Idealist and Realist?

The Wisdom of the Just

Praying for a Higher Purpose

More reflections on prayer from E. Stanley Jones.  This is taken from a longer meditation on the implications of John 15:3, "You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you."

"[Jesus] also cleansed prayer.  He found it as magic and mere petition and left it as communion. Prayer was no longer getting something out of God, but God getting something out of us.  It was a pulling of ourselves to God, that, through this higher contact with higher power, higher purpose might be achieved."

I assume that prayer as higher contact with higher power is a widely-shared notion of prayer among United Methodists.  What about the last part?  Do you agree that God's ultimate goal for our prayer time is to use it to get a higher purpose out of us?  Has God gotten a purpose out of you that was higher than personal petition?

Christian Perfection by any other name

Consecrated or selfish?

Pure or unwholesome?

Trustworthy or fraudulent?

Truthful or Deceptive?

Easily offended or loving?

John Wesley's first publication, Collection of Forms of Prayer for Every Day in the Week (1733), is part prayer book and part self-examination book.  The book is organized so that a set of self-examination questions prepare the reader for the prayer that follows.  (A sample of the book is available on Google Books.)

An abundance of Wesley-inspired self-examination questions is available on the web for those who are interested.  I've always found the lists to be too long to be helpful.  Possibly something shorter and more pointed would have more of an impact.

I found such a list in Victorious Living (also available online).  I'll let you know if the questions turn out to be an effective spiritual practice.   If you give them a try or if you have a different list, I'd be interested in hearing about your experience.

Here's the list that E. Stanley Jones got from a friend--

1. Am I truthful?
2. Am I honest?
3. Am I pure?
4. Am I easily offended, or am I loving?
5. Am I selfish, or am I consecrated?

The fourth question is the one that really gets to me at the moment.  I think this reaction might have something to do with the presidential election season that has just began and that is already starting to offend me.  

I confess.  Yes, I am easily offended by most of the presidential candidates.  No, I do not have a loving attitude towards them.  Christ, if you want me to be loving in this situation, then you will have to work a miracle.  I trust your ability to fix what's broken in me, and I will try my best to react to your gracious intervention in an appropriate manner.

What do you know!  A set a self-examination questions followed by a prayer . . . this list just might have potential.

Theology in Action: from competition to cooperation

How to Pray

Prayer advice from E. Stanley Jones:

1. First of all, have the prayer hour

Sacredly keep it.  Build the habits of your life around that prayer hour.  Make things fit into it, not it into things.

2. In the beginning of the prayer hour be silent.

Let your mind relax and let it roam across your life to see whether it stops at anything wrong.  If so, tell God you will right it.  Let the first moment be a sincere moral search.  If nothing is shown to be wrong, then, "Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, we have boldness toward God."  We are ready for bold praying.

3.  Bathe your thought in the Word.

God's Word will wash the dust from your eyes.  Then you will see, have insight.  You will get right attitudes through the Word, so you will pray right prayers.  You are pulling your thoughts up alongside of His thought, your purposes up to His purposes.

4. Take a pen or pencil with you and write down what comes to you as you pore over the Word.

That pen is the sign of your faith that something will come.  And it will. Don't hurry through that Word.  Every word is precious.  Pause, assimilate.  When a man hurries through a wood, he sees few birds or animals.  They hide.  But if he sits down and waits, then they come out.  It will be so with you.

5. Take obedience with you into that hour.

You will know as much of God, and only as much of God, as you are willing to put into practice!  For God will answer many of your prayers -- through you.

Prayer: active or passive?

More reflections on prayer from Victorious Living by E. Stanley Jones:

. . . . prayer is not bending God to our wills--it is the bringing of our wills to God's.   When we throw out a boat hook and catch hold of the shore, do we pull the shore to ourselves?  Rather we pull ourselves to the shore.  Prayer does not pull God to us, it pulls us to God.  It aligns our wills with His will, so that He can do things through us that He would not otherwise have been able to do.  An almighty Will works through our weak wills, and we can do things all out of proportion to our ability.  Prayer is, therefore, not overcoming God's reluctance; it is laying hold of His highest willingness.  Those who pray link up with that willingness.   

After reading this passage, I tried to visualize a boat being pulled closer to shore.  I was in a little row boat, and God was using a rope tied to the boat to pull me in to shore.  This wasn't the boat hook image that Jones mentioned.  His boat operator had used the hook to snag a piece of the shore.  I, on the other hand, passively sat in my boat feeling grateful that God was bringing me closer.

The idea that prayer moves us closer to God's will is very appealing.  My hope is that, once aligned with God's will, I would be more willing and able to cooperate with God's activity in the world.  If the kind of prayer Jones described can give me a greater insight into where God is active, then it's worth adjusting my current prayer routine and giving Jones' technique a try.

Identifying where God is acting is a challenge for me.  Often I end up hooking a shore, pulling as hard as I can, and finally arriving only to discover that where I've landed might agree with my plans, but it doesn't coincide with God's plan.

Sometimes it's best to pause, cease my efforts, and check my bearings.  During that pause, if God adjusts my course and pulls me in the right direction, then my passivity was beneficial.  (Admitting that inaction can be good, is an admission I make with great reluctance.)

What does your experience tell you?  Prayer as you reaching out and hooking God, or prayer as allowing God to hook you, which have you experienced, which do you prefer, and which was more effective?

What is Prayer?

In his book Victorious Living, E. Stanley Jones shared this description of his experience of prayer:

". . . I mean that my lesser spirit can come into intimate, personal contact with the Spirit called God, that I can come to a common understanding with Him, can adjust my will to His will, and through the contact can find my personality heightened, enlightened, re-enforced, used.

. . . I have gone to my knees broken, all in, defeated, and have arisen, re-enforced, new and victorious.  Everything within me said I had met God."

This morning I went to prayer feeling overwhelmed with my to-do list.  Prayer did not reduce the list.  It's still burdensome, but its weight is not as great.  I turned to God in prayer, and God pushed back against the stress.  It was as if God gave me a little more breathing room.  Just enough extra space so that I can go into the day with an improved attitude.

Based on my experience, I would add to Jones' list the word "expanded".  Through prayer-contact we can find enlightenment, re-enforcement, and expansion.

May you make contact today.

The Leisured Heart

Another excerpt from Victorious Living by E. Stanley Jones.  The idea of being inwardly adjusted to the will of God appeals to me.  It brings to mind Luke 12 where Christ teaches his disciples that being rich towards God is the opposite of anxiously pursuing possessions.

"called to belong to Jesus Christ" (Rom. 1:6)

"The ending of our calling is not to know good, do good, or be good-- the end of our calling is 'to belong.'  The knowing, doing, and being good come out of our belonging to Jesus Christ."

-E. Stanley Jones

Still reading The Word Became Flesh, which is still complaining about sterile preaching.  Jones identified moralism as the main problem with the sermon he heard at that time (book published in 1963).  The Gospel was reduced to moral principles.  Jesus was reduced to a teacher of moral precepts.  The preachers told people to be good.  They defined what they meant by doing good.  They connected their definition of good to something that Jesus taught or did.  Jones called such preaching sterile because it did not produce faith, which is necessary in order to know, do, and be good.

Below is today's devotional lesson sandwiched between highlights of the lines that stood out for me and my reaction to those statements.  What do you think of the format?  Is it readable or too distracting?

Redistributing wealth with Pope Francis and E. Stanley Jones

"You and your mammon have to hold your world together"

If no one is beaten, is it still a victory?

A mental nagging that required research and writing in order to think it through.

"the deepest joy this universe knows"

E. Stanley Jones contrasts eros and agape

You fortunate ones with easy access to Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, help out an independent scholar.  Below is a table with a side-by-side comparison of E. Stanley Jones' definitions of eros and agape.  I'd like to know if this is a scholarly conclusion or a preacherly convention.  Thanks for the assist!  (I specify Kittel because it's the only lexical aid I don't have access to.)