Please Pray

Have you ever asked others to pray with you? 

Ok. Have you ever asked others to pray with you...when you aren't, or have no intention or, praying?

It happens to the best of us. (I hope. Because otherwise, it's just me.) Life throws so many things our way. Good things, bad things, tough things. Things we know what to do with and some things that we don't. And as people of faith, most of us know we're supposed to pray about such things. About all things. So when we don't know what to say, how to finish a sentence that seems like an incomplete thought - "The results are in,a and they aren't good.... Today was hard and tomorrow doesn't look any better.... They turned away and I kept running...." - we tack "Please pray" on the end of it. Because that's what we do, even when we're not doing it.

There are some times this is all we can do. Times when we don't know how to pray. Or what to pray. Or even, yes I'll say it, why to pray. Times when our spirits are overwhelmed and weak and broken and they don't know what to do with this mess. They know prayer is the answer, but prayer...is a foreign word. Or at the very least, a four-letter word. I'm not sure which is worse. So we invite others to pray, hoping their words will find meaning where it doesn't seem like ours can. This is the beauty of a community of prayer. It is the place where the groaning of the Spirit and the fire of a thousand tongues comes together to convey a message we can only vaguely grasp in a heart that can't hold onto anything. A broken wineskin where even God's good grace just runs right out.

But sometimes, and I'll speak for me knowing full well I'm not alone, I ask you to join me in prayer so that I don't have to pray. So that I don't have to hope. So that I don't have to put my heart on the line one more time, expose myself to one more dream, invite one more disappointment. If I can get you to do all of my praying and all of my hoping for me, then life just gets to happen. And either it's good or it's bad but it doesn't take the significant investment of my heart. I can either enjoy it or shake it off and it doesn't hit as deep. Because it's just been this thing out there...and not this very real thing inside here.

The problem is that the day comes when life has just been happening for...who even remembers how long? and all of a sudden, you wonder how much of your own life you've even been living. It's nearly devoid of hope and joy because you've been too busy guarding against disappointment and despair. God is a friend, but a distant friend, and it's been so long since you talked to Him that you almost forget how. Ok, you completely forget how. You still say things like "Please pray" but you can't remember what that second word means.

I love that we are a people who use the word "pray" as frequently as we do, but I am saddened that we are a people who do not as often do what we say. I confess I am part of the problem.

It's not just in the hard things, though, and that's what gets me. The way we have watered down the word "pray," we have done the same to "praise." Have you ever said to someone, "Praise the Lord!"...without actually stopping for even half a blink to actually praise the Lord? Guilty.

It's easy to pawn off our relationship with God with the right buzz words, without ever actually engaging our faith. It's easy because it doesn't feel like it costs anything. It doesn't take the risk of hope, the courage of vulnerability. It doesn't take the admission that there's something missing, that there's a longing inside of us. We never have to say the words "I want" or "I need" or "I hope" or even "I love." We don't have to say anything because the word we've said sounds like a thing all in itself - "pray." But until we've actually done it, it's not anything at all.

There are things in my life I've been actively not praying for. There are things on my heart I have been willfully pushing aside so I don't have to say them out loud. Not to my God, and not to myself. There are challenges I should accept, weaknesses I should embrace, hopes I should dare hold onto, and steps to walk and it's reached a point in me where I understand that clothing the heart in buzz words, saying what seems like the right thing to say, is costing me something.

It's costing me the opportunity to be everything God wants me to be, to do everything God wants me to do. To pull yesterday's point into today, it's forcing me into a life where God is doing everything He can with me...but not everything He wants. And I realize I want it, too, and I don't want to settle.

So be honest. How often do you use "Please pray" as half a sentence? "So that I don't have to." How often do you delegate your heart's duties to others so you don't have to risk the investment? So you don't have to hope? So you don't have to dream? So you don't have to fall? What would your life look like if every time you said, "Please pray," you also said, "Dear Lord"?

You might find the very thing you're trying so hard not to hope for. 

Go ahead and hope. Dare to dream. Care enough about your life to cry out. Fall into faith. Be blessed and broken.

Pray. 

Fingers crossed and hands folded.

Yes or No

Given that God's calling on your life is not an all or nothing proposition (you have "all" from the very first whisper), your response to God's calling is simple.

It's yes or no.

Most of us aren't comfortable with that idea. It leaves out all the details we're so attached to. All the questions we think we need answered before we can commit. When it comes to what God is asking us to do with our lives, most of us live as "definite maybes." As in, if it happens to work out that such a thing would fit into my life, then of course, I'm in. If it's not easy, if it doesn't just click together, then catch me next time.

The truth about definite maybes is that they are actually forlorn nos. They are spoken from a heart that wants to, but doesn't believe it can. From a life that is comfortable and unwilling, right now, to be shaken. From a place that's ready to risk wrapped in a rut it doesn't know how to get out of. When both time and the moment have passed, it is a heart that regrets not moving. It is a life that mourns a missed opportunity. It is a mind that begins to wonder what might have been...and can't remember what was so scary in the first place.

The lies we've bought only intensify this feeling. Lies like, "God is going to do something with you even if it's not this." That's the truth. God is already doing something with your life. He's already doing something beautiful. You don't know the impact your life is already having. Most of us are keenly aware of that. 

But it's also a lie because it convinces us to settle for what God can do with us instead of what He wants to do with us. Doesn't that make your heart cringe? This world is full of people, religious and unreligious, holy and unholy, righteous and unrighteous, who God is using in any way He can. Millions of lives are lived salvaged instead of saving. People are content with whatever God is doing with them without realizing they are one diligent step, one powerful "yes" away from the fullness of what God wants to do with them.

The other lie we often believe is that if today, we hesitate, there will always be tomorrow. If God really wants us to _______, He will just keep giving us the chance until we go for it. That's also the truth. God will keep opening doors, asking you to walk through them. Giving you opportunity after opportunity to step into this thing that He's created in you.

But He will never give you this moment again. Every second of your life is unique, whether it feels that way or not, and if you say, "Not today," you never get today back. You may still get tomorrow, but what have you missed? 

Does it matter? Maybe not in an individualistic, postmodern, self-centered society where one day looks just like the next and one thing looks as good as any other. But in a holy universe, it absolutely matters. God has never asked you for this moment so that He can have the next one. He wants you now. He wants you today. He asks you for this moment because this is the one that matters. Right now. 

That's the deception, I think, that is hardest for most of us to wrap our hearts around. We've been taught that God knows everything, that He's working all things together right now, that He's a few steps ahead and knows how this is all going to work out. But the God we see revealed in the Bible, the God we know through our own prayer, the God we meet in the stillness of our spirits...is not a God who makes appointments for tomorrow or next Tuesday or next September. God never asks people if they will join Him next week; He asks if they are ready now.

Which means every time we say, "Not now..." we are actually saying "no." 

When we say, "Let me see..." we are saying "no."

When we say, "If..." we are saying "no."

All the things we think are going to happen tomorrow if we say "no" today may or may not happen. Even if they do, we have still lost today. We have lost what today offers. We have lost our chance to give to today, and our chance for today to prepare us for tomorrow. Because when tomorrow comes, it will not be today. You will not be the same person tomorrow that you were today. In the blink of an eye, everything has changed and one breath of hesitation, one forlorn "no," has swept that moment away. It's not coming back. All of a sudden, God is doing all He can with your life.

But no longer all that He wants. 

It's scary. It brings us back to the questions we looked at at the beginning of this week - what if God is calling me to something big, scary, and stupid? What if I don't find locusts and honey a gourmet delicacy? What if I don't want to wear camel's hair? 

What if that's not what God is calling you to at all? 

The only way you'll ever know what God is really up to with you is to let Him do what He wants with your life. That means becoming a person who says an unqualified yes. Who steps boldly toward the voice of God as He calls you into this moment. This one. Right now. There will never be another one like it. 

Whaddya say?

All or Nothing

We've spent a few days now looking at calling, at the things God is asking us to do with our lives. And I think one of the greatest hurdles most of us have when it comes to this (and pretty much anything) is that we're "all or nothing" people. We may know what God has asked us to do, but there are still details and in those details, we have come up with two possible conclusions:

It will work or it won't. 

God will completely clear the way, carve a path...or He won't. God will provide for every need...or He won't. This will happen...or not. There is no middle ground.

For the sake of putting some skin on this concept, take my recent adventures in the seminary application process. It has been on my heart that God has called me into this, but as months passed between acceptance and registration (with registration looming eerily close), I still hadn't heard anything about financial aid. I had no way to calculate what this all was going to cost me, and whether or not it would be a financial possibility. I spent those intervening months yearning, aching, longing to hear whether this was going to happen...or it wasn't. Whether this would work...or it wouldn't. Whether God was going to provide...or not. I refused to let myself get attached to the idea of moving forward and was left with one timid foot hovering in the air for far too long, waiting to see if I could set it down with any reasonable assurance.

When really, the assurance had already come. It came not in the mail, but in my heart.

What I was really waiting for was to see if God was going to make it possible for me to do this education thing the way it's traditionally done - with a full course load and definite progress and pushing toward that degree in 3, 4 years tops. As April came and went and we got into May with still no word, I was full-on worrying that, in a way that is customary to this world, this was going to be taken away from me because of my limitations. Because of my current station in life. Because I do not, right now, have $35,000 for a degree that I don't think will pay off right away (board certification is a bit of a process in its own, above and beyond the MDiv requirement). And I was stuck in this place of....either it will work out, or it won't. Those were the options.

But my nagging heart would not let go. And as I continued to wait on the mailman every day (because such important information is still delivered snail-mail), all of a sudden I realized that it already is "all." It's already happening. It's already working out. The question I really had was whether or not it would work according to my plan, according to the common convention, according to the traditional way. Then I laughed because we all know that God has never been one for the common convention.

And in that moment, I decided that if I had to take one class at a time, every semester, for as long as it took so that my checkbook didn't break under the pressure of school, then I was going to take one class at a time, every semester, for as long as it took...and I was getting my Masters of Divinity and heading toward board certification and doing what God had called me to do, what He already promised was going to work out.

I put my foot down firmly and realized I already had "all." It was some unfaithful place inside of me that had refused to let go of "nothing."

Long story, I'm sorry. But the point of it all is this: the calling God puts on our lives usually feels big. Whether you're one of those called to be something for Him or to be something of men, it's all the same. Where do you start? How is this going to work out? Is there even a way to do it? And we're so quick to paint ourselves into the all or nothing box. It will work...or it won't. God will provide...or He won't. 

God has provided from the moment He spoke the word. From the very first whisper into your heart, and probably long before, God has been making a way for you to do exactly what He's calling you to do. It doesn't always work according to your plan. It doesn't always look like conventional wisdom or the traditional way. Don't worry; God has never been into either of those things. Conventional wisdom is folly compared to the ways of the Lord. And the traditional ways will never take you somewhere new. (You can't get to a new place by doing things the same old way.)

It'll all work out just the same. And that is faith.

So what is the response we must have to God's calling on our lives? It is not to wait, not to linger to see how things are going to work out. Not to harbor any reservation that it will. Of course it will. In the all or nothing equation, from the very first whisper, you have had it all. Faith, and discipline, then say simply to believe it. Set your foot firmly on the path God has laid before you and take small, diligent steps in a faithful direction. Because this is really happening. 

Maybe not all at once. Maybe not in the big, grand way it looks in your mind. Often not in the overwhelming way we fear. Usually in the quiet, agonizingly slow, painful way of patience and faith. But it's happening. Step into it. And let God show you the way.

**Note: The financial information I had been waiting on finally arrived a few weeks ago. By the grace of God, the next step of my journey is more possible than I ever could have imagined it to be. I am excited to take ever more faithful steps when the seminary adventure begins in just 68 days.**

Of Man

Most of us, despite our greatest fears, are not called by God to do anything for Him. We're not meant to be the voices crying in the wilderness, the men clad in camels hair, feasting on locusts and honey. (See yesterday's post.) We aren't called to the big, crazy, stupid things we're afraid God will call us to.

There is a second, arguably more common, calling in the Bible, and that is this: to do whatever you're already doing...for man.

We know the stories of Elijah, Moses, John the Baptist. But look at the stories of Abraham, David, Mary, Peter. These are some big names, too, and all they were ever called to do was to be who they already were for a new audience. For man.

Abraham wanted to be a father. He longed to be a father. He prayed to be a father. And God granted him this prayer, with one word: Be a father of nations. Be a father of men! You, God told Abraham, will not just be a father; you will be the father of descendants more numerous than the sky. The father of My children. For My sake, be a father of men.

In the same way, Mary (many generations later) was about to become a mother. Although it's not part of my religious tribe, there are many who look to Mary as the mother of all of God's children. God tells her she will be a mother, and she becomes a mother of all of His children, not just His Son. For His sake, she becomes a mother we all can turn to.

David was a shepherd boy. He was used to tending flocks. Guarding sheep. Protecting them. God comes and anoints him king and in essence is saying, "Become a shepherd over My people. Be a shepherd of men." Calling on the skills he learned in the fields, David slays a giant. He organizes troops. He builds shelter (a city), a place to call home. We repeatedly see him asking about names, and calling people by names, because a shepherd knows his flock. He's taken his shepherding skills, changed the audience, and for God's sake, become a shepherd of men.

And of course, Peter, the fisherman. Christ speaks the words directly to Him. Come with me, and I will make you a fisher of men. God takes Peter's natural skill set and changes the target, teaching him to cast a wide net and catch men in grace. Catch men in mercy. Catch men in the story of Christ, which Peter has a front row seat to. For the glory of God, Peter does what he's always done, but he does it now of men.

This is the more common calling for most of us. This is the word God speaks into our lives. That we would take whatever we're doing and put His people at the center of it. That we would shift our audience, change our target, and work of men for His sake.

Maybe you're working construction; God says, ok. Be a builder of men. You know how to make things strong; make men strong. Maybe you're a teacher. Great! God says, be an instructor of men. Teach them My ways. Maybe you're a nurse. Fantastic! God may be calling you to be a healer of men. Not just in bruises and bandaids but far beyond in the broken places of their spirit. Maybe you're a police officer; be a protector of men. Maybe you're a banker; be a backer of men. Maybe you stock vegetables at the grocery store; be a supplier of men. Maybe you're a waitress; be a server of men.

Maybe you're unemployed right now and all this talk of jobs leaves you feeling left out. Fear not, for even this can be your calling of God. Seeking a job? Be a seeker of men.

Whatever you're doing, there is a way to do it of men for the glory of God. It doesn't take much to shift that focus, but it's a radical change. And it changes not just what you're doing, but your heart. It reconnects you with that thing that once spoke so loudly into your heart. That voice that says things like "Go to college and major in economics." Psychology. Business. Journalism. Music. English. Chemistry. Communications. Basketweaving. Auto mechanics. Hair styling. Or even the voice that said, "Skip college. There's an adventure out there." Putting God's people at the center of your adventure reminds you why you've done it in the first place.

It's the purest expression of that nagging in your heart that got you where you are already, to take whatever you're doing and to do it of men.

God doesn't a bunch of John the Baptists. He doesn't need a nation of Hoseas. Only one man - Moses - could lead the many out of Egypt; the others were meant to work within their community, for the glory of God, for the sake of each other. 

That's what most of us were meant for today. To work in our communities, doing what we do, for the glory of God, for the sake of each other. That doesn't seem so big, crazy, and stupid, does it? Of course not. It seems...purposeful. Beautiful. Created.

Called.

So I ask you, in light of this, what is God really calling you to? 

Locusts and Honey

I've been thinking a lot lately about calling, which is nothing entirely new for me. If you've read Unfolded Hands, you know I devoted an entire chapter to the fear we have that God is going to change our story in some massive, unpredictable, undesirable way. I think it's this fear that keeps most of us from considering there may be a calling on our life.

We're pretty sure if we listen to God, we're going to be the nutcase in the wilderness clothed in camels' hair, surviving on locusts and honey. After all, isn't that what calling looks like?

In some situations, yes. In the stories that stick out most in our minds, absolutely. Stories from the Bible, stories from our ancestors, stories from the world around us...the dramatic stories of what God is asking His people to do are usually like this. Isolating. Ostracizing. More than a little "out there." They take a leap of faith, a measure of courage, a denial of self that most of us are not prepared for.

Moses took on the criticism of an entire nation as he dutifully tried to lead them out of slavery and into the Promised Land. God sent a stutterer to speak, and he ended up the scapegoat of the whole operation, at least as far as the people were concerned. They complained against God, but they complained to Moses. There had to be times when Moses was ready to throw his hands in the air and concede, "You know what, PEOPLE OF GOD? I don't know either! You're probably right! Maybe God did lead us out here just to kill us in the desert and make us a laughingstock! I don't know any more!" Being Moses took more faith than most of us think we have. He had to keep believing when it looked like there was nothing to believe in...because the faith of an entire nation was resting on how well he lived out his calling.

Hosea became willingly unclean when he took a prostitute as his wife in order to live a sermon before the people of God. We have a bit of a redemptive take on prostitutes in our day and time, when we have seen the stories of Rahab and have seen the girls on our streets and have heard about women who turned their lives around to make something better of themselves. But in the Old Testament? Uncleanness rubbed off. Uncleanness separated you from everything. Hosea, while trying to live out the Lord's testimony in front of His people, would have been cut off from those very people by his mere association with a whore. Being Hosea meant sacrificing all of self, which is more than most of us are willing to give. He had to step purely into impurity...because the sanctification of an entire nation was resting on his illustration.

Elijah certainly lived outnumbered. In one powerful scene, the lone prophet of the Lord challenges the hundreds of prophets of the other gods to a supernatural showdown. He stands, surrounded by false prophets and taunting voices, and calls on the name of the Lord. Those who saw this powerful display were burned up in holy fire, so they could not come after the prophet who must have been scared for his life. After all, he'd just confirmed the people's faith system was completely bogus; he'd shattered their lie. But back down the mountain, the people heard, and the queen herself was coming after him. Being Elijah took more courage than most of us think we have. He had to stand his ground...because the ability of an entire nation to stand was resting on his courage.

I've already hinted at John the Baptist. He believed firmly in the coming Messiah and in the secret word God had spoken to his heart. He lived alone, on the outskirts of town, a complete outsider and total nutcase as far as most of the establishment was concerned. Paul was sent to sure death, as was Peter, by becoming the voice of God to an unreached people. John was exiled for his radical faith, and his powerful story.

And on and on the story goes of men (and women, although I have not included any here) pursuing God's calling on their lives. These are the stories we think of when we think about calling. These are the measures of faith, courage, and selflessness that most of us don't think we have within us. These are the things most of us consider, and then decide we are not able - or willing - to do. Even for God.

And we can't understand why God would ever call us to such things.

The truth is, for most of us, He's not. He's not calling most of us to do these kinds of extravagant things for Him. He's not asking most of us to give up ourselves, to give up our lives. There is only so much honey, and so many locusts, in the world; not all of us can live off them. This kind of calling is reserved for the very few.

Which is not to leave the rest of us out at all. You see, the Bible clearly shows two types of calling God places on the lives of His people. For a very select handful, it is what we all fear: to do something big, stupid, and crazy. For Him. But for many, many more (including some of the most powerful names in Scripture), God's calling is not to do something for Him. It's to...

Stay tuned. I'll tell you tomorrow.