honest

Real Prayer

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“My belief is that when you’re telling the truth, you’re close to God. If you say to God, ‘I am exhausted and depressed beyond words, and I don’t like You at all right now, and I recoil from most people who believe in You,’ that might be the most honest thing you’ve ever said. If you told me you had said to God, ‘It is all hopeless, and I don’t have a clue if You exist, but I could use a hand,’ it would almost bring tears to my eyes, tears of pride in you, for the courage it takes to get real—really real. It would make me want to sit next to you at the dinner table.

So prayer is our sometimes real selves try­ing to communicate with the Real, with Truth, with the Light. It is us reaching out to be heard, hoping to be found by a light and warmth in the world, instead of darkness and cold. Even mushrooms respond to light—I suppose they blink their mushroomy little eyes, like the rest of us.

Light reveals us to ourselves, which is not always so great if you find yourself in a big disgusting mess, possibly of your own creation. But like sunflowers we turn toward light. Light warms, and in most cases it draws us to itself. And in this light, we can see beyond shadow and illusion to something beyond our modest receptors, to what is way beyond us, and deep inside” (Anne Lamott, Help Thanks Wow).

Sometimes, the best prayers are the ones without any words, the ones that express themselves in tears and groans and sighs.

Sometimes, it’s good to know on the nights when it feels like our prayers are getting no further than the ceiling that God hears anyway because He’s in the room with us while we pray.

Just keep asking. Just keep seeking. Just keep knocking. Just keep praying.

 

Community of Faith

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Sometimes, it’s easy to believe. Everything is going your way and you seemingly are getting all the breaks.

Sometimes, it’s not so easy. Your prayers bounce back from the ceiling and you can’t hear God as well as before, but you keep praying and trusting, though with little seeds of doubt creeping in.

Sometimes, you don’t have it in you anymore to pray or believe for yourself.

That’s where community comes in. That’s what I believe we’re called to do in 2015.

Community means that I believe for you when you can’t believe for yourself when it comes to the promises of God. It means that I pray on your behalf claiming your promises for you when you can’t get the words to come out.

On occasion, I find it easier to visualize the person I’m praying for. I picture him (or her) in a small chapel, walking down the center aisle. I picture Jesus at the end of that aisle. I see myself as guiding that person toward Jesus and watching as He wraps His arms around the person for whom I’m praying.

Community means that we encourage each other. It also means we don’t accept easy answers, but push beyond the “I’m fine”s to get to the truth. It means that every now and then we speak the hard truth, but speak it in love, when we see the other headed down a harmful path.

Community means that we are honest, vulnerable, and transparent as close to 100% of the time as our imperfections will allow. It means that we choose to love the unlovable in our midst, remembering that we too were at one point unlovable before Christ made us loveable.

That’s what the 1st century world saw in the early Christians that won them over. That’s what God used to turn the world upside down (or more accurately, right-side up again) and transform a small band of believers into His Church.

That’s what the world around us needs to see more than ever right now and in 2015.

 

For All the Phonies in the World

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Let me ask you something. Just between you and me (and the world wide web). Do you ever feel like a phony?

Do you ever hear yourself giving Sunday School answers to real life questions? Do you ever feel that you’re praying what you think God wants to hear instead of what’s really in your heart? Do you ever lie awake at night wondering what would happen if the people around you knew what you were really thinking? What you were really like?

There’s good news that sounds like bad news at first. God knows. God knows it all. He knows all the faux-prayers and the religious jargon you talk sometimes. He knows what you do and what you think when no one’s watching. That seems like bad news until you get to the clincher. He loves you anyway.

He loves you at your phoniest. He loves you at your meanest. He loves you at your darkest moments in the middle of the night. He looks at you and doesn’t see phony. He looks at you and sees Jesus and what Jesus did in your place. He sees the perfect life Jesus lived instead of your own very imperfect existence.

Best of all, God sees you for who you will be instead of who you are. He sees what He designed you to be. He promised to not stop working on you until you’re 100% real and complete.

In the meantime, it’s okay to be real and honest and admit you have made a mess of your life. It’s okay to confess you don’t have all the answers, or even all the questions. It’s really not about how much you know or how well you act but how much you are loved.

I raise my glass and toast to all the phonies who are stepping forward to take off the mask and be honest about themselves. I drink to all the pretenders who just got real. I salute all of you who are letting down the walls on what God is doing in your life so others can see grace at work and how love can transform a person. That’s where the freedom is. That’s where I want to be. I hope you do, too.

Brokenness and Community

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We are all broken. Some are just better at hiding it than others, but deep down inside we know we don’t work right. I believe when God reveals our brokenness within the context of community, we have two choices. I can see your brokenness and choose to walk away and shut you out or I can choose to walk with you and share your burdens, “and thereby fulfill the law of Christ” (Ephesians 6:2). I’m not saying it’s wrong to walk away; some are not ready to handle brokenness in others. But to stay and walk with a brother or sister through brokenness is the better way.

I also think about the image of Jesus breaking bread and blessing it. If we want God to bless us, or better yet to bless others through us, we must first be broken. Only in the context of community where we love each other and share joys and sorrows and bear each other’s burdens can this happen. We shouldn’t just pray for blessings on each other. We should be able to pray for brokenness for each other. We should be authentic and transparent enough to be broken and honest with each other.

I am reminded of Henri Nouwen’s term “wounded healer.” If we aren’t broken, we can never reach beyond the surface in our relationships and serving and ministry, but if we are broken, we can empathize with the weaknesses of others. The more we own our brokenness, the more loving and Christlike we will be toward the brokenness in others.

I want to buck the trend that says that weakness is something you don’t talk about. I want to be like Paul who boasted in his weakness, because that’s where Christ’s strength is perfected. Let people see that you are not a perfect saint, but a weak and broken and transparent vessel through which God’s love can pour unhindered to the world around you.

As always, I believe. Help my unbelief.