Continue reading »]]> Here is an 82 word summary of Miller’s A Praying Life.

We don’t need a praying life because that is our duty. That would wear thin quickly. We need time to be with our Father every day because every day our hearts and the hearts of those around us are overgrown with weeds. We need to reflect on our lives and engage God with the condition of our souls and the souls he has entrusted to our care or put in our paths. In a fallen world, these things do not come automatically.

May your time with your heavenly Father be engaging, healing, worshipful, and expectant.  Enjoy Him as the only thing truly worth everything!

Continue reading »]]> In A Praying Life, Paul Miller explores two common ways we go wrong when it comes to hearing God’s voice in our life and how we can correctly discern when God is speaking to us.

1. “Word Only”—Going Wrong by Not Listening. If we focus exclusively on God’s written Word when looking for God’s activity in our lives but don’t watch and pray, we’ll miss the unfolding story of his work.
2. “Spirit Only”—Going Wrong by Elevating Human Intuition.  Unless Scripture guards and directs our intuitions, we can easily run amok and baptize our selfish desires with religious language (“God told me to marry her . . .”).

Spirit Only people, on the right side of the chart, can separate the activity of listening to God from obedience to God’s Word. Under the cover of “being led by the Spirit,” they can easily do what they want. What they “hear” from God might be masking their self-will. This is emotionalism (a form of Romanticism), which makes feelings absolute.

Word Only people can also separate hearing and obedience by focusing on obedience and ignoring a life of listening and repentance. Listening to and obeying God are so intertwined in biblical thought that in the Hebrew they are one word, shamar. Under the cover of being obedient to the Word, Word Only folks can be rigid. We need to guard against rationalism as much as we need to guard against emotionalism.

We need the sharp-edged, absolute character of the Word and the intuitive, personal leading of the Spirit. The Word provides the structure, the vocabulary. The Spirit personalizes it to our life. Keeping the Word and the Spirit together guards us from the danger of God-talk becoming a cover for our own desires and the danger of lives isolated from God.

Continue reading »]]> More from A Praying Life.  There is so much packed in here that I would encourage you to read it twice.  How do we live and pray in light of God’s Upper Story while we are living life in our Lower story?  We need to look for Him, wait for Him, and expect to find Him!

When God seems silent and our prayers go unanswered, the overwhelming temptation is to leave the story—to walk out of the desert and attempt to create a normal life. But when we persist in a spiritual vacuum, when we hang in there during ambiguity, we get to know God. In fact, that is how intimacy grows in all close relationships.

To live in our Father’s story, remember these three things:

1. Don’t demand that the story go your way. (In other words, surrender completely.)
2. Look for the Storyteller. Look for his hand, and then pray in light of what you are seeing. (In other words, develop an eye for Jesus.)
3. Stay in the story. Don’t shut down when it goes the wrong way.

To see the Storyteller we need to slow down our interior life and watch. We need to be imbedded in the Word to experience the Storyteller’s mind and pick up the cadence of his voice. We need to be alert for the story, for the Storyteller’s voice speaking into the details of our lives.

As we wait and pray, God weaves his story and creates a wonder. Instead of drifting between comedy (denial) and tragedy (reality), we have a relationship with the living God, who is intimately involved with the details of our worlds. We are learning to watch for the story to unfold, to wait for the wonder.

Now, on a lighter note, I just thought this was funny…

Continue reading »]]> Sometimes prayer is difficult because we refuse to see our inabilities to affect real, lasting change in our lives or the lives of people around us.  How much time do we spend trying to change our kids?  Parents?  Siblings?  Co-workers?  How often does it work out for us?  Not very often.  Until we become convinced of our own inability to change things, we won’t take prayer seriously.

Other times it is difficult because we forget that God may be need to change us more than He needs to change the person we are praying for.  Here is an example from A Praying Life of how this sometimes plays out when praying for our kids:

Until we become convinced we can’t change our child’s heart, we will not take prayer seriously. Consequently, repentance is often missing. When we see, for example, our son’s self-will, we usually don’t ask, How am I self-willed? or How am I angry? We may even want God’s help so we can dominate our son. We forget that God is not a genie but a person who wants to shape us in the image of his Son as much as he wants to answer our prayers.

Ouch.  Ever find yourself praying for change in others and discover it is YOU that needs to change?  Try this petition for yourself before you ask God to work on someone else:

How can I know all the sins lurking in my heart? Cleanse me from these hidden faults. Keep your servant from deliberate sins! Don’t let them control me. Then I will be free of guilt and innocent of great sin. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer. Psalm 19:12-14

Continue reading »]]> Here’s another example. Imagine if your day looked like this:

And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. (Philippians 4:8 NLT)

What do you spend your time thinking about? Things that make your mind look up to God, or things that keep you firmly entrenched in the Lower Story? Do you dwell on the negative or choose to keep your mind on all the good that is around you? Do you only see ugly, or do you intentionally focus on the beautiful things and people all around you?

Spend your day today thinking about things that are worthy of praise!

Continue reading »]]> The Christian life is not easy, but it can be simple.  It is sure to be hard, but it doesn’t have to be complicated.

Here is another ‘easy’ example of how to live the life:

Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all. Ephesians 4:1-6 (NASB)

OK, just imagine it.  Humility.  Gentleness.  Patience.  Unity.  Peace.

What if we really lived like that?  Would it be easy?  No, but it sure would be simple!

Continue reading »]]> The Christian life is not easy, but it can be simple.  It is sure to be hard, but it doesn’t have to be complicated.

So many people spend so much time trying to figure out what to do with their Christian lives.  However, we could turn to 1000 places in Scripture and find simple, straightforward descriptions of what our lives should look like.  It may be difficult to live out what we read in Scripture, and we cannot do it without God’s help.  But let’s not kid ourselves…it isn’t complicated!

So, I thought I’d take a few posts to point out some of these simple descriptions.  Imagine if your life looked like this:

Don’t just pretend to love others. Really love them.

Hate what is wrong. Hold tightly to what is good.

Love each other with genuine affection, and take delight in honoring each other.

Never be lazy, but work hard and serve the Lord enthusiastically.

Rejoice in our confident hope. Be patient in trouble, and keep on praying.

When God’s people are in need, be ready to help them. Always be eager to practice hospitality. Romans 12:9-13 (NLT)

Which of these simple instructions comes easiest to you?  Praise Him for that!  Loving people is not difficult for me…it is both simple and easy!  Thank you for that!

Which is most difficult?  Ask Him to transform your heart to make it easier!  Being patient in trouble is difficult for me…it is simple for me to say, but hard for me to do.  God, help me to be prayerfully patient!

Continue reading »]]> I have been reading through Paul’s letter to the church in Rome.  At the end of chapter 11, there are some powerful reminders of how much different God is from us and how incomprehensible He is as a result.  His ways are truly not our ways. 

Oh, how quickly I forget.

In the last verse, Paul reminds us where everything comes from, who holds everything together, and even what the real point of everything is:  God.  This was a great reminder to me.

For everything comes from him and exists by his power and is intended for his glory. All glory to him forever! Amen. Romans 11:36 (NLT)

• Everything comes from Him.  I didn’t create anything on my own.  My family, my friends, my stuff, my health, etc, etc…all of it came from Him!
• Everything exists by His power.  Not only did I not create anything on my own, I certainly don’t have the power to hold anything together.  I can’t hold together my family on my own.  I can’t take care of my friends on my own.  If I try to keep it together by my power…it will all melt away!
• Everything is intended for His glory.  Not my glory.  Not my fame.  Not my comfort.  Everything I am and have exists so that He can get the glory!

So how about you?  Are you taking credit for things that God has given you?  Are you trying to hold everything together and make it work with your own power?  Does your life seem to revolve around you…or around God?  What do you need to repent from?  What do you need to thank Him for?  How can you bring Him glory today?

My advice?  Cry out to him to help you live out this verse today…and everyday!

Continue reading »]]>

The Bible tells the greatest and most important story of all time. It is the story of the one true God and His children. It is the story of the God who speaks; the God who acts; the God who listens; the God who sacrificed; the God who forgives. It is the story of redemption and new life.

It is the story of God.

We want to know the Bible as understandable and fascinating. We want to experience the transformational message of the Bible as we learn and re-learn the story of God.

I think this could change everything.  The question is: will people engage with The Story?

Part of the answer to that question depends on how much people interact with The Story between weekend services.  Will they read along in The Story?  Will they interact with with The Story with personal and/or family devotions?  Will they encourage and challenge each other with The Story in their Life Groups?

Did I mention that I’m excited about this?  Please be praying for our church as we start this journey together.

Continue reading »]]> Some things in the Bible are so hard to read, and even harder to live.  Here is one of them from the gospel of Matthew:

You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! Matthew 5:43-44 (NLT)

Let me give you a couple definitions here:

• Love: there are several kinds of “love” expressed in the Bible, expressing a wide variety of things.  The kind of love Matthew writes about here is agape love.  This is the sort of love God has for us, a love that is willing to give and even die for others.
• Your enemies: those that are hateful or hostile toward you.
• Those that persecute you: those that mistreat, oppress, torment or harm you.

So, let me carefully rewrite these two verses from Matthew.

You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies in the way that God loves you!  Love them enough to give your life for them!  Pray for those who mistreat you in even the smallest of ways!

So who comes to mind for you?  God gives us the command (and the power) to turn hate into love and mistreatment into prayer.  Are you willing to obey Him in this?  You’ll need His help to do it, but I would encourage you to pray right now for the names that come to mind.  Ask Him for a taste of His love for them.  Ask Him to point out ways you can express love to them.

Do it for your sake.  Do it for their sake.  Do it for God’s sake.