Splash

“The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God.” Gal 2:20

Splash! Summer is here. Some of you will take your first swim for the year very soon. How will you enter the water? Will you run and dive with great gusto? Will someone take you by the hand and wade with you as you tentatively test the waters? Will someone push you in and abruptly speed up the whole process? Who’s initiative will get you there – yours or someone elses? Now switching gears let me ask, “How do you enter a life of prayer?”

Before we might consider different forms or postures in the practice of praying, we must recognize a fundamental truth. This is that God takes the initiative in approaching us first. This means our desire to pray is a response to God’s loving nudgings and beckonings. Like an email, God ‘sends’ and we ‘reply’. Our main task is to be eager to respond to His “emails”. We need to expect that He desires to have a relationship and is constantly seeking us.

When we embrace this understanding of a God who loves us and is looking to communicate with us we rightly enter into a life of prayer – “SPLASH!” With this perspective we become fully immersed in the waters of prayer. In this place our heart’s desire is to love Jesus more and more. He is the life preserver we cling to as we frolic in the waters of prayer. Our constant active offering of our love to God, held secure in the arms of Jesus, by the power of the Spirit, keeps us in a good place. Love to God is essential or our life will diminish in prayer and increase in self trust.  Christ is what keeps our prayer life buoyant. A child finds a swimming pool a magically enticing place; may we find a life of prayer to be the same.

This is the Air I Breathe

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Matt 6:21

A field of wild flowers may be breathtaking to behold but for allergy suffers it doesn’t look so wonderful. Very often allergies and asthma seem to go together. Asthma sufferers know that the most fearful part of this condition is the restriction of breathing that it causes. Pollen can literally be “breath-taking”. Fundamentally, to breathe is to have life. In our spiritual life prayer is as essential as breathing. We must keep God in mind more than we think about drawing breath. Prayer safe-guards a solid and vital relationship with God.

It is what we continually return to that defines us. A life of conversing with God in prayer insures that our most treasured relationship is our friendship with our Savior. Prayer does not tell God anything He does not know but through a life of prayer we consolidate our love for Him. What is the desire of your heart? How can you prove that it is so? Look at what you invest in.

Prayer protects the prime relationship that affects all other relationships in the world. At the center of any personal relationship or experience of community life will be two things: joy and forgiveness. Luke chapter 15 makes mention of the theme of joy more than any other chapter in all the gospels. Associated with this joy you can see the subject of forgiveness throughout this chapter. But mark the order, we can only truly accept and forgive others when we know we are accepted by God in all our brittleness and forgiven. Again, the prime vertical relationship is crucial for healthy secondary horizontal relationships in this world. The greater experience of God’s forgiveness guarantees the greater experience of joy.

Doctrine and intellectual assent alone will not develop us. It is prayer, a life expressing love, that draws us to God as we emulate the life of our dear Savior. It was the patriarch of Methodism and the great hymn writer, Charles Wesley, who, in summing up the life of Christ said, “All Thy life was prayer and love.” I want that kind of life, how about you?

The Cycle of Prayer

“I(Jesus) have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” John 10:10

BRAN 2012 (Bike Ride Across Nebraska) has just concluded. Approximately 600 riders of various shapes and sizes, genders, and ages made the seven day journey across the state to chalk up 455 miles on their bikes and boast of traversing the beautiful state. It was quite a mixed collection of adventurers. Participating for the first time, I couldn’t help but observe the bike enthusiasts who seemed almost married to their bike and biking. These folks seemed to breathe cycling or live for the joy of riding and conversing about cycling. An evidence of this comes to mind when I recall pitching my tent next to a couple who appeared to have a tent with an odd bump on one side. I learned they had purchased a tent that had a small bike garage attached to it. Surely this was an example of a kind of total dedication - “live to pedal”.

I mention this by way of drawing an analogy so as to answer the question “What is prayer”. Essentially, prayer is not just an activity but a whole state of mind and being. It is a state of mind that causes one to continually return to the activity almost as second nature. You might call it a fixation. But in this it must be made clear that this fixation is not with an object but with a person. Prayer is a vital and personal relationship in the setting of a family – a child approaching/adoring his Father. On top of this we must add that the relationship that the Father wishes to convey toward the child is one of love and affection. Love and prayer are bound together.

Prayer is absolutely essential for progress in the Christian life as it expresses our desire to know and love God and it opens our hands to receive God’s unbounded love toward us. A Christian is one who allows God, their Father, to love them. Prayer is an encounter with the God of love. It is through a life of prayer that intimacy with God is developed as we open our life to God and become candidly honest and willfully submissive to His good plans and directions for us. The key to prayer is honest and open communication. Our Father in Heaven longs for this kind of relationship; this is at the heart of the cycle of prayer.