The Forgotten Fruit of Faithfulness

It's safe to say that we live in a culture that prizes the concept of "radical."

We--and I definitely include myself in this category--love to think of ourselves as revolutionary firebrands, as if our generation is the cumulative second-coming of a technologically equipped Martin Luther.

We love to glorify the cowboy, the lone ranger, the wild men who break free from the prison bars of a 9 to 5 and a lawn to mow.

While much of this is attitude can be good and necessary, I think that we as Christians are especially prone to exalt a radical out-of-the-box attitude as the newly discovered chief end of man.

It strikes me as odd--and most of all, humbling--then, that the concept of "radical living" in and of itself is nowhere to be found in the Scriptures. Of course, as Jesus steps onto the stage of human history, He delivers one challenge after another that require a radical change at the heart level--akin to being born again--but you won't find Him calling His disciples to become a group of mavericks who renounce convention as a spiritual act in and of itself.

In fact, what the Scriptures hold up as the the normal and practical context of a Christian living out his or her faith is just that: normal and practical.

Maybe, instead of Christ calling His disciples to merely flaunt convention, He's calling us to a change that is deeper than simply quitting a job or selling a house. You don't need to be given a new heart to figure out that the American Dream isn't all it's cracked up to be, but you do need to be given a new heart if you're going to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

This is the kind of change that will result in that increasingly forgotten virtue known as faithfulness.

Now, if you're anything like me, that may not exactly thrill your heart to hear that, because it seems so mundane and ordinary. Faithfulness doesn't sound all that exciting, but for the believer, faithfulness is a clear sign that God is actively working in our lives, producing the fruit that is to be characteristic of His people.

The forgotten fruit of faithfulness is what my friend and former boss, Tim, reminded me of this past year. Tim had originally hired me at Concordia, and I worked under him for a year before he moved onto a different position at the school.

I have all the respect in the world for Tim as a godly man and a leader, and so when I came upon hard times in the past year, I went to him for advice.

After listening to my situation and helping me to think through a couple of different issues, he said something so simple that I was almost tempted to pass it by.

He said, "Jay, God is not calling us to do anything heroic or to be liked by everybody, but He is calling us to be faithful. With His help, I think it's a pretty achievable goal."

A few months removed from that conversation, I'm still getting a bit choked up just remembering those words and the deep, lasting consolation the Lord delivered to my soul that afternoon.

Far from boring and mundane, faithfulness is a miraculous fruit that is produced by God's Spirit in the hearts and lives of believers.

And how does faithfulness show itself? In everyday life, of course.

Faithfulness means answering the bell morning after morning, working hard, paying attention to detail at our jobs, refusing to be distracted and waste our company's time. It means that we are consistent in the time we spend with our families, making that time count by pouring into them and showing them how to walk with the Lord.

Faithfulness also means pursuing relationships that God is putting naturally in our lives; relentlessly loving, knowing and caring for our friends, co-workers and neighbors and ceaselessly praying that God would open a door for His gospel there.

Faithfulness means that we make the most of our time, realizing that time is short and we are on a mission to reach a dying world with the good news of God who has loved us and pursued us even to the point of death so that we might live in Him.

I pray that God would produce this forgotten fruit of faithfulness in me more and more.

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires." -Galatians5:22-24

Columbus, C.S., and the God of All Comfort

As I checked my email for the ump-teenth time this afternoon, it hit me: My god is too small.

Before you get too excited and start putting a tract in the first-class mail headed for Columbus, allow me to point out the lack of capitalization on the above "g".

Because by no means is the God of Glory, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, too small. No, no, He is the One who raised Christ Jesus from the dead.

The god I'm talking about is decidedly smaller than the aforementioned God who sits enthroned above the earth, looking down upon the sons of men as if they were grasshoppers--yet still taking notice of us image-bearers of the Holy One.

The god I'm talking about is nothing more than a crude replica of the God of All Comfort. This mini-g deity is simply the god of comfort, offering--in the place of unconditional trust in the creating, sustaining and redeeming love of God--a paycheck.

Not that I'm against paychecks per se, in fact quite the opposite, I'm for 'em. Especially as it applies to supporting my family, as per the emphatic direction given in 1 Timothy 5:8, which declares that  a so-called believer sitting on his duff, neglecting the needs of his family, is in a worse predicament than that of an unbeliever.

Or, to steal a line from It's a Wonderful Life, "(Money) comes in pretty handy 'round here, Bub!"

With right around 25 applications in process and just over a week into moving my fledgling family across the country to the fair (and slightly humid) city of Columbus, Ohio, I'm ready to get working.

A natural and godly inclination, to be sure, but one that is easily perverted by the Enemy.

Here's how it has worked in my mind over this last week: I'll spend a few hours at a time feverishly applying to anything from local coffee shops to multi-million dollar marketing corporations, then I'll refresh my inbox, literally not willing to leave a new email unopened for more than a minute or two.

Since I have my email set to pop up when a new email arrives, the question to "Is there a new email?" is invariably "No" when I check it this way, but still, I want to be extra sure I'm not missing something, as if the email will read, "This job will self-destruct in 10-9-8..."

Now I'm sure I'm not the first, last or only person to ever experience this cycle, but what I noticed with increased clarity this afternoon was the fact that, instead of thanking God for allowing me to play a part in His story and asking to make me faithful to play it well, I have been begging that He would quickly bring along a job, period.

But what if, during this time of job-seeking, God is not most passionate that I find a job, but that I seek Him more, that I realize my dependence upon Him more. What if He desires me to pray for His kingdom to come with a fervency that I wouldn't have if everything was dialed in?

Could it be that He is using this unique time--now more than ever--to cause me to deny myself, take up my cross and follow Him?

If that's going to happen, I know that the top casualty is going to be the mini-g god of comfort.

It's going to end up looking something like the scene C.S. Lewis creates in The Great Divorce, where one of the ghosts has an extremely painful lizard-ectomy of the shoulder. The lizard had been a nuisance and a tormentor of the ghost up until this point, directing his paths, yet disallowing him to be free and whole.

When the lizard is finally removed from the ghost's shoulder, there's a terrible, agonizing scream from the ghost, but he is transformed into a solid man, and the lizard is transformed into a great stallion that suddenly serves as a faithful steed--not an encumbrance--for the now-solid man.

Uncomfortable as the process may be right now, there stands the God of All Comfort, promising to replace my self-made, shabby version of "comfort" with that infinite, unfading variety of Comfort found only in sharing in the afflictions of Christ.

The test is going to be whether or not I check my email right after I get done posting this self-directed sermon.

Ready? Set? Go.

The Reason for our Watchfulness

With all the buzz created from the most recent End-of-the-World prediction, I'm glad the Giants and A's had the foresight to schedule an early start time to this afternoon's game.

First pitch is at 4:10,  so Tim Lincecum and Brett Anderson have a solid 1:50 to get through five innings and get a winner declared before the clock strikes 6 p.m. Billy Beane must have been behind that decision--Moneyball indeed...

It really has been interesting, and even thought-provoking to watch how today's world takes in an exact doomsday prediction, what with all the social media out there (including, but not limited to, the Official Site of Jay and Janelle Hobbs).

In the past few weeks, I've joined the Twitter-verse, and along with my theological/pastoral follows, I'm following several sportswriters (mainly Giants beat writers), along with one of my favorite comedians, Jim Gaffigan.

Jim has plenty to say about all the aforementioned buzz, for example:

• Dear God, Can I get extension on my Judgement Day? I was sick & distracted by Twitter. (btw follow back?)
• This Rapture stuff is silly. BTW how do I become a good person in 12 hrs? Anyone know what God’s favorite ice cream is?
• Anyone know if the shuttles to Hell will have Wifi? Asking for a friend.
• “I didn’t say Judgment Day. I said Judge MINT Day. Which is better Mentos or Tic Tacs? Hope there wasn’t any confussion.” - God 

Outside of recognizing these tweets for sheer comedic value, isn't this an enlightening window to see how our world--and if we're being honest--we tend to view the coming Judgement, that Day on which God will set everything to rights and separate the sheep from the goats?

The enlightening and convicting element to all of this is that, in response to a knucklehead on the radio who no doubt has a whacky timeline that includes some version of flannelgraph, we are treating the Judgement as something fictional.

What we need to realize--both Christians and non-Christians--is that the Day of the Lord is coming. It's as far from fictional as it gets.

And Jesus has plenty to say about that Day. In fact, he devotes two chapters-worth of solid teaching on the subject in Matthew 24-25, which begins with his disciples asking him for a precise date of his return and ends with Jesus reminding the Twelve that a different "Day" is right around the corner--the Day of his death.

A few things about the Day of the Lord (Judgement Day) to glean from these chapters:

• Birth Pains Precede Baby
• You can't miss it
• Ready or Not, Here I Come

Birth Pains Precede the Baby
For anyone who's been in or around a delivery room (or even a pregnant woman), you know that pain precedes delivery. This may seem like a fairly obvious point, but Jesus applies it to the signs of his coming.

He says that nation rising up against nation, kingdoms rising up against kingdoms, famines and earthquakes will precede his coming. Alright, we have all of those things happening now--in the past year, month, week, even days, not to mention the Israel border scuttlebutt in Washington--doesn't that mean that He is coming soon and very soon?

Well maybe. But birth pains don't start the same clock for everyone. They are valid signals that the process is underway, but some women are in labor for 24 or more hours, while others are in labor for just an hour or so. It's an inexact, non-precise metaphor, and you've gotta believe that Jesus understood that.

The folly of predicting the exact timing of the Lord's return is underscored repeatedly throughout these two chapters, as Jesus says things like, "But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only."

Are we to believe that the angels and the very Son of God himself, Jesus who is at the Father's right hand, don't know the time, but some old dude in Oakland does? That is folly. 

The fact that all these things (wars, earthquakes, etc.) are happening and have been happening for 2,000 years is directly related to another statement of Jesus in Matthew 24: "And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come."

The end is coming, and that means we Christians need to get about the work of worldwide evangelism. It means that I need to be bold with people I interact with on an everyday basis, and it means that I need to be willing to orient my life in such a way that people hear the gospel and have a chance to believe.

You Can't Miss It
Okay, so we can't know for sure when. Does that mean that we won't know when it actually is happening? Not at all, it's going to be the clearest event imaginable. You can't miss it.

Jesus uses at least three metaphors in these two chapters that all speak to the clarity of his coming:

• It's like lightning going from one end of the sky to the other--you can't miss it
• It's like when vultures gather, you know there's a corpse there--you won't be able to misinterpret it
• It's like when a seasonal tree that blooms only in the spring blooms, you know it's spring--again, no interpretation necessary, it's that obvious

He's saying these things in order to comfort his disciples--the Twelve and us. We're always afraid of not getting invited to the party, or showing up late to the dance, but what Jesus is saying is that it will be an absolute impossibility to miss his coming. When he comes, everyone will know it.

That means that when someone claims to have insider knowledge, we can and should reject what they are saying out of hand. By definition, nobody has insider knowledge. What has been whispered in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the rooftops.

That's why its baffling and a clear work of the devil that so many are sucked in by claims to insider knowledge. Anyone who claims insider knowledge to the mind and work of God is a charlatan and a liar, and there's no grey area there. Jesus doesn't allow for it.

Ready or Not, Here I Come
Then what should our response be, as Christians who know we will be rescued on that great and unmistakeable Day of the Lord?

Jesus says that we need to get busy.

He uses several metaphors to point out the fact that we need to live in constant readiness and preparedness for his coming.

It's like the master of the house has gone out of town and we don't know when he's coming back. Our response, in that case, ought to be to live as if he's coming back today. To redeem the time and be a productive servant in his house.

It's like the 10 young ladies waiting for the bridegroom to come. Half of them are wise and bring extra oil for their lamps, because they don't know exactly when he's coming, while the other half are foolish and assume that they won't need extra oil. Guess what? The run out of oil and miss the wedding feast.

It's as if he has given us various gifts and wants us to make the best use of them possible. We may know that he requires much of us--i.e. all of who we are--but that is to be motivation for productivity and kingdom advancement, not a sanctifying of our laziness.

In each of these metaphors, the consequences for abusing our time are severe. The wicked servant is ordered to be chopped into pieces and thrown out where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, while the worthless, gift-wasting servant is likewise thrown out into outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Maybe the most severely disappointing consequence comes to the unprepared virgins, who, in the words of Rocky Balboa, "Should have planned ahead." They have to make a last-minute run to the lamp-oil store, and when they return, they knock on the door only to hear the devastating words of the bridegroom:

"Truly I say to you, I do not know you."

As rightly terrifying as the other two consequences are, I'm struck even more by this statement. That is tragedy. To think you know the Heavenly Bridegroom and find out at the moment of truth that in fact, He doesn't know you.

What to Wear
I want more than anything else in the world to be known by Heaven's Bridegroom. So how do I prepare?

Here's how: I will trust in the Bridegroom and his sin-bearing death, and I will claim his resurrection as my own. Then, I will get active and live out his mission.

It won't do to short-circuit trust in the Bridegroom and just start working. No, he has done the work. He is the master of the house, the Bridegroom, and it would be the highest act of mistrust and treason if I were to just try and work my way toward preparedness.

He has done the work, yet I am called to fruitful, prepared kingdom living. That's the difference between a sheep and a goat. A sheep feeds the hungry, gives drink to the thirsty, clothes the naked, and visits both the sick and the prisoner.

The sheep does this because he himself was once hungry, thirsty, naked, sick and imprisoned, but the Shepherd-King, the Son of Man, gave him--gave me!--food, water, clothes, and visited the sick (dead), imprisoned sheep.

This is the heart of the gospel. King Jesus has visited us, and he himself has given us life, righteousness and joy. He is coming back some day soon to rescue his people, and I can't wait.

Lord, make me busy, useful and prepared in the meantime.

God Beyond the Trivia

When I was a kid in Sunday school, our teacher asked us this question:

"Can God make a rock so big that He can't even move it?"

Even though I was 12, that question struck me as bogus. One that I would later come to find out to be on par with, "How many angels can fit on the head of a pin."

The reformers had a pretty sweet answer to questions like that. There was an on-going battle of half-wit theologians who were trying to decifer what God was doing before He created the world. The reformers' answer:

"He was creating hell for people who pry into mysteries."

You've gotta love an answer like that. It like when the Pharisees came asking Jesus where He got His powers in Matthew 21. Far from playing along with their little politically charged game, Jesus poses them another brain-buster in return:

"I'll answer you that if you can tell me where John the Baptist got His power."

This was a provocative question, and the Pharisees had no answer at all for it, because neither of their potential answers would meet their self-serving purposes. If they say John's authority was from heaven, then that doesn't square with the fact that they opposed him and eventually had him whacked.

On the other hand, if they say his authority came from man (which is really what they think), then a riot is going to break out immediately, because the people overhearing this conversation believed whole-heartedly that John was a prophet of God.

Jesus then goes into a couple of parables that depict God's chosen people--Israel, and more specifically, the Pharisees--rejecting and killing not just the prophets (i.e. John), but the Son Himself (i.e. Jesus). Now that's what you call conversation domination!

What do these questions have in common? They're irrelevant, and therefore, irreverent and even sacrelgious. When God comes to us, He doesn't come in the form of a brain-teaser, whipping up gargantuan stones that He may or may not be able to lift.

He also doesn't come in the form of a decoder ring, breaking down His every thought from eternity past. He doesn't come to answer all of our self-serving curiosities.

But still, when God comes to us, questions are answered and His Truth--He Himself--is revealed. When Jesus, the eternal Word of God, takes on flesh, He is "full of grace and truth." After all, He is "the way, the truth and the life."

In Jesus, we are given "all things that pertain to life and godliness." That means God doesn't just reveal to us tid-bits or trivia about Himself, but rather, in Christ we see and know all things neccesary to know God and live for Him.

Let's put this into practical terms: When Christ is revealed, we don't receive any insight into God's creative ability as it pertains to rocks, but we do discover something about suffering.

In Christ, we see that God not only knows and cares about our pain, but He comes down and joins us in it. Christ--the very essence of God--who was eternally loved and cherished by the God the Father, took on flesh and lived among us.

It's like the song says: "What if God was one of us/Just a slob like one of us/Just a stranger on a bus..."

Well, He was one of us. He came and joined us in our suffering, and in fact, suffered much more than we could ever imagine.

Do we know the pain of watching the innocent suffer? What about the pain of losing a loved one? A mother, or even a son?

The beauty of the Gospel is that God not only knows all about our suffering, He identifies with it to the maximum degree. Picture Christ, naked and alone on a cross, what does He cry? "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?!"

He knows all about our suffering. He has experienced it to the max. But that is little comfort if that's all that He's done. What if God knows all about our suffering and even identifies with us, but can't do anything about it? That is little consolation, if any.

We need a God that is stronger than our suffering, One who goes toe-to-toe with death itself and comes out on top. Picture Christ, risen and exalted, and what does the Father say, "You are my Son, today I have begotten you ... Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool to your feet."

God creating universe-sized rocks that He's barely able to lift means absolutely nothing to me. Christ on the cross, suffering for me and conquering death on my behalf--now that means absolutely everything to me.

What's it mean to you?

Dental Drilling, Gospel Wounding

I'm not a big fan of pain, and even less so when it comes to my mouth.

Because of that, I usually avoid the going to dentist at all costs. Come to think of it, cost also has a good deal to do with why I generally steer clear of road signs directing me to anyone bearing the initials "D.D.S.".

Call me crazy, but I don't normally look for ways to lose money and endure pain at the same time.

What is the cost? Great.

How will it feel? Not so good.

Count me in!

One of my favorite things that the dentist tends to ask is, "How are you feeling?" Not so good, actually, you've got a drill in my mouth and I'm just praying that the needle you shoved into my gums not too long ago does its job and keeps me numb.

Maybe they're asking the wrong question. Maybe (ok, probably) the reason I'm there at the dentist has more to do with setting my disheveled mouth back in order than it has to do with my momentary comfort.

But notice, I said "momentary comfort," because what I hope and expect to gain from this momentary discomfort--or, in the words of Paul, "this momentary affliction"--has everything to do with my future comfort, my future health, and my future happiness.

Dentally, I don't want to be like my dad, whose teeth betray him like Julius Caesar's good buddy Brutus on a daily basis. It's time to take action now, while there's still time to save my 32 teammates.

All this to say that the more serious our situation, the more we will be willing to give up to fix it.

Think about it like this: I don't remember ever throwing a cooler full of drinks and food overboard from my parent's ski boat, but then again, I've never been in the middle of the Arctic Ocean with a glacier-shaped hole in the hull of said sea-going vessel.

When God comes to us--when the eternal Word takes on flesh--He finds us in dire straights. We don't just need a cleaning or a filling--we need oral surgery. We don't just need to gas up the ski boat, our vessel is damaged beyond repair, the band is playing and we're out of life boats.

And that, my friends, is uncomfortable news. Oh, how comfortable it would have been if the dentist would have told me that my mouth is awesome and I don't need any work! But that would be a hateful and cowardly dentist who would deliver such false news, and my teeth would continue to decay and die.

Thank God that He is not hateful and cowardly. He not only delivered the bad news--"You must be born again to inherit the kingdom", "You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked," "You were alienated and hostile in mind"--He himself became the Good News.

"The Word became flesh and dwelt among us."

In Christ, we have One who came and joined us in our suffering. More than that, He became the worst and lone truly innocent victim of human suffering. Or, as Isaiah had said so long before, "with his stripes, we are healed."

Is this an offensive message? Does what God says about your sin offend you? Good, because it's supposed to.

Receive the news. Endure the affliction that it causes, because the cost is minimal compared to the inexpressible joy of seeing Christ, being united to Him and living in the hope of seeing Him in glory.

A True and Better Rehoboam

One of the hardest lessons for a leader to learn is that he is first and foremost a servant of those he's leading.

I'm learning that myself both as a small group leader at church, and as a student-worker supervisor at my job. The problem isn't grasping the content, though, it's letting that content penetrate and result into action.

The best example I've ever had of this servant-leader concept being lived out is found in my good friend, Mo Roberson, the Associate Athletics Director at Cal Baptist. "Robe," as he's affectionately known, has got to be the easiest person to respect that I've ever met simply because he personifies servant-style humility.

The great thing about Robe is that he serves those whom he's trying to lead. And the reason he's able to do that is that he gets grace. He knows the One who emptied Himself and made Himself nothing, taking on the form of a servant, became obedient to death--even death on a cross.

Robe isn't the hero of his own life, and that's why he's able to impact the lives of others.

With my friend Robe in mind, compare the leadership style of King Rehoboam, son of Solomon, successor of David's throne.

To be fair, Rehoboam had already been prophesied to be the fall boy in the line of David. Solomon had followed after other gods because of his marriage to foreign, idolatrous wives, and the Kingdom was to be largely stripped away and parceled out to another as a result.

Because of God's promise to David, the Kingdom wouldn't be taken away from Solomon himself. And only because of God's grace, the Kingdom would never be taken away entirely from David's House. That's because David's House was to produce the Promised Seed, the Deliverer of Israel--Jesus.

So here's Rehoboam, trumpets sound as he takes the podium for his first press conference as King. The newspapers are there, and they want to know what's going to define his Kingdom.

    "Your daddy was a harsh ruler, are you going to be the same?"

Rehoboam does the first, last and only wise thing ever reported in his whole life here. He delays answering the question.

    "Uhhh... Come back in a couple of days and I'll answer you."

Now, Rehoboam takes counsel with the old men who had advised his father Solomon--the wisest of all wise guys ever. It seems like a good move at the time, and they give him some stellar advice.

    "If you will be a servant to this people today and serve them, and speak good words to them when you answer them, then they will be your servants forever."

"Serve the people and they'll follow you, Rehoboam." I can't get the picture of Robe out of my mind here. No boss I've either had or been around has been easier to follow, and it's because he's a servant to the people he's trying to lead.

What will Rehoboam do with the jewels of wisdom that the old men laid down? You guessed it, he's going to spurn them, "like a strumpet in the street."

Rehoboam goes to his high school buddies to ask what they think. (And there's a lesson here for us younger guys listening to older men here, isn't there?) I'm picturing his buddies sitting on their Harleys and wearing sleeveless leather vests, maybe snapping their fingers in rhythm like the Sharks and the Jets.

    "Hey dudes, what do you think I should say? Should I lower myself and be a servant?"

The reply comes back from the Causeless-Rebels:

    "Serving is for suckas! Your finger is thicker than your daddy's thigh and your daddy's whip is going to be a scorpion in your hands!"

Well played, young punks. Great advice. Dear reader, I'll save you some time and say that he took the young punks' advice and the Kingdom fell into ruin and divide shortly thereafter.

Now we come to the point. Robe's servant-leadership style versus Rehoboam's scorpion-leadership style, right? Not exactly.

It's more like this: We need a True and Better Rehoboam.

Rehoboam was called upon to lead his people by way of service. He was charged with the task of laying himself down for others.

Rehoboam could not have failed any worse than he did, and come to think of it, we could not have failed any worse than we do. We consistently put ourselves above others, making ourselves little copies of Rehoboam.

We need a King who is willing to serve us. A Master who washes His disciples' feet.

We need Very God of Very God, Light of Light, to liquidate His Eternal-God assets and take on the form of a servant.

We need Him to submit to the old men's advice, because we're lost and ruined if He doesn't.

It's only by looking away from ourselves and to the Servant-King, the True and Better Rehoboam, that we can expect to lead like Robe. We can't be our own hero. Only Jesus can fill that role.

The Tale of Two Prayers

This past week, I was the happy recipient of a prayer in the form of a chain email.

I was so grateful to get said e-prayer in the first place, that I received it again later on that day.

And this prayer didn't travel by its lonesome in either email, as you might expect. Its traveling companion was a poorly written email (maybe as poorly written as this post will be), the sole purpose of which was to perpetuate the sending of the prayer to as many people as possible. More simply put, it was a half-hearted effort at laying down an e-guilt trip.

What did the prayer say, you might ask? Well, at the cost of perpetuating the life of the prayer itself, here it is:


"God our Father, walk through my house and take away all my worries and illnesses and please watch over and heal my family in Jesus name, Amen."

A prayer like that has the invariable effect of making me echo the words of the Church Lady, "Well, isn't that special."

To be fair, the prayer contains no heresy and actually gives a shout out to God the Father and Jesus, and you may be able to draw some connections from "take away all my worries" to something like "cast your cares on Me".

Praying for healing isn't a bad thing either, last I checked. Growing up, we had a little old lady in our church who always seemed to be praying for healing in bizarre family health situations, so much so that the joke in our family became, "My great-grand nephew Eddie was born without a face. Pray for healing."

The main thing that rubs me the wrong way about this prayer is that it's lacking something--something big, in fact. How about the first petition of the Lord's Prayer: "hallowed be Thy Name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

So often, I find myself trudging through prayer with no sense of God's glory, no sense of the reality of God's kingdom (into which we are welcomed by the blood of Christ), and minimal acknowledgement of the sole purpose of the universe: God showing himself to be great.

But then it hit me last night, like I honestly don't remember it ever hitting me before. God means to fill the whole earth with His inexpressible glory and that is all that matters in the universe and my re-realization of that was enough to wake me up all through the night with that one overwhelming thought.

"Blessed by his glorious name forever; may the whole earth be filled with his glory! Amen and Amen!"


It's almost comical to contrast this prayer with the e-prayer that permeated my inbox twice this week. I mean, even as the piddly e-prayer ends with one Amen, the psalmist ends his prayer with two calls for Amen.

Here's the psalmist, in this case Solomon, as he takes the throne of his father David. He, like his daddy, was a fore-runner of the great King that would one day come to govern and care for Israel, and his prayer starts in verse 1 with a cry for God to make him a just and righteous ruler.

Throughout the prayer, he asks God again and again to make him a king that cares for the oppressed, the poor and needy, one in whose sight even the blood of the oppressed is precious.

He also asks for length of days--which our bashful e-prayer is evidently not bold enough to try--and he asks something else that our e-prayer left out: "May people be blessed in him, all nations call him blessed!"

Does he sound like anyone you know? Heir to the throne of David. Righteous and just King. Merciful ruler who cares for and rescues the downcast. The One in whom all nations are blessed.

And it's this one, the Son of David and true rescuer of Israel, who has made sense of the lofty goal to fill the whole earth with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord.

Even if it costs me sleep all night every night, I pray that God would keep waking me up to the reality of his glory, the greatness of his name and the greatness of his love toward us in Christ.