Tag: 2 Corinthians

“Most of us find it hard to pray,” observes J. Oswald Sanders. True enough, but Sanders, in his book Spiritual Leadership, does not let us accept our difficulty in prayer without highlighting the reality it uncovers: “We do not naturally delight in drawing near to God. We sometimes pay lip service to the delight and power of prayer. We call it indispensable, we know the Scriptures call for it. Yet we often fail to pray.”

There are two things needed to grow in prayer, writes Sanders:

Mastering the art of prayer, like anything else, takes time. The time we give it will be a true measure of its importance to us.

All Christians need more teaching in the art of prayer, and the Holy Spirit is the master teacher. The Spirit’s help in prayer is mentioned in the Bible more frequently than any other help he gives us. All true praying comes from the Spirit’s activity in our souls.

Time and teaching—with these two, Sanders sets the tone for prayer as the intersection of the practical with the spiritual. Cultivating a fruitful prayer life is both an action and a response. Sanders explains:

We are to pray in the realm of the Spirit, for the Holy Spirit is the sphere and atmosphere of the Christian life. Much praying is psychical rather than spiritual, in the realm of the mind alone, the product of our own thinking and not of the Spirit’s teaching. But real prayer is deeper. It uses the body, requires the cooperation of the mind, and moves in the supernatural realm of the Spirit.

God has ordained prayer, and we can be confident that as we meet revealed conditions for prayer, answers will be granted. God sees no contradiction between human free will and divine response to prayer. Our obligation to pray stands above any dilemma concerning the effects of prayer.

As we grow in prayer our dependence on God deepens while, simultaneously, our strength in his Spirit grows. Chambers concludes with this fruitful balance:

The praying Christian wields no personal power and authority, but authority delegated by the victorious Christ to whom that faithful believer is united by faith.

Great leaders of the Bible were great at prayer. They were not leaders because of brilliancy of thought, because they were exhaustless in resources, because of their magnificent culture or native endowment, but because, by the power of prayer, they could command the power of God.

Today’s Reading
Job 39 (Listen – 2:47)
2 Corinthians 9 (Listen – 2:26)

“The original meaning of the word theology was union with God in prayer,” remarks Henri Nouwen. Today we view theology as an academic pursuit and prayer primarily as something to do, rather than something to enter into. In his book, In the Name of Jesus, Nouwen reflects on the power of entering union with God in prayer:

Through contemplative prayer we can keep ourselves from being pulled from one urgent issue to another and from becoming strangers to our own heart and God’s heart. Contemplative prayer deepens in us the knowledge that we are already free, that we have already found a place to dwell, that we already belong to God—even though everything and everyone around us keep suggesting the opposite.

It is in prayer that we find rest for our disquieted souls, Nouwen believes; and from prayer that we begin to lead in our own lives, families, and vocations.

The central question is: Are the leaders of the future truly men and women of God—people with an ardent desire to dwell in God’s presence, to listen to God’s voice, to look at God’s beauty, to touch God’s incarnate Word, and to taste fully God’s infinite goodness?

What we find in prayer has immediate ramifications in shaping our thoughts, words, and actions. In a salient example for American culture today, Nouwen explains:

Words like right-wing, reactionary, conservative, liberal, and left-wing are used to describe people’s opinions—and many discussions then seem more like political battles for power than spiritual searches for the truth.

Through the discipline of contemplative prayer, Christian leaders have to learn to listen again and again to the voice of love. Dealing with burning issues without being rooted in a deep personal relationship with God easily leads to divisiveness because, before we know it, our sense of self is caught up in our opinion about a given subject.

But when we are securely rooted in personal intimacy with the source of life, it will be possible to remain flexible without being relativistic, convinced without being rigid, willing to confront without being offensive, gentle and forgiving without being soft, and true witnesses without being manipulative.

Today’s Reading
Job 38 (Listen – 3:33)
2 Corinthians 8 (Listen – 3:25)

 

How can you spot the difference between a thriving prayer life and a moralistic or legalistic prayer life? Timothy Keller contrasts these two views, for which he uses the shorthand gospel vs. religion, by observing:

Religion: My prayer life consists largely of petition, and it only heats up when I am in a time of need. My main purpose in prayer is control of the environment.

Gospel: My prayer life consists of generous stretches of praise and adoration. My main purpose is fellowship with God.

Central to the practice of healthy, gospel-centered prayer is the awareness of God’s presence in and around our lives. However, the busier our lives become the more difficult identifying God’s presence can be.

This is not a new problem, when Saint Ignatius of Loyola developed a work called The Spiritual Exercises in 1522-1524 C.E. One of the enduring prayers from this work, the Prayer of Examen, was designed to be prayed even when the necessities of life made other forms of prayer impossible.

Today we give you an adapted version of the prayer. For a fuller explanation of the prayer download Prayer of Examen (PDF).

1. Recall You Are In The Presence Of God

As you sit in silence, renew your awareness of God’s love for you as your one true and perfect Father.

2. Review Your Day With Gratitude

Review your day (or the previous day) from beginning to end. Identify and give thanksgiving for God’s presence throughout.

Process your day’s high and low points. Search for encounters and experiences where you showed grace and your heart was at peace, and those where you did not. Is there anything God is asking me to (1) start doing, (2) stop doing, (3) start believing or thinking, (4) stop believing or thinking, (5) to commit to, (6) or to stop committing to?

3. Renew The Gospel In Your Heart And Life

As you recall actions you’ll find yourself naturally thankful where you have lived a holy life and naturally convicted where you have not. The good news (gospel) is that, although you are guilty and unworthy, through Christ you are fully accepted and loved.

4. Look Forward With The Lord’s Prayer

Our Father in heaven, holy is your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.

Today’s Reading
Job 37 (Listen – 2:27)
2 Corinthians 7 (Listen – 2:58)

 

By C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)

We begin to notice, besides our particular sinful acts, our sinfulness; begin to be alarmed not only about what we do, but about what we are. This may sound rather difficult, so I will try to make it clear from my own case.

When I come to my evening prayers and try to reckon up the sins of the day, nine times out of ten the most obvious one is some sin against charity; I have sulked or snapped or sneered or snubbed or stormed.

And the excuse that immediately springs to my mind is that the provocation was so sudden and unexpected; I was caught off my guard, I had not time to collect myself. Now that may be an extenuating circumstance as regards those particular acts: they would obviously be worse if they had been deliberate and premeditated.

On the other hand, surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is. Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth. If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. Apparently the rats of resentment and vindictiveness are always there in the cellar of my soul.

Now that cellar is out of reach of my conscious will. I can to some extent control my acts: I have no direct control over my temperament. And if what we are matters even more than what we do—if, indeed, what we do matters chiefly as evidence of what we are—then it follows that the change which I most need to undergo is a change that my own direct, voluntary efforts cannot bring about.

And this applies to my good actions too. How many of them were done for the right motive? How many for fear of public opinion, or a desire to show off? How many from a sort of obstinacy or sense of superiority which, in different circumstances, might equally have led to some very bad act?

But I cannot, by direct moral effort, give myself new motives. After the first few steps in the Christian life we realize that everything which really needs to be done in our souls can be done only by God.

*Abridged from C.S. Lewis’, Mere Christianity.

Today’s Reading
Job 34  (Listen – 3:26)
2 Corinthians 4 (Listen – 3:02)

The depth of Christ’s humiliation is astonishing. His life was marked by radical marginalization and poverty; he was born a political refugee, grew up a subsistence-level worker, and died homeless and possessionless.

If we believe Christ suffered because he wants us to emulate his example, our lives will be known for their striving and either frustration (for failing) or pride (for succeeding on our own power). Fortunately the New Testament paints a different picture.

Viktor Frankl observed, “In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.” No stranger to suffering, Dr. Frankl was a psychotherapist who willingly stayed in Austria and endured the holocaust. Of his time in the concentration camp, he wrote, “There was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.”

This way of understanding suffering demonstrates why Christians have, for centuries, referred to Christ’s suffering as his passion. In modern culture passion is defined as powerful feelings or interest. The historic word comes from the Latin, pati: to suffer.

Following a true passion is a journey of suffering defined not by the intensity of positive emotion, but the willingness to endure for a greater reality. Most people do not miss out on their passions because they have been held back from expressing emotion or desire, but because they were unwilling to courageously place their faith outside of themselves.

It is only through dying to ourselves and placing our passion in Christ that we truly live. It is Christ’s love born in us that gives us hope and a future—never more than in suffering. “Love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire,” reflected Dr. Frankl. Reflecting on his time in the concentration camp, he concludes:

The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way—an honorable way—in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, ‘The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.’

Today’s Reading
Job 33 (Listen – 3:00)
2 Corinthians 3 (Listen – 2:25)