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LENT 2002 |
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Part 2
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Unity & Fellowship Part 3 - Mission Part 4 - Social Justice |
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A Reading from Genesis 1:26-27: ‘Then God said,
“Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over
the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over
all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.’ To ponder: Once upon a time there was a man who went hunting bears. As he trudged through the forest, he came upon a large and steep hill. He climbed the hill and, just as he was pulling himself up over the last outcropping of rocks, a huge bear met him nose to nose. The bear roared fiercely. The man was so scared that he lost his balance and fell down the hill with the bear not far behind. On the trip down the hill the man lost his gun. When he finally stopped tumbling, he found that he had a broken leg. Escape was impossible and so the man, who had never been particularly religious (in fact he was hunting on Sunday morning), prayed: “God if you will make this bear a Christian I will be happy with whatever lot you give me for the rest of my life.” The bear was no more than three feet away from the man when it stopped dead in its tracks, looked up to the heavens quizzically, and then fell to its knees and prayed in a loud voice: “Lord bless this food of which I am about to partake. Amen.” When God created mankind He gave him something not given to the rest of creation, a special gift that separates mankind and places him above the rest of creation. That special gift was to be made in the image of God. That does not mean that we necessarily resemble God in any physical sense, but that we have the unique ability to have a conscious, personal and two-way relationship with the Creator of the universe. In other words, unlike the rest of creation, mankind can know God in a very special way. Without this ability, the closest we should ever come to God would be at one remove – in other words, to know about Him, rather than to experience Him for ourselves. Scripture teaches that the principal way of coming to know God is through prayer and this was something that Jesus reinforced in his own life and in which he encouraged in his disciples. Jesus added a new intimacy to the prayer that he taught to his followers, for whilst the Old Testament was familiar with the idea of God as Father of Israel, his ‘son’, the prayer of Jesus introduced a distinctively personal relationship by his use of an intimate family-address, Abba, ‘daddy’. The seven petitions included in the Lord’s Prayer indicate what he considered to be the seven most important things about which Christians should pray. The New Testament requires and indeed assumes that Christians will pray without ceasing. It also teaches that prayer should be made in the name of Jesus. Christian prayer thus contains only those petitions which can be genuinely offered in the name (character, spirit) of Christ, the same Christ who ‘at the right hand of God’ makes intercession for us. This rules out all selfish requests and every suggestion that prayer is a kind of magic by which God’s attention can be caught or His will influenced. The essence of prayer is not asking but offering, not self-seeking but self-dedication: ‘not my will but thine be done’. This is not to disguise the very real struggle that everyone finds in praying: throughout the Bible even those called by God are often seen wrestling with this aspect of their spiritual lives, and even Jesus himself found it difficult at times to align himself with his Father’s will. Ultimately, the test of faith is not whether we are able to subjugate ourselves, but whether we are strong enough to allow God to work in and through us, whatever the cost. All prayer should be concerned with God’s kingdom of righteousness: with those who suffer from injustice, deprivation, disease, violence. A father expects his children to be concerned, as he is, for other members of his family in distress. He also expects them not merely to speak to him and then leave him to do everything; he desires their active co-operation. If our communion with God is even a faltering reflection of Jesus’ own intimate sonship, we shall not be able to prevent ourselves from bringing to our heavenly Father all the concerns which press upon us. If we have the Spirit of Jesus in us, these concerns will be for others rather than for ourselves; but our own personal griefs and problems will, quite naturally, not be excluded from our speaking with God. Christian prayer is possible only if we believe in the God whom Jesus called Father, not the puppeteer God, or the problem-solving computer or any Genie of the Lamp. If our belief in God is the childlike (not childish) trust in one to whom we can always turn quite spontaneously, there is nothing that can be asked ‘in the name of Jesus’ about which we cannot pray to God. Important things to remember about prayer: 1) That it is just as much about listening to God as it is speaking to Him. Intercessory prayer is just one element of the equation. One way to remember how to approach God is the acronym ACTS
- Adoration
(pondering upon the first three elements of the Lord’s Prayer - see
above) 2) That prayer is about utter dedication and self-forgetting; it should lead to action, not to introspection. It should never be used as a way of passing by on the other side. 3) That prayer is our common language, the means by which we communicate with God and one another. 4) That prayer is about relationship not process. That is to say that we are to be concerned not with the externalities of prayer (eg, posture, language, style, etc) but with the One with whom we have a dialogue. God is not concerned with the niceties of language, but with our honesty: the Psalms are a good example of the openness of prayer. 5) Be prepared to be the answer to your prayer Questions: 1) Do you honestly feel comfortable/safe in God’s presence? If not, what is the basis of your discomfort? 2) Is there anything or any part of your life that you would not feel able to confide to God? 3) How do you prepare to come into God’s presence? For example, do you use music, poetry or a mantra in order to ‘centre down’ and to focus on God? Or do you feel you have no time to spend with God in prayer? 4) In what ways can Christians support one another in and through prayer? 5)
How do you think the Church can help you to pray?
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