A Deceitful and Sinful Lack of Prayer

I have a confession to make.

I have been fooling you all along.

If you go to College Park Church, you know me. I am the one in choir who stands pretty much front and center (I was put there I promise! I did not choose it!) and…moves…a lot…all the time… Its an exuberance I can’t really hold back. The Gospel is so freeing and so amazing and God’s love so inconceivable that I personally can’t help but be excited about it, enthusiastic about it, smile about it, sing about it.

But that joy has been a selfish joy. I am happy God has saved ME. I am joyful he has taken me from MY sin and claimed ME as his own so that I can claim MY inheritance. The joy is genuine, but it is incomplete, it is insufficient. It is not completely founded in God’s heart.

Why?

I have no heart for the nations.

Pastor Nate preached on Sunday and made a thrust with the sword of the spirit when he said that God is a glowing hot ember of love for the nations and if we are near enough we WILL catch fire.

If I’m not on fire, what does that say about me? What does that say about what I do on Sunday mornings Sunday in and Sunday out in front of you all, claiming that I love God with all of my heart, soul, mind and strength?

For four REACH  months (CPC's annual focus on global missions), I have listened to the sermons, had meals with missionaries, done the prayer nights and breakfasts absorbed all of the amazing content that College Park offered. I would agree with every bit of it and say, “Yes! God I want to do your work! If you want to send me, send me! Open an opportunity!”

Then I would…wait. 

I’m not sure what I expected really. I expected at some point listening to a missionary talk about what they were doing that my heart would leap and say “I NEED to do that,” or that my heart would break for a specific people group or need. I waited. I would look over the Vision Trips and the schedules and my available PTO time and see that…well…none of them fit. So I would wait. And a year would go by and the next REACH would come and the same thing would happen. I wait…and nothing happens.

“Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” Matthew 7:7-8

Both Pastor Willson and Pastor Nate have told us that the most important first step is to ask God for the nations. What did Jesus say himself when he looked and saw all of the wayward people of Israel harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd? He didn’t tell his disciples to “Go now and help them,” or “appoint some amongst yourselves to go.” No he said, “pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” (Matthew 9:38 emphasis mine)

Of course nothing was happening! Of course my heart didn't leap or break! Of course PTO was a problem or schedules didn't align or the money wasn't there! How could it be?! I NEVER ASKED. How can I claim that I don’t go because I don’t feel God moving me if I never ask him to do it? How can I justify my inaction and disguise it in spiritual sounding “lack of calling” if my own lack of prayer shows where my desire really is?

I have a sung of a selfish Gospel. I have exuded selfish joy. I have proclaimed selfish freedom. I am truly, deeply, sorry.

Maybe, as Pastor Nate said, the dampness is drying out from the paper that is my heart. Maybe the anti-inflammatory sealant that I like to paint over my soul is finally being taken over. After four REACH months, its finally time to start praying. I don’t know what that means for my future. I don’t know where it will take me, if anywhere. Maybe I am a sender, an enabler, a Barnabas. But how can I be sure if I don’t ask?

What I do know is the rest of the promise in Matthew 7.

“Which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heave given good things to those who ask him?” Matthew 7:9-11

I may have to do something hard or uncomfortable. It may cost me a lot. But God promises that it will be GOOD. It will be a GIFT. And more people will join me when Jesus returns to sing of a global Gospel, a Gospel not just for me but for all people and all tribes and all languages from all of time.

Amen.    

Out of His Presence

One day last week, I woke up and experienced the scariest moment I have ever experienced.

Ever since my heart has began to be regenerated, which was about four years ago, scripture has never failed to speak to me. I would open the Word of God and feel it living, feel it speaking, feel it teaching and feel it convicting. Every time I open the Word, I have had something to write, whether it be for bible study, for teaching, for leading, for planning, for blogging or for journaling. It has been an amazing time of discovery and worship and love and adoration.

On this day, I had nothing.

I was not panicked yet though. This had happened before. I would open a passage and just not know where to start. I would blankly stare at a text and my mind would spin, having no order or no coherence or no direction. I would stop and ask God to reveal himself to me. I would tell God that I need him and that I wanted to see him. I would ask him to remember his promise from his word, his covenant love and kindness. I would open the text again and his words would be there, living and active, speaking to my soul, giving me something to write.

On this day, I had nothing.

And I was terrified.

You see, the night before, my heart, my thoughts and my actions were far from God. I had bought into the promise of immediacy, the allure of the here and now, the burning desire deep in my gut that needed to be dealt with. I chose to forget God's promise, God's character, God's satisfaction, God's hope. This was not the first time, and it won't be the last but it was the first time I had ever heard God tell me...

ENOUGH

"When you come to appear before me, who has required of you this trampling of my courts? Bring no more vain offerings; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations— I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates; they have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood." Isaiah 1:12-15

As much as God has shown his love for us and as much as he has proven it, God has also shown his holiness. God has proven that he despises sin. He does not and cannot abide it in his presence. He grows weary of our words of loyalty when they are tainted by acts of betrayal. He tires of our fruitless devotion when it is infected by poisonous treason. 

And after a while, he will hide from you. 

He will refuse to be found. 

He will ignore your prayers.

I have prayed Psalm 51 before but never with such fervency, such desperation. "Cast me not out of your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me! Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit!" I feverishly prayed this as inscribed these words in my journal. I sat back...

...and closed my journal. 

I was done. I had nothing left to say. I simply had to wait for God's answer. I surrounded myself with the Word that day, through music and sermons and people and prayers. I did not open the word again, but infused my mind and my soul with Christ and his people. Holiness was pursued vigorously, sin was avoided mercilessly, God was worship fervently and desperately. I NEEDED to taste the goodness of God again. 

I opened the word again, to the same passage I had opened before...

...and God was there. It wasn't profound or life changing or theology altering that morning. But the Word was speaking. Words were in my mind and coming through my hands on to the paper. Thoughts were clear and God was present. He had returned and revealed himself again.

I am desperately thirsty and over the past four years God has begun to refine my taste. He has promised and he has delivered and I have tasted and seen his goodness. I had, however, began to take it for granted. I had read these words before, prayed David's prayer, but never had I identified with the feeling and never had I felt like God had left me. Never had I felt like I needed God's presence in me. I had been drinking things in for 4 years, whether God or sin. I had quenched my thirst with one or the other because both were available. Never had I reached out for God and not found him there to drink from.

And that was terrifying. 

I am desperately thirsty, and now by God's grace, he is using that thirst to save my soul.