Doubt, Unlimited Access, and the Power of Prayer

Have you ever doubted if prayer really works? I sure have.
Then God started answering my prayers.
I don't intend to oversimplify our understanding of prayer. Granted, most of the things that I pray for I never see the results, and may never hear of them while on earth. However, I firmly believe that God's character is true as the Bible reveals it, and my personal experience while living for Him has supported that.
Prayer is also a spiritual law, a behavior that is grounded in God's character and widely believed in. Even non-Christians and atheists seem to do it when they're in a bind and need help. God, for some reason, seems to wait for people, especially His people, to pray before He acts. I'm not entirely sure why this is; I suspect it's because God wants us to be involved in the spiritual world, and in the battle that goes on in people's lives and in the world. Regardless, prayer is an amazing opportunity to partner with God and cooperate with what He is doing. I don't know about you, but if I was given unlimited personal access to the most influential person in the world, I'd use it all the time, and I wouldn't sit around and doubt it until I tried it to see if was real.
In addition, it's significant that when the Bible promises that God answers prayers, they are not unconditional promises, but dependent on the character and motives of the one who prays: "He who has clean hands and a pure heart...will receive blessing from the Lord and vindication from God his Savior" (Psalm 24:4,5); Jesus told his disciples, "whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours" (Mark 11:24); and perhaps the most thorough explanation in the Bible is given by James -- "If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt" for a doubter "should not think he will receive anything from the Lord" (1:5-6), and he later says to his audience, "You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures" (4:2-3), and finally, "The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective" (5:16).
So, in summary, God gives generously to all, but lends a special effort to those who are of godly character; The Bible tells us that in order to receive, we must ask, ask believing that we will receive, and ask without selfish motives.
So if you do nothing else for the kingdom of God, pray and ask Him to do things -- mundane things, hard things, amazing things, outrageous things. Then expect Him to answer, and see if over time, you don't also believe in the power of prayer.

Teeter-Totters, Optimism, and the Most Important People in the World

One of the things I strive to do in my life is to be completely present mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, as long as I am in a place. A large part of doing this is to enjoy my present company, and not just to enjoy them, but to make them feel, if at all possible, that they are at that moment the most important people in the world to me. This is not an easy thing to do, nor am I necessarily very good at doing it; sometimes I do it and sometimes I don't.
Probably my best experience with this was at the camp for physically disabled kids that I worked at last summer. I did not have a problem with centering my experience around those disabled kids. My job, and my delight, was to help them have the best time they could possibly have. I think in reflecting on that experience since then, it is important for me to not isolate that situation as unusual. It was, but in some ways those kids were the most "normal" people I have ever been around. Why? Because they did not try to deny their condition. They understood that they were disadvantaged, but many of them also understood they were of inestimable worth and value. In that way, I believe people like them are ahead of "the rest" of us. The answer, as God has helped me to see, is not necessarily to spend my life ministering to disadvantaged kids. It is to realize that all of us are disabled and disadvantaged. We all struggle with our worth and value and our purpose.
So when I am around people who I don't particularly like or relate to, I remind myself that they are unique. They are, as an individual, a one-of-a-kind reflection of God's glory and creative ability, whether they live for God or not. This might be my only opportunity to be with them, learn how to relate to them, and learn from them about God in a way that only they can tell me.
I don't worry about blessing them or changing them or challenging them. There will certainly be opportunities for that as I get to know people. My job isn't to help people as much as it is to love people. When I am around people, I try to appreciate who they are. I admire God's creativity in making them. I notice what jumps out to me about them...their hair, their eyes, their smile, their mind, their choice of clothes, whatever it may be. If I compliment them, I will by doing that compliment God who created them. I will learn from them; there is something that I can learn from everyone I meet. Even the worst, most rebellious, evil people in the world can teach me how not to live. I won't try to fix them, but rather to believe in them, believe that they are better, more amazing people, than the evidence of their lives would indicate. Over time, some people will begin to become what I can envision through God's perspective.
My suggestion for you is, if you are a true follower of God, don't just care for people. Go beyond that. Think ridiculously positive thoughts about them. Take the teeter-totter that has reality on one side and optimism on the other, and tilt yourself towards optimism, without losing sight of reality. I might not be described by others as an optimist, but there are two things I am optimistic about: The value and potential of every human being, and the ability of God to change people.

Note: Portions of this post were taken and adapted from a recent e-mail to a friend.

Tithing, the Sabbath, and the Law of Sowing and Reaping

There is one spiritual law that ought to affect how we live a great deal. It is the law of sowing and reaping, and it is found in Galatians 6:7-9: "Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up."
This law, of course, extends to many more things than doing good. Two that surprise me sometimes are giving (especially tithing) and the Sabbath. Worldly wisdom says that neither of these spiritual disciplines make sense. If we are tight on money, why would we give away the money that we need to meet our rent payment, or to buy groceries? Yet, that's exactly what God calls us to do. Tithing is a statement of trust, a statement that says we believe in God's ability and willingness to provide for our needs. And if you exercise that belief by giving at least ten percent of your income to God, He always seems to honor that. I have not only heard numerous stories about anonymous checks and scholarships and bags of groceries that turned up on front porches, but it has happened to me also. This kind of blessing only happens when we declare in a practical way that "our" money doesn't really belong to us, but to God. If we sow by giving, giving will be a practical reality in our life and we will receive it as well. If we sow by hoarding, the resources of heaven will not be evident in our life.
The same thing is true of the Sabbath. The decision to rest on one day of the week and so consecrate that day to God, is basically tithing from the time that we are given. With our busy schedules, it's very tempting to skip the Sabbath, or only rest for a part of a day instead of for a whole day. But we discover that the law of sowing and reaping is still true. When I rest for a whole day, it seems that I have more time in that week. I'm more productive, less anxious, less stressed, and more importantly, I'm more in step with God during the week. If you're not obeying the biblical instruction to rest, it should be no surprise to you when you have trouble handling your schedule, you get busier and busier, and your life, externally and even internally, is spinning out of control.
God doesn't just reward His people for obeying Him and living according to His spiritual laws. He establishes a kind of cause-and-effect so we always benefit in some way, in many ways, when we do right. It's in those moments that we realize we are beginning to fulfill our calling and everything starts falling in place.

Gravity, Obedience, and the Laws of God

To live as a Christian is to pay higher respect to the laws of God than to the laws of men.
That sounds great, but what does it mean? We might have a good idea of what the laws of men are, but what are the laws of God?
I believe that when God created the world, He created certain laws to govern it, both physical laws and spiritual laws. He holds the right to make exceptions, but God is the only one who can do that. Physical laws govern nature, laws such as gravity and the laws of physics. We can't see gravity, but we certainly believe in it, ever since we put on a Superman cape and jumped off our parent's dresser or the front porch believing we could fly, and it didn't work.
Spiritual laws, on the other hand, are unseen. They are declared in the Bible, and evidenced in biblical accounts, world history, and personal experience. Just because we haven't noticed a particular spiritual law or been affected by it does not mean that it doesn't exist. Some spiritual laws appear to me to be absolute rules, and some have conditions.
This is just another way of looking at truth and God as the origin of truth. Indeed, all spiritual laws are based in the nature, character, and word of God. Because God's character is constant and unchanging, the results of His interaction with the world are spiritual laws. For example, God embodies truth, and therefore, He must always speak truth. God is not capable of lies or deception. He always keeps His promises; when He does not, it means that the promise had a condition that was not met (in the Bible, the condition or conditions are usually included in the promise).
Our example in this is the apostles of the early Church. In Acts 5, the apostles are brought before the Sanhedrin (the Jewish ruling council, i.e. the civil and religious authority for the Jews) and ordered not speak in the name of Jesus any more. They replied, "We must obey God rather than men! (5:29)" As disciples of Jesus, this must be our priority and even our rallying call. But there is much more involved than just disagreeing and disobeying the civil or religious authorities when they contradict God's word. Our society has values and priorities that we do not share. People who we know believe things that we don't. We must answer to the Higher Authority, rather than meekly agree with the voice of society or well-meaning people. As Paul says: "Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ" (Gal. 1:10).
To please God and to obey Him is to act in accordance with His laws, not those of men, and to bring the heavenly reality of God's nature and character in direct collision with our fallen and troubled world.