When You Pray

When You Pray. Today a friend called with excitement in his voice. “Kevin, I think God granted a miracle. We didn’t know what to do, so we prayed that a hopeless marriage might be spared from the fast-track toward divorce. The divorce papers were already signed and ready to mail in, but God answered our prayer! The husband did something that he never in his life did; he said he was sorry. The wife did something that she vowed never to do again; she believed her husband. That’s a miracle!”

“Amen, brother,” I said, “that is a miracle!”

Prayer, its meaning, and its mechanism within the all-knowledge of our sovereign God, is a mystery. “Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps” (Psa. 135:6). Why God, who already knows everything and already does everything he pleases, commands us to pray is complicated, but that God commands us to pray is simple. “Pray then like this” is a straightforward imperative given by Jesus (Matt. 6:9). It is ours to obey even if it is hard to grasp theologically. “When you pray” normalizes the practice of prayer for Jesus’ disciples, yet without enforcing a mode of prayer (Matt. 6:5, 6, 7).

Before and arguably instead of being a means to an end, prayer is, first and foremost, an act of worship. This devotional aspect distances biblical prayer from all other religious rituals involving prayer. Prayer does not seek to gain God’s attention because in Christ we already have God’s attention! Prayer does not seek to butter God up, to grease the skids for the big ask because in Christ we already have God’s unmerited favor. Instead of the common, religious rituals of prayer, Christian prayer is a function of relationship. In prayer, between every “Our Father in heaven” and each “Amen,” we review the basic hierarchy that governs the universe: God is god; we are not. God is able; we are unable. God is generous; we are needy. Prayer, before any word is uttered, is the admission that we are powerless. Yet, sublimely, though we are impotent, we are simultaneously held inside a faith relationship with the Omnipotent Lord who bids us to call upon his name, using his name, for his name’s sake.

It was entirely appropriate and within the scope of prayer that the disciples asked Jesus—which was itself a prayer whether they perceived its nuance or not—“Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1a). Of course, the disciples were conceptually off because the thrust of their request was comparative in nature instead of relational: “Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples to pray” (Luke 11:1). Wrongly but often repeated, a certain prestige is conveyed to the watching world through our forms of prayer. They wanted to be noticed through their prayers as Jesus’ disciples the way that John’s disciples were noticed by the way that they prayed. But Jesus did not rebuke them of their starting place at prayer. Jesus meets us where we are to lead us to where he wants us to be with prayer. Essentially, the best way to begin praying is to pray about prayer. “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24).

As of First Importance

As of First Importance. Thumb-typing a foreign mission update on the iPhone’s memo feature, in a plane, at 37,000-feet above sea level has for me all the markers of déjà vu. I did this last week on the inbound flight into Mozambique. I did that last year also, at Eswatini. I did many of these a decade ago, too, in Uganda. Although I have “seen this before,” as the word, déjà vu, means in French, foreign mission is never the same twice.

This time, Africa was all work and no play, because there was neither time nor energy nor money to play. Eight days, four of which were traveling, which left three days for teaching and one day for preaching, were—like my one small carry-on suitcase—extremely, densely, necessarily, aggressively packed to the fullest extreme. This was a no-nonsense trip to Tete, Mozambique—the medium-sized city in the northern part of the country at the place on the mighty Zambezi River where a hydro-electric dam was built several decades ago. I woke up, took some coffee, taught, ate, taught, then slept, skipping supper each night due to jet lag.

Twelve pastors, plus two who showed up outside the official roster, had been explicitly waiting for theological education for three years. Their ministries nevertheless continued during those three years with the normal tasks of preaching, praying, and problem-solving. However, this week was the first taste of theological education that any of them had ever received. I warned my translator, Pastor Bowman, that he would be tired from seven hours of speaking for three consecutive days. He was, and he predictably lost his voice on the third day of lecture. Another sister in the church had to translate my sermon.

The Holy Spirit is ever able and active to guide the church into all truth (John 16:13), in conjunction with the Scriptures. In that Spirit-led sense, these pastors were very effective in their ministries. They did not need, per se, a traveling lecturer from the States. At their invitation, I merely added to their homespun wisdom the first taste of more rigorous instruction, as formal as a brick and corrugated roof building can support with its six bare light bulbs. This was their beginning of sorts.

I wanted the pastors to know that these first lessons were the matters “as of first importance” (1 Cor. 15:3). Upon these first importance concepts, the things of second and third importance can later stand or fall. We sought to understand the attributes of God, which intersect with the gospel in each of the twenty-one lessons (e.g., God is holy, God is just, God is love, God is true, etc.). Correspondingly, twenty-one times I gave the same encouragement: “Theology is difficult but important work.”

God must be God. To reduce him is to lose him in the sense of biblical accuracy: “For [God] cannot deny himself” (2 Tim. 2:13). "With God all things are possible" (Matt. 19:26; Mark 10:27), but we need to separate out from our theology any of our imaginations about God that are inconsistent with the way God explained himself to us in the Bible. This is the true work of theology—we must guard the edges of what God has revealed about himself.

Because You Know

Because you know.  Barring any complication, it will have taken sixty hours to get from Goldsboro, USA, to Tete, Mozambique. This is the 56th hour. When or if the Wi-Fi will turn on, no one knows. 

What constitutes sixty hours? To a child, sixty hours is cruel and unusual punishment, especially if that time is spent in a booster seat in the family minivan. To an old man, sixty hours may the unit of time between gin rummy with the boys and physical therapy with Nurse Ratched. To a young man, sixty hours spent doing mostly anything other than being productive is a colossal waste. For me, no longer young yet not wise enough to be considered old, sixty hours away from hearth and home is the saddest span of time with nothing to filter out that which lurks in the back of my mind among the cobwebs. But sixty hours seems to be the price to pay the boatman to cross the river into missions in southern Africa. I gladly pay the fee because there are little children, fathers, and young men in Mozambique with (currently) no one to teach them of “him who is from the beginning” (1 John 2:13, 14). 

I have traveled alongside two groups of people so far inside these sixty hours: those who traveled to America from South Africa for the Masters golf tournament and those who travel from America to South Africa for big game hunting. It might be overly reductionist to say, but it seems like I have more in common with the pastors in grass-thatched huts to whom I will teach the attributes of God—his person, power, and perfections—than with trophy seekers and trophy hunters. (I hope there are embedded servants of Christ in those affluent subcultures as much as in the rural north of Mozambique.)

But the living parable acted out in front of my eyes between airports is that every slice of society has a next step of growth. And I won’t disparage anyone’s next step. I can’t, because I am still growing, and because growth is worship, and worship is Christ’s own due reward.

The Apostle John’s admonition is highly versatile when he said in triplicate, and twice, “I am writing to you, little children…fathers…young men” (1 John 2:12-14). In particular, he said to the fathers, “I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning.” How curious and profound—he teaches again what they already know! There is more to learn. The little children know the Father also, but there is more to learn. The young men know about bravery and conflict, but there is more to learn. Knowing God is tremendously different than knowing about God. I have much to learn, too. 

We are all going from somewhere to somewhere else but may we each grow as we go! “Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen” (2 Pet. 3:18).

Prophesy

Prophesy. Prophesy is a strange word, and a stranger command: “Then they spit in his face and struck him. And some slapped him, saying, ‘Prophesy to us, you Christ! Who is it that struck you?’” (Matt. 26:67-68). The noun form is less strange, prophecy, but not entirely familiar either. How does one play the prophet or occupy the office of soothsayer except in some dark version of a dog-and-pony-show meant to entertain sadists? In effect, these thugs were not seeking information, they were seeking humiliation. They were hell-bent, in the most literal sense, on knocking Jesus down a few pegs. All week in Jerusalem, Jesus was being publicly venerated as the Prophet who is like but much greater than Moses in terms of authority (Deut. 18:15). Moses spoke for God, but the Prophet after Moses will speak as God (Deut. 18:18). In effect, they demand: Prove it, Prophet! Tell us what God reveals about a hidden subject, whether it be the future, or what is happening in the next room, or which assailant struck a blindfolded detainee (Mark 14:65; Luke 22:64).

The original promise of the Prophet after Moses contained a capital offense clause, either against the one who refused to listen to the Prophet, or against the so-called prophet who claimed that office illegitimately. “And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die” (Deut. 18:19-20). This is high stakes poker! The temple guards are calling out what they think is Jesus’ bluff, but it is they who are in mortal danger as they scorn the Savior. Jesus does not answer them. He will not. He has said enough.

What is remarkable, however, is what is happening outside that interrogation room. Prophecy is happening, but not in response to the guards’ command to prophesy. Judas, who shared the previous night’s supper with Jesus, has done exactly as Jesus prophesied by betraying him. “What you are going to do, do quickly” (John 13:27). Peter, who could not keep prayerful vigil with Jesus, has lunged toward temptation, exactly as Jesus prophesied. “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation” (Matt. 26:41). All the disciples fled when Jesus was arrested, exactly as Jesus prophesied (Zech. 13:7; Matt. 26:31). And most prominently, in the very courtyard outside Jesus’ illegal trial, Peter was actively denying the Lord three times, exactly as Jesus prophesied. “Now Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard. And a servant girl came up to him and said, "You also were with Jesus the Galilean." But he denied it before them all, saying, "I do not know what you mean" (Matt. 26:69-70). “And the Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the saying of the Lord, how he had said to him, ‘Before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times.’ And he went out and wept bitterly” (Luke 22:61-62).

Prophesy to us, you Christ, who is it that struck you? Judas struck Jesus. Peter struck Jesus. All the disciples struck Jesus. I struck Jesus. You struck Jesus. We struck Jesus in ways that hurt far more than the slaps of the high priest’s hitmen, exactly as Jesus prophesied.