Prayer: "Lifting Up of the Mind to God"
I finished the last two chapters this morning and this post will cover them together. Chapter 21 is "Prayer and Others." Chapter 22 is "Prayer and God."
Sunday mornings are a relaxing time at the Howerton home. Our church is constantly growing and, in order to have space for everyone to worship on the weekends, we have two Saturday night services in addition to Sunday morning's two services. Our pastor preaches five times (including the Sunday evening service) every weekend. And since there is an influx of new people at the beginning of each year, many of us who have been around a while have willingly switched to Saturday nights to make more room for the new believers who will come on Sunday mornings. John and I have been going to church on Saturday nights for a long time now and it's not a sacrifice. We love going on Saturday night.
We try to sleep in on Sunday mornings (which is usually no later than 7:00 because we're getting older). John is normally in the kitchen first and makes a pot of coffee. He then goes upstairs and plays guitar for a while, while I often read a book and sometimes write on my blog. His passion is music. Mine is reading and writing. Although I was blessed with musical ability, it has just never captured me or been my passion the way learning and writing has. John has music flowing through his veins. I can tell he doesn't really "get" my need to write any more than I can fully "get" his need to play guitar. But God created us both and also created us differently.
One of the things I have learned in recent years is how God can be at the center of everything we do -- or not. We tend to compartmentalize our lives and think of spiritual things as one compartment, separate from our other activities and responsibilities. But everything we do can be for the glory of God, if that is our motivation. And Yancey discusses this in the last chapter of his book.
I used a quote from Chapter 22 as the heading for this post because it really struck me. Yancey writes, "I am learning the difference between saying prayers, which is an activity, and praying, which is a soul attitude, a 'lifting up of the mind to God.' Praying in that sense can transform every task, from shoveling snow to defragmenting a computer's hard disk."
I am always putting myself on a guilt trip because of my tendency to view prayer as performance instead of relationship and by constantly evaluating the amount of time I devote to the activity of saying prayers. However, in reading this chapter, I started to think about all the time throughout the day that I am lifting up my mind to God. And it occurred to me that if I did not compartmentalize prayer the way I do, I would realize that I actually spend much more time focused on God and listening for His voice than I think "counts" as praying. That is one pit fall of performing for God as opposed to being engaged in an intimate, personal relationship with Him. Our performance, no matter how good, will always fall short of the mark. And if we ever think our performance is satisfactory, we are deceived by our own self-righteousness. But only when we incorporate every aspect of our lives into our relationship with God, are we living the way God intended.
In praying for others, Yancey discusses how prayer helps us to see others as God sees them. He poses questions about intercession; praying for loved ones and praying for enemies. He told a story about praying with co-workers at Campus Life magazine:
"We convened at 7:00 a.m., an hour before work began, and the gathering was strictly voluntary. Over time, though, the handful of us who met learned each other's secrets. We got to know each other's stories, including the colorful family members and the private pains and struggles. Then, after praying about each of the specifics of those lives, we would join together in the combined task of putting out a magazine.
You treat a typist differently during the day, I found, after listening to her describe her self-image problems -- 'Will I always be just a secretary?' -- and praying with her that morning. You are less likely to judge a computer programmer for his irritating mistake when you hear how deeply that mistake affected him. In short, you begin to see fellow workers not as cogs in a machine but as human beings graced and loved by God. That hour in the morning brought us together in a new kind of order, not one based on ranking and salary, but as men and women with hopes and longings, fears and struggles, dreams and devastations. It brought us together in the orbit of God's searing love."
I loved that story. I guess it touched me most because I have always been a person who has wanted to truly understand others and to be understood. I have always wanted to see beyond a person's exterior and into their heart, what influences their behavior. I have always believed that if I knew all of the contributing factors to the way someone behaved (especially if their behavior annoyed me), I would be less irritated by them and have a more genuine compassion for them. The real virtue, of course, is to have compassion without having to have those questions answered. But attempting to understand the hearts, wounds and vulnerabilities of others will help us to cultivate a more instantaneous response of compassion rather than criticism. We cannot love God without loving others.
Returning to the last chapter, "Prayer and God," Yancey makes some statements that have a great deal of meaning for me as a direct result of the things I have suffered.
"By bringing us into the presence of God, and giving us a glimpse of the view from above, prayer radically changes how we experience life. Faith during affliction matters more than healing from affliction. Submitting to God's will is preferable to a rescue from crucifixion. Humility counts more than deliverance from a thorn in the flesh...where one loves God with the entire soul, doubts and struggles do not disappear, but their effect on us diminishes...My questions about prayer recede in urgency as I learn to trust the ultimate goodness of God, who can transmute whatever happens into a 'good gift.'"
Yancey tells his readers about a German preacher, Helmut Thielicke, "who lived a life that might rival Job's." In the midst of Hitler's tyranny, humiliating interrogations by the SS and the threat of imprisonment, he stood in a pulpit each week "and tried to bring a message of hope to a demoralized congregation," whose former sanctuary had been bombed to rubble. Yancey explains how Thielicke's "heart nearly broke when he came across his famished children licking the pictures of food in recipe books."
Thielicke declared to his congregation, "The one fixed pole in all the bewildering confusion is the faithfulness and dependability of God." He assured them that all through history "and the disorder of personal lives there runs the constant thread of God's purpose." The following statements from this preacher are shared with us by Yancey:
One day, perhaps, when we look back from God's throne on the last day we shall say with amazement and surprise, "If I had ever dreamed when I stood at the graves of my loved ones and everything seemed to be ended; if I had ever dreamed when I saw the specter of atomic war creeping upon us; if I had ever dreamed when I faced the meaningless fate of an endless imprisonment or a malignant disease; if I had ever dreamed that God was only carrying out his design and plan through all these woes, that in the midst of my cares and troubles and despair his harvest was ripening, and that everything was pressing on toward his last kingly day -- if I had known this I would have been more calm and confident; yes, then I would have been more cheerful and far more tranquil and composed."
Sunday mornings are a relaxing time at the Howerton home. Our church is constantly growing and, in order to have space for everyone to worship on the weekends, we have two Saturday night services in addition to Sunday morning's two services. Our pastor preaches five times (including the Sunday evening service) every weekend. And since there is an influx of new people at the beginning of each year, many of us who have been around a while have willingly switched to Saturday nights to make more room for the new believers who will come on Sunday mornings. John and I have been going to church on Saturday nights for a long time now and it's not a sacrifice. We love going on Saturday night.
We try to sleep in on Sunday mornings (which is usually no later than 7:00 because we're getting older). John is normally in the kitchen first and makes a pot of coffee. He then goes upstairs and plays guitar for a while, while I often read a book and sometimes write on my blog. His passion is music. Mine is reading and writing. Although I was blessed with musical ability, it has just never captured me or been my passion the way learning and writing has. John has music flowing through his veins. I can tell he doesn't really "get" my need to write any more than I can fully "get" his need to play guitar. But God created us both and also created us differently.
One of the things I have learned in recent years is how God can be at the center of everything we do -- or not. We tend to compartmentalize our lives and think of spiritual things as one compartment, separate from our other activities and responsibilities. But everything we do can be for the glory of God, if that is our motivation. And Yancey discusses this in the last chapter of his book.
I used a quote from Chapter 22 as the heading for this post because it really struck me. Yancey writes, "I am learning the difference between saying prayers, which is an activity, and praying, which is a soul attitude, a 'lifting up of the mind to God.' Praying in that sense can transform every task, from shoveling snow to defragmenting a computer's hard disk."
I am always putting myself on a guilt trip because of my tendency to view prayer as performance instead of relationship and by constantly evaluating the amount of time I devote to the activity of saying prayers. However, in reading this chapter, I started to think about all the time throughout the day that I am lifting up my mind to God. And it occurred to me that if I did not compartmentalize prayer the way I do, I would realize that I actually spend much more time focused on God and listening for His voice than I think "counts" as praying. That is one pit fall of performing for God as opposed to being engaged in an intimate, personal relationship with Him. Our performance, no matter how good, will always fall short of the mark. And if we ever think our performance is satisfactory, we are deceived by our own self-righteousness. But only when we incorporate every aspect of our lives into our relationship with God, are we living the way God intended.
In praying for others, Yancey discusses how prayer helps us to see others as God sees them. He poses questions about intercession; praying for loved ones and praying for enemies. He told a story about praying with co-workers at Campus Life magazine:
"We convened at 7:00 a.m., an hour before work began, and the gathering was strictly voluntary. Over time, though, the handful of us who met learned each other's secrets. We got to know each other's stories, including the colorful family members and the private pains and struggles. Then, after praying about each of the specifics of those lives, we would join together in the combined task of putting out a magazine.
You treat a typist differently during the day, I found, after listening to her describe her self-image problems -- 'Will I always be just a secretary?' -- and praying with her that morning. You are less likely to judge a computer programmer for his irritating mistake when you hear how deeply that mistake affected him. In short, you begin to see fellow workers not as cogs in a machine but as human beings graced and loved by God. That hour in the morning brought us together in a new kind of order, not one based on ranking and salary, but as men and women with hopes and longings, fears and struggles, dreams and devastations. It brought us together in the orbit of God's searing love."
I loved that story. I guess it touched me most because I have always been a person who has wanted to truly understand others and to be understood. I have always wanted to see beyond a person's exterior and into their heart, what influences their behavior. I have always believed that if I knew all of the contributing factors to the way someone behaved (especially if their behavior annoyed me), I would be less irritated by them and have a more genuine compassion for them. The real virtue, of course, is to have compassion without having to have those questions answered. But attempting to understand the hearts, wounds and vulnerabilities of others will help us to cultivate a more instantaneous response of compassion rather than criticism. We cannot love God without loving others.
Returning to the last chapter, "Prayer and God," Yancey makes some statements that have a great deal of meaning for me as a direct result of the things I have suffered.
"By bringing us into the presence of God, and giving us a glimpse of the view from above, prayer radically changes how we experience life. Faith during affliction matters more than healing from affliction. Submitting to God's will is preferable to a rescue from crucifixion. Humility counts more than deliverance from a thorn in the flesh...where one loves God with the entire soul, doubts and struggles do not disappear, but their effect on us diminishes...My questions about prayer recede in urgency as I learn to trust the ultimate goodness of God, who can transmute whatever happens into a 'good gift.'"
Yancey tells his readers about a German preacher, Helmut Thielicke, "who lived a life that might rival Job's." In the midst of Hitler's tyranny, humiliating interrogations by the SS and the threat of imprisonment, he stood in a pulpit each week "and tried to bring a message of hope to a demoralized congregation," whose former sanctuary had been bombed to rubble. Yancey explains how Thielicke's "heart nearly broke when he came across his famished children licking the pictures of food in recipe books."
Thielicke declared to his congregation, "The one fixed pole in all the bewildering confusion is the faithfulness and dependability of God." He assured them that all through history "and the disorder of personal lives there runs the constant thread of God's purpose." The following statements from this preacher are shared with us by Yancey:
One day, perhaps, when we look back from God's throne on the last day we shall say with amazement and surprise, "If I had ever dreamed when I stood at the graves of my loved ones and everything seemed to be ended; if I had ever dreamed when I saw the specter of atomic war creeping upon us; if I had ever dreamed when I faced the meaningless fate of an endless imprisonment or a malignant disease; if I had ever dreamed that God was only carrying out his design and plan through all these woes, that in the midst of my cares and troubles and despair his harvest was ripening, and that everything was pressing on toward his last kingly day -- if I had known this I would have been more calm and confident; yes, then I would have been more cheerful and far more tranquil and composed."
Comments
The situation reminded Kellie of something that happened to her at work a couple weeks ago. So, as we sat there annoyed, she told us about the day she got the telephone call about her Dad's cancer diagnosis. There was a table of Christians she had been serving. She took very good care of them as she usually does. She knew they were Christians because they all held hands and prayed before their meal. They were through eating and all they needed was their check when the call came in to Kellie, which decked her immediately. She could not pull it together no matter how much she tried. That table of people called some other waiter over to bring them their check and they left paying the exact amount of the bill, not one penny for a tip.
I guess that's not a big deal but that validates what was said here in this post. We DON'T know what's going on in other people's lives at any given moment. Maybe we should act like real Christians and give one another the benefit of the doubt? I can't count how many times I should have done that. We left a good tip for our disappearing waitress last night. Live and learn.