When God Is Not Where You Expect Him

I've been visiting colleges last week with my daughter.  Four colleges, four different locales, in four days.  If I'm honest I wasn’t starting my day asking for God to help me see Him more clearly, or love him more dearly, or even follow him particularly closely.  Rather I was trying not to leave a trail of clothes in various hotel rooms, trying to consider the best way to navigate traffic, and wondering if it is possible to home school your child on the way to a Bachelor of Arts degree.  In other words, how in the world do people pay for all this? 

One of the things that struck me about the Admissions presentation at each school was the absolute silence regarding spiritual life on campus.  Ironic for a student of American history like myself, because I know full well each of these private colleges were founded by people of faith, in most cases in order to educate Christian leaders, pastors, etc.  

On the tour of one campus, founded by the Episcopal Church, I had to ask if the beautiful church near the center of campus was still in use and if so by whom.  The tour guide said, “Yes” but little more.

At a college founded by progressive Quakers, one of the parents asked if having values grounded in Christianity made the philosophy of the school exclusive in some way.  I really wanted the Admissions rep to say Yes, we were founded by followers of Jesus who had decidedly passionate beliefs about cooperation, equality, and discerning your own path in life with God's help.  Alas, his answer was less assertive and more conciliatory than I would have liked.

Every single club, sport, activity, academic pursuit, and social connection were laid out on the table and not a single school said a word about spiritual formation, Christian organizations, or any community of students pursuing a deeper, richer walk with God.  And these were all schools that have their roots and history wrapped up in being overtly Christian institutions!

As far as I can tell these Admissions professionals were doing their best to 'sell' us on their colleges.  They were addressing the issues, opportunities, and questions that they know High School students are eager to discuss and hear.  I just find it sad that high school students aren't eager to hear about how they might find opportunities to continue their spiritual growth in their college years.  If it were important to high school juniors and seniors it would show up in these presentations.  The fact that it didn't tells me that it just isn't that important to a large majority.  They want to grow intellectually, socially, physically, vocationally but whether or not they grow in their love of God and love for others evidently doesn't rise to the level of a single brochure or talking point.

I know, I know.  These aren't overtly Christian institutions any longer.  They may have a Bishop on their Board of Trustees, or they might have a beautiful Chapel nestled somewhere on the campus grounds, but facilitating the spiritual growth of their students is no longer part of their mission as they see it.  Engagement with the world is growing more and more important, that is clear.  But the reason for that engagement seems a little vague and sketchy without a moral mandate, transcendent purpose, or higher calling.  That’s because once upon a time a priority was put upon educating the whole student:  body, mind, and spirit.  When you drop the spiritual emphasis, engaging the world is about ‘doing good’ for goodness sake.

This is really a long way around the barn to say that sometimes when we look for God we don’t find Him—at least in the ways we think we should.  Is God moving in and through those campuses?  Of course!  I’m guessing God is being God in powerful, unsuspecting ways.  I just mourn the fact that the institutional leaders don’t recognize that publicly—that they aren’t looking for signs of spiritual growth and celebrating it as much as they are celebrating the academic and social growth and accomplishments of their student bodies.

It is promised that when we look for God with our whole hearts we will find Him.  But that phrase “with our whole hearts” is an important qualifier.  We may or may not bump into God as God moves through our day, through our schools, at our work place, in our homes.  But that would be nothing more than dumb luck.  Really finding God—Seeing God More Clearly—takes an investment of our hearts and wills.  That’s why I think the Chichester Prayer is so powerful.  It makes pursuing God front and center when we make that prayer front and center in our daily conversation with God.  And of course, there is a promise implied.  When we ask, when we come to God honestly and wholly—when we bring our whole heart to bear—God makes himself known to us in new and life changing ways.

May you find renewed commitment and energy to see, love, and follow our God each and every day.

 

Another Favorite Prayer

I recently came across another prayer that I dearly love.  Many years ago it was a regular part of my devotional life, but it has fallen off since then.  I had transcribed into a book I bought for a friend and when I finally got around to sending that book--months after when it should have been sent--I saw it again and remembered just how meaningful it has been to me.

I offer it to you, not to replace our Chichester Prayer, but maybe as a warm up to it.  Think of it as a Pre-Prayer Prayer.  It was shared many years ago at a World Council of Churches gathering in Australia.  It is a wonderful centering prayer.  I hope you find it meaningful.

God
Grant me to be silent before you--
that I may hear you;
At rest in you--
that you may work in me;
Open to you--
that you may enter;
Empty before you--
that you may fill me.
Let me be still and know you are God.
Amen.
         Sir Paul Reeves 

Do It Then Pray It?

Maybe it is time to rethink the whole 'look for God first' before moving on to loving God and following God.  I have been very much challenged as I look for the presence and leading of God in my daily life.  I keep wondering why I haven't been doing this all along.  I don't think there is a more important expectancy followers of Jesus can fuel than to expect God to be alive and at work in our daily lives.  But I also came across a useful idea from Mark Batterson, the author of the All In book we recently based a sermon series upon.  Batterson suggests that sometimes we have to move beyond asking and looking into doing.  Let me share his thoughts with you:

"In my experience, signs follow decisions. The way you overcome spiritual inertia and produce spiritual momentum is by making tough decisions. And the tougher the decision, the more potential momentum it will produce. The primary reason most of us don't see God moving is simply because we aren't moving. If you want to see God move, you need to make a move!

 "I learned this lesson in dramatic fashion during the first year at National Community Church. We had been praying for a drummer to join our worship team for months, but I felt like I needed to put some feet on my faith, so I went out and bought a four-hundred-dollar drum set. It was a Field of Dreams moment: if you buy it, they will come. I bought the drum set on a Thursday. Our first drummer showed up the next Sunday. And he was good. He was actually part of the United States Marine Drum and Bugle Corps. Rock and roll.

"I cannot promise that signs will follow your faith in three minutes or three hours or three days. But when you take a step of faith, signs will follow. God will sanctify your expectations, and you will begin to live your life with holy anticipation. You won't be able to wait to see what God is going to do next.        
       Mark Batterson, Wild Goose Chase (Multnomah, 2008), pp. 32-33

Batterson's insight makes me wonder if it might not make sense to try and follow God more closely first, and in the process, we might see God's handiwork all the more clearly.  It's worth chewing on at least.

How about you and I try to act in ways that we already know God favors and blesses.  How about we step out in faith, trusting that when we do what God commands, when we are faithful to our calling--AS BEST AS WE KNOW IT--then God will reveal God's self to us in ways God may not have been doing up to that point.  And the more we see God surround and use our actions, the more we will love and glorify him in response.

A new attitude--an expectant mindset--can make a huge difference in any aspect of our lives.  But we don't actually grow and change unless we act on that attitude--unless we put our expectancy to work for us.  I am going to do exactly that for the next two weeks. I invite you to join me.  Let's see how our praying the Chichester Prayer changes when we act on God's behalf, when we step forward in faith, when we take what we already know to be right and true and live by it.  It's a great way to usher in the Lenten season.

Diagnosis Prayer

I love the Chichester prayer.  It has really helped keep me on track for these last few weeks.  I have been looking for and seeing God at work in my life, I have embraced and tried to honor and love the God behind those moments, and as a result I think I am following Christ more closely. 

Here’s an added dimension I hadn’t really thought about before.  Because I am on the lookout for God every day, I also notice situations where God isn’t—or at least where God’s presence is not obvious.  And I’ve started to try and fill that hole, either with my own response, or by praying that God make himself known and intervene in more obvious ways.

         Let me give you a couple of examples. 

I am a pretty insulated, pay-attention-to-my-own-backyard kind of guy.  But you cannot help but notice the riotous ups and downs going on in the Ukraine over the last several weeks.  And now things are even more grim with the expected intervention of Russian troops any time now.  If you love democracy, and if you believe political freedom is always a good and even godly thing, then it’s easy to see that God has been moving among the people of Ukraine to stand up to and overcome a corrupt and unpopular leader.  But I fear a repeat of what happened to Russia’s other neighbor, Georgia, some six years ago.  There was bloodshed and military intervention and the best that the rest of the world could do was stand by and witness tragics repression.

         So what’s a Hoosier Christian to do?  Pray of course.  I’ve started praying for the people of Ukraine: that they might act wisely and not needlessly provoke the Russians.  I am praying for the European Union that they might find a way—short of military intervention of their own—to make it very clear that invading Ukrainian sovereignty is unacceptable.  And it would be silly to do all this praying and not pray for Vladimir Putin: that he sees the advantage of a peaceful compromise in this matter.  Normally, I don’t pray foreign policy.  Normally, I just sigh and prepare myself for what feels like the inevitable worst-case-scenerio.          

         On a personal level there is a colleague of mine, a Methodist Pastor, who was recently diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor.  I was at his church for a meeting recently and saw him interacting with other pastors.  I thought that if I were him, I would get tired of offers of sympathy and requests for information.  My first instinct was to say ‘hello’ but otherwise let him be. 

But I had been praying the Chichester Prayer.  And it didn’t seem right that such a gifted pastor should be facing such a grim diagnosis.  I had a hard time seeing God anywhere in this man’s situation.  So I went up and talked with him.  We talked about events of the day, but I left openings for him to share whatever he wanted to share.  And he did.  He told me about an experience he had as a young man when he faced the real possibility of falling off a cliff.  He related that rather than being overcome with fear, he felt a deep peace, knowing that he is was in God’s hands whatever happened.  We talked for 15 minutes or so and then got interrupted.  Yet as I walked away, I felt as if he had ministered to me.  His courage and confidence in God was clearly a big flashing sign that God was most certainly at work in his life and ministry.

         Oswald Chambers once said, “Prayer does not fit us for the greater work; prayer is the greater work.”  And even though it defies logic and our “what have you done for me lately” world, I think it is true.  Prayer has the power to keep us plugged into God’s Spirit so that we have the kind of perspective that allows us to live more compassionately and faithfully.