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.    

The Danger of Denial

I have a weird form of impulse buying.

Lets take, as an example, my saga of buying a PS3. Ever since it came out, I mulled over the prospect of buying one. It has some great games, great features, is region free (a big thing for me as I import stuff from Japan) and has killer computing power. The thing was, for a long time, there were other things that I needed to spend $300 on, like, say food and tuition and rent. I would reason my way out of the desire, pressing it down into the lower reaches of my conciousness and go about taking care of the necessities of life. I would see trailers for games and hear conversations by friends that would raise the specter of desire and I would brutally shove it down again.

Fast forward to some 3 years later. I am meandering through Fry's Electronics (always a dangerous thing when you have unsatified technical fantasies) and I notice that they are selling refurbished PS3's in the wake of the newer slimmer model that had just released. It was just too good of a deal to ignore. A game that I really wanted to play had just released from my favorite studio and now this sale hits me at a weak moment, a time where I had already decided to spend some money (I was pot committed if you will). So I walk over and grab a box. Then I look up the row and see the brand new model sitting there at full price. I look at the box and wonder at the stories that this pre-owned console may have, what conditions it had been in before, how some uncaring tech may have poorly re-soldered some components and a catastrophic failure that could happen and the extra money I would end up paying. The potential was too great for my mind. I put the box down and grabbed the new model and walked out with a much much lighter wallet. This is a pattern. Anything over a couple hundred dollars goes through this process for me.

Now I don't regret this purchase. Not really. But what is illustrated here? A repressed desire will grow until one day some catalyst will transform it into an uncontrollable urge with consequences larger than it ever would have been had the desire been fulfilled initially.

I am desperately thirsty. I want a lot of things, a lot of which can be attained easily through sin. Self-righteous culture tells me to deny these impulses, that desires are unholy and should be suppressed. Post-modern culture tells me to satify every desire and constantly bombards me with messages about how to do so and shows me a myriad of people who are doing so and enjoying it. As Christians we are caught between denial and indulgence, between holiness and debauchery with many strategies to win mental battles but with few motivations to win heart battles.

"I will feast the soul of the priests with abundnce, and my people shall be satisfied with my goodness, declares the Lord." Jeremiah 31:14

Two things. He says he will feast the soul. This is not a promise of material blessing, something to satisfy our minds and senses. This is a promise that he satisfies the root, the innermost part of our being. He goes beyond what we think will fulfill our desires and fills the very essence of the desire itself, a longing and emptiness in our souls. He then says that they will be satisfied with his goodness, not his gifts. He makes certain that our satisfaction is rooted in something that will never change and will never depart and that is himself.

Remember, this is written to his people who are in exile. They are in a pagan culture where they are being told every day that their way is not the best way, their God is a farce and that they can have everything they have ever wanted if they will simply live like everyone else. They are in Babylon, which is used in Revelation as a metaphor for the most sin drenched depth that mankind can reach.

God knows that simply giving them a list of "do nots" will do nothing to combat the enticement of the culture around them. Instead he tells them, "Don't trust them, trust me. I will do far more for you than they can. I will satisfy you so much more deeply than they can ever know. Don't deny your desires, they will keep coming back. Come to me and have them filled."

"Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me" is not a call to not satisfy the desires of our heart. It is a call to give up our own control and our own ideas of how to satisfy them. It is God saying, "Look, you can do what everybody else is doing to work at satisfying yourself or you can do it my way. My way looks like the cruelest, most agonizing thing you can ever choose because to all the world, it will look like you are giving up something great. They will ridicule you and call you foolish. But the weight of my cross on your back is the weight of my love for you, a reminder of my goodness to you, a taste of what I have done for you. You have me and I am good."

So don't bury your desires, trying to pretend they don't exist, trying to hide them from God in some silly notion that we can fool God into thinking we are holier than we are. Open them before him. Tell him what your mind is telling you that you need. Then ask him to fill you. Ask him to remind you of his promise. Ask him to give you a vision and a faith to make the future vision a present reality. Ask him and ask him often. Every day, every moment if you have to. Whatever it takes to attain the attitude that Paul had "Whatever gain I had, I count as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord."

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek, and you will 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...If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father (who is good!) who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!"