Consumed by Zeal for God’s House — Praying the Emotions of Jesus Day 3

John 2:15-17 (ESV)
And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

Prayer
Jesus, You boldly confronted the religious systems of Your day. Consumed with passion for Your Father’s house, You overturned tables and called for pure worship. This was not a passive enthusiasm that only desired for God’s best and failed to act. No, you acted in earnest. You took time to deliberately prepare to purge those things that were not as they should be. You made a whip to overturn the exploitation and abuse of Your holy temple. May I have the same zeal for things that consume Your heart. May I see religiosity for the dead end it is.

Help me to see past the man-made systems and religious facades that deny Your true power. May my zeal be directed by the Holy Spirit. Beyond mere enthusiasm, may I be zealous for the things that matter most. May my heart beat as one with Yours. May I see clearly enough to allow You to turnover the tables that don’t belong in my life. Amen!

Indignant – Praying the Emotions of Jesus Day 2

Mark 1:40-41 (NIV)
A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” Jesus was indignant.* He reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!”
Footnote: * Many manuscripts render “Jesus was filled with compassion.”

Prayer
Jesus, You are so willing to do more than we can think or imagine. There is no limit to Your love for Your people. Though we doubt and frequently approach You only at our darkest hour, You are faithful. There is nothing beyond Your ability or grasp.

Like a sheep to the slaughter, we wrestle with things from which You desire to deliver us. You desire for Your people to approach Your throne boldly because You are the new and living way. But my sin and the pressure of peering eyes causes me to be distant. You offer a healing touch, but my doubts get in the way. May I believe for what You so desire to give to Your beloved.

You burn with such zeal for Your people that our distance leads You to anger. You become indignant at my request because it is mixed with doubt, fear and self loathing. I am unclean, unclean. Yet, You say, “I have made you clean, clean, clean!”

Lord, forgive me for my doubt. Free me to receive Your grace. And provoke me to ask for that which I know I do not deserve. May I realize that You are truly good. May I discover in my heart that Your generosity and compassion is beyond measure. Amen!

Compassion for the Lost – Praying the Emotions of Jesus Day 1

Mark 6:34 (NIV)
When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things.

Prayer

Jesus, May I see people with Your eyes of compassion, not with a judgmental attitude. Erase the emotional distance between me and those You have called me to love. May a passion burn in my heart to see the lost come to saving knowledge of You.

May I never be overwhelmed by the sheer numbers in need. In the midst of the crowd, may I identify the individuals that I am destined to connect with in order to share what You alone can do. There are many who are lost and need direction to the truth. The lost go about life blind to the reality of their need for You. They do not recognize the loving arm You extend to them. They have followed blind guides and have listened to the wrong voices.

As I share the Good News, may I never become proud. I am what I am by Your grace. In humility and compassion, may I share Your truth out of a sincere heart of love. May everything I share be said in love with genuine concern for those who don’t know You.

Amen!

Sacred Passion – Praying the Emotions of Jesus

While at a conference last November, I was inspired by a teaching from Michael Card, a respected Christian folk artist and author. He taught on the emotional life of Jesus as explored in the book of Mark. This led me to write a short meditation full of prayers based on the emotions and life of Jesus. Over the next month, I will reveal parts of this mini-book/meditation.

Here is the introduction…

Sacred Passion – Praying the emotions of Jesus

Why Emotions?

Whether people would admit it or not, many think that God, being perfect, does not have nor shows emotion. This view is commonly held by many Christians even though they may not have expressed it. You seldom hear anyone preach or teach on the emotional life of Christ. It seems like a taboo topic – even in the Church. But if we are to be truly free, the power of God must also redeem our emotions as well as our minds.

Why is it so disturbing to think that God can “Get emotional?” Are we scared about what would happen if were to make God angry? Or is it something else? Maybe we find the notion of an emotional God disturbing because we somehow equate emotion to weakness. And if God is God, He certainly doesn’t have a weakness. At the core of this mindset, is a series of lies And I believed these lies for many years.

Mastering my emotions has been such an inner struggle that I couldn’t believe someone like Jesus would wrestle with such conflict. I saw emotions as weakness because they frequently led me to sin and self loathing. Somehow, you start to look at all emotions as a sign of weakness and thereby part of man’s fallen condition. Then, emotions become sinful in and of themselves. The only way to stay strong is to cut off emotions at the root, put them in a box inside your heart, and deny that they exist. But this was futile. They would always break out at the worst time. Then, I would be more resolute to never let emotions control me again. This was the cycle of my life for many years.

I was saved intellectually and bound up emotionally. I was a fairly decent guy morally, but I was a complete wreck on the inside. I was a complete fraud. I displayed a form of godliness but denied Christ’s real power. Jesus came to set us free from the law of sin and death. Jesus came to redeem all of us, including our emotions. Jesus shows us what it means to be perfectly human and to express perfect emotions. As I started to look at this reality, I had to unlearn much of what I thought that I knew.

Embracing Jesus’ emotional life has been part of my road to inner health. Jesus, being both man and God, had emotions and expressed them openly. Emotions are not sin neither are they a sign of weakness. Emotions are part of what it means to be human. What if they really reflect what it means to be created in the image of God? What if God wouldn’t be God unless He had an emotional side to His character?

As a man, I have struggled with the social norm that says, “Men are tough. We aren’t supposed to be emotional.” This is yet another lie that keeps people bound up from experiencing true healing and restoration.

Why emotions? Because we have them, and God desires to redeem them. Because we don’t need to fear them, and God can use them to accomplish His greatest work in us. Because they are frequently the part of our lives that we hold back and don’t release to God.

Why Prayer?
The answer quite simply is that prayer changes things. We can strategize or talk about our struggles as much as we want, and things stay the same. We can make resolutions in our heart and even strive in the flesh to follow what we know God wants us to do, but that can fall short too. The reason is that we can’t change our own hearts. We can’t heal us. If we could do this one thing, we wouldn’t need Jesus. Prayer is the vehicle for change in our hearts and lives. In prayer we invite God to act, surrender closed up areas of our heart, confess sin, declare God’s ability to transform us, and we praise God in advance for what He alone can do.

This little book is a meditation of prayers focused on the emotional life of Jesus as depicted in the Gospels. These prayers have been helpful for me as I am working through surrendering my emotions to God. And I pray that they are useful to you as you allow the Holy Spirit to to a deep work inside your heart.

A Daily Prayer of Surrender

As I remember the dedication that Jesus showed in walking toward the cross, I am reminded that He called His disciples to follow His example. Jesus prayed a prayer of surrender in the Garden of Gethsemane. He prayed that the will of The Father be done.

Here’s a prayer of surrender that I am praying this week…

Holy God, I bow before You and submit my life to You this day.
Take my will, heart, mind, emotions and body. Conform them to Your will.

May the use of my time, resources, and relationships bring You glory. Help me to see people as You see them.

Thank You for loving me despite my sin. Equip me with a greater measure of Your Spirit. Anoint me with spiritual gifts that I may serve Your Body.

Search my life and show me any wicked way in me.  Guide me by Your Spirit. May I walk in love, humility and supernatural strength to be what You have called me to be. Amen!

Less Talk, More Action

I listened to a sermon by Francis Chan tonight while working out. I was struck by the simplicity of his message. He said that for many Christians our problem is not that we need to hear more sermons. He said the real problem is that we haven’t really listened and let those words produce change in our lives.

Many of us in America are ever hearing and never changing. I was struck by Chan’s warning. He said that we should be scared if we ever get to the point that we can hear inspired teaching and walk away without being challenged to change. At that moment, we have significantly stifled the move of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Here is my prayer. I want to really live for Jesus every day because He has paid the ultimate price.

Holy Spirit, let me know Your will. May I live a life of disciplined action, empowered by You. I don’t want to live a life of regret. Instead, I want to leave a legacy that glorifies my Savior and encourages others to know the sweetness of God’s violent grace.

May I talk less and act more! May I abide in You. Amen!

That’s Crazy

Scripture records that God asked some of His servants to do some pretty crazy things. From building a gigantic boat to parting the Red Sea to standing up against persecution to killing one’s son, God made some very strange requests.

How did Hosea really know he was supposed to marry a loose woman? Did Noah ever wonder if his mind was playing tricks on him? What went through Abraham’s mind as he raised the knife and looked into the sheepish eyes of his beloved son? These type of questions really bother me. I don’t know if I would have had the faith to obey.

At times it seems the more outrageous the command or word, the more likely it came from God. I wonder if God does this so that we know His work in our lives is really His work and not something we do. Are these strange requests tests of faith or avenues to build our faith in God? How about both?

Bill Cosby performed a comedy skit about the likely interaction between Noah and God. You can listen to it by clicking on the link below. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0KHt8xrQkk 

I personally believe that Bill Cosby hit on something. It does all come down to faith. Do we trust God or not?

While I may struggle to understand all of God’s ways and requests, I am comforted by the fact that He truly knows best. How about you?

Words That Last

When you are long gone what will remain from your life? I thought about this recently while listening to a song written by my friend Tamice Hasty. The top things that come to mind are stories, descendants, art, buildings, music, genes, inventions, personal legacy. But most of these fade after time unless you are really famous or do something very noteworthy. The family tree for most people only goes back so far until we are merely a name on a chart. But there is one thing that we do in life that lives on because it is always remembered by the only One who exists apart time. And that is prayer.

The prayers of godly saints echo through the ages. Our prayers are like incense that rise up to God. This idea shows how really important our prayers are throughout time. Sometime it can be easy to dismiss prayer as just wishful thinking or ideal chatter when faced with the harsh realities of life. But Scripture is clear that the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. Maybe prayer is truly one of the longest lasting things we can do in our lives.

Consider these lyrics from Tamice’s song.

Synergy of the Ages

how good and pleasant it is
when brothers dwell in unity
it’s like a precious oil streaming down
i wanna take my stand and join the cloud of witnesses
that’s where the Lord commands the blessing

i want to get lost inside your story
and echo the prayers of old
God let my groans be written on the pages
it’s the synergy of all the ages, the synergy of all the ages

all these in faith believed though they never received the promise
that i might join their fight
Lord let the oil that rests on their priestly robes, flow down to me
and I’ll join their ancient cry

you will not be silent and you will not forget
you hear the cry of your people and you will answer them

It Is Finished

Oswald Chambers wrote in My Utmost for His Highest, ” A pitiful, sickly, and self-centered kind of prayer and a determined effort and selfish desire to be right with God are never found in the New Testament. The fact that I am trying to be right with God is actually a sign that I am rebelling against the atonement by the Cross of Christ…  I cannot make myself right with God; I cannot make my life perfect. I can only be right with God if I accept the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ as an absolute gift. Am I humble enough to accept it?”

“There is a great deal of prayer that comes from actual disbelief in the atonement. Jesus is not just beginning to save us— He has already saved us completely. It is an accomplished fact, and it is an insult to Him for us to ask Him to do what He has already done.”

———————-

I find Chambers’ words an indictment to many of the prayers that I have prayed in my life. Why do I pray for things that God has already done? Why don’t I take hold of these spiritual realities by faith? It can be real easy to thing we are being very spiritual when our petitions before God ring of faithlessness and a lack of godly understanding.

When Jesus said on the cross, “It is finished,” He meant it. These are some of the most profound words ever uttered. The implications change human history. Jesus has already obtained our salvation, freedom and future.

The only barrier we find to these greatest gifts is not God’s willingness to provide them because the real work is already done. The difficult part is accepting the full implications of the cross by faith.

We have to come to the end of ourselves and realize the futility of our works. We have to understand the amazing quality of God’s grace and the fullness of its power to impart reconciliation and transformation. When I come to the reality of what I can’t do on my own, I start to realize the power in what Christ has already done for me.

Answered Prayers

A number of good friends of mine have recently become engaged. It is a joy to see them find the woman of their dreams. I have prayed with these guys for years. For some of of them, this incredible blessing has come after failed relationships and more prayers than I can remember.

I am overjoyed for these friends and look forward to their weddings. Congratulations to my friends.