Prayer: Day 3

Day 3 took an interesting turn for me.  My wife just got off the phone with the doctor's office and has to have some more test with her thyroid.  Both of us were worried because it could be nothing or it could be something.  So while she was doing some work.  I went into the guest bedroom and knelled down in front of the bed.  I imagine myself running to the throne room.  I get cleansed by the Holy Spirit then I enter the throne room.  As I am standing there in front of the creator, I bring my wife into the throne room and I ask that the Lord will heal her.  He lays his hands on her throat while I am praying.  After that I feel a peace wash over me, I open my eyes and continue on with my day.

later on that day, my wife was talking to her father about the situation.  In her conversation she started to have a peace about the situation.  Her final conclusion was that it is either nothing, or, if it is something, is early enough so that it can be treated and cured.  Whatever happens, I truly feel that God's presence was real in that throne room.

Prayer: Day 2

Prayer was a bit challenging this day.  I was busy throughout the day.  The only time I had was driving back home from my night class.  It is hard to visualize God's presence with your eyes open with cars driving by you.  I could close my eyes, but last time I checked I was not good at driving with my eyes closed.  I prayed for direction in my life and also for the struggles I am having.

Prayer: Day 1

How do you learn to pray?  Most of us would say they learn to pray from their parents, sunday school teacher, or by observing other people praying.  Richard Foster in his life found that his prayer life was lacking and ineffective.  So he decided to read the bible and focus on the prayers of Jesus.  What he found out is some things he learned about prayer were false (unanswered prayer, etc.).  One thing I have learned from readings on prayer is that it is experimental.  If you are not seeing or feeling results, try something different.  So the first five days I am going to focus on entering into the presence of God before I speak a prayer.

I get distracted very easily.  In each room where I am living at, there are different things that can distract me (book, t.v., phone, etc.)  So I decided that I will go to the bathroom and draw a bath to relax in while I prepare myself to enter into God's presence (and a little green apple bubble bath can help as long as I am not making facial hair out of it.)  Sitting in the tub, I close my eyes and I try to imagine myself walking through the hallway towards the throne room.  The holy spirit is standing outside of the room.  When I get to the holy spirit, I pray that it will cleans me from any impurities In my life.  If something is on the front of my mind, I will confess that impurity.  I also asked that the spirit will help steady my mind and my heart so I will not be distracted.  Once I felt clean and focused, I open up the doors and walk towards the throne of the Creator.  I talk to him and brought some request and questions to him.  After I have done that, I sit and wait for a response.  Once I feel that I am ready, I thank God for listening to me and walk out of the room.

The challenging thing about this approach, was how often my mind would wonder and thing of things I need to do (dishes, write this blog, etc.).  When those distractions would come, I would ask the spirit to take these thoughts away from me.  Overall, I felt this was a good experience, and hope that it will get better.

Practice of Spiritual Disciplines

Hello friends,
Ryan and I are practicing various spiritual disciplines.  The goal is to practice one discipline for 3 weeks (15 days) and to hopefully update the blog regularly.  Scott will be focusing on the discipline of prayer, and Ryan will be focusing on fasting.  We hope you will take this journey with us and learn something about each discipline.

The Wonder of Light

I was hired to cook at a camp during the week.  Over the weekend their was a big group that rented out the camp and left the kitchen full of flies.  The caretaker took out as many flies as he could, but their were still a handful flying around.  Roaming the kitchen, I could not find a fly swatter anywhere.  I looked in the pantry, dining hall, and the other buildings on the grounds.  I finally asked the caretaker where a fly swatter would be.  He told me that they were in the dining hall on one of the counters.  Since i looked everywhere in the dining hall, i asked if their were any other swatters on camp if they were not there.  He told me those were the only ones he knew about.  I walked back to the dining hall and turned on the lights and their were the swatters behind some Tupperware containers.
I was searching for the swatters in the dark.  Their was light coming through the windows but i thought that would have been a sufficient amount to find the swatters.  It was when the room was full of light, I could find what I was looking for.  John 9:5 says, "While I am in the world, I am the light of the world (NIV)."  Because of sin we have darkness in our lives.  When we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we have the him to light up the darkness in our lives.  Paul writes to the Ephesians, "For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (Ephesians 5:8 NIV)."  When we are living the christian life, we sometimes lose adequate light by not regularly reading the bible, praying, and other disciplines.  This can make us lose focus on what we need to do for the kingdom and puts us at odds with it.  So it is important to always try to live as children of the light.

Give Us Something God

Sometimes I feel trapped. I, as much as the next person, am a product of everything and everyone in my life. I am realizing more and more that who I am has everything to do with my family, friends, enemies, strangers, books I have read, and the society and culture that I have been a part of my entire life. The fact that I am writing a blog on a laptop computer says that I am the product of an over-communicated and wealthy culture where everybody thinks they have something important to say and that people really want to listen. Or so it is that we hope people will listen or be wooed by our [un]conventional wisdom or our witty stories of life. I do not suppose that this is a bad thing. As a matter of fact, I can not imagine a life where anyone truly is an individual. Even those persons who claim to be altogether independent and wholly self-sufficient have had help along the way. They have been nurtured by a community of people and by a culture created by communities of people, past and present, who have and are simply trying to make sense of life. I totally embrace that so many people and communities have influenced who I am. What I have a hard time with sometimes is actually knowing who I am.

As I mentioned above, I feel trapped. Even though I am grateful for people who help to tell me who I am, I am convinced that the construct in which I have come out of is insufficient in defining who I actually am; and I feel trapped in it. I feel trapped in my social status and the expectations of society. I am weary of things that are not worth being weary over. I feel privileged and cursed all at the same time. I feel tamed by it all; and while I may not know what the word natural actually means, I will say that I do not feel natural about this. I have come to a point where I am learning to step outside of my comfort of social graces and peaceful conflict management; and doing so has caused me to realize that being uncomfortable and sometimes appearing to be odd at least feels more natural. That is, it feels right. I have realized for quite some time now that life is about so much more than society has taught me. Life is about more than stuff; it is more than knowledge; there is even more to it than friends, family, and, yes, even church. But I don't know that I have ever been able to live like it is true. I do not believe that I have ever been able to live like my faith in God is real. I am plagued and restricted by the same society that I am so grateful for.

I guess the question that I am wrestling with is how I can break out of this construct that does not simply tell me who I am, but also who I should be. There is a huge tension inside of me and I feel like I am being pulled in two different directions. I need to be freed to be and do what I know is a life worth living. I have desires that I hold back, and I feel compromised because of it. I feel as though I will never begin to know who I am if I continue down the path where I am tamed. I will always be trapped by the restrictions of society, but my hope is that society cannot tame me to be something other than what I was meant to be. To those of you who feel the same way, my prayer is that God provide a way out of our boxes or open our eyes to the way he has already made. My prayer is that we come to a place of unrelinquished following of our desires as placed in us by our Creator. My prayer is that God give us something to work with when we feel trapped by ourselves and the world.

...in doubtful places see thou add no interpretation contrary to them...

"Mark the plain and manifest places of the Scriptures, and in doubtful places see thou add no interpretation contrary to them; but (as Paul saith) let all be conformable and agreeing to the faith." ~ William Tyndale, Preface to the New Testament 1526.


Reading Tydale's prefaces to the New Testament, I thought about our society in regards to Scripture.  I think that for a long time most churches have took different passages of Scripture and have used them as a wedge to divide the church.  Most lay persons, who struggle with a particular scripture, will either a). struggle with the passage and come up with their own interpretation or b). go to a church member, with the struggling passage, and get the members interpretation of the Scripture and hold that as truth.
Before my training in undergrad and seminary, I have fallen victim too the two scenarios.  During my training, I found out that some of my views (mine or others instilled in me) on certain passages were not accurate.  Now, if i encounter a passage that makes me struggle a bit, I do my research to make sure I understand it completely.  I also debate with colleges and friends to get more depth in understanding a passage.
I understand the temptation to take a certain passage and label it irrelevant and/or contradictory to other scriptures in the Bible.  But, as Tyndale wrote, we should interpret them as agreeing to the faith.  Paul wrote in his letter to the Church in Phillipi to "...work out your salvation with fear and trembling..."  I think we also need to work out troubling scripture the same way.