Here’s the amazing, life changing, truth: God is so crazy in love with you that he gave up himself in such a way that you can be set free from all the self-destructive habits and thinking that has you tied up in heavy chains.  If you trust him, he will build upon his sacrifice and you will immediately begin experiencing a life changing relationship that can last forever. Know this: he is ready and willing; he holds nothing against you. Come on, let the adventure begin today.  ~John 3:16-17 in my own words

A friend recommended I read the book, A Praying Life: Connecting With God In A Distracting World by Paul Miller. I have it in Kindle and audio format and I have gone through it about three times now.

One statement the author makes is: Personal prayer is the last great bastion of legalism.

Legalism is a Christian term that means trying to save (aka justify or redeem) one’s self through personal effort.  Another way this is expressed is by the phrase “salvation by works” in contrast with salvation by God’s grace alone. Legalism is antithetical to the Bible’s teaching of salvation; both Old and New Testaments make it clear that salvation is based on God’s grace and cannot be accomplished by human effort.

So how does this apply to prayer?  Often when we prayer, there is a sense that we have to do it the right way, say the right words, or have ourselves together. If we aren’t “righteous” we think that God won’t hear our prayer or respond in the way we hope he will.

This is legalism. It’s also fake. God desires that we come and talk with him – period. Messy,  disjointed, sad, angry, questioning; in other words, helpless.

Helplessness is how Christian life, and prayer, is lived.

I often talk with people about prayer. My next few posts will consider prayer in our lives.

This is from the book Experiencing God.

Prayer is not a one-way conversation in which you merely list everything you want God to do. Your personal prayer life may primarily be one-way communication but prayer is more than that. Prayer is two-way fellowship and communication with God. You speak to God and he speaks to you. Prayer includes listening. In fact, what God says in prayer is far more important than what you say. God already knows what you are going to say. You, however, do not know what God is thinking.

Prayer is a relationship not just a religious activity. Its purpose is to adjust you to God, not to align God with your thinking. God doesn’t need your prayers, but he wants you to pray because of what God wants you to do in and through your life as you pray.
God speaks to his people by the Holy Spirit through prayer. When the Holy Spirit reveals a spiritual truth to you in prayer, he is present and actively working in your life. Genuine prayer does not lead to an encounter with God. It is an encounter with God.

A pastor friend once told me that in his experience, when all the reasons are sifted and peeled back, people usually drop out of church community because they are disappointed and/or angry with God.

C.S. Lewis once wrote: “It seems to me that we often, almost sulkily, reject the good that God offers us because, at that moment, we expected some other good.”

As I reflected on those two thoughts, I was reminded of this video by OneTimeBlind.

In my last post, Danger Zone, I stated that the church can be a dangerous place for God’s followers. While it can be a place of loving fellowship, worship and service, it’s also a place where you can find religion.  Religion breeds self-righteousness and left unchecked creates harsh, judgmental, and destructive people.

There is a cure for self-righteousness.

In Mark’s gospel, chapter 8, verses 34-37, right after Jesus explains that the danger zone for him is among religious people, he shares the cure: “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to saving yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? What could you ever trade your soul for?

The cure is simple. The cure is the hardest thing you will ever do. The cure is letting God lead your life, coming to the point where you can say with deepest love, “Not my will LORD, but yours.”

If you listen long enough to Christians, they will tell you that their faith, their practices, even their lives are in mortal peril because of some evil outside the church* environment. Certainly, those who live outside a church family, reject God and are not surrendered to the Spirit, have and still do persecute Christians. However, the Bible reveals something very interesting.

In the book of Mark, chapter 8, verse 30-32, Jesus told his friends, “It is necessary that the Son of Man (Son of Man is a nickname for the Liberator and Jesus applies it to himself) proceed to an ordeal of suffering, be tried and found guilty by the elders, high priests, and religion scholars, be killed, and after three days rise up alive.” He said this simply and clearly so they couldn’t miss it.” The Message

It turns out, the most dangerous place for Jesus was among the church folks. In another place, talking to the church folks, he reminds them that they killed the prophets – think messengers – that God sent to them. Sadly, this still happens today. Followers of God sometimes find the church to be a very unsafe place. Why?

Ideally, a church family is a community where people who love God with all their being fellowship, worship, and go out from to lovingly serve their neighbours, city and even the world. Realistically, in that mix there are those who don’t love God with all their being rather they are practicing a religion.

Religion is based on tit-for-tat thinking: I’m good, I go to religious services once a week, I give, etc. therefore God owes me. Owes me blessing, owes me my way, owes me salvation. This way of life – a religious life – has a nasty way of breeding self-righteousness and self-righteous people tend to be harsh, critical, judgmental, and when it gets really bad, destructive.

Fortunately, there is a cure for self-righteousness.

*In the Bible, the church is the people not the building.

In one episode of the Simpsons, Homer is finding himself attracted to another woman. Not wanting to betray his relationship with his wife, Marge, he goes about his day he telling himself, “Think unsexy thoughts, think unsexy thoughts.”

There are three views of human sexuality.*

There is the church view which says that we are to be like angels. We should all be like Homer, telling ourselves to think unsexy thoughts.

There is the world that hand tells us to be beasts. Sex is evolutionary and biological. If it feels good do it. What could possibly go wrong?

The Bible presents the third view. In the Bible, it says that we are above the beasts but we are also lower than the angels.

*With a nod to Roger Walters who pointed out the three views to me.

When you hear someone say:

‘I really like the teachings of Jesus but I don’t think he was God.’

What you have just discovered is, they have never actually read the teachings of Jesus.