(Notes from the powerpoints of three seminars presented to the Baptist Union of Queensland's annual convention).
'Secret, fervent, believing prayer lies at the root of all personal Godliness'
William Carey

[1] WHY PRAY?
FULL NOTES for these seminars..
put
Rowland Croucher
or
John Mark Ministries
into Google -
http://jmm.aaa.net.au
and look for 'Fervent Prayer'


And one more suggestion.
Our aim today is to open just a few of the hundreds/ thousands of 'windows' on a very big subject.


A good prayer to begin: 'Lord, please speak to me: your servant is listening.'
Prayer. for most of us.
is not easy.
may be dry/barren.
What else.???

'If you're too busy to pray you're too busy.'


'Prayer should make you joyful.'
'When it's hardest to pray is the time to pray hardest'
'More prayer, more power.'
The Kneeling Christian
(by An Unknown Christian)



A Christian's Guide to Prayer
(Derek Prime)



'Pray as you can, not as you can't'


How do the best-put-together pray-ers get to be like that? (Sangster)


Introduction.


How we pray is who we are
Our prayer is the best measure of the integrity of our Christian life, the best index of our relationships - with God, others, self, ministry
Prayer is friendship with God
So. if prayer is about
Who we are
Who God is.
and
Friendship


How does that happen?








(1) AUTHORITY - Wesley's 'quadrilateral'.


God (in Christ) reveals His will through
Scripture


Reason


Tradition/the authority of the Church


Experience


Jesus.




. is our pattern for ministry - to God and for the world. Close communion with the Father was at the heart of all he was and did. As his disciples saw this reality they wanted to be part of it (why don't more people ask us to teach them to pray?). His prayer-life was disciplined and ordered, although he too, was busy. It begins with a contemplation of God - 'Our Father' - before moving to human need. He prays hard before important decisions, like choosing the twelve.


His meditation on Scripture gives strength in times of testing, particularly when the devil wants him to do ministry another way. Time is found for prayer - 40 days, a whole night, very early in the morning: hurry is the death of prayer. (When did you last take a retreat?). Nowhere does Jesus pray 'to feel good': for him, and for us, the key imperative is obedience.


BUT. WHICH JESUS?


(2) THE IDEOLOGICAL SPECTRUM


Radicals - Progressives - Conservatives - Traditionalists


MINDSETS


Mindsets are models within people's minds that allow them to interpret the world in a way that is acceptable to them. These mindsets comprise expectations about how the world should work.


A mindset is.
A mental attitude or disposition that predetermines a person's responses to and interpretations of situations.


This phenomenon is also sometimes described as mental inertia, 'groupthink' or a 'paradigm'.


Mindsets are influenced by age, gender, IQ, personality type, life-changing experiences, modeling by significant others, occupational status, social status, or the rewards/ punishments associated with belonging to a group, and conforming to their 'ideology'.


Note.


It is still possible to know the Bible off by heart and miss the point!


WAS JESUS A CHRISTIAN?


My theses:


Each mindset makes part of Christianity the whole of it.
There's nothing wrong with the parts. But like a car, if you've only got parts lying around you're not going anywhere.
Jesus rejected all these mindsets (but not the essential concerns of each of them). For convenience I'll use terms from early Christianity, and for the sake of brevity I'll oversimplify each mindset.


Zealots.
are passionate about justice. Justice is all about fairness, the relationship of the strong to the weak, the right use of power. Their God may sanction terrorism; their theology is 'liberationist'; today they're priests and others who advocate the violent overthrow of oppressive Latin American regimes, or radical Islamists who terrorize those-not-like-them.




Scribes, elders, teachers-of-the-law.
regard tradition as master, rather than servant. Their religious way of life is ruled by precedent, what has been. 'Come weal, come woe, their status is the quo'. If it's new, it's suspect. Their God is unchanging, not merely in faithfulness, but operationally.




Essenes.
are liturgists. 'If only we get our worship right, the Messiah will come.' Their God is 'wholly other'. Their liturgies are exact, their worship-forms utterly predictable.
Mystics.


major on experience. They are right-brain, rejecting rationalism, cerebralism, dogmatism. For them prayer (perhaps divorced from labour) is the essence of the spiritual life. They sometimes form monastic orders.


Gnostics.
are syncretists. They believe there's truth in every religion. They invite us to make up our own identikit picture of God. They're at home somewhere in the New Age Movement; they develop conspiracy theories from the Dead Sea Scrolls; they love the Gospel of Thomas.
Sophists.
or sages place a high premium on knowledge or wisdom (they're not the same). They develop beautiful theories about redaction criticism, whether the four gospels are 'reliable' when they describe what Jesus said and did. They write learned papers, which like those of their predecessors, will be seen in future academic circles to be largely nonsense.


Sign-seekers.
love miracles. With Herod (in Jesus Christ Superstar) they invite Jesus to 'walk across my swimming-pool.' Their God wants everyone to be healthy and wealthy (but not necessarily wise: academia is suspect). Anything can be cured, instantly, given enough faith.


Materialists.
measure everything, not just money. The bigger, faster, more brilliant, the better. Bigger churches are better than smaller churches; brilliant preachers than ordinary ones. Success, fame, ambition, optimism, 'imaging' may be their watch-words. Some attend Amway conventions.


Apocalypticists.
this world than anticipating the world to come. They attend 'Second Coming' conventions.
Do-gooders.
are given to paternalism. They do works of mercy for their own benefit, not just for the sake of the one done good to/against. Thoreau said of them, 'If you see someone coming towards you with the object of doing you good, run for your life.' These 'people-helpers' don't realize they're in it to solve their own problems: pure altruism is very, very, rare.


Antinomians.
despise holiness - at least for themselves in private. As the term implies, they're 'against law' and misuse grace. 'God loves to forgive, it's his business' - so they give God every opportunity to do just that.


Pharisees.
are preoccupied with two things - law and doctrine. So they become legalists and dogmatists. They talk a lot about 'truth' and 'error'. Their God is unambiguous, reducible to creeds and doctrinal statements. Their 'gospel': repentance precedes acceptance (with Jesus it was the other way around). The acid test: their non-concern for social justice and mercy and true faith (Matthew 23:23, Luke 11:42, cf. Micah 6:8). They're conservatives/ fundamentalists, and proud of it.


All the entities emphasized are O.K. as part of a religious system, but are deadly if divorced from any/all of the others. Jesus did not align himself with any of the above groups: go and do likewise!


WHAT IS PRAYER?


'Ask God to make you healthy, wealthy and wise' (Sadduccees)

'Praying is best done by relating to God through aesthetic worship' (Essenes)

'Ask God for help to fight life's battles and defeat your/his enemies' (Zealots)

'Expect God to save you from this present evil world - soon!' (Apocalypticists)

'Ask God for the key to secret knowledge' (Gnostics)

'Ask God to make you strong and powerful' (Herodians)

'Prayer is best done by using traditional forms' (Scribes, Lawyers, Elders)

'Pray for a miracle!' (Sign-seekers)

'Ask for strength to obey God's laws and believe the right doctrines' (Pharisees)



WORSHIP PARADIGMS


Temple (God as 'wholly other')

Synagogue (God as the source of truth)

Home Group (God in each other)

Festival (God as father/parent)

Desert (God within us)

Work (God in daily life)

All of Life (God as Lord/King)



What is a Christian? (think about it for a minute)



Believe!
Obey!
Love!


SPIRITUAL FORMATION.
is the process whereby the Word of God is applied by the Spirit of God to the heart and mind of the child of God so that she or he becomes more and more like the Son of God. It's 'growing firm in power with regard to your inner self' (Ephesians 3:16). It's the maturing of the Christian towards union with Christ


Assumptions of spirituality
include.


God is doing something before I know it
Love and Prayer are gifts
The aim of spiritual formation is not happiness, but love, joy, peace - and courage and hope
Prayer is friendship with God, a response to his love
Prayer is subversive: it's an act of defiance against the ultimacy of anything other than God
We are always beginners in the life of prayer: pray as you can, not as you can't ('to seek to pray is to pray').


ON NOT BEING SPIRITUAL

Eugene Peterson says that in his 45 years of pastoral experience, the most distressing question he's asked is: "Pastor, how can I be spiritual?" His answer: How about starting by loving your husband or your kids? Even for the mystics, moments of rapture and ecstasy are rare and unexpected. The notion of being intimate with God is also misleading, he says.
Intimacy with God is like any other form of intimacy: in marriage, for example, you don't feel that intimate with your mate all the time. "Spirituality is no different from what we've been doing for two thousand years just by going to church and receiving the sacraments, being baptized, learning to pray, and reading scripture rightly. It's just ordinary stuff." (Christianity Today, March, 2005).


THE ONLY REASON FOR PRAYING
(Jacques Ellul)



Do you have to have a reason to pray? Am I really going to pray because I have a reason which is rational, clear, explicit and conscious? Am I to pray because...? Must prayer have a cause? Prayer is a spiritual act, and I should accept it and live it as such. Since it is a spiritual act I do not need proof, nor do I need to look for reasons. I pray, or I do not pray.


But in times of dryness. of despair, of alienation, of negation, of disobedience, of rejection, when there is nothing left "in our hearts" which tells us to "seek His face," I cling to "a reason" outside myself, which I find compelling, which pushes me along, in other words, like a hand in my back forcing me ahead, constraining me to pray. It is the commandment which God in His mercy has granted to make up for the void in my heart and in my life. "Watch and pray." That is the sole reason for praying.


We must be clear about the meaning of the term "commandment." (We are in a)
person-to-person relationship. We pray because God tells us to pray.


The commandment as the foundation for the reality of prayer brings us to the only discernible subjective and human motivation, namely, obedience. But we must be careful. Our intellect, always defective in the things of the Spirit, will trick us into thinking that if there is obedience then there must be an obligation, a compulsion, a duty to pray. Then we fall back into the confusion between law and commandment. Obedience in Christ is the opposite to a duty or an obligation. There is no compulsion. There is the hearing of a word which I receive and which commands me, before which it is mine to obey without pressure or penalty. There is not a duty to pray.


The idea that there could be a duty sterilizes prayer, which is characterized by spontaneity and involvement. To declare it a duty to pray kills the possibility of prayer, for such duty is impersonal and sterilizing.


If the commandment to pray is the reason for prayer, that is to say, to lead us to obedience, then that is possible only if we receive it in faith. Prayer presupposes faith.


To raise the problem of prayer, of the difficulty of praying, etc., is to raise the problem of faith in the contemporary world. If, for the Christian, prayer becomes impossible, dead, troublesome, uncertain, that is but the evidence for the absence of faith. Prayer is a mirror in which we are called to contemplate our spiritual state. Since it is a real encounter with God we can in prayer see ourselves as God sees us.


Prayer is never other than a sequel, a consequence, a response, to the word of invitation. If it is not God who is speaking, then there is nothing. The relationship is begun before the idea of praying occurs to us. I never have the initiative. Otherwise, prayer would in fact be a discourse, a monologue.





RESOURCES.
'Spirituality for Ministry'


http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/11420.htm


RESOURCES (BOOKS):


1. The Upper Room DICTIONARY OF CHRISTIAN SPIRITUAL FORMATION
2. The SPIRITUAL FORMATION BIBLE (NIV, Zondervan)

3. RENOVARE SPIRITUAL FORMATION
BIBLE
4. CELEBRATION OF DISCIPLINE, STREAMS OF LIVING WATER, PRAYER, DEVOTIONAL CLASSICS (Richard Foster)

5. Conservative/Calvinist: Andrew Murray, Dallas Willard, John Piper
6. Evangelical: A W Tozer, W E Sangster
7. Mainline: Eugene Peterson


Discuss.


1. Baptist churches used to have 'mid-week
prayer meetings'. Now they mostly don't.
Why? Is this a bad trend? What
suggestions would you have for
praying with others?


2. What do you think of Ellul's
sole reason to pray - obedience?


3. Share your best prayer-idea.


Rowland Croucher
September 2005.
~~



[2] PRAYER DE PROFUNDIS


Psalm 129:1-4


Since the time I was young, enemies have often attacked! Let everyone in Israel say: "Since the time I was young, enemies have often attacked! But they have not defeated me, though my back is like a field that has just been plowed." The LORD always does right, and he has set me free from. those cruel people.


Psalm 130


Out of the depths I cry to you O Lord
Lord hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my supplications!


My soul waits for the Lord
more than those who watch for the morning.


How we are to pray about the evil perpetrated by enemies - individuals or institutions in our society, in particular the 'powers that be' or political institutions?


Stories.


Dawn Rowan


Two victims of Satanic abuse


The pastor beaten by Hindu extremists


Persecuted Christians




It's a truism to say we're living in a world where terrible evil is perpetrated against good people. Militant global terrorism is the most publicized evil, but believe me, evil is everywhere. There are evil 'people of the lie' as Scott Peck described them, right here in this city, who 'love evil'. There are hidden institutions in this lucky country of Australia whose sole aim is to oppose goodness and promote evil and torture.


There are evil people and evil institutions. (And sociologist Robert Merton reckons the evil in institutions is greater than the sum of the evil of the individuals within them.)



"Teach us how to pray," the disciples said to Jesus. (Luke 11). He answered by teaching them the prayer Catholics call the Our Father or Protestants The Lord's Prayer.
The Lord's Prayer is a basic Christian prayer. As a model of prayer, every Christian learns it by heart. It appears everywhere in the church's life: in its liturgy and sacraments, in public and private prayer. It 's a prayer Christians treasure.
Central: 'Deliver us from evil/the evil one'..


Wink, Walter. Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1984.
________. Unmasking the Powers: The Invisible Forces That Determine Human Existence. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1986.
________. Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1992.
________. The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium. New York: Doubleday, 1998.


The Wink trilogy on the powers (first three titles above) offers a biblical theology on the spiritual realities of the principalities and powers. Wink's tendency toward demythologizing the powers as corporate structures will disturb some, but it should not distract them from Wink's strength, a careful biblical and scholarly analysis. The first work reviews the biblical terms for the powers, studies disputed passages, and interprets the powers as cosmological spiritual symbols essential for understanding reality.


Wink's second volume seeks to comprehend confusing spiritual experiences by assessing the powers-angels, demons, gods, elements, the devil. Wink's categories of inner personal demonic, outer personal possession, and collective possession provide a perspective for understanding both the structural and the personal dimension of the demonic. The final volume describes how nonviolence offers the means to victory in the struggle with the powers. The Wink trilogy on the powers is summarized in his most recent work, The Powers That Be.


The author, who is Professor of Biblical Interpretation at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City, presents an ethically challenging reframing of angels, demons, principalities, and powers. He writes: "Every business corporation, school, denomination, bureaucracy, sports team - indeed, social reality in all its forms - is a combination of both visible and invisible, outer and inner, physical and spiritual." These systems, institutions, and structures can do good and evil at the same time: "They form a complex web that we can neither ignore nor escape."


One of the challenges for Christian churches in our time is to discern the spirits of institutions and structures. If they are organized around idolatrous values and what Wink calls "the Domination System," they must be recalled to their divine vocation - the well-being of all individuals. With great clarity and clout, the author attacks the myth of redemptive violence and proclaims Jesus's path of practical nonviolence as its antidote ("It is the way God has chosen to overthrow evil in the world.")



Wink ends with a clarion call to seek God in our enemies, to practise justice in prayer, and to work every day for the "freeing of the Powers." Reading this watershed book will open your eyes afresh to the significance of spirituality, evil, politics, and redemption in our world.


Evil in our churches?


1988 - a tonne of excess food for every starving woman, man, child in the world - 800 million


AND CHURCHES IN THE 'CHRISTIAN WEST' - WHERE THE EXCESS FOOD IS - DID HARDLY ANYTHING TO LOBBY THEIR GOVERNMENTS TO GIVE MORE AWAY!


The final exam (Matthew 25): bad news and good news!


4 WAYS TO PRAY IN THE FACE OF EVIL


(1) PROPHETIC PRAYER - Exodus 3: 1-15
(2) THE PRAYER OF FAITH - Psalm 105
(3) LOVING PRAYER - Romans 12: 9-21
(4) THE PRAYER OF RELINQUISH- MENT - Matthew 16: 21-28


Paul says in Romans 12 we're to love and bless our enemies. Jesus in the Matthew 16 story is going to submit to them, and tells Peter he's like Satan for opposing that idea! But in contrast, God tells Moses in the Burning Bush theophany to go and confront the ruthless Egyptian dictator-Pharaoh who is persecuting an ethnic group called the Hebrews. And Psalm 105 is a litany of events where God miraculously delivered people from impossible situations.


"Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things." "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." Alice in Wonderland.


1. LOVING PRAYER Romans 12:9-21


Love in its purest form is the relationship of subject to object which creates worth in the object, rather than responding to worth in the object. This love is a gift to all others, whether or not that love is returned, or in spite of the one loved hating the loving one.


WHAT LOVE IS THIS?


a choice
a gift from God
doesn't tolerate what harms the other
Discipline - parent, teacher, magistrate and surgeon


HOW CAN WE LOVE LIKE THIS?
DEVELOP A BIBLICAL THEOLOGY ABOUT GOD!
RECOGNIZE THAT ALL HUMANS ARE MADE IN GOD'S IMAGE
FOLLOW THE EXAMPLE OF CHRIST
EMULATE THOSE ALREADY DOING IT
DISCIPLINE
PRAY FOR YOUR ENEMIES
BOTTOM LINE: WE CAN'T REALLY LOVE GOD IF WE DON'T LOVE OTHERS


'YOU LOVE GOD JUST AS MUCH, AND NO MORE, THAN YOU LOVE THE PERSON YOU LOVE LEAST'


(Prophetic vs. pastoral)



(2) PROPHETIC PRAYER - Exodus 3: 1-15


Bodies in the river.


.like a sheep-herder coming in from the desert in the 1990s and telling Saddam Hussein that he ought to stop torturing and killing Kurds and Shiites or else the God of the Jews will get him!


God meets us in the ordinariness of our lives
In experiences like theophanies and suffering God gets our attention!


PEAK EXPERIENCES


American psychologist and philosopher Abraham H. Maslow (1908-1970) coined this term to describe nonreligious quasi-mystical and mystical experiences. Peak experiences are sudden feelings of intense happiness and well-being, and possibly the awareness of "ultimate truth" and the unity of all things. Accompanying these experiences is a heightened sense of control over the body and emotions, and a wider sense of awareness, as though one was standing upon a mountaintop. The experience fills the individual with wonder and awe. He or she feels at one with the world and is pleased with it; he or she has seen the ultimate truth or the essence of all things.


Suffering/loss: Woman camping outside President Bush's ranch; MADD
Canada - JMM.
Persecuted Christians - India, Bangladesh, Romania, Russia before 1989


When we're asked to do something hard we usually make excuses (Moses, Jeremiah, Jonah). Modern excuse: 'Christians shouldn't be political!' (See letter to The Age - 4 September 2003 http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/1768.htm


The powers and the State: Romans 13 vs. Revelation 13


(3) THE PRAYER OF RELINQUISHMENT - Matthew 16: 21-28


We are committed to letting go of our will whenever it conflicts with the will and way of God. Obviously, our goal is to learn always to think God's thoughts after him, but we all have times when our human desires get in the way. At such times we must follow the lead of our Master who in the garden prayed, 'Nevertheless not my will, but yours, be done.'"


-Richard Foster

"When Christ calls you to follow him, he calls you to die" - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

(4) THE PRAYER OF FAITH - Psalm 105


Faith: believes that God is in charge of the universe and is working it all out (Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45)



"When Jesus prayed for others he never concluded by saying 'If it be Your will.' Nor did the apostles or prophets when they were praying for others. They obviously believed that they knew what the will of God was before they prayed the prayer of faith. They were so immersed in the milieu of the Holy Spirit that when they encountered a specific situation, they knew what should be done."
- Richard Foster


Jesus: 'If you have faith and do not doubt. if you say to this mountain, "Be lifted up and thrown into the sea," it will be done. Whatever you ask for in prayer with faith, you will receive.'" Matthew 21:18-22


Faith and Paul Yonggi Cho:


'In Korea. every miracle in Acts, including the raising of the dead. but never (yet) the replacement of a limb that's not there at all.'


A little excursus: Jabez. was an obscure figure from, as the Los Angeles Times puts it, "one of the dullest sections of the Old Testament." In the Book of Chronicles, a man named Jabez utters a one-sentence prayer: "Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain." God grants the prayer, and that's the last we hear of Jabez. Not much to work with, but Atlanta preacher Bruce Wilkinson made it the centerpiece of a book.


"God really does have unclaimed blessings waiting for you, my friend," Wilkinson writes in "The Prayer of Jabez"--but "if you didn't ask Him for a blessing yesterday, you didn't get all that you were supposed to have." Be sure to ask extravagantly: "For you, nothing but God's fullest blessing will do." Don't worry about coming across as selfish, for this is "exactly the kind of request our Father longs to hear." Routinely utter the Jabez prayer and "you will be so overwhelmed with God's graciousness that tears will stream down your face." You may even find yourself telling God, "It's too much! Hold some of Your blessings back!"


Chronicles describes Jabez as "more honorable than his brothers." Might that explain his success? Could it be that you have to cultivate honor, and not merely incant magic words, for God to enlarge your territory? "Prayer of Jabez" doesn't say. On the website prayerofjabez.com, Wilkinson says Jabez's honor may have preceded the prayer, or the prayer may have instilled the honor--we have no way of knowing. "My own viewpoint is, don't worry about it. Don't worry about it."


Wilkinson's 93-page, $9.99 "Prayer of Jabez" was the bestselling nonfiction title of 2001, according to Publishers Weekly. It has sold more than 9 million copies, spent 24 weeks atop the New York Times bestseller list, and spawned endless spinoffs: a devotional volume, an illustrated gift edition, a journal, a Bible study course, "Prayer of Jabez for Women," and "Prayer of Jabez for Little Ones" ("Dear God, Please bless me in a great big way!"), not to mention greeting cards, calendars, mugs, mousepads, and a planned feature film.


Those are the licensed products. The enlarge-my-territory prayer also appears on wristwatches, bumper stickers, pens, candy bars, "Jabez: A Novel," and much else. "It's from the Bible, so I guess they couldn't copyright it," muses one CBA exhibitor. Several others tell me that editors are scouring the Bible in search of another nobody with star quality.


Discuss.


What comments would you make about the Prayer of Jabez?


Can/do you pray like this?


Why? Why not?


WHICH IS THE BEST PRAYER?


All four:


Love if it is not 'tough love' can see evil perpetuated


Working to remove a perceived injustice can produce mindless zealots or even terrorists


Submitting to evil can produce hordes of martyrs and the evil persists. (Jesus submitted to trial and crucifixion, but not to the injustices perpetrated in the Temple).


Believing God will work it all out can lead to an other-worldly opting-out which ignores the evil and is not true to the prophetic traditions of the Judaeo-Christian faith.


But the best place to start.
is with the evil in myself!


Rowland Croucher
September 2005-09-02


~~


[3] 'SHUT UP AND PRAY!' PRAYER AS MEDITATION/ CONTEMPLATION


Discuss:
WHAT'S THE BIG IDEA IN PAUL?


* JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH (LUTHER)

* SANCTIFICTION BY THE SPIRIT (WESLEYANS)

* FORGIVENESS OF SINS/ GOING TO HEAVEN (FUNDAMENTALISTS)

* SIGNS AND WONDERS IN THE POWER OF THE SPIRIT (PENTECOSTALS)

* THE ELECTING GRACE OF GOD (CALVINISTS/ REFORMED CHURCHES)



All the above doctrines are means to the end of being 'United with Christ' - the great goal of the Christian, and of the universe. When they become ends in themselves they fall short of God's holy intention for God's people. (The gist of 'Mysticism and Morality' in James Stewart, A Man in Christ).


John Stott - England's 'Mr Evangelical' - picked up this theme in an essay entitled In Christ. There he notes that the expressions 'in Christ' / 'in the Lord' / 'in him' occur '164 times in the letters of Paul alone and are indispensable to an understanding of the New Testament.'


SPIRITUAL FORMATION.


is the process whereby the Word of God is applied by the Spirit of God to the heart and mind of the child of God so that she or he becomes more and more like the Son of God. It's 'growing firm in power with regard to your inner self' (Ephesians 3:16). It's the maturing of the Christian towards union with Christ.


Richard Foster: Streams of Living Water
Asks.
How have Jesus and his followers related to God in terms of spirituality/ prayer?


There are six major traditions of spirituality in Christianity:
* contemplative (prayer-filled life)

* holiness (virtuous life)

* charismatic (Spirit-empowered life)

* social justice (the compassionate life)

* evangelical (Word-centered life), and
* incarnational (sacramental life)



The book views these streams of spiritual life through the prism of Jesus' life. Jesus is the "divine paradigm" for our quest to know God more fully. In the gospels, we see how each of these six spiritual traditions is rooted in the teaching and life experience of Jesus Christ.


Jesus is the source of each tradition. his prayer and intimacy, purity of heart, life in the Spirit, advocacy of justice and shalom, proclamation of the evangel, and sacrament of the present moment.


Each chapter follows a similar format. First we are provided with an outline of the history of the particular tradition in a list of 30 or so notable figures and six significant movements. Then the chapter narrates the story of someone from church history that exemplifies this tradition. This is followed by two more stories of people-a biblical personage and a contemporary individual-who model the tradition.


The people chosen to illustrate a particular tradition include Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Holiness), St. Francis (Charismatic), John Woolman (Social Justice), Billy Graham (Evangelical), and Dag Hammarskjold (Incarnational tradition).


After Foster has captivated us with engaging stories of people who serve as models, he provides a description of the tradition, with a discussion of its major strengths and "potential perils." He closes each chapter with ideas for practising the spirituality of that particular tradition and then issues a call for us to pursue it.


The Incarnational tradition "focuses upon making present and visible the realm of the invisible spirit. This sacramental way of living addresses the crying need to experience God as manifest and active in daily life" (p. 237).


The Holiness tradition (eg the Wesleyan-Holiness movement) "holds before us the ultimate goal of the Christian life: an even deeper formation of the inner personality so as to reflect the glory and goodness of God; and ever more radiant conformity to the life and faith and desires and habits of Jesus . . ." (p. 85).


The chapter on the Contemplative tradition or the prayer-filled life is organized around Anthony of the Desert as the historical example, John the Beloved as the biblical expression of the movement, and Frank C. Laubach as the contemporary figure.


FOSTER makes it hard to lobby for one spiritual tradition as more important or essential than the others. We need to be grounded in each of the traditions. Throughout the book he finds ways to tie the traditions together and demonstrate how they need to be operating simultaneously in our lives: our spiritual walk is at its strongest when we are being nurtured by all six traditions.


"God is bringing together streams of life that have been isolated from one another for a very long time." If we can discover unity at the very source of how we nurture and care for our souls, then a strong foundation can be laid to support the building of relational bridges in the human family.


More on Contemplative Prayer.


* Psalm 46:10, Be still and know that I am God.


* Psalm 62:5, For God alone my soul waits in silence.


'Few things are needful, or only one' says Jesus to Martha (Luke 10:42 RSV mg.). Be still, and know that he is God. Contemplation is the awareness of who (and where) God is. The intellect and lips are still, and one is open to beauty, goodness, wisdom, gentleness and love - in short, to transcendence. It's the descent of the 'Word' from mind to heart. The most important element in the contemplative life is not knowledge, but love. This is a hard discipline for 'heady' and busy people.


Contemplative Prayer, also called Centering Prayer or Listening Prayer, has been taught by Roman Catholic monks Thomas Merton, Thomas Keating, and Basil Pennington, as well as by Quaker Richard Foster, Baptist E. Glenn Hinson, and Presbyterian Eugene Peterson.


CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER INCLUDES.


.CONTEMPLATION IS
* Prayer divorced from noise and activity; from 'head and mouth' * 'Practising the presence of God' (Brother Lawrence)
* 'Thirsting for God' (Psalm 42:1,2)
* All our faculties - seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling, feeling, perceiving: 'Teach me, my God and King, in all things thee to see (George Herbert)
* Seeing God in all things ('nothing is profane for those who know how to see' - Teilhard de Chardin)
* 'Feeling' God's presence ('I felt my heart strangely warmed' - Wesley)
('Jesus the very thought of thee with sweetness fills my breast' - Bernard of Clairvaux)
* 'Reverent fear. sweetness and delight in Him. so that we cannot pray at all except that He moves us' (Julian of Norwich)

* Total self-detachment (Meister Eckhart)
* Surrendering all: 'all to him I freely give' (evangelical hymn)
* 'The heart. stretched through suffering and enlarged' (Thomas Kelly)
* A love affair with 'Lady Poverty' (Francis of Assisi)
* 'Dark night of the senses/Spirit/ soul (John of the Cross)

* Movement from love of self for self's sake, through love of God for self's sake and love of God for God's sake to love of self for God's sake (Bernard of Clairvaux)
* Longing and desire: 'Jesus, lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly' (Wesley)
* Stages: from disciplined mental exercises (reason) to the heart's 'prayer of quiet' (Teresa of Avila)

* Through imagination, to experience the mind of Christ (Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises)
* 'Seeing' human need/greed (social prophets like Merton, John Woolman) ('To withdraw from human struggle and seek only the selfish thrill of individual salvation is the way of spiritual danger' - Rufus Jones).


- E. Glenn Hinson (Christian Spirituality: The Contemplative View, IVP)



And. from another Baptist.


- Stephen Winward How to Talk with God - the basics of prayer, pp. 113-4 :


Martha, preparing an elaborate meal, was irritated by the behavior of Mary, who sat at the feet of Jesus and listened. Jesus commends Mary for listening, but his rebuke to Martha is not a disparagement of service - it follows the story of the Good Samaritan.


Some of us are naturally contemplative. Others, no less devoted to the Lord, prefer to be up and doing. Most Western Christians have a sneaking sympathy for Martha! But the best comment on this story has been made by St. Teresa. 'To render our Lord a perfect hospitality, Martha and Mary must combine'.


Mary and Martha must be combined in each of us. The life of prayer must find expression in service, contemplation in action, worship in work.


* "God's first language is silence." (Thomas Keating, Open Mind, Open Heart 57)



* "Progress in intimacy with God means progress toward silence."


(Richard Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home 155)




[Contemplative prayer is the world in which] . . . our private, self-made worlds come to an end; a new world appears within and around us and the impossible becomes an everyday experience. Yet the world that prayer reveals is barely noticeable in the ordinary course of events. (Page 13)

On Centering Prayer


[Centering prayer] is . . . a journey into the unknown. It is a call to follow Jesus out of all the structures, security blankets, and even spiritual practices that serve as props. They are all left behind insofar as they are part of the false self system . . . The false self is an illusion. Humility is the forgetfulness of self . . . (Page 72)



Centering prayer is a method of refining one's intuitive faculties so that one can enter more easily into contemplative prayer. It is not the only path to contemplation, but it is a good one. As a method, it is a kind of extract of monastic spirituality . . . you have to keep up a certain level of silence in the psyche and nervous system if you want to obtain the benefits of contemplative prayer. (Page 34)



Breath Prayers
* "With practice, you can develop the habit of praying silent 'breath prayers'" -Rick Warren, pastors.com


* "Use 'breath prayers' throughout the day, as many Christians have done for centuries. You choose a brief sentence or a simple phrase that can be repeated to Jesus in one breath." - Rick Warren, Purpose-Driven Life, p. 89.


"Breath prayers are a great way to keep in contact with our Heavenly Father throughout our day. Just repeat short heart-felt prayers, such as "You are my God," "I love you Lord," and "Thank You, Jesus." from pastors.com article by Tobin Perry

"Develop the habit of praying silent "breath prayers" for those you encounter." -Rick Warren, Sermons, 5-Week Plan


At the end of A Faith to Proclaim, Presbyterian James Stewart writes: 'I know the terms our fathers used - such as "meditation" and "contemplation" - are much disparaged in this hectic age; we are not shining examples of the immutable peace that is God's gift... somehow we have to recapture the things for which these words stood. In honour to our (ministry) vows and our vocation we are bound to discipline ourselves to make time to company with Jesus...'


PRAYER IS NOT SAYING WORDS by: Jacques Ellul


'The true content of prayer is not expressed in what is said [whereby we make the] great mistake of analyzing prayer on the basis of the content of the discourse, and the distinction between the prayer of petition, of praise, of intercession, etc. That sort of thing [may] falsify the true nature of prayer.


Prayer is not a discourse. It is a form of life, the life with God. That is why it is not confined to the moment of verbal statement. The latter (verbalization) can only be the secondary expression of the relationship with God, an overflow from the encounter between the living God and the living person.


Prayer is not to be analyzed like a language. It has none of that form or content, for it receives its content, not from what I have to say, but from the One to whom it is spoken. For prayer to be what it is meant to be, it depends on Him and not on me, still less on my ability to speak the adequate language. Of course, I can address God [by arranging] the sentences, but it is neither the harmony of the form, nor the elevation of the content, nor the fullness of the information which turns it into a prayer.


It becomes prayer by the decision of God to whom it is addressed. A transformation takes place whereby it is a prayer of Christ or a prayer of the Holy Spirit. That is how we should understand the famous statement of Paul, in which he says that in the last analysis we do not know what the content of our prayer should be (Romans 8:26,27), but that the Holy Spirit himself "intercedes with sighs too deep for words."


This phrase has too often been interpreted as though the Holy Spirit added a little something to our prayer. That is quite incorrect. It is the entire prayer which is the prayer of the Holy Spirit. Only when the Holy Spirit intercedes, and in a way which cannot be expressed, that is, which transcends all verbalizing, all language, then is the prayer prayer, and it is a relationship with God. Prayer is a gift from God, and its reality depends upon Him alone.'


SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES


The spiritual life cannot be nurtured without discipline. Make a chapel or oratory somewhere, perhaps a corner of your bedroom, away from interruptions (put the telephone answering machine on), where you do your prayer and Bible/spiritual reading (not 'Bible study' or sermon preparation). Daily solitude is not a luxury; it is a necessity for spiritual survival. If we do not have that within us, from beyond us, we yield too much to that around us.


Begin your 'quiet time' with a Bible word, phrase or prayer ('Be still...', 'Maranatha', 'Lord, have mercy on me a sinner'). 'Occupy yourself in it without going further. Do like the bees, who never quit a flower so long as they can extract any honey from it' (Francis de Sales).


'Lectio divina'.
is the slow, reflective reading of the Bible. Scripture is God's personal word to me - for my 'formation' not just information. I read it reverently, ready to be 'converted' again and again (conversion begins but never ends), willing to be led where I may be reluctant to go, believing that God has yet more light and truth to reveal to me, and to the church. I try to learn to 'meditate on the Word day and night' (Psalm 1:2).


The Daily Office.
is an excellent structure for daily devotions. Try the Australian Anglican Prayer Book or the Daily Devotions version in the New Zealand Anglican Prayer Book. The Daily Office, says (Baptist) Stephen Winward is absolutely scriptural, God-centred, depends on an ordered use of Scripture (including difficult and challenging passages), is corporate, educative (we're in touch with prayer traditions centuries old) and 'obligatory' (even though the discipline is sometimes hard). Of course, as the Protestant Reformers emphasized, it can be mechanical, formal, but it doesn't have to be.


Community
Christian spirituality issues from, and creates Christian community. We have suffered from too much 'privatized religion'. Pastors, too, need to be accountable spiritually to someone. 'Self-made Christianity' is a contradiction. And remember, pastoral ministry is not automatically self- (or spirit-) nurturing. Because you handle holy things doesn't ensure you're a holy person.


Spiritual Direction
Find a spiritual director, a 'soul friend', someone who helps one respond to the inner promptings of the Holy Spirit, listening together to the Lord. The key question in direction is not 'who am I?' (that's counselling) but 'what happens when I pray?' Spiritual direction is not, in essence, directive (it's the Spirit that directs). We come to God, said Augustine, not by navigation, but by love.


* The sacraments are the Lord's specific gifts to his people: the corporate acts par excellence of his church.
* Fasting is a good regular or occasional discipline. Fast from food, words, TV, spending money, the telephone, sex, watching sport - whatever will help get ends and means in perspective for a while.


* Silence is 'the royal road to spiritual formation' (Nouwen). It is not just the absence of noise, but an opportunity to listen to the still small voice of the Spirit. 'Meditation' is a way for scripture to be internalized not merely (as in Transcendental Meditation etc.) a technique to 'calm down'.


* Journaling is a useful way to record the promptings of the Spirit in your life. A spiritual journal is a written response to reality: a record of one's inner and outer life (including dreams), a way to inner growth, reflection and healing.


* Prayer cannot be divorced from daily living. Baron Friedrich von Hugel's first suggestion to Evelyn Underhill when he was invited to be her spiritual director: visit the poor in inner-city London two days a week. After all the Spirit, says an ancient Latin hymn, is pater pauperum, 'father of the poor'.
Everything Belongs: the Gift of Contemplative Prayer (Richard Rohr)



*The two great paths of transformation:
· suffering (which gets our attention) and
· love and prayer (to get to our heart and passion).
* 'Everything belongs' - even that which is broken and poor
* The poor and uneducated may love God more than the theologian or ecclesiastic - St. Bonaventura
* Move beyond either-or thinking and learn to live with paradox, unanswered questions, inner contradictions
* The 'Christ' of the insecure tends to be tribal - 'just like them'
* Centred people, however, have their security and identity in God
* 'If prayer isn't simple by the time you have finished reading this I will have failed'
* We cannot attain the presence of God because we're already totally in the presence of God who is choosing us, now and now and now.
* Prayer is not primarily saying words or thinking thoughts. It is, rather, a way of living in the Presence
* God can most easily be lost by being thought found: We must never presume we see (Pharisees see sin everywhere except in themselves). Try to say 'I don't know anything' ('tabula rasa' in Latin). (Jesus' parables are almost always subversive with regard to conventional wisdom and so-called common sense)

* Spirituality is about true seeing - you don't have to push the river, because you are in it.
So repeat throughout the day:
* God's life is living itself in me.
I am aware of life living itself in me.
* Or St. Patrick:
God beneath you
God in front of you
God behind you
God above you
God within you.
* Jesus invites us to love and recognize the divine image even in our enemies. Either we see the divine image in all created things, or we don't see it at all. If the world is a temple, then our enemies are sacred too. And the ability to respect the outsider is probably the litmus test of true seeing.
* The contemplative secret? Live in the now ('the sacrament of the present moment')



Be still and know that I am God
Be still and know that I am
Be still and know
Be still
Be


* The 'judging mode' ranks people/ideas (higher/lower, superior/ inferior)
and is into control, comparison, competition - and all this blinds us to love. Julian of Norwich: 'The Lord looks on his servants with pity and not with blame.'
* Jesus' crucifixion - seemingly a time of utter powerlessness - was actually his moment of greatest power.
* Is the Universe Friendly? (Einstein). Babies under 2/3 years experience 'kinesthetic knowing' - and we always live out of that knowing. 'Be not afraid' is the most common single line in the Bible.
* Bernham ('Coming to Our Senses') says the proliferation from about 1500 of mirrors was a historical watershed, leading to a split within the self, and a desire for 'physical perfection', a lack of contact with reality ('ontological moorings'). We must break the material world's hold on us, and enjoy the freedom of living as they did before mirrors and photos!
* The price we've paid for technologies? Our soul, which now doesn't know itself because of comparison/differentiation.
* Most revolutions fail because the demon of power (from left or right) has never been exorcised. We need less reformation and more transformation.
* Most people spend their entire lives trying to be smart, good-looking, successful, clever, rather than living in the primal 'I' that is already good in God's eyes. When we are nothing, we are in a fine position to receive everything from God - poverty (Franciscans), nothingness (Carmelites), emptiness (Buddhists), the desert/closet (Jesus) - 'in Christ, hidden in God' (Paul, Colossians 3:3).
* Contemplation, returning to the naked self, helps us let go of this 'I' fixation. The child, says Jesus, with its beginner's mind has no ego identity to prove, project, protect.
* The problem with religion is that it clings to a small part of the whole - spinning the prayer wheel right, engaging in rituals, affirming dogma (group-think is often a substitute for God-think), obeying laws. Techniques, rituals and spiritual disciplines are just 'fingers pointing to the moon'. Institutional religion is the least mature manifestation of the living presence of Christ.
* If you understand it, things are just as they are; if you don't understand it, things are just as they are.
* The Enlightenment: I think therefore I am. Moderns: I choose therefore I am.
* Prayer is not 'one of ten thousand things'. It's that by which we see ten thousand things.
* Aquinas did not ask where it came from, but if it is true: 'If it is true, it is of the Holy Spirit.'
* God refuses to be known except by love (John of the Cross)

* The wounds to our ego are our teachers and must be welcomed ('our trials and disturbances come from our not understanding ourselves' Teresa of Avila)

* Prayer is not finally self-observation, but 'falling into the hands of the living God' (Hebrews 10:31)

* In politics we demonize the other side (it's all driven by illusion, self-interest, power and fear - especially the fear of not being re-elected). 'Fear not' - the most common one-liner in the Bible. We live too much in reaction to others - they're wrong, I'm right. It's scapegoating - projecting the problem 'over there'. Rather: 'we have found the enemy and it is us!'
* Kohlberg's schema on moral development would place Jesus as a sixth-level person - a very small minority of humans (but mystical Judaism, Islam and Buddhism also agree.)

* We all need art, music and solitude. Prayer and suffering lead to our emotional depths (they both help us become dependent on God): they are the two primary paths of transformation and we connect with the suffering and injustice of the world (com-passion = 'feeling with').
* Humility and honesty lead to truth, not just information, according to the wisdom traditions: we grow by subtraction more than by addition. The twentieth century has added nothing to the wisdom of the soul: it was all there already.
* We can choose fear/illusion/self-protection - or love. FEAR = false evidence appearing real.
* The holy fool knows that he doesn't know ('If you can explain it, it's not true'). (Protestants' theology is mostly in their head).
* 'God comes to us disguised as our life' (Paul D'Arcy). Meister Eckhart: 'God is closer to me than I am to myself'. Everything belongs; God uses everything; there are no dead-ends; there is no wasted energy. Everything is recycled. Sin-history and salvation-history are two sides of the one coin. The Gospel is all about the mystery of forgiveness. The people who know God well - the mystics, the hermits, those who risk everything to find God - always meet a lover, not a dictator.
* (Two-thirds of Jesus' teachings and one third of his parables are about forgiveness)

* Your life is not about 'you'. It's part of a much larger stream called God.
* When a church isn't teaching people how to pray, it's lost the reason for its existence. For most churches what is all-important is attendance at a service where the clergy happen to be in charge. Church = individuals coming for their spiritual fix then leaving.
* Weeping is the opposite of blaming, and also the opposite of denying. The freedom to cry is a clear sign you've actually experienced God. The man who cannot cry is a savage; the old man who cannot laugh is a fool. The person of prayer is a person who can cry from the heart and laugh from the belly.
* We are all naked underneath our clothes, more alike than different.
* All transformation takes place in 'sacred space', 'threshold place' (liminality). Prophets lead us into sacred space by showing us the insufficiency of the old order (priests help us live in the new realm).
* In mature religion the secular becomes sacred. The temple veil is rent ('pro' + 'fanum' --- profane, ie. outside the temple.)

* Embracing the Shadow
* In the first half of life winning is very important ('the character lie' - Ernest Becker). Most problems are psychological; most solutions are spiritual. The burden of the second half of life is often the reclaiming of what we have denied, feared and rejected.
* Our shadow is failure itself. We scorn powerlessness and poverty, the fear of being 'ordinary' (which is failure in a success-driven culture). Francis: 'Here is where I will rejoice. I will delight in nonpower, nonaggression, nondomination, nonpleasure, nonwealth, nonsuccess.' That is freedom!
* The fear of death is the existential terror about losing what you've never found. For Jesus life and love are eternal; we enter into it now. It's heaven all the way to heaven (or hell all the way to hell). Not later, but now.
* Augustine: 'In my deepest wound I see your glory and it dazzles me!' Julian: 'God sees the wounds and sees them not as scars but as honors.' Most of us do not thank God for our wounds - and then, not until the second half of life.
* The religion of Jesus is about attachment, falling in love, risking pain, suffering - not Zen-like detachment - 'the Third Way', the middle way between fight and flight ('everything is beautiful'), the contemplative stance, the way of wisdom.
* Liberals are into 'fight' - 'fix it and change it'; conservatives flight - denying massive institutional evils. Liberals deny the vertical arm of the cross (transcendence); conservatives the horizontal (breadth and inclusivity).
* Prophets see in themselves good and bad (it's not 'over there'). The divine image honors the good in both myself and my would-be opponent.


CONCLUSION: A CONTEMPLATIVE SEEING OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE CROSS


I believe
* God is in all things - even and especially painful things. The crucifixion of the God-man is he best thing in human history
* Human existence is neither perfectly consistent nor is it incoherent chaos
* The price we pay for holding together these opposites is always some form of crucifixion
* The 'paschal mystery'- true life comes only through death and rebirth wherein we learn who God is for us
* We should not be surprised by the sinful and the tragic. Do what you can to 'be peace' and to do justice but never expect or demand perfection on this earth
* Resist all utopian ideologies and heroic idealisms that are not tempered by patience and taught by all that is broken, flawed, sinful and poor
* Following Jesus is not a salvation scheme for individuals or society but sharing the fate of God for the life of the world
* God is calling everyone and everything to himself
* Institutional religion is the necessary but immature manifestation of the 'hidden mystery' by which God is saving the world. It is never an end in itself but an uncertain trumpet of the message
* Many live this mystery who do not belong to the church - Gandhi, Simone Weil, Nelson Mandela
* Jesus Christ crucified and resurrected is he vulnerable face of God
* The Cosmic Christ is no threat to anything but separateness, illusion, domination
* The contemplative mind is the only way of seeing all this. The calculative mind creates dualisms, win/lose scenarios, imperial egos and necessary victims
* 'No problem can be solved by the same consciousness that caused it' (Einstein)


A final word from Bonhoeffer:
'It is not some religious act which makes a Christian what he or she is, but participation in the suffering of God in the life of the world.'


Two excellent prayers for each day:
* 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'


* 'Lord, help me to see you in every one I meet today; and help me to be like you to everyone I meet today.' Amen.




Further Reading.
* Anything by A. W. Tozer, W. E. Sangster
* Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline, Streams of Living Water, Devotional Classics
* Margaret Hebblethwaite, Finding God in All Things, Uncommon Prayer
* Anything by Henri Nouwen, Thomas Merton, Carlo Carretto, Richard Rohr
* Rowland Croucher (ed.) Still Waters ... Deep Waters: Meditations and Prayers for Busy People, High Mountains Deep Valleys: Meditations and Prayers for the Down Times, Rivers in the Desert: Meditations and Prayers for the Dry Times, Gentle Darkness, A Garden of Solitude; and Recent Trends Among Evangelicals, Part 3: 'Creative Spirituality'


Rowland Croucher
September 2005