Pastor Steffan’s Reckless Obedience - August
Sometimes thirty-two minutes is just not enough time.
During a recent sermon, I shared some of the misconceptions I held as I entered the Christian life. False understandings about relationships, marriage, security, abortion (and the nature of one’s lips). False under-standings based on the wisdom of the world. Again, it was not that I knew so little, I was well-educated, rather, it was that so much of what I knew simply was not true.
As often happens during sermon prep, some of what was developed during the week was edited from the final version. At times, cuts are made in the name of civility, or to maintain the focus and flow of the overall message. But in this case, cuts were made simply in the interest of time. Thirty-two minutes were about thirty-two minutes too few. So, rather than a sixty-minute message on Sunday, this month’s newsletter article will consist of some of the clippings that did not make the cut.
So, from the editing room floor, the rest of the story…
Worldly love.
Looking back, I am forced to admit that I did not love my wife on our wedding day. Oh, I thought I did, but I was not even close. Not. Even. Close. For, you see, on that day in July 1990, my entire understanding of love was gleaned from the world. The secular world. A fallen world. A world that has turned truth upside-down and inside-out.
Yes, on that day I pledged my life to her as the one I loved. I loved the way she made me feel. I loved all that she did for me and for what she meant to me. I could not imagine my life without her. In a card to her, I wrote, “I am never as happy as when you are with me, and never as sad as when we are apart.”
But take a minute to read again about my love. Count the number of times you see the words “me” or “my.” As with everything else in my life, a life apart from Christ, my love was about me. Self-focused. Self-serving. Again, viewing everyone and everything in relation to how it affects me.
So romantic, so worldly romantic.
This is worldly love. A love that revolves around self. A love that causes us to quickly abandon others once they no longer meet our needs or live up to our expectations. We do not love them, rather, we love what they do for us. Such love is one that causes us to so quickly quit on a spouse, a child, or a church when they do not live up to our expectations. Worldly love is a love that seeks to take. It is a cheap counterfeit that inevitably fails. It is no wonder that when we speak of the love of God to unbelievers that they are so rarely moved. They cannot understand what they have never experienced.
But biblical love, Spirit-empowered and other-centered, is something else entirely. It does not take but gives. It does not wane but grows. It is the most powerful force in the universe.
Its source is God himself.
If you have not done so recently, please take a moment to reread the description of love, true love, sacrificial love, as recorded by Paul in 1 Cor 13:4-13. It should both convict us and encourage us. Convict us as its description is in such sharp contrast to how we so often treat those we claim to love. But encourage us as it is the picture of God’s perfect love for us, a love that will ever endure. It is a love that is so countercultural that it must be demonstrated to an unbelieving world.
Worldly prayer.
Okay, admittedly an apparent oxymoron. But stay with me.
My prayer life predated my faith. I prayed as a child. I prayed as a teen. As a child, I did not know God. As a teen I outright rejected God. But in a pinch, I still prayed, to whom or the what, I really do not know. But I prayed.
I was eleven years old. It was late. I sat in the back of our station wagon as we left the hospital. My grandpa was dying. I did not want him to die. I did not know what to do. I did not know what I could do. So, I prayed. There, alone and in tears in the back of our station wagon, I prayed…to the man on the moon.
Yes, you read that right. I prayed to the man on the moon. Funny, until you realize how incomparably sad it is.
I knew nothing of God. Knew not of his power, nor ever experienced his presence. I knew of none of his attributes, nor of his purpose or plan for my life. I was utterly lost. The greatest influence on my prayer life? Certainly not the Bible. Rather, it was the television shows Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, and the story of Aladdin and His Magic Lamp. Prayer was about telling an-other of my wants and desires, and if I could only say the right words, or hold my hands the right way, then my prayers would “come true.”
A desire for prayers to “come true.” A long history of worldly prayer. Heavy baggage to bring into one’s Christian life.
But prayers are not wishes in that what we ask of God we hope will come true. Rather, prayer is the central avenue God uses to change us. To grow us. To make us more like Christ. Prayer is about connecting with God. Talking to God, yes…but just as importantly, listening to him as well.
But even now, I run the risk of slipping back into worldly habits, turn-ing what is to be an intimate time of fellowship into a presentation of a laundry list of demands. Expecting him to feed my soul with the things of this world. And when he refuses, I rail at him in anger or turn away in despair.
I so often talk to God, but so rarely listen to God.
But when I do stop, stop talking, stop striving, stop railing, stop de-manding, and listen, what I hear…I hear the voice of a good good Father telling me how much he loves me. How he is pleased with me. He reminds me that I am created for more than what this world has to offer and that he will not allow me to settle for less than what he has to give. He invites me to know him more.
Biblical prayer. Taught by Jesus. Modeled by Jesus. Ushering us into perpetual communion with God the Father. Sharing the desires of our hearts, most definitely. But also allowing God to fill our hearts, change our hearts, and create in our hearts an even greater desire for him.
It is said that a simple two-step formula exists for ensuring that every one of our prayers is answered, and answered in exactly the way we desire.
Step 1. Submit your will to God’s will, making his wants your wants.
Step 2. Pray for your wants.
Know Him. Love Him. And may all our prayers ever “come true.”
