelling need to pray!

Last week I took you to Luke 6, where Jesus prayed all night before selecting twelve of his larger group of followers. I asked you to consider how this group of twelve could constitute the answer to any prayer. We would expect the prayer and evaluation to result in an elite team of spiritual commandos fit for the mission. Instead we get a dirty dozen that includes the betrayer Judas, men on the opposite sides of the political spectrum (the Roman sympathizer Matthew and the ultra-right-wing conservative “Zealot” Simon), back-country fishermen (Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John) and others who do or say little that ever merits mention in the Gospels or Acts. More than that, these Twelve regularly disappoint their teacher and master with their cowardice, pettiness, feeble faith and outright stupidity. Yet these are the twelve apostles. Someone has said, ‘Prayer is not a means of removing the unknown and unpredictable elements in life, but rather a way of including the unknown and unpredictable in the outworking of the grace of God in our lives.’

Another of Jesus’ prayers that had an unusual answer is in Luke 22:31-34. The setting is the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus says to Simon Peter:

Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” Peter said to him, “Lord, I am ready to go with you both to prison and to death.” Jesus said, “I tell you, Peter, the rooster will not crow this day, until you deny three times that you know me.”

Simon Peter, with his typical swaggering confidence, declares that he is “all in” with Jesus, whether that means imprisonment or crucifixion. Surprisingly, Jesus says something no one wants to hear: that Peter would deny him three times within a matter of hours. Roosters don’t necessarily wait until the sun comes up to crow. (I learned this on a 1995 mission trip to Kingstown, St. Vincent.)

But more intriguing is Jesus’ statement about Satan demanding to have Simon Peter and sift him like wheat. Why did Jesus allow such a thing? Why not deny Satan’s request: “Get out of here. No way: he’s off limits!” Or how about this: why didn’t Jesus embolden Peter so that he would not wilt and surrender in the testing? Jesus did neither of these things. Instead, he says he prayed that Peter’s faith would not fail.

Here’s something else that’s hard to swallow: Peter’s faith did fail—three times! The incident sounds like the opening chapters of the book of Job. Satan seeks permission to do harm to one of God’s servants; then God, for some strange reason, grants permission, and we all wait to see how the tested servant will respond. This opens some larger questions: why does God sit back while Satan works mischief, while evil regimes oppress the innocent, while hurricanes and floods and fires and tornados devastate, while diseases ravage lives, while a betrayer hands God’s beloved Son over to a murderous enemy?

There is another factor in the story, though—the prayer of Jesus. I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail. Over the short run, Peter did fail; in the long run, Peter’s faith did not. Jesus was already coaching Peter up from the failure of the threefold denial—when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.

When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we say, ‘And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” But how will our heavenly Father deliver us from the evil one? At times he removes circumstances that have been the means of enticing us into sin. At times he blunts the desire.

His more normal way, however, is not to keep us vacuum-sealed from evil and temptation and trial. He allows us to experience the seductions of temptation because he wants to engage us in living the Christian life. He wants us to develop godly habits and virtues. He wants us to learn of repentance and restoration. We grow through battle experience, not through reading about battles. Unused muscles atrophy, and likewise spiritual maturity is stunted by inactivity. God wants to develop the skills of resisting the devil so that he will flee from us (cf. Jam 4:7; 1 Pet 5:9). The grace of refinement is more painful, but more purifying than the grace of relief or the grace of release. How remarkable that Jesus prays for us—and even anticipates betrayal, redeeming it as a part of the outworking of his gracious kingdom.

Over the past few months I’ve shared some excerpts from the CaringBridge site for Buddy Wood, brother-in-law of one of our FPC Kosciusko members. Buddy’s journal of his spiritual growth in the midst of brain cancer has taught me a lot about living and dying well for Christ’s sake. I’ve chronicled them in entries such as In Everything Give Thanks, Allies with Your Enemies, and The Hazards of Dealing with Trials.

For the last two weeks or so, Buddy has been under hospice care, and this afternoon I received this:

Friends and family,

Our dearly beloved husband, father, brother and friend left this earth to be with his Heavenly Father this afternoon at 4:18 PM. Buddy’s last moments on this earth were peaceful and filled to the brim with the dying grace of which he often spoke in this garrison. He was surrounded by family as his breathing gradually slowed to a stop and he was taken off at last to a heavenly kingdom where words like cancer and suffering no longer apply. Buddy fought a brave fight and remained a faithful servant of the Most High God to his very last breath. Our grief is great but it is not without the hope that comes from faith in Our Savior and the knowledge that we shall be reunited with him again in God’s perfect timing. God’s grace overflows in the abundant love poured forth on us by friends and family.

Love,

The Woods

Buddy shone like a star–and his works follow him. May God grant more of us such grace to live and die well and, like Buddy, not to waste our lives.

Jesus prayed: he prayed daily, he prayed in the synagogue, he prayed at some critical moments in his ministry. When I think of Jesus’ prayers, I recall a conversation with a Jehovah’s Witness nearly twenty years ago in which he tried to prove that Jesus was not fully God on the basis that God would not need to pray to God. I also think back to well-intentioned teachers who tried to motivate me to pray through the guilt of the ‘Jesus never missed a quiet time; what’s wrong with you?’ line of reasoning.

In spite of those memories, more and more I find that a satisfying and comforting answer to the question ‘Why pray?’ is the fact that Jesus prayed. The eternal Son of God, agent and sustainer of creation, felt a compelling need to pray!

When you piece together a picture of Jesus’ prayer life from the Gospels, you find just over a dozen specific prayers (mostly short utterances, John 17 being the exception), along with parables and teaching and comments about prayer. Five times the Gospels tell us that Jesus would go off by himself to pray.

Jesus’ prayer habits, and especially his turning to prayer in times of crisis and at key events (his Baptism, before choosing the Twelve, at the ‘Mount of Transfiguration’ incident, and in dark Gethsemane), suggest that he found rest, comfort, renewal, and strength from praying to his Father. After an exhausting day of preaching and dealing with people and their needs he would withdraw to an isolated place to pray. There he found something he needed when he was drained. I have food to eat that you know nothing about, he replied when his disciples expressed concern over his physical condition at such times.

Consider what we read about Jesus in Luke 6, when Jesus prayed all night before choosing twelve disciples in whom he would invest so much of his energies. “One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles” (Luke 6:12). Actually, Luke’s account is the only example we have of Jesus praying all night. This apparently was not a habit. He slept as every other son of Adam sleeps, but here was a special occasion when he needed to go off alone to pray. He was the incarnation of the wisdom and power of God, but he needed to pray. He was about his Father’s business, but he needed to pray. He had no sin to confess, but he needed to pray. The Father delighted in him and the Spirit indwelt him, but he needed to pray. He had a lot to do, but he needed to pray. No matter how busy he was or how closely he walked with God there were times of prayer which he maintained.

This was a big moment; there were more than twelve from whom he could pick. The task called for power, illumination, guidance. Luke uses a simple phrase to describe Jesus’ intercession; ‘praying to God’, or literally ‘prayer of God’ (only Luke uses it and only on this occasion). Christ spent the night in the ‘prayer of God.’ In other words the emphasis was not on the night-long vigil so much as a praying of divine fellowship—an earnest concentration of heart and mind which was divinely sustained throughout the night. Twelve names were finally fastened on his heart and mind and he went forth that next morning and “called to him those he wanted, and they came to him. He appointed twelve, designating them apostles” (v.13-14).

You would think he could say to God, “It’s OK; I can pick twelve–no problem.” Yet if even Jesus, before making such a great decision, needed to go aside and pray, then certainly we do. How can we with our uninformed insight, our own self-confidence, our own overrated abilities for handle life, come to any wise decision if we ignore prayer?

I want you to consider one more thing: how could this group of twelve constitute the answer to any prayer? We would expect the prayer and evaluation to result in an elite team of spiritual commandos fit for the mission. Instead we get a dirty dozen that includes the betrayer Judas, men on the opposite sides of the political spectrum (the Roman sympathizer Matthew and the ultra-right-wing conservative “Zealot” Simon), back-country fishermen (Peter, Andrew, James and John) and the others who do or say little that ever merits mention in the Gospels. More than that, these Twelve regularly disappoint their teacher and master with their cowardice, pettiness, feeble faith and outright stupidity.

This fact makes me hesitant to get so frustrated and put out with Jesus’ followers in my life. And, on the flip side, makes me aware that my wife prayed for a husband…and got me. My congregation prayed fervently over many months for a pastor…and got me. Jesus prayed…and got me. That’s gotta hurt!

Someone has said, ‘Prayer is not a means of removing the unknown and unpredictable elements in life, but rather a way of including the unknown and unpredictable in the outworking of the grace of God in our lives.’

As the Waterboys sing, “I’ve some to say, and I’ve more to tell” re: Jesus’ prayer life…

The New Year is for starting new things.  Did you spend last year wondering about this whole blogging phenomenon?  Was The Sweet Dropper the first blog you ever visited?  Are you starting to think, “Maybe I should start a blog”?  If this describes you, let me offer a little advice.

Should you start a blog?

My simple answer is, “Sure, why not?!”  Blogs aren’t for everyone.  That being said, they are for a whole lot of people.  As of December 2007, Technorati was tracking 112 million blogs.   To give you some perspective, the current population of the United States is a few folks above 300 million.  Blogging is big!  Some people think it is here to stay.  Others say blogging is a passing fad, albeit a very significant passing fad.

I still remember seeing my first blog.  Several years ago, my brother-in-law introduced me to an online journal he had started with a program called movable-type.  Not long after that Google started providing free hosting to blogs using their blogging platform blogger.  I joined up with blogger and was hooked.

Simply put, blogging is publishing online successive posts ordered chronologically.  As to what classifies a post, no one is quite sure and blogdom seems to like it that way.  Some people post diary-like entries, others post opinions, some post pictures of their family, others post pictures of cats with silly captions.  People can and do post most everything.

That leads to the next question.

What should I post? Or, what type of blog should I create?

Most people don’t blog about politics, what they had for lunch, why they liked Sundays sermon, and pictures of their French poodle all at the same site.  It is good to pick a general genre for your blog.  Blog genres, certainly not static, typically fall along three lines for most Christians.

• A Journal Blog - This type of blog will record the daily events of your life.  Posts can vary from “We did x today” to humorous narratives of unusual events.  For the most part, the people who will read this type of blog will be your friends and family, that is, unless you have a truly fascinating life and know how to write about it.
• A Theo-Blog - This type of blog examines different aspects of Christian theology.  These blogs cover every conceivable topic withing the church and are written by everyone from world-renowned theologians to relatively uneducated laymen.  If you like to think deeply about theological topics then this is the kind of blog for you.
• A News Blog - This type of blog usually produces a high output of short posts chronicling news items or posts at other blogs.  Maybe you like reading other blogs and want to post links of your favorite posts by other authors.  Maybe you like to keep track of politics or national news and you want to post all of the days events with brief commentary.  If either of these is true, this type of blog would suit your needs.

Of course, different blogs may mix multiple of the above genres.  Most blogs, however, will fall into one of the three categories above.

Where should I go if I want to start a blog?

Unless you are a computer geek hosting your own domain, you should look into some of the free hosting options.  The two best are blogger and wordpress.  I’ve used both though I currently keep my personal blog at wordpress.com (Mining Grace). Most will agree that both of these services give the new blogger all that they need to get started.

One word of reminder and warning.  A blog is posted on World Wide web.  You are posting things for the whole world to see.  That does not mean that the whole world is going to beat a path to your blog, but it also does not mean that you are posting in anonymity.  May all that you post be seasoned with grace, befitting someone who claims the name of Jesus, giving honor to him and him alone.

If you have just started a blog or start one after reading this post, link to to your blog in the comments below so we can all take a look.

The following are some great blogs that you could check out for ideas:

• Reformation 21
• Al Mohler
• Challies.com
• Between Two Worlds
• Girl Talk
• Common Grounds Online
• The Shepherd’s Scrapbook

Think about the non-biblical proverb, “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” What is that proverb telling us? If you take it as an ironclad law, then you will conclude that the secret to health, wealth and wisdom is good sleep habits. But surely there is more to it than that–and of course, there is!

Think about a Thanksgiving dinner being prepared, and the main cook says, “Too many cooks spoil the broth,” what does she mean? She means, “Get out of my way and out of my kitchen so I can cook this meal properly.”
However, after the meal, she looks at everyone and says, “Many hands make light work.” She is saying that now is the appropriate time for everyone to get busy clearing the table, washing, drying and putting up the dishes and pots and pans. Before the meal, all that involvement was a hindrance; but now, after the meal, all that involvement is a help.

One more interesting example is in 26:4-5, where we find two statements that seem to be  contradictions: Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes. Well, which is it? In Every Thought Captive, Dr. Richard Pratt applies to these two verses to the task of defending the Christian faith by saying that sometimes we must reject the philosophical underpinnings of unbelievers in order to confront them with the claims of Christianity. At other times, we should deal with them as though their false beliefs were true in order to point out the absurdity in their thinking.

Both proverbs are true if understood according to their intention and according to the situation. Proverbs are not ironclad laws. Their validity and applicability depends on the right time and the right circumstance. In fact, that is a basic component of true wisdom. In order to read, interpret and apply Proverbs to everyday living, we ought to keep in mind the importance of doing the right thing at the right time in the right way for the right reasons–or as the poetry of Proverbs expresses it, To make an apt answer is a joy to a man, and a word in season, how good it is! [Proverbs 15:23]

A wise person knows the right time and the right situation and the right approach and the right reasons to do something. The writer of Ecclesiastes expresses this right thing/right time/right way/right reasons thinking in these famous words: To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die…[Ecclesiastes 3:1-8].

Proverbs are not magical words. If you just memorize them and apply them in a wooden or mechanical way, you will not necessarily find good things happening around you:

A whip for the horse, a bridle for the donkey, and a rod for the back of fools…
Whoever sends a message by the hand of a fool cuts off his own feet and drinks violence.
Like a lame man’s legs, which hang useless, is a proverb in the mouth of fools.
Like one who binds the stone in the sling is one who gives honor to a fool.
Like a thorn that goes up into the hand of a drunkard is a proverb in the mouth of fools.
Like an archer who wounds everyone is one who hires a passing fool or drunkard.
Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool who repeats his folly. [26:3, 6-11, emphasis mine]

God is telling us that it takes wisdom to apply wisdom properly. The fool applies a proverb with no regard to how fit it might or might not be for a situation—like a paralyzed leg, thorn bush brandished by a drunkard, hurting the one who wields it as well as the one on the business end of the blow. If we are to wield wisdom wisely, we must 1) understand the text; 2) understand people, and 3) understand the situation.

Psalm 107 says, ‘Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.’ This past Sunday evening a good number of the Lord’s redeemed testified as to how goodness and mercy followed them during 2007. Laughter was heard, tears were shed, and God was glorified and enjoyed.

Below is a prayer adapted from The Valley of Vision that we pray together at FPC Kosciusko as the calendar turns.

O God, your love is beyond compare. You are good when you give,
when you take away,
when the sun shines upon me,
when the night gathers over me.
You have loved me before the foundation of the world,
and in love you have redeemed my soul.
You love me still, in spite of my hard heart, ingratitude, distrust.
Your goodness has been with me during another year,
leading me through a twisting wilderness.
Your goodness will be with me in the year ahead;
I launch my boat on the unknown waters of this year,
with you, as the pilot of my future, as of my past.
If you appoint storms of tribulation, you will be with me in them.
If you ordain joy and success, you will receive thanks and honor.
If I die, I shall see your face the sooner;
If I live, I shall walk by faith and not by sight.
Only glorify yourself in me whether in comfort or in trial,
as a chosen vessel suitable always for your use.
Give me your grace to sanctify me,
your comforts to cheer,
your wisdom to teach,
your right hand to guide,
your joy to strengthen,
your law to convict,
your presence to stabilize.
May the fear of the Lord keep me in awe of you,
and may the triumphs of your kingdom be my joy. AMEN.

May 2008 find us all faithful in adversity and thankful in prosperity. Grace and peace to you in the new year.

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