Pre-Written Prayers Are Reusable and Helpful Too

Growing up IFB(Independent Fundamental Baptist) I was taught that the only real prayers were those you prayed on the spot.  It was clearly said that any accidental recordings of prayers weren't able to be prayed again because they could only be prayed once.  Of course the Psalms were never seen as any type of prayer.  The "Lord's Prayer" wasn't a real prayer either; it was just a model of how we were to pray.  The older I grew the more restrictions and rules there were that applied to how to properly pray to God.  I didn't have to use thee's and thou's, but if I did evidently God required grammatical consistency in order to be pleased with my prayer, and I couldn't mix in a 'you' anywhere.

By the time I reached my early 20's I stopped praying.  I was too afraid I'd do it wrong and incur God's wrath for my presumption in prayer.  I would pray for specific requests for people in great need or pain.  Eventually pastors caught on that people prayed for things and weren't praying all the other proper sorts of prayers that were divided correctly into whatever the right way to pray was.  So for a while in my 20's and early 30's I heard more about how wrong it is to use God as only someone to ask things from, but not talk to him in any other way in prayer.  Big push on prayer, not prayer requests.  Once again I altered the way I prayed and only prayed for life or death issues. 

Imagine my surprise when we began going to a different church and I observed men going up to pray from the pulpit with their prayer already written out.  Now I knew that sort of thing happened at Bob Jones University in chapel, but I counted that as a speech requirement for the 'preacher boys' and never considered they were praying for real.  But here this was a real church and they had written prayers?  Baptist love to talk about the slippery slope, but seeing prayers written out and prayed in a meaningful way in public for the first time was a first step in a long theological journey away from fundamentalism.

I still don't pray my own original prayers, except on rare occasions, but I'm learning to pray the prayers that others have written.  Here is one that fits me pretty well right now.

Sustain Me in the Coming Then

O God, empty me of angry judgments,
   and aching disappointments,
         and anxious trying,
and breathe into me
   something like quietness
         and confidence,
that the lion and the lamb in me
   may lie down together
         and be led by a trust
as straightforward as a little child.

Catch my pride and doubt off guard
that, at least for the moment,
I may sense your presence
   and your caring,
and be surprised
   by a sudden joy
        rising in me now
to sustain me in the sudden then.

from Guerrillas of Grace by Ted Loder

Life Together with Christians in my New World

I haven't written a blog post in a while, although I've been writing a lot for my own sanity elsewhere.  I've started reading another book, just a short little one, but it is packed with a whole lot of things new to me in some ways.  It's really not new, but reflects the cry of my heart that I've done my best over the years to bind and gag and bury it deep so I can't hear it any longer.  The book I've begun to read is Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Enter the idea of Christian community and confession.  Why in the world would I read such a book?  I don't know, I suppose it has something to do with the things I've been wrestling with for the last few months.  In good ole IFB language these would be the things I would mention as "unspoken prayer requests" back in the independent fundamental baptist church I grew up in.  Thankfully I'm not in that world anymore, but I still don't quite know how to safely navigate in the world I find myself in today.  Life Together is given as an example of how we should live life together in our Christian community.  Therefore I find myself reading it to see just what that entails.

There is a great amount of tension between confession and daily community life that I see lived out before me.  How much of your story should be known?  What sort of things do you confess and to whom?  Who can handle the really big stuff, you know, the type of things that you do need help with in overcoming, the struggles that are too hard to carry on your own?  Not too many people fit that description.  And the incredible risks involved are enough to drive you back to isolation and denial.  That's a lonely and emotionally frozen way to live.  I want to be thawed out, but I'm afraid I may be "freezer burnt" and never be able to function as a normal person in the community I am now in.  The big things like major depression that cycles around to various degrees of suicidal thoughts all the way up to the point of deciding to attempt it or not is not something most people can deal with.

Of course the ones who are "trained" to deal with it are the ones who have no answers.  What kind of help is that?  Listening to the Godless drivel that comes out and yet is called help, is enough to drive me to really go through with it.  Talk about truly depressing!  Yet these are the people that I would be referred to in the throes of being suicidal because evidently pastors, who are thoroughly trained in the scriptures and theology, don't have the answers I am in desparate need of during the times I am suicidal. (Did you notice the sarcasm here?)

QUOTES from Life Together:

"The physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer." p19

"The believer feels no shame, as though he were still living too much in the flesh, when he yearns for the physical presence of other Christians." p19

"The prisoner, the sick person, the Christian in exile sees in the companionship of a fellow Christian a physical sign of the gracious presence of the triune God." p20

"He knows that God's Word in Jesus Christ pronounces him guilty, even when he does not feel his guilt, and God's Word in Jesus Christ pronounces him not guilty and righteous, even when he does not feel that he is righteous at all.  The Christian no longer lives of himself, by his own claims and his own justification, but by God's claims and God's justification." p22

"God has willed that we should seek and find His living Word in the witness of a brother, in the mouth of man.  Therefore, the Christian needs another Christian who speaks God's Word to him.  He needs him again and again when he becomes uncertain and discouraged, for by himself he cannot help himself without belying the truth.  He needs his brother man as a bearer and proclaimer of the divine word of salvation." p23

Themed Blogging Days

Thinking about ways of being more intentional with this blog and I'm going to try themed blogging days.  Something like:
Marvelous Monday, Mad Monday or Morbid Monday or maybe just to be a little more "normal" I'll do Monday Munchies.
Truthful Tuesday, Tuesday Triggers, Troubled Tuesday, or Torturous Tuesdays: a walk down memory lane
Wednesday Wonders, Wordless Wednesday(I like pictures and occasionally I take a good one)
Theology Thursday (I could probably write on this, pose questions, post about the crappy "answers" I've received over the years)
Fearful Friday or Fabulous Friday (That's really polar opposites, maybe I'll just skip Fridays)
Searching Saturdays (open ended theme that can work for a lot of things, even normal living life stuff)

What is the Gospel?

I've been hearing for the last six months how the gospel needs to be the center of my life. I need the gospel beyond salvation. It needs to be "the main thing". Live out the gospel, I'm told.

I just don't get it. How can the gospel be the center? What does that mean? How does the gospel effect me past salvation? I know what the gospel is, at least I think I do. How do I live out the gospel? What does that look like? What does it mean to live out the gospel?

Grace used to be just a word to me. I don't think I can explain it very well yet, but I'm recognizing it more in my life. I've experienced God's grace in my life and am increasingly aware of it. Grace is so much more than a word to me now. My life is so much richer for having grace as God's action in my life.

I hear christians talking about the gospel and it's not just a word to them. It really means something. There is a depth and richness to their understanding of the gospel that I don't have. Is it something that can be taught and learned or is it another gift that God gives in his own time?

Someone asked me how I knew I was a Christian

Someone asked me the other day if I was a Christian. (Neither one of us was being ugly) I told him I was and he asked me to tell him how I knew. I couldn't. I don't have the words to explain it except in an arminian/semi-pelagian way. I do know I'm a Christian. But I didn't do anything, so I don't know how to explain it. It started with the Bible church and the preaching I heard there was truth. I was intrigued by the stark contrast of this preaching and any other I'd ever heard.

This is the article that started it all. My four year old was bringing home Sunday School papers that were very different than any I'd seen before. They weren't just cute little pictures to color and a nice moral story about a perfect family with children who are wonderful little soulwinners. I wanted to know more about the place that made these Sunday school lessons. What was so different?
http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Articles/ByTopic/105/1487_What_We_Believe_About_the_Five_Points_of_Calvinism/

So I looked up the website that was in extremely small print at the bottom of my childs paper. I had never read anything about the five points of Calvinism before. Back in high school in Bible class I had to know what T.U.L.I.P. was. We studied it in the sense that we took notes on what our teacher was saying, but there was never any true study. I was taught that Calvinism was heresy. So there I was reading this article, trying not to listen to a lifetime of conditioning that was telling me this was heresy and dangerous doctrine.

I had LOTS of questions. So I hit the internet. I also wore through everyone I could see face to face. I was warned about the dangers of looking for answers on the web, but at the same time no one had enough time, in real time, to spend answering questions. I'm not saying they didn't take time to answer questions, but my questions never stopped. I could talk for an hour and just be getting started. I sent lots of emails with questions about what I was reading or something from the sermon. I pulled in a lot of people to ask questions of. I couldn't get enough. I read lots of books, good ones like: How Can I Be Sure I'm a Christian?: What the Bible Says About Assurance of Salvation; The Almost Christian Discovered; A Treatise on Regeneration; Knowing God and several others.

I spent six months, mostly on the Puritan Board, reading and then later asking questions. Many on that board spent a lot of time answering my questions and were so kind. I'll never forget it. I don't know when I slept. God was drawing me. It was like a crash course in knowing God. I was saved in the first week of Nov 03, but I don't know how to explain it. But I know I'm a Christian. I know I belong to God. I hope to have the words for it someday. I know it was God, not me.

Vulcan Mind Meld During the Sermon

Do you ever listen to a pastor when they start off a sermon and the topic is going to cover suffering and wonder if this time things will make sense? I do. I listen and I watch him preach as though I could do a Vulcan mind meld from my seat and suck the understanding about all kinds of suffering straight through his eyes and into my heart. Sometimes the topic does cover what I'm wondering about and it is a huge help knowing that the pastor "gets it" and yet I'm still left with questions.

• How does God use sin sinlessly?
• Did God plan sin? Is he sovereign over all?
• Did God allow sin? He didn't plan on it, but he can make it work.
• Does God listen to the prayers of those who will be saved or does he not listen until they actually are saved?
• I can understand suffering for Christ, that's in the Bible.
• I can't understand suffering without a point to it. The point can't be--You suffer so you can help others who suffer. That's just circular reasoning.

I know God is sovereign. If I didn't believe that; then I couldn't trust God for anything, not even salvation. I just don't know how to understand the sovereignty of God in relation to my own suffering. I didn't suffer because of persecution and standing for Christ. I suffered because of someone elses sin. How can God use that? There has to be more than II Corinthians 1:3-4. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
What about verses five through seven which continue the thought of suffering for Christ? For as we share abundantly in Christ's suffering, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.

These verses are talking about suffering for Christ and yet are used to "help" people with all kinds of suffering that have nothing to do with persecution. I don't get it. This is where I just can't wrap my mind around God's sovereignty and my suffering. I have to separate it and know that somehow I'm just not understanding something. But I want to understand, hence the Vulcan mind meld stare during sermons.
Another question I have concerns the timing of when God listens. Did he not "listen" to me all those times I was begging and crying out to God in my mind? Was I not one he listened to yet because I wasn't his child? Does he listen to those who will be his child? How was I viewed by God? Was it as his child even though my salvation was years in the future or not as his child because my salvation was years in the future?
These are not just intellectual arguements and hypothetical questions. These are questions that drive me to understand who God is. These questions also tear at me. There has to be answers, doesn't there?

Do you pray...for real?

Prayer is not made so that God can find out what we need. God wants us to pray because prayer expresses our trust in God and is a means where by our trust in Him can increase. ---Wayne Grudem

Do you pray? I mean really pray, not just give God your list and thank him for the nice day. I don't really pray. Sometimes I do, but usually I'm just glad to hear other people pray. Do you ever hear someone pray and you think, "Wow, that was real!"? It may not have sounded great and wasn't pre-scripted to catch grammar errors, but it struck a chord in you and you wished you could talk to God like that.

Recently I've heard some people pray and I felt like I was overhearing a conversation between them and God. That's was prayer is, but it's different when it seems like the person praying isn't thinking about people listening, but instead is just talking to God.

My "real" prayers are when I'm overwhelmed by who God is. I want to know how to stay in awe of God. It seems like I get used to him and no longer hold him in true reverence. The other times my prayers are "real" are when my world is falling apart and I run to God because I have to. Any other choice than complete dependence and trust in God leads me to despair. Been there and have lots of t-shirts to show for it.

I don't pray if people can hear me because I think about them and what they think of me... It's stupid, but it is what it is--fear of man. Maybe someday I can talk to God and let others overhear. For now, I just need to talk to God, period.

What is Fellowship?

I'm done for now on dredging up past crap. It wears me out. I can't do anything!!!

I was up all night coughing too bad to sleep, and that was after I took one of those 12 hr cough medicines. I tootled around on the web most of the night. I guess I should have read a good book. Maybe not, though. I came away from my forum readings with a strong sense that the church we are now attending is the right choice.

We've had more real fellowship recently than we've ever had. God is good. I know he is, but sometimes things happen or fall together in a such a way that the goodness and love of God just grips me. God knew we weren't ready for this type of realness in fellowship even though we were hungry and looking for it. We had to be "starving" before we began to look again outside of the church we were in. That led us to a totally new kind of church, one that we wouldn't have touched with a 10 foot pole even a year ago.

What is fellowship? real fellowship? biblical fellowship? I say we've had more real fellowship recently than ever before.

My definition of real fellowship

1. Doesn't center around small talk
2. People will dig into your life and expect you to dig into theirs. This is also called transparency.
3. This transparency is pouring out of people. Many mask layers are removed.
4. Christ centered and life changing
5. It's WOW! because it is radically different when it reaches past the pastor level and floods the rest of the church

I don't know if I 'm prepared for this fellowship, but I plan on jumping in with both feet.

Just a few questions

We're trying to figure out what we believe and why and at the same time trying to find a church to grow in and worship with. It's hard to figure things out from a distance, but it's scary to get too close. I guess that sums it up fairly well. I talk big, but if its face to face I fall apart. I usually get out what I want to say but only if I wrote it down beforehand.

Here are some things that are important to us, but I don't know if we're looking at the right things and saying this is important.
1) family integrated worship- no age segregated ss on a regular basis
2) homeschool friendly-not just tolerated
3) not KJV only-strongly prefer the KJV not to be preached from
4) 6 day literal creation
5) fellowship that's real
6) the doctrines of grace unashamedly believed and preached--no tiptoeing around the buzz wordsHere are things we know are important to understand, but don't really get it yet(not in any particular order)
1) paedo-communion vs credo communion
2) infant baptism
3) believers baptism
4) wine vs juice (Lord's Supper)
5) bread-leavened or unleavened; yeast? (Lord's Supper)
6) the whole covenant thing
7) excommunication....shunning? ...barring from the table
8) household baptism
9) regulative principle of worship
10) how do you chose a denomination?--do you figure out what you believe first or do you just pick a church and plan on leaving in the future after you realize you don't believe what they believe?
11) What are the true fundamentals of the faith? the Westminister Confession?
12) what about the exceptions and the different versions of the Westminister Confession? What if I get the "wrong" version that's twisted somehow, or a study guide written by a nut with a familiar name? I'd rather do nothing than do it wrong.
13) militant Scottish presby history-Scottish presbyterian denominations
14) church history
15) How are dissention or doctrinal differences/disagreements supposed to be handled?
16) the whole church gov't and court- how does it work?--do I really need to understand it?
17) barring from the table/fencing
18) closed vs open communion
17) Are we to pursue justice?

Here are a lot of questions I've thought of to go along with #17:
a) Is the answer different if the person is a believer or not?
b) what if he claims to be?
c) Let's say he's been confronted and denies any wrongdoing; do you pursue justice by actively looking for information that would cause justice to be carried out on earth?
d) Do you pursue justice based on the severity of the offense?
e) Is seeking justice too close to seeking vengeance?
f) How is it common grace that one hasn't received justice; isn't that more mercy than grace?
g) Is mercy permanent and (common)grace temporary?
h) I heard/read somewhere that God's justice is mercy in that it stops one from continuing in sin unabated. How are justice and punishment related? and how do they differ?
i) How does one decide that it is time to pursue justice or to wait on God to carry it out?
j)If one decides it is right to pursue justice; then how is that done without it taking over every spare moment and more?
k) Do you wait until you have time or do you fit it in?
l) What criteria should one have to determine whether it is right or the right time to pursue justice?

These thoughts have been on my mind quite a while. I usually push them aside, but it seems that God keeps bringing them up due to sermons or Sunday school lessons and even fluff books I've read recently. I don't know, maybe it's just something to sidetrack me and it's not from God at all. I can't tell the difference.

There's a lot of things that are on our minds. I don't know how to order them. I do know that I belong to God, but some days that's all I'm sure of.

We're going to die young and stupid.

I've been fighting the pollen the last few days and right now I feel like crap. The trucks are covered in the yellow dust pollen. I'll need to start sweeping the long pollen strings up pretty soon. My tolerance for our yapper is at an all time low. I just hollered at the son whose dog it is to "Train that yapper to shut up or keep him with you at all times. I'm sick of hearing him yap 24/7." We've bought bark collars at $50 a pop. They don't work. I wonder if a zap collar that I mash the button on would work any better. Do I want to spend that much money?

Last night I was pessimistic/depressed over how much there is to learn about God and what is the right way to believe and act. So I was being very negative in the conversation with my husband. I was comparing our life span to Adam's and our brain/smarts to Adams and my conclusion was that we could never learn enough to figure it out and we were going to die young and stupid. Well J set me straight. He basically said that if we had it all figured out and knew all the right answers that there'd be no one we would agree with and we'd still be alone and we'd be bored because we wouldn't have anything else to learn.

So the current thought is that we'll connect with a -----------Church and not worry about infant/believers/household baptism, end times, credo/paedo communion, covenant theology/new covenant theology, music, worship styles, the regulative principle of worship, gifts, cessationist/continuists etc. By the time we figure things out we'll be dead and we could still be wrong! There are a lot of smart people disagreeing on all these things, and I think I'm going to get it right?

It's kinda like going to Christian college and getting the rules handbook given to you your freshman year. I remember looking at it and thinking "I'm never going to get all this. I can't remember which places at which times with with who is off limits." I decided I'd just do what I do and hope I didn't get kicked out. I managed to make it through 4 years and graduate without ever even being "campused"(Christian college version of being grounded). So here we are thinking we're just going to go with it and learn along the way. We can take a lot of leeway on things if the relationships and true biblical fellowship are present in the church. The non-negotiables are the sovereignty of God and the doctrine of salvation along with the rest of the five points/doctrines of grace. We are definitely reformed, we're just not sure how much. Should we look for strong doctrine and give up on fellowship and accountability? We tried that and just about starved even while we were being comforted by the doctrinal preaching we were hearing. So now we will try a church that has fellowship as a main component of its practice. Hopefully it's not just talk or just something that exists in the goals of the pastor that hasn't yet made its way to the people. We agree on our non-negotiables. I guess we'll see if thats enough agreement.

I Need Fellowship

I'm tired of being surrounded by people I "know" and yet they remain strangers and I'm still alone.

Anyone I get close to still somehow isn't a "peer" because they're older and/or have a position of quasi-authority. So, anyone in a position to get to know me and speak truth into my life and seems to be making that effort, ends up relegating me to "project" status; but never a friend. I'm a project, not a friend. That's what I get for transparency.

I'm not saying, "Poor me. I don't have any friends." I am saying that I need friends who will look at me as a friend, not an off and on project. I'd like to have some friends who are on the same page as I am theologically. Your theology makes a big difference in how you live your life. It'd just be nice to have someone care without it being because I need some serious help. And for me to know people who care because they care and don't have to be in the position of "official helper of this project(me)" before they care.

Ahhh fellowship...what does it look like? I need fellowship. Is it wrong that my husband isn't fellowship enough? Is this starving feeling a sign that I'm avoiding God and trying to replace Him with people? I really don't think it is. It's not an emptiness without God in it. Am I just wimping out? Many through the ages have been alone in their Christian life, why can't I hack it? I have my husband that I can actually see, and my children I have with me all the time. I have various versions of the Bible to read, lots of great books and online Christian resources. Why is it so lonely?