Monday, January 25, 2010

"Power Outages" and "Unanswered Prayer"

Two and a half hours ago power went out in our home...actually, it was out for our entire block on our street. I immediately placed a power outage call to the power company (Jersey Central Power and Light...or, JCP&L). It took about an hour and an half for the repair truck to show up outside our house, but that's still a great response time! When that truck showed up I posted a Facebook comment, "Now, if only some answers to prayer would manifest this quickly!" About 5 minutes ago (after the utility repairman working on the problem for about 45 minutes in hurricane force winds standing in a bucket on the end of a hydraulic arm about 25 ft. off of the ground) the power came back on, and I posted the comment, "Power is restored!"

I want to comment further on both of my previous FB posts regarding the answers to prayer and power being restored. I feel strongly about both of these issues, and I also feel that there is much doctrinal error concerning both of these in the Church today.

My thought this morning was, "Oh, no...the power is out! What do we do now? My laptop only has a few minutes of battery power, my connection to the Internet is completely dependent upon the power being on, the stove is gas but the igniter is electric, the refrigerator won't hold the cold...", etc., etc. My cousin just wrote to me as a reply to my FB comment about the power being out, "In my house that's cause for panic!" Yes, I agree completely...the knee-jerk reaction to a power outage IS panic! It's a scary thing to have the power go out, to hear the howling, gusting wind outside, to see and hear the driving rain beating on the windows! But my observation and following question is this..."The power has 'gone out' in the Church and the wind is howling and the storm is raging...why isn't anyone overly concerned about this?" While there may (or maybe not!) have been a spiritual "panic" at first, we seem to have gotten used to getting by with candles (religion) and flashlights (our own attempts to provide power). Communication certainly isn't working (between pastors and pastors, pastors and people, people and pastors, people and people, and EVERYONE and GOD), the answers to prayers aren't manifesting (probably due to the breakdown in communication), and the "food" that is being served in many churches isn't even reheated left-overs...it's cold “take-out”, generic, and it may have been relevant for the pastor's study or for times past, or at best it is doctrinally correct but practically and relationally irrelevant, out of touch with where people truly are in their lives (because the pastors/preachers are out of touch with the people (see my previous note for more on this...shepherds should smell like the sheep, otherwise they are simply "professional preachers" who may be great orators but are lousy pastors). And people still live with their problems, they still go to church, they still stand up and sit down on command, they still accept that nothing can (or will) be done except to continue "business as usual" (which is a putrefying concept for the Church of Jesus Christ!)

So, the problem(s) remain...Where has the 'power' gone in our lives and in our churches? Why aren't more people (pastors?!) concerned about this? When is God going to send us shepherds that truly will shepherd the flock? When will the Church STOP being satisfied with unanswered prayer and powerlessness, and stop trying to make up for these deficiencies with high-powered, secular, business organization/management solutions, candles, flashlights, spiritual-gasoline-powered generators (religion, human effort and reasoning, bigger is better, etc.)? I'm not advocating a full-blown panicking, but maybe a little panic over this situation would do us some GOOD here! Why don't our prayers seem to get any higher than bouncing off of the brassy heaven above our heads? Why doesn't God come as quickly as JCP&L did to fix the problem(s)?

I don't buy into the "Word of Faith" teaching that if the prayers we pray aren't answered (or don't seem to be answered, or aren't manifested) by God then there's something wrong with US...we didn't pray with ENOUGH FAITH! That is nothing but condemning, guilt producing, legalistic trash. I'm NOT suggesting that instead of US being the problem that there must be something wrong with God. I AM saying, though, that there is something wrong with the teaching that there must ONLY be EITHER something wrong with us OR God, and it certainly isn't God. There are other factors in prayer that the "name it and claim it" camp totally disregard. Such factors include God's timing, our timing, other people (vacationers pray for sunshine, farmers pray for rain, etc.), selfishness, pride, our inability/unwillingness to deal with uncomfortable situations and God's desire to disciple us THROUGH such times, etc., etc. I simply refuse to believe and practice that if I ask for something in prayer then believe it enough that God is obligated to give it to me! I also reject the notion that if I REALLY had "true" faith, I wouldn't have to ask for something again...asking again would mean I didn't have enough faith for it the first time I asked. Once again, this is religious, guilt producing rubbish.

I am extremely confident (not proudly arrogant, but well-grounded and humbly confident) in my relationship and fellowship with the Lord. Because of this, I CAN ASK these questions KNOWING that I am NOT in a faith-deprived state when I ask them! Faith that our God loves us, cares for us, provides for us, etc., drives us DEEPER into Him, causes us to SEEK Him in-and-through our questions and unsolved problems. I believe that religionists and doctrinalists are more upset by our questions than God is! I believe God delights in them! He sometimes purposefully allows and even prompts us to question Him, knowing it will draw/drive us closer TO Him! I do know some who allowed themselves to go in the opposite direction and they forsook God because He didn't answer them as they wanted Him to...but I also have the confidence that God will bring them back to Him! He will reveal Himself to them and show them that His existence, His love, His providence, His care for them (and us) does NOT depend upon whether WE experience Him as we would like to. He remains God, and His will for us is still that we do not live under condemnation, and in this case it would be the condemnation of even ourselves, and that of religionists and modern day Pharisees who would teach and preach that God MUST answer our prayers otherwise we simply are not asking with enough faith. If THAT WERE the Truth, I'd leave Christianity behind as well.

So, where do we go from here with this? I wish I knew and could write down the formulas for assured answered prayer and continued unlimited power in the Church. (Actually, I don’t wish this…I literally hate scripted, religious formulas! I believe God does, too! I counsel you to literally RUN from anyone who proposes such formulas to you.) The Word of God gives us insight into these things, but it was NEVER meant to be such a formula or set of formulas to “success” or “great faith”. It WAS meant to reveal God's character to us, His unfathomable love for us TO us, and to lure/entice/call/set us on a JOURNEY of LIFE and FAITH seeking Him, finding Him, following Him, realizing our further need for Him, questioning Him, seeking Him, finding Him, following Him, realizing our further need for Him, questioning Him, seeking Him, finding Him…etc., etc.

I do not propose answers here...only questions. But I sincerely believe that it is IN our questions, and as the questions drive us to seek Him more desperately, that God WILL make Himself known to us. The Christian life is a JOURNEY of living by faith and then constantly reevaluating what that faith is! It is a constant seeking and finding of God, not that He's playing hide-and-seek with us, but that He is constantly drawing us, through our questions, desperation and seeking, from faith to faith, from glory to glory. When will we finally understand fully? The Bible is very clear on this..."when we see Him we will fully know Him, even as now we are fully known by Him." While I live in this earth and in this body, I know that I will NEVER EVER find or know Him completely. I will ALWAYS have questions, see and experience "power outages" in both my life and in the Church. I pray that the Holy Spirit will ALWAYS cause or prompt an immediate "panic" in my spirit over these things! I pray that such “panic” will prompt me to first examine myself, then to speak the truth in love over myself and others, and that we all have humble and contrite hearts before our holy God and come to Him in sincere repentance for how we missed Him. Then I pray God will KEEP me (and us) in the palm of His Hand and under the shadow of His wings even if/when I (we) don't feel Him and when I don't understand Him (or myself!). I KNOW that God will ALWAYS answer that prayer in the affirmative, and will manifest the realization of that to me (us) in His timing.

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