Jeremiah 29:7: Praying With External Focus

After being carried to Babylon, God spoke to the exiles:

"Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper." - Jeremiah 29:7

Often, our actions express an unspoken focus on blessing the church, but ignoring the community in which God placed the church. How about with prayer? What does prayer look like when a church takes its eyes from itself and looks outward? Here's a thought-provoking chart from the book, The Externally Focused Quest[1]:

• "Internally Focused Church" vs "Externally Focused Church" 
• "Prayer inside the church" vs. "Prayer on location in the community (schools, places of violence, etc.)" 
• "Prayer for our people" vs. "Prayer for those outside our church-city officials, human service agency leaders, teachers, etc." 
• "Prayer for our church" vs. "Prayer for other churches"
• "Prayer for you" vs. "Pray with you"
• "Prayer for church finances" vs. "Prayer for money to be freed up to help others." 
• "Prayer for the lost." vs. "Prayer for and engagement with three people who don’t know Jesus." 
• "Prayer gatherings for people in our church." vs. "Prayer gatherings with other churches for the community." 
• "Prayer for myself (my happiness, security, health, etc.)" vs. "Prayer for people in need." 
• "Prayer for God to change them" vs. "Prayer for God to change me" 
• "Prayer for people to come to church" vs. "Prayer for people to be sent out from our church." 
• "Prayer for the success of our church." vs. "Prayer for expansion of the kingdom." 
• "People who pray" vs. "People of prayer." 

Pray outwards.


[1] The Externally Focused Quest, Eric Swanson & Rick Rusaw (John Wiley & Sons, 2010)

Psalm 16: Not Shaken, Again.

Just a quick note because this theme of "not being shaken" showed again in my morning reading:

I have set the LORD always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. - Psalm 16:8

Interesting topography in this Psalm. God is set "before" David's eyes (attention), which places God at David's "right hand" It is also interesting that God is the one at David's right hand (which means that we are at God's left).

How deeply my soul yearns for stability. May we find it only in God.

"And who is the Rock except our God." - Psalm 18:31b

Psalm 15:5: Earthquake Country

One of the scariest experiences I had with an earthquate was not in California, where tremors were a fact of life. No, it was when I woke in the darkness and my 18th floor hotel was swaying back and forth and creaking; the quiet tinkle as glasses in the bathroom shuffled against each other; and I wondered whether the upper floors above me would collapse.

These buildings are designed to sway. They are made of durable materials. Earthquakes are a way of life anywhere along the Pacific rim. So building codes and materials and engineering design all focus on the inevitable. You only have to look at the heart-wrenching results of being unprepared in such places as eastern Turkey or Haiti, to see what can happen.

Life is full of earthquakes. The question is not if, but when, how often and how strong.  Some are tremors: heart-ache, struggling relationship, accidents, job loss, illness. Some are ground-breakers: Death, divorce, natural disaster, accident. All of them are unsettling. All of them threaten to throw us down.

Psalm 15:5 offers these encouraging words: "He who does these things will never be shaken." What things? What sort of bomb shelter is the author talking about? In the context of this Psalm, the answer is given right up front, in verse 1: "LORD, who may dwell in your sanctuary? Who may live on your holy hill?" God is our refuge. He is our sanctuary. He is our bomb shelter, in time of need. The verses in between fill us in on the type of person who dwells close to God: someone who lives with integrity and compassion.

This may seem like standard, bread-and-butter Christian practical living. But five chapters ago, there was another person who said: "Nothing will shake me; I'll always be happy and never have trouble." (Ps. 10:6) In Psalm 10, the person who says this is shown as arrogant and about to fall.  But in Psalm 15, this person is commended? What is the difference?

1. Trying to Become A King or Submit To The King? The Psalm 10 man views himself at the top of the heap. He thinks he cannot be shaken because he controls the weak and disdains his enemies. The Psalm 15 man knows there is a king of the hill (Zion) and the by being where He is, he will not be shaken.
2. Are Words Used To Destroy or Are Words Used To Build Up . The Psalm 10 man uses words to beat down and control. "His mouth is full of curses and lies and threats." (Ps. 10:7) The Psalm 15 man "speaks the truth from his heart" and "keeps his oath, even when it hurts." (vs. 4) Someone once told me that the world can be divided into two types of people: those who believe words mean something and those who don't.
3. Are Other People Potential Victims or Are Other People Neighbors. The Psalm 10 man divides the world into sheep and wolves. You plunder the sheep and fight off the other wolves. His goal in life is to stay at the head of the wolf pack. The Psalm 15 divides the world into neighbors and those who take advantage of neighbors. He will not climb over his neighbor nor fail to help him in need.

There comes an earthquake to each of us. God will use it to rattle our cages; break down defences, realign priorities and clear out our cluttered hearts and replace it all with the kingdom of God.

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our "God is a consuming fire." - Hebrews 12:28

Dear God, only your kingdom cannot be shaken. Your kingdom come, your will be done, in my life, is it is in heaven. Amen.

Psalm 14:1-3: Not A Pretty Picture

When NASA sends us pictures of earth from the space shuttle Atlantis, we see an blue marble with swirls of white clouds, an amazingly beautiful picture. The oil spill has recently caught the attention of space-mounted camerias, such as these, where the swirls of oil slick and the fires show as a cream colored stain. But when God looks at the world, his filter is slightly different. Here is my paraphrase of Psalm 14:1-3:

"Can it be that anyone actually really believes that 'There is no God'? Decaying inside, rotten outside-could anything good come from such zombies? You think it strange, but God looks down from his vantage point, looking for any sign of life. But what He sees is that everyone has detoured. They have all chosen the path of inner decay and outward rot."

My natural tendency is towards decay--towards zombification. I have no power--indeed, no desire--in myself to alter this course. And I sit in a city of millions who share my unwillingness to seek God. We all stand in need of rescue--revivification--resusitation. "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" (2 Corinthians 2:17)

Practical atheism is living like God doesn't exist. It is the preference for the life of the zombie. Take hold of the new life God gives and come alive.

Job 42: Job's Daughters

Job is one of those books (like Revelation and Ecclesiastes) which puzzles me. Having just finished reading it again, I still shake my head at its amazing premise (Satan accusing God of bribery!), the Supreme Court-worthy test case of undeserved suffering and the audacity of the author to answer neither the former nor the latter after nearly 40 chapters of unremitting dialog.

And what about that happy ending?

"The LORD blessed the latter part of Job's life more than the first. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand donkeys. And he also had seven sons and three daughters." - Job 42:12

So God doubles his livestock (see Job 1:2). His family gathers around him to console him and gives him "a piece of silver and a gold ring" (Job 42:11). He gets an extra 70 years of life. Oh, and he gets seven more sons to replace the seven killed in chapter 1 and three more daughters to replace the three killed in chapter 1. Children are not interchangeable.

So what really happened? I believe the biggest reward for Job was not the change in his circumstances, but the change in his attitude. In chapter 1, we see:

His sons used to take turns holding feasts in their homes, and they would invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. When a period of feasting had run its course, Job would send and have them purified. Early in the morning he would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them, thinking, "Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts." This was Job's regular custom. - Job 1:3

If I was to summarize his relationship with his children in the beginning of the book in one word, it would be Distance. The author of Job emphasizes the distance in his relationship with his children: They hold feasts in their homes, but not in his. He has to send to have them purified. He doesn't know what is happening with his children ("Perhaps my children"). His primary goal towards his children does not seem to be extravagantly loving towards them and involved with their lives, but to act as sort of a remote-control life-insurance policy.

Then Job meets God, who grants a two chapter behind-the-scenes look into really what it takes to be God as it details his intimate relationship with his creation. Contrast Job's previous response with his attitude post-interview:

And he also had seven sons and three daughters. The first daughter he named Jemimah, the second Keziah and the third Keren-Happuch. Nowhere in all the land were there found women as beautiful as Job's daughters, and their father granted them an inheritance along with their brothers. After this, Job lived a hundred and forty years; he saw his children and their children to the fourth generation. And so he died, old and full of years.

In some ways, you have to have the Old Testament in your blood to appreciate the turnaround here. Job has gone from distance to devoted. First, the names of his daughters are listed. You'd have to search high and low to find any place where the daughters are listed (and not the sons!) in the Bible. Second, he gave his new daughters extravagant names, naming them after doves, a sweet spice and a type of beauty treatment. Third, he granted them an inheritance. In the ancient world, sons had inheritances but not daughters. Fourth, he saw his children.

How had meeting God changed Job? He treasured what God gave. He loved.

How has meeting God changed you? Sometimes Christians seem to become extravagantly grumpy rather than extravagantly loving. But the world was not rescued through a grump, but through a giver.

Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good. - Titus 2:13