Letting It Be

I've been really thinking about prayer recently.

Rob Bell just released a new NOOMA video called "Open," where he shares his thoughts on the power of prayer. He questions whether God answers all prayers, no prayers, some prayers and not others, that maybe he answers all prayers but just says no to some. He shares a story about two families with daughters who are suffering from terminal diseases. The one he is there to pray with loses their baby girl shortly after the other family finds out that their daughter is miraculously cured. How is that explained? What is that even supposed to mean to us? How do we process that?

I totally understand the frustration there, because Phil's dad is really sick with a GBM brain tumor, a terminal and aggressive cancer tumor that invades the brain. How do you explain how sick he is, when everyone he knows is down on their knees passionately begging God for a miracle? Why isn't he cured if the Bible says, "Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours?"

In praying for Phil's dad, I am frequently finding myself at a loss for words. What do I ask for? Do I pray for a miracle, if I really don't think that praying for it is going to help? Or do I just pray that his time left is good and painless? Or do I pray for their strength and comfort as a family? I don't know.

Rob Bell suggests that prayer is the beginning of an active effort to finish playing out the creation story. In Genesis, God creates the trees, plants, birds, bees, and humans, all to reproduce in numbers. Therefore, when God created the world, he left it unfinished. He could have completed it, but then what would be the point of living? We have been created as humans to play a specific role in the body of Christ, the church, in order to slowly create God's kingdom on Earth, even if it is slowly.

So when we pray, what should we do?

On Friday night, I went to a concert where one of the artists said, "What if our prayer doesn't end with "Amen," but it begins with "Amen?"

Whew.

When we pray, we should be asking God to use us in fulfilling our prayers. James 5:16 says that "the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective." If we are righteous, we are not hypocrites, and that means that we truly do want what we are praying for. Therefore, we should be more than willing to do what it takes to carry out the part of the creation story that we have prayed for God to handle.

Did you know that the word "amen" means "Let it be?"

Now think about prayer in that way. We get down on our knees, or maybe we hold hands, or maybe we even drive in our cars, and we pour our hearts out to God, begging him for unfathomable answers to prayers for healing, miracles, for guidance. Then, when we are done, we say "Let it be." Amen.

Let what be? Well, if you remember, when God teaches his followers how to pray, he says to them, "Let your will be done on Earth as it is in heaven." Let your will be done. Let me carry out your will on Earth as if I were standing next to you in Heaven.

When we think about prayer in this active, empowering way, it certainly adds meaning to its power. And, it gives me an enormous amount of hope for what I'm praying for.

"Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be. There will be an answer. Let it be..."

Amen, amen, amen, amen. There will be an answer. AMEN.

Habits: Church Involvement/Sunday School, April 13

***SHOW DRIVE-THRU CHURCH VIDEO***


Yes, this video is very cheesy, but I think it's pretty spot-on. We have somehow come to the conclusion that the word "church" means a place that we go, fun songs, nice clothes, clapping hands, sermons, confessions, a way to feel good about yourself, a moral duty, a way to have fun, a place to take communion, a place to cry, a place to get advice, etc., etc., etc.

This is scary!

I think that we have all started mis-using the word "church."

In the Bible, the word that was first used for "church" was the Greek word "ekklesia," which means "called out," "called forth," or "an assembly of people."

Right away we see the gap between what is commonly believed to be the church and what the Bible intended for the church to be.

In reality, the church is all about people. It's all about the gathering of believers, the assembly of the body of Christ.

On Friday, I went with a couple of people to a concert in Deep Ellum, where Shawn McDonald and two other artists were playing. Each artist shared their testimony, and each of them was very powerful and very passionate. The first guy told a story about growing up. He told a story about how they were so poor that one time, he was driving down the road and the car door just fell off. I mean can you imagine that?? You're on your way to school, halfway asleep, and then all of a sudden the door just disappears! Crazy! So anyway, this guy was so poor that he was always wearing these really awkward and embarrassing hand-me-downs to school. It got to the point where he was just mortified, and all he could think about was having a cool pair of jeans. So he started praying every single night to God, saying, "God, if you really do exist, if you really are out there, bring me a pair of jeans." By this time, tears are coming out of this guy's eyes, so I know that he's really not kidding when he says that these blue jeans were important to him. One day, he woke up and opened the door to their trailer, and sitting on the step was a neatly folded pair of jeans, just the right size. And he said that that was when he knew that there was something bigger out there.

Now, he made very clear after that that he didn't think that there was like some celestual blue jean angel that swooped down to give little kids jeans. And he didn't think that God used superpowers to make the jeans appear either. No, he knew that someone in the trailer park, someone in that community, had brought him those jeans.

Guys, that is what the church is. The church is when God uses human bodies, men and women, you and me, as vessels of His spirit. The church is when we become the hands and the feet of God.

12 -13You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts—limbs, organs, cells—but no matter how many parts you can name, you're still one body. It's exactly the same with Christ. By means of his one Spirit, we all said good-bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We each used to independently call our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which he has the final say in everything. (This is what we proclaimed in word and action when we were baptized.) Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain—his Spirit—where we all come to drink. The old labels we once used to identify ourselves—labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free—are no longer useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive.
14 -18I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not less. A body isn't just a single part blown up into something huge. It's all the different-but-similar parts arranged and functioning together. If Foot said, "I'm not elegant like Hand, embellished with rings; I guess I don't belong to this body," would that make it so? If Ear said, "I'm not beautiful like Eye, limpid and expressive; I don't deserve a place on the head," would you want to remove it from the body? If the body was all eye, how could it hear? If all ear, how could it smell? As it is, we see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right where he wanted it.
19 -24But I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blown up into self-importance. For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of. An enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn't be a body, but a monster. What we have is one body with many parts, each its proper size and in its proper place. No part is important on its own. Can you imagine Eye telling Hand, "Get lost; I don't need you"? Or, Head telling Foot, "You're fired; your job has been phased out"? As a matter of fact, in practice it works the other way—the "lower" the part, the more basic, and therefore necessary. You can live without an eye, for instance, but not without a stomach. When it's a part of your own body you are concerned with, it makes no difference whether the part is visible or clothed, higher or lower. You give it dignity and honor just as it is, without comparisons. If anything, you have more concern for the lower parts than the higher. If you had to choose, wouldn't you prefer good digestion to full-bodied hair?
1 Corinthians 12:12-30 (The Message)

Now the recurring theme here is the idea of the body. There is this ongoing analogy throughout the New Testament that refers to the community of believers or followers as the physical representation of Christ on Earth. Paul and the other writers are constantly reiterating this idea that we each represent a small, yet absolutely essential part of the body, whose heart is that of Christ.

This specific passage stresses how important it is to recognize what you are a part of. It says "For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of. An enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn't be a body, but a monster."

We are only great because of the greater body that we belong to. Only when we realize that we have a specific function within the greater body do we really realize the greatness of God, and only when we realize the greatness of God do we realize our full potential. A couple of weeks ago, Neil said that "Our destinies are fulfilled not by proving our own greatness, but by demonstrating God's greatness through our lives."

We can only be great because there is a larger thing happening within us, around us, and through us.

***SHOW STORK VIDEO***

In this commercial, the stork goes through all of this work for the guy, and in the end, the guy is not living up to his potential, settling for being part of the everyday working world.

It is the same way with God. He has gone through so much to create you into the perfect, beautiful, absolutely irreplaceable part of his body. If we want to reach our full potential, if we want to fulfill our destinies, we have to realize that we can't do it without being a part of the body of Christ, the church.

Romans 12:3-5 says:
4 -6In this way we are like the various parts of a human body. Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around. The body we're talking about is Christ's body of chosen people. Each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of his body. But as a chopped-off finger or cut-off toe we wouldn't amount to much, would we? So since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ's body, let's just go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren't. ?
Romans 12:3-5 (The Message)

This series that we started last week is called "habits." Last week, Phil took some time defining what exactly the word "habit" means, and where it comes from. We learned that the word "habit" is very different from the way we use it today (kind of like the word "church" right??). We normally think of the word "habit" as some repeated behavior that we do over and over again, usually without thinking about it. However, Phil revealed to us that, in actuality, the word habit has three origin words, meaning "clothing or behavior custom," "condition or character," and "to have or to hold."

This week our habit is to involve ourselves with the church. We are to make the church our clothing, our behavior custom, our condition, our character, we are to have the church and hold the church.

Whew. Makes the church WAY more than just clapping hands, pretty buildings, and a decent sermon every now and then.

We are to literally BE the church. As we said last week that we were going to put on the habit of Jesus, wear Jesus as clothing, we will wear the church, put on the church, become the church.

Jesus said in Matthew, Chapter 18:

"For where two or three gather together as my followers, I am there with them."
Matthew 18:20 (New Living Translation)

When we come together, forming an assembly of believers (which, if you remember, was the definition of the word church), Jesus is here with us.

I don't believe that Jesus meant here that he was going to pick a chair and go sit down next to us. I don't think either that he meant he was going to stand in the back or even hover over us.

When groups of believers assemble, they become the body of Christ. As we sit here together, we are uniting as the various parts that we are to form a much greater body. It's like the word "synergy," which means that a group of something is exponentially greater than the sum of its individual parts.

As you go into your small groups, and as you leave this building today, I want to challenge you to become the body of Christ, to recognize the greatness of God so that you can fulfill your destiny and your potential as the part of the body you were created to be.

I want you to think about how you can wear the church, make the church your character, to have the church, and to hold the church.

For Phil

Phil, who is one of my best friends, is at home right now in Fair Grove, Missouri with his family. His dad has a brain tumor, and they found out Monday that it has grown 40-50% in the last 4 months. They have a sweet family-I actually wrote about how great they are back in January.

So we put Phil on a plane home Monday night to be with his family as long as he needs to be there. As much as we all want him to be with his family, though, we selfishly miss him terribly!

Tuesday morning, Allie (cupcake) and I threw together a prayer vigil in the park. We mass texted and called everyone we knew to meet us in Caruth Park at 6:45 AM to pray together before school started. Running late, Allie and I got there after everyone else. When we got there, there were over 25 people there! Kids, parents, friends, other staff alike, everyone there to just support Phil and his family and beg for a miracle.

We prayed silently and out loud for an hour, watching the sun rise. We all wrote letters and prayers to and for the Diekes and I sent them for them to read today. It was really beautiful. Really incredible. I definitely had chills and tears in my eyes the entire time.

Usually on Wednesdays Phil and I go to HPHS to see the kids during lunch. Yesterday, it was just me, so I decided to make him a video to let him know how much everyone loves and misses him.

Here are the precious kids that I get to love on and spend time with and teach and learn from every day. You are so jealous. You know it.

Side note: I canNOT rap. I can only dance.

Forgiveness: WOW, April 9

Who came to the sextravanganza this weekend? It was really good...sometimes it was awkward, sometimes funny, sometimes surprising. It was a lot.

Anyway, I had a great time, but Saturday I was in a terrible mood.

I had funk. I don't get funk very often, and oh my was I funky on Saturday. If you were there, you probably already knew that. And I hope you forgive me for acting that way.

But what you don't know is why I was in such a bad mood.

Kathleen said something that made me think about a person that I have not forgiven, and all of a sudden it was like all of this anger and hurt and frustration and disappointment took over me to the point where I couldn't even be myself, I couldn't smile. It was awful!

I was in a terrible mood because I realized that I had not forgiven someone who had hurt me. I have thought for almost two years that the actual act of forgiving this person was unimportant, that it didn't affect me, didn't affect them, was just something I could try to forget about it and move on with my life. I was hurt so bad that when it happened, I was physically sick. I was throwing up, shaking, sobbing, literally almost suffocating because I was crying so hard. I'm not talking about someone just saying something bad about me or hurting my feelings. I'm talking about someone who literally shattered my heart, destroyed my world. I was so upset that when I called my friends to tell them about it, they couldn't even understand what I was saying. I was devastated. I still am devastated. In fact, I don't think that will ever change. The amount of hurt that this person caused me was so intense and so deep that I can't forget about it, and I can't forget about the pain that they have caused me.

So on Saturday, it was like Kathleen was picking at this wound of mine. It's kind of like if you have a huge, deep cut on the bottom of your foot. If you don't take care of it, it doesn't heal right. So for a while, you may not feel it, but if you step on that same spot in the wrong way, it absolutely kills you.

So that's what happened to me…I haven't delt with this pain for so long. For two years, I have been putting off dealing with this, putting off forgiving this person, because it was just easier and more convenient that way. And, I felt like I could just push them aside, let them suffer the consequences of their actions, not think about them, erase that memory from my mind. But then, someone said something that struck that exact same place of the wound, and it was like an uncontrollable anger. I am not a moody person. And usually, if I am upset or angry about something, few people know it. But Saturday, I'll bet that if you even saw me, you knew something was wrong. I was a huge jerk. I was snappy, I was cold, rude, uncaring, unloving, selfish, and most of all, I was really really sad.

Now here I am, a year and a half after this wound, and I am wondering, what the heck do I do now? I know, and I think we all know that the Bible says to forgive everyone, to love everyone, to serve everyone, including our enemies, the people who we really just want to hate. In every gospel, it says, "Forgive and you will be forgiven." We are told to "clothe ourselves in love and kindness and compassion and to forgive each other." We were taught to pray saying, "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."

But it's just not always that easy.

In Matthew, Jesus tells a story about a master and his servants, the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant. In this story, a servant approaches his master with an ENORMOUS debt of 10,000 talents, knowing that he's in big trouble. The master is about to sell him to pay off his debt, when the servant gets down on both knees and begs for the master to be patient and let him pay him back. Then, the servant goes to a fellow servant and demands that he pay him the debt he owes. The other servant begs him to be patient and allow him to pay off his debts, but the servant denies him and has him thrown into jail. When the master hears about how his servant treated another servant, he says, "'You wicked servant, I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?" Then, in anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

It's clear in this story what we should do. We, like the first servant, have been freed from our debts when Jesus died on the cross for us. We were told that we were free from the bonds of sin. I want you to stop and think about this. Think about a person who you need to forgive.

For some of you, you may have to go way back to remember a painful memory that you have tucked away. Some of you may have been hurt today. Either way, I want you to think about the pain that they have caused you. How bad it hurt when they betrayed you, or when they disappointed you.

That's not even close to how Jesus felt when he hung on the cross. We betray him every day, we disappoint him every day. Yet, he still loves us and he still forgives us every day.

So why can't we do that? Why do we always have to be like the servant, accepting forgiveness and then turning right around and denying someone else forgiveness? It seems so simple. Love Jesus, be thankful for his forgiveness, love each other, forgive each other.

Honestly, though, I have a really hard time just saying to someone who has hurt me so deeply, "You know, it's ok. What you did was ok." I just can't bring myself to say to someone, "I forgive you, and now we can just go back to the way things were. I'll forget about that pain you caused me completely."

I just can't

And you know what?

THAT is ok.

Because that's not what forgiveness is. Forgiveness isn't telling someone that they didn't hurt you. It isn't telling someone that what they did was ok, that you'll forget about it. It isn't telling someone that you will have the same relationship that you had with them before they hurt you.

Rob Bell says in one of his videos that "forgiveness isn't always about forgetting. We always say that we should forgive and forget, but maybe forgiving is remembering."

Maybe…by remembering and acknowledging the pain that someone has caused me, I will be able to say, from a distance, knowing that I don't have to be hurt by them any more, that I forgive them.

The story about the unmerciful servant did not say a single thing about the way the servant and the master interacted after that. I would be willing to bet that the master was a lot more hesitant to allow the servant to borrow money after that, for fear that he may not ever pay him back.

The same is true for us.

Just because you forgive someone, that doesn't mean that things have to be the same again. You may never trust that person again. You may never even have a real relationship with that person again. And you don't have to. All you are called to do is to forgive them, to say "Hey…I love you, and I truly and honestly wish the very best for you." You are not called to wait around for them to suffer the consequences of their actions, for them to be punished for what they did to you. You are not called to wait for them to mess up again. With some people, we need to keep our distance, we need to have boundaries so that we can prevent ourselves from being hurt again. In my situation, I have had to tell this person that I don't want to see them, that I don't trust him any more, and that I have little respect for him. And that is absolutely ok.

Proverbs 26:11 says, "Like a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly."

People mess up. Some people mess up over and over and over again, in the same way. Like a dog returns to his VOMIT, the person who has hurt you could hurt you again, this time even worse. But you don't have to be there for it. In fact, you shouldn't be there for it.

Proverbs 4: 23 says, "Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life."

This weekend, we talked about an analogy of your heart being like a house. There are some people who stay on the curb, some people you invite to your porch, and few people are allowed inside your home.

Forgiving someone may mean kicking them out to the curb and telling them that you hope their trip is wonderful. It may mean that they never set foot on your yard again, much less your house.

But the key part is, you have to actually wish them well on their way, and you have to believe it. If you don't, it will eat you alive. You will start to blame yourself for their mistakes. You may even totally block them out of your mind. But one day, someone will ask, "What ever happened to so-n-so?" And that memory will come back.

If you have forgiven, you will be able to say with confidence that you don't know and that you hope they are well.

If you haven't forgiven, anger, guilt, sadness, pain, and a huge weight will return, and you will have to go and search for that person to forgive them.

So guys, forgive. Now. Don't wait. The longer you wait, the more you have to search to find the pain. The more the pain has become an actual part of you. And the more it hurts, like stepping on an infected cut.

I don't know what forgiveness means for you. Write an email, send a letter, write a letter and don't send it, make a phone call, give someone a hug after WOW.

Most of all though, you have to be able to say that you hope that person has the best life possible. That you don't wish pain upon them, or suffering.

You don't have to know what happens after that. But remember what happened to the servant when he chose not to forgive the other servant? He was thrown in jail.

Don't allow yourself to be held back by what someone else did to you. Don't let what someone else did to you dictate who you are or what your life will look life.

Free yourself. FORGIVE.