Prayer Makes a Great Social Media

I have no idea how many forms of communication exist coming under the category of social media. The 21^st century offers us possibilities beyond the dreams of us mid-twentieth century folks. Social media for my family growing up on a farm in Kentucky was the party line phone when everyone picked up their receivers at the same time.

Gurus in the communication world are insistent that involvement in social media is critical for success in the world. The language of social media must be learned as surely as any other language. If the individual is to know and be known beyond the walls of their own closet, then a comfortable use of Facebook, Twitter, texting, or any of several dozen other forms of social media must exist. They cannot be just understood. They must be used!

In the eighteenth chapter of Luke, Jesus urges his listeners to use the divine social medium of prayer. He shares insights for how often to use it, what the content ought to be, and what results should be sought. For Jesus and every believer in the God whom he revealed, prayer was and is the most important form of communication.

Prayer should be the believer’s most important form of communication for several reasons. It can and should be two-way on a regular basis. It strengthens the relationship between those involved. If done properly it is life transforming. It allows an impact on those who are not a part of the communication circle.

Many forms of social media leave you guessing if anyone is out there, just like this blog. I have no idea how many may be reading it, if anyone. I can check the stats but they tell me only how many visits have been made, not if it is the same person twenty times or if the visit came from a machine.

With prayer I know someone is listening. I have been given the assurance that every prayer will be heard. (Jeremiah 29:12; Romans 8:26; Philippians 4:6-7) There is never a bad connection with God. Static, weather, and wi-fi are never factors. The only things that can hinder prayer are the walls we build between us and God. (Psalm 66:16-19; Proverbs 28:13; Isaiah 59:1-2; Luke 18:9-14)

God not only promises he will listen, he would also like for us to go silent occasionally so we can hear him. Mostly this involves us getting our minds off our own interests and focusing upon what are his priorities. Conversations between two people go much better if we are willing to use questions that open discussion instead of statements reflecting only our own position. God is able to guide and support us far more when we open our spirits to his written word and the wisdom to be gained by listening to the experiences of believers who have traveled the path ahead of us. (Philippians 4:8; I Peter 5:5)

In prayer we seek the One we feel can hear and answer. The more we pray the more we grow in our dependency upon God. The more we pray the more we come to understand the One to whom we are speaking. We see more into his nature and become more like him. Prayer transforms the one who prays.

I confess I do not understand how God uses prayer to make his will known or put power behind his miracles. God doesn’t need me to help him I would think. Yet we are called to pray and with great perseverance. (Luke 18:1-8; Ephesians 6:18; I Thessalonians 5:17) Somehow God uses my prayers to touch the lives of my scattered family members, the churches I serve, and people on the far side of the world.

Social media puts us in contact with family and friends across the state and around the world allowing us to convey thoughts and images. Prayer allows us to unite with the will of God and influence the course of history. You can’t beat a social medium like that.

Who Should Be in First Place

The Winter Olympics are in full swing, and I do not appreciate them nearly as much as they deserve. The athletes participating in the games must train and practice every bit as hard as those involved in the track and field events of the Summer Olympics which I tend to enjoy more. Like many others I suppose I have my preference.

What all the games have in common are individuals and groups striving to be number one, the best in their event. As I said in an earlier blog, the games are designed to have winners and losers. Only when it is a competition involving a group such as basketball or hockey, is there more than one winner. Only then can someone say, “We Won!”

We cheer on our favorite teams or individuals and celebrate with them their victories and suffer with them in defeat. We take some solace when our picks do not win, but those who do win do so in humility and with a willingness to share the accolades with those who helped them reach the pinnacle of public admiration.

In going through our English classes we learned rules of capitalization. Among these were the first words of sentences and all proper names. In thinking about who gets attention and who deserves it, I have always found it interesting there is one word in the English language that is not a proper name but is always capitalized regardless of its position in a sentence. That is the personal pronoun “I”.

Is this aspect of the English language emblematic of our personal narcissism? Is this a subtle way we can always make ourselves winners, come out on top, or be seen as first? There is a lot of backslapping and handshaking when the team wins. When an athlete stands alone and is given the gold medal acknowledging a first place finish, the capital “I” is often glaringly visible.

How this plays out in life on a daily basis away from the courts, tracks, and fields reflects greatly upon our attitude toward ourselves and others. When we win, we want to show our pride in our accomplishment. When we lose, we want the winner to be extra humble and not make our loss any more painful due to their boastful pride. Winning and losing can be just as real in daily relationships and reaching personal goals as in any sporting event. And the attitudes can be just as right or wrong.

The Apostle Paul felt the issue of pride in relationships was important enough to address it at three points in the sixteenth chapter of Romans. In verse three he writes, “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment…” In verse ten he continues, “Honor one another above yourselves.” Finally in verse 16, “Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.”

The team wins when each member puts the goals of the team ahead of any goals for personal recognition. Humility says we put the best interest of others ahead of our own. It means we limit the use of the capital “I”.

How do we keep the “I” from controlling our lives? Think about these possibilities:

1.      Put your personal desires second to the best interest of others (Luke 10:25-37)

2.      Be willing to forgive others even when they are not willing to confess their own wrongdoing (Luke 23:33-35; Acts 7:54-60; II Timothy 4:9-18)

3.      Seek to be a servant for the sake of others (Matthew 25:31-46)

4.      Love others as Christ has loved you (John 13:34-35)

When we put others first, we live out the spirit of Christ who said, “I have not come to be served, but to serve…” (Mark 10:45; Luke 22:24-27)

Hiding the Not So Pretty

As I write this, eight inches of snow has covered the ground and round three has begun. A couple of degrees warmer and it would all be rain. A couple of degrees cooler and the accumulation would already be ten inches plus.

Tree limbs are gracefully outlined with a white blanket. The snow has placed a muffler on noises softening the sounds of trucks on nearby roads. The rough edges and ugly scars of nature are hidden, and a vision of smooth perfection is produced. Norman Rockwell would be proud of the finished piece.

That is one of the great beauties of snow. It hides the grays and browns of winter under an expanse of white. We enjoy the serenity of the picture and for the moment ignore what lies hidden beneath. Too often we allow our words and façades to create the same type of deception for the people around us. We do it as individuals. We do it as churches.

For some churches it is a matter of focusing upon the physical facilities. The thought is we honor God best when we keep the buildings in pristine condition. The church building is equated with the spiritual condition of the Church, God’s people. When we look good with our facilities, we please God to the extent required. People and relationships are given little priority. Faithfulness to the church is measured by faithfulness in maintaining the facilities.

The beauty of buildings and facilities becomes a bandage to hide the deeper wound of a lack of concern for the spiritual health of people both inside and outside the congregation. “If we build it, they will come” is a statement that reflects this attitude. “They can see our steeple. They know where we are if they want to come” is another comment that shows a lack of concern for the spiritual condition of others and our own responsibility to seek to address that issue.

Another façade churches use to feel better about themselves involves their programs. They have programs for families. They have programs for senior adults. They have programs for youth. They have programs for children. They have programs for preschoolers, and on and on and on. Unfortunately their system of measurement consists of counting heads, especially church members. Honoring God consists of supporting all the programs of the church.

Busyness becomes equated with spiritual strength and maturity. Little emphasis is placed upon growing in Christlikeness or relating to the unchurched of the community. As in some conversations, if a person talks fast enough and long enough, the other parties in the dialogue won’t have the opportunity to ask difficult or embarrassing questions. So it is with busyness in the church. It becomes a bandage to hide our fear or outright lack of desire to engage the unchurched population around us. Our clean busyness with what is safe and nonthreatening prevents us from being held responsible for the messy.

When we substitute anything for striving to grow in spiritual maturity or reaching the unchurched of our community, we have blinded ourselves to what God has called his people to have as their focus. We put a bandage over our weaknesses and distractions and try to push into the limelight what we think looks good and ought to impress others including God. We’ve allowed those same metrics to impress us. In the process the Church loses all influence in the world and it is simply ignored. At best the world may notice the Church but respond with an attitude of “so what” and leave it to its self-congratulating pastimes.

Scripture has told us what is to be our priority. (Micah 6:8; Matthew 6:33; 28:18-20) Christ calls us as individuals and as churches to be honest with the world we are trying to reach. We show our weaknesses and our faults. (II Corinthians 12:9-10) We show our efforts to overcome them all. (I Corinthians 9:26-27; Philippians 3:13-14) We show where we have to go for help and invite the world to join us in our journey. (Philippians 4:12-13)

The Vicarious Victor

For forty-eight years we have been watching winners and losers smile and cry during something called the Super Bowl. When we have finished judging the commercials, we check to see the score of the football game. The winners among the commercials touched our hearts and made us cry, stand proud, or recall some memories that haven’t been dredged up in a decade or longer.

Yes, of course, we wouldn’t have the commercials if the football game didn’t guarantee a few score millions of viewers. And no, there cannot be a tie in the Super Bowl, I don’t think. There must be a winner, and if there is a winner, there must be a loser. How sad. We create a situation in which we guarantee there will be a loser, and we win or lose with them.

We have also created ways to claim victory even in a loss. We call that a moral victory. I never had much use for those, but I suppose they are better than nothing. Actually that can work out. In Revolutionary War Days, American General Nathaniel Greene caused so many casualties to General Cornwallis’ British Army near Greensboro, NC, Cornwallis had to change his battle strategy for his Virginia campaign even though Greene had been clearly defeated. We know how that story ended.

A victory in sports is rarely measured in how big the margin might be. That only counts in bragging rights. Sometimes a point spread may matter, but those are under special circumstances. Whether it is one point or forty points, we just look to see if there is a win or loss in the final column.

In dealing with conflict in perspectives or human relations, a cardinal rule is always to seek a win-win solution. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it remains a goal. If everyone can claim some sense of gain, if everyone feels they won something even if they had to compromise in some way, then life can go on and the hope remains for continuing improvement. We don’t call these ties. Those are just sources of total frustration, especially if you expected to win. A win-win situation is positive for everyone. We all leave the table feeling good about what has just transpired.

C. S. Lewis tells in his Chronicles of Narnia of an evil white witch who destroyed her enemies but lost everything in the process. About to be conquered, she spoke the magic word that would make them all disappear. Unfortunately it took her kingdom as well. She was the lone survivor in a realm wiped clean of all life. It could be said she won but it cost her everything, kingdom, friends, and family. She won but had nothing to show for her victory.

The complete opposite of that might be seen in the simple words of Jesus as he hung and died on the cross. He had endured betrayal, abandonment by his disciples, and denial by his closest friends. He had been beaten until the flesh hung in shreds from his back, and finally he was nailed to a cross as a public example of Roman cooperation with local authorities.

For three hours darkness covered the land. For three hours no human hand offered comfort, no divine hand intervened. For three hours of human time, an endless agony in the existence of the eternal Christ, the God-man faced the prospect of bearing all the sins of the world forever. Then it was over. (Luke 23:44)

Seven times Jesus spoke before he died on the cross. The greatest victory, where there should have been none, can be found in those last words before he died, “Into your hands I commit my spirit.” (Luke 23:46) Betrayed and denied by his followers, abandoned by a part of his eternal nature, Jesus still could face that moment with faith in his Father.

He lost everything the world thought valuable. He gained the only thing that mattered. In every battle there is a winner and a loser. We cannot always have a win-win scenario, but when Jesus won, we all won.