Prayer Life.

“Whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, because they love to pray while standing in synagogues and on street corners so that people can see them. Truly I say to you, they have their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you.” Matthew 6:5-6

Commenting on these verses, Tim Keller wrote this:

"To discover the real you, look at what you spend time thinking about when no one is looking, when nothing is forcing you to think about anything in particular. At such moments, do your thoughts go toward God? You may want to be seen as a humble, unassuming person, but do you take the initiative to confess your sins before God? You wish to be perceived as a positive, cheerful person, but do you habitually thank God for everything you have and praise him for who he is? You may speak a great deal about what a “blessing” your faith is and how you “just really love the Lord,” but if you are prayerless—is that really true? If you aren’t joyful, humble, and faithful in private before God, then what you want to appear to be on the outside won’t match what you truly are....The infallible test of spiritual integrity, Jesus says, is your private prayer life."

May all of our spiritual integrity be such.

 

Crossroad

“And whoever does not fall down and worship shall immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace."

Nebuchadnezzar answered and said, "Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants, who trusted in him, and set aside the king's command, and yielded up their bodies rather than serve and worship any god except their own God. Therefore I make a decree: Any people, nation, or language that speaks anything against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego shall be torn limb from limb, and their houses laid in ruins, for there is no other god who is able to rescue in this way." Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the province of Babylon.”

Daniel 3:6, 28-30 

This is an act of idolatry, without question. It's also - for the Jews, that is - capitulating to the powers that be and giving up on certain values or principles, specifically the one that says, You shall have no other gods before me' and 'You shall not bow down to [carved images] or serve them.' For some, who already worship various idols and gods, it's just another day. There's nothing particularly abnormal about the situation.

But for Shadrach, Mishach, and Abednego? They've committed already to be faithful to the Lord their God. They stood up for their beliefs when they were being prepared for service in this new land - only certain foods, remember?

'But that was just food,' their friends might argue.

Still, it's the principle of the matter. How can they stand up for their faith when it involves food, a small thing, and not stand up when it's literal bowing down to a massive idol?

'Yeah, but this is your life! At least ol' Nebby feeds us and puts a roof over our heads and lets us practice our faith in private. And he's practically a Jew! Back with the dream thing, he said our God 'is God of gods and Lord of kings.' You're young and already so influential. You could convince him that the whole nation needs to be Jews. Just picture it: 'Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego - the men who converted Babylon!' We just have to get through this tough time, and then we'll get back to being faithful to God like before.'

At least that's how I imagine the argument from their friends going.

There probably wasn't much objection when it was a little thing like food. 'You do you, guys.' But when it comes to losing their lives, I can just hear the objections rolling in, even as everyone around them bowed down to the idol. They're trying to save their lives, to protect their rights, to survive in a pagan land - I get it - but they're selling their very soul to do it.

This lesson is very real in the world today. So many people, from so many different sides, are trying to convince us to give up our principles - or at least set them aside for a while. They're trying to play to our fears and insecurities. They're even convincing influential leaders of our same conviction and sending them to drag us over to their side. And the threat is real. It's not life or death, but it's a threat no less. In so many ways (especially with the way we as Americans can tend to idolize our freedoms and rights), it almost feels worse than death in a fiery furnace.

I read about current events, election news, rampant and blatant racism. I see this or that politician or leader offered up as a functional savior, as a demigod. And I understand that my people have come to a point of heart-wrenching crisis. We can no longer hide the fact that we gradually allowed a loyalty for God and country turn into an equivocation of the two. Our idols are under attack.

So we stand at a crossroad. Will we remain faithful to our convictions? Will we live out our faith, even if that means the great risk of being ostracized, or - heaven forbid - losing our precious freedoms? Are my rights valuable? Absolutely. But are they any more important than the ones Jesus gave up as the Son of God, an equal member of the Godhead, in order to take on human flesh and die on a Roman torture device for my sake? Not even close. Perhaps in America, Christians are finally getting a taste of what Christians in the rest of the world have already lived with for two thousand years, and what Jews have faced for even longer than that.

Not bowing down and paying homage, as Daniel's friends did here, is a risk. Faithfulness to God demands it. Being set apart as one holy unto the Lord can't be accomplished any other way. But it's a risk worth taking. It's a risk that has eternal rewards. It's a risk that may even show others the way to truly live (vs 28-30).

What's the 'golden statue' in your life? What tempts you most strongly to give up your values, or at least just set them aside for a little while? Maybe it's your rights and freedoms, as I mentioned before. Maybe it's something else. For me, often, it's the opinion and approval of others. It's a fear of conflict. I'd rather avoid the conflict and make everyone happy. I'd rather do what makes others proud of me and draws attention to my own good qualities. {I'd rather not write a long-ish piece about how Americans idolize freedoms and rights.} Some of my idols are self and approval and peace. While those aren't necessarily, in and of themselves, bad things, they still lead me away from being faithful to God and pursuing holiness before Him. They still lead me to bow down to a golden statue, often of my own making, rather than before the Holy God.

So what's your golden statue?

And what's it gonna take for you to melt it down and toss it in the dumpster out back of your idol-factory heart?

Becoming

It's silly, really. Idol making. Jeremiah paints a caricature of the silliness of it. Cutting down a tree, crafting some God or other, and then bowing down to it. Hysterical. Martin Luther famously, though more starkly, commented that our hearts are idol factories. We're constantly looking for new things, false things, to worship. We're constantly crafting for ourselves new images that might somehow satisfy us more than God or be worthy of the worship we were created to pour out. But, there won't ever be something more satisfying that God. And there won't ever be something worthy of our worship besides God. So, these raw descriptions of our idolatry are silly. Terribly, disappointingly, vainly silly.

Worse than the silliness of making idols is this image: becoming like what we've made for ourselves. Not only are the idols we falsely worship mute, blind, deaf, unable to smell, or feel, or walk - but, as the Psalmist indicates here, we become so unfeeling as well. We lose our senses, our awareness of both good and bad, callous to sin and numb to grace. It is perhaps the worst position in which to find oneself. So, here we are. Sunk in sin, spiritually dead, without any hope of rescue - and praying to gods of our own making to save us. When we truly understand our position before God, it's not silly anymore. It's pitiful. You can't help but pity those you see in such a state. You can't help but pity yourself. You can't help but feel entirely, utterly destitute and hopeless. You cry out with Paul, "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?"

Yet, even there, Jesus breaks through. "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! ... There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Amen! Jesus rescues us. More than that, Jesus gives back our senses, our awareness of who we are in Him, sins that need confession, and grace that is worthy of praise to our God Who is worthy of glory. I must die to sin every day. I must live to Christ every day. Only then do I avoid becoming like those idols - by becoming like Christ.

Settled

“The sons of Reuben and the Gadites and the half-tribe of Manasseh, consisting of valiant men, men who bore shield and sword and shot with bow and were skillful in battle, were 44,760, who went to war. They made war against the Hagrites, Jetur, Naphish and Nodab. They were helped against them, and the Hagrites and all who were with them were given into their hand; for they cried out to God in the battle, and He answered their prayers because they trusted in Him. They took away their cattle: their 50,000 camels, 250,000 sheep, 2,000 donkeys; and 100,000 men. For many fell slain, because the war was of God. And they settled in their place until the exile. Now the sons of the half-tribe of Manasseh lived in the land; from Bashan to Baal-hermon and Senir and Mount Hermon they were numerous. These were the heads of their fathers' households, even Epher, Ishi, Eliel, Azriel, Jeremiah, Hodaviah and Jahdiel, mighty men of valor, famous men, heads of their fathers' households. But they acted treacherously against the God of their fathers and played the harlot after the gods of the peoples of the land, whom God had destroyed before them. So the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul, king of Assyria, even the spirit of Tilgath-pilneser king of Assyria, and he carried them away into exile, namely the Reubenites, the Gadites and the half-tribe of Manasseh, and brought them to Halah, Habor, Hara and to the river of Gozan, to this day.”

1 Chronicles 5:18-26

There are so many stories about the people of Israel and their ridiculous propensity to fall into sin, cry out for rescue, be rescued, only to fall into sin again. I keep reading and hoping that they'll get it right one day. Though, I suppose if someone were to read my story they'd see the same cycle and (maybe?) have the same hope. Still, it seems so odd that in this passage, for these people, a mere 5 verses was all it took for them to go from victory to destruction. What in the world happened?

"They settled into their place," "lived in the land," and "they were numerous."

An even more succinct way of putting it: they prospered.

And in their prosperity they turned to idolatry.

There's an important lesson for me in this passage. Where there is warfare, I am more prone to depend upon and cry out to the Lord. I am more inclined to have a heart oriented toward trust in God and gratitude for every moment that I 'survived.' It's war, and the struggle tests my allegiance.

But, life is not always war. There are also times of peace. There are times of prosperity. And these are the times in which I am most prone to grow comfortable, to forget the war and the One Who carried me through it. War may test my allegiances, but peace is what reveals them.

This is why the heresy of the so-called "prosperity gospel" is so dangerous. People find it very easy to cry out to God in their troubles. Even atheists, agnostics, and otherwise non-believing people tell stories of praying, of throwing up a 'Hail Mary' in their desperation. "Jesus take the wheel," they say, "but only when I'm absolutely at my very end and I can't do anything else for myself anymore." However, with the prosperity gospel, people are taught that God intends to bless and to give abundantly to His children. This much is true. But, what happens when tragedy strikes? What happens when their "seed gift" doesn't return a hundred fold as promised? What happens when the loved one that He supposedly healed gets worse or dies?

It turns out that they've been deceived into believing that blessing is the only thing God intends for His children. It turns out that, in the land of plenty, their true allegiance has been revealed - and it's not to God. It's to His blessings. It's to the good, comfortable things in life. It's allegiance to some mutated form of faith, some false god that offers no explanation for the suffering in this world and expects people to live in some fantasy world where difficulties apparently don't affect his followers. The problem is, that doesn't present the world as it actually is, as we know it to be.

Just like the Reubenites, Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh discovered, our prosperity, if not properly understood and oriented in gratitude to God, leads us down the path of comfort to idolatry. Idolatry of what? In the passage, the people had cities. They were surrounded by the people of the land. So, we don't know for certain, but we can guess that there was probably idolatrous materialism. We are indeed told that they "played the harlot after the gods of the peoples of the land." There's was a very literal idolatry. But, in our prosperity we do the same thing. We turn to different idols, but idols nonetheless. Technology, opinions of others, sports, etc. We even idolize comfort itself. Our hearts, Luther's 'idol factories,' love to take good things and make them gods in our own images.

And again, just like the people here discovered, we learn something more about who God is and how He relates to people. Idolatry leads to exile, separation from God. When we refuse to give up our idols and give our worship to God, we too end up in exile. In the present, this means being separated from His presence, His protection, and even what we began idolizing in the first place - His promises of prosperity. In the ultimate sense, it means eternal separation from God in hell. Only when we surrender our lives, in wartime and in peace, trusting in Christ as our Savior and turning to Him as Lord, do we find escape and salvation. In Him alone is the right kind of prosperity - that which leads to gratitude for and worship of God. In Him alone do we find peace and rest in suffering. In Him alone do we find a way to live that actually makes sense of the world that God created for us.

So, remember in the midst of the battle that victory belongs to the Lord. Trust Him to fight for you. Take refuge in the shadow of His wings. But, don't forget in times of peace and prosperity how you got there, and Who it was that made it possible. Being settled and prosperous is a good thing. The danger lies in worshiping those good things, rather than the Giver of them.