HOSPITALITY

Dearest family,

The ‘discipline’ that we considered on Sunday in our summer series was ‘hospitality’. Perhaps you thought it strange that these two words would be coupled. Doesn’t that take all the fun out of hospitality and make it sound onerous? Only if you have a wrong understanding of discipline. Several factors affirm the need to understand hospitality as a spiritual discipline, including that fact that it is exampled and commanded in the OT in the life of Israel, and in the NT in the life of the church. On Sunday, we also saw that given the nature of the church as a household, given the nature of the Lord’s Supper, given the way that hospitality images are used to present the nature and experience of our salvation – hospitality is fundamental to the life of a disciple. We saw that Jesus was utterly dependent on it, and that in his roles as guest, host and invited stranger, the welcome of God was expressed in hospitality terms.

In an attempt to begin a brief theology of hospitality we observed the following points: (listen to the download for details):

  1. Hospitality is the non-negotiable presentation of the gospel and the basis for our understanding our communion and community with father, Son and Holy Spirit.

  2. Hospitality is the non-negotiable means for the proclamation and propagation of the gospel (see Gospels and Acts)

  3. Hospitality is the context for discipleship and training

  4. Hospitality is the key means to build relationships within and outside the church

  5. Hospitality is an ethical issue for all believers, not just an elective possibility for some. It is the non-negotiable means for the expression of our faith through love. (1 Pet. 4:9; Rom. 12:13; Hebr. 13:1-2)

But as well as all these observations, we are more than aware of the many obstacles and hindrances to hospitality, that require the discipline of obedience to continue to practice it. What things run interference with hospitality in your life and home?

  • Busyness resulting in lack of time

  • Desire for privacy: home time as down time as my time

  • Weariness leading to: can’t be bothered, lack of motivation, lack effort, energy

  • Lack of money: widow of Zarephath was commanded by God to show hospitality to Elijah at a time of famine. As a result, her flour and oil jars did not run empty. We are just called to give what we have. This is how we learn like the widow that we cannot out-give God.

  • Too much work, too much trouble

  • Self-isolation

  • Laziness, selfishness, slovenliness

  • • Perceived lack of ability: we are not asked to be Iron Chefs.

  • Shame (mess, circumstances); house proud (don’t want any mess)

  • Lack of self-confidence, insecurity.

  • Bad past experiences: personal, familial

  • Bondage of temperament (shy, un-assured, fearful of intimacy, rejection, vulnerability, fear of failure)

  • More influenced by familial or cultural norms than Christian truth

These hindrances explain why hospitality is a discipline. Hospitality is a conscious decision because it involves a conscious obedience, and a conscious commitment and a conscientious effort. We should begin by asking for two things:

  • For a prepared heart for Christ’s concerns and affections and perceptions 

  • For a prepared home – for others, not just oneself, and not just for those that we want to entertain, but those who need more than food (company, encouragement, touch etc.)

When Jesus commissioned his disciples to go into the nation and preach and heal he added this instruction: “Whatever town or village you enter, search for some worthy person there and stay at his house until you leave.” (Mt. 10:11) Hospitality was the sign of receptivity. When you get to Acts and the account of the growth of the church, it is impossible to ignore how hospitality is vital to the story. It is the hospitality of a Gentile to Peter the Jew that breaks open the mission to the Gentiles. At a time when we are engaging the sin of racism in our country and the dire consequences of racial irreconciliation that impact all of us, I hope you took to heart the point about hospitality being a key, a bridge to racial reconciliation. It was in the context of hospitality in the home that the greatest irreconciliation of Jew and Gentile was overcome by the power of the Holy Spirit. Hospitality shatters social and racial boundaries, and invites a deep sharing of our cultures and personal lives, as expressed in how we live and how we eat and what we eat, and how we decorate and what we hang on our walls, and what stories our photographs tell. It is about dignity and equality, about transparency and vulnerability, about giving with no expectation of return. (If the church is meant to be a reconciled community, no wonder hospitality is a non-negotiable qualification for spiritual leadership – 1Tim. 3:2 and Tit. 1:8) How can we underestimate this earthquake of salvation deliverance that rocked the world when Gentiles showed hospitality to Jews and they ate the hot-dogs and the shrimps from the barbecue! Enjoying the hospitality in Joppa, Peter went for an afternoon prayer and sunbathe. It says he got hungry and wanted something to eat. Guess who acted as the waiter and chef? God dropped a sheet full of meat on him in preparation for his next experience of hospitality that would usher in a brand new transnational community of faith that would see the dividing racial barriers of centuries broken and destroyed. Again, the church was born in hospitality. It says that Peter stayed with them for “a few days.” He then walked straight into a storm of criticism with the circumcised believers. Why? “You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them.” And talking of world-shaking breakthroughs that began with hospitality, it was in the home of Philemon that reconciliation was effected when a slave became a brother. I’m going to be teaching two or three messages out of Philemon in September but note that it was hospitality that was the wedge that pried open the slave-master relationship to bring down empires of injustice. It started with hospitality.

From the Garden of Eden where God invited our first parents to eat all the food provided, to the marriage supper of the Lamb in Rev. 19, from Jesus asking us to open the door of hospitality to him in Rev. 3:20 to his description of his heavenly work as preparing a place for us, the call of scripture to us is to have a hospitable heart to Father, Son and Holy Spirit so that we have hospitable homes to those both in the church community and outside it. When it comes to church growth, hospitality is the program. My heart and my home become the building blocks of the church. It is hospitality and not the building fund that accommodates the work of the church. How accessible are our homes. Can people come in? Are people invited in? The location of our home is no spiritual accident. Do we have a theology of place? “He determined the exact places where they should live…” (Acts 17:26) Have we read Jn. 1:4 recently? “The word became flesh and moved in to the neighborhood.” What would your definition of a hospitable person be? Do you meet your definition? John writes in his epistle “we ought to show hospitality”. If our heart and our home was the norm for the community, what would be the health of the community? If everyone in the community was just like us, what would be the state of hospitality? If the church had no building and just our home, would it grow if our home was typical? Would it be able to meet there? If not, why not? I’m suggesting that it is no good just talking about community as if it only has to do with what happens in the building we call the church; if it is only about what the church corporate does to foster, develop and nurture relationships. Given that God’s house is actually our house, it is fundamentally about our heart and our home and its response to others, especially the household of faith. Again, the discipline of hospitality is the program. Cheers!

Pastorally yours,

Stuart

(2015) UNANSWERED PRAYERS, PT. 2

Dearest family,

First of all, to all those who were there on Sunday, thank you for your great support of the barbecue after church that raised funds for the education of girls who are in the church plants in northern Togo. We desire the “girl-effect” to be effective in these contexts. $20 supports a child for a year’s schooling, covering their supplies and basic classroom needs. The good news is that we raised enough to educate 100 girls for the next school year. There are 100 others that we still want to support for the 2015-2016 school year. If you were not there on Sunday and would like to be part of this collaborative TAG effort then you can send your check (made payable to: The Antioch Group) for $20 or any amount. Mail to TAG at the church address. We are so excited about supporting this mission for the third year. Thank you to you all.

There was a lot of food on Sunday and nothing was left over except a few hot dogs that will be consumed at The Porch. There was also a lot of spiritual food in the preceding sermon. If you were in attendance you will know that it is not easily reduced to a short pastoral letter so I encourage you to download it and listen to it at your own pace. I ended the last message by asking if it was possible to close the gap between our asking and His answering; between our actual speaking and His assumed hearing; between our wanting and the waiting; between what we expect and what we experience; between what we are hoping for and what is actually happening? What bridged that gap between Abraham’s childlessness and the Pleiades and Orion? But it seems that he found a way to keep staring at stars. “Against all hope Abraham in hope believed.” (Rom. 4:18) Does that settle everything for us? We do not want to accept specious rationalizations as to why our asking is in the pending tray, if in fact it made it even that far. But is it not reasonable to at least ask about some possible explanations for the “gap” that might help close it somewhat? Can we look for some reasons?

By way of introduction I recounted how C.S. Lewis articulated his thoughts about asking, which he described as “the problem without an answer”. What ‘reasons’ would Lewis have been open to countenance? Several, I think, but with a proviso. In his typical self-effacing way he offered a throw-away line at the end of his essay on the efficacy of prayer, expressing his own weakness, but gently yet firmly warning about being too dogmatic about any area that we cannot fully fathom, or about legitimate tensions that we cannot resolve but have to keep taut in order to get the whole picture. Though a permissible discussion, there are not enough reasons to close the gap.

If a friend either refused to respond to our request, or denied it altogether, we would want to ask questions and seek reasons. We look for reasons for unanswered prayer to make sense of things, to make sense of relationship with God, in the same way that Lewis did, but with the same cautions. God is not threatened by this endeavor. “If God doth not grant your petitions it will put you to study a reason of that his dealing: and so you will come to search in your prayers and the carriage of your hearts therein to see whether you did pray amiss.” (Thomas Goodwin) James does confirm that we can ask “amiss.” (Jm. 4:3) Three hundred years later, another commentator, J. Oswald Sanders conducted “a post-mortem on unanswered prayer” and suggested that “behind every unanswered prayer is a reason, which we must discover for ourselves.” (‘Prayer: power unlimited’) Peter does advise us that there are things that “hinder our prayers” (1 Pet. 3:1-7) and I mentioned well over twenty scriptural reasons for unanswered asking that are accounted for by the reasons that God refuses to listen.

What should we make of this? I would affirm Goodwin’s encouragement to us to “study” and “search” in a way that is open to check one’s own heart and humbly seek to learn, especially things that are convicting and formative for personal growth in asking. Who knows but in that process we may discover some things that will influence an answer. However, though I agree with the thought that there is a reason for every unanswered prayer, I do not believe that they are all discoverable, or that we must discover them. The faith that we need to ask is the same faith that we need to be operative when an answer is not forthcoming. Reasons alone will never close the gap.

That said, I did give a descriptive presentation (not a prescriptive one) to point out some of the possible ways of ordering our understanding of unanswered asking, without it being an inflexible classification – the kind of systemization that I argued is neither desirable nor possible. These were:

Dismissals – asking that is unheard because of reasons that God gives, not unanswered. (Ask Heran in the office if you want a more detailed list of some scriptural examples.) We are referring here to asking that is not answered by God because He refuses to listen; He chooses not to hear.

Disqualifications – This refers to inappropriate asking. For example, God can take no responsibility or give any support to something asked which is non-sense or which contravenes God-given laws of nature, or which contradicts his own nature and character, His will and His word. We cannot ask for God’s blessing on something He has clearly said He cannot bless.

Delays – This is when the prayer room becomes a waiting room. There are delays of fulfillment that appear to us as unanswered asking, but the fact is they have been heard, and more than that “decreed.” (Daniel 9:25, 26, 27) Although we are not as assured as Daniel of the ‘decree’ being a done deal, we can be equally assured that we are heard, and equally sustained to wait. That being said, it is not easy, which is why we looked at the scriptural exhortations to be patient and to wait eagerly. I love the way that John Stott put it: “We are to wait neither so eagerly that we lose our patience, nor so patiently that we lose our expectations, but eagerly and patiently together.” (The Message of Romans) Delayed answers are assumed given the scriptural emphasis on importunity and ceaseless asking.

Deferrals - Some unanswered prayers are divinely willed deferrals. Our asking is necessary and timely as it is being ceaselessly expressed, but it is being ‘stored’ to be answered another day, or another time that may well be beyond our sojourn on earth. Stephen’s last breath was asking for something which was answered after his death. Denials – This is about taking ‘no’ for an answer. Unlike ‘dismissals’, asking which may be denied will likely be an appropriate desire, a legitimate request given present perceptions, a reasonable inquiry given current understanding. It is the apparent acceptability of what is asked for that makes the acceptance of a denial so difficult. Although it is true that delays are not denials, it is easy to understand why an interminable delay will be assumed to be a denial. Having said that, there are denials. Scripture presents us with some examples, and they were all experienced by stellar saints, (we looked at Moses, David and Paul) and at one who was the saintliest of all, Jesus. If denials were the membership qualification for this alumni group we would be less concerned about them!

Divine discretions – I called these “creative unanswers”! There is a saying that suggests that sometimes the answer to our asking is not rejected but redirected. Divine discretions do not deny the requests but apply their intentions and desires to different applications and outcomes. Of course, this still feels to us like a deprivation or a diversion. After our asking has pitched the way that things need to be, it is as if God says, “You are on the right track, but how about we do it like this not that?” Abraham’s prayer for Ishmael was answered in Isaac. What Moses asked for himself was to be fulfilled in Joshua. David’s prayers for the child who died revert to Solomon. David asked to build the Temple, but again, the answers were reserved for Solomon. Though the specific thing asked for was not delivered in the terms in which it was asked, nonetheless, this asking was not ‘unanswered’ but applied in a way that advanced God’s glory, fulfilling his renown more than answer to the original request would have done.

You could argue that as great as the problem of his suffering was for Job, it was the matter of unanswered asking that gave rise to so much of his tortured argumentation. The fact that this is the concern of possibly the earliest written text in scripture, suggests how foundational this matter is to the human soul. It is God himself who gives Satan an allowance to test Job, and surely his unanswered asking tested his faith. Peter argues that the suffering of our trials “have come so that your faith - of greater worth than gold… may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.” (1 Pet. 1:7) The good news is that the glory of God remains the outcome of the testing of faith. The bad news is that we may have to wait till the parousia for this being validated and vindicated. Calvin conceded that circumstances may convince us that God has forsaken us, and confirmed that unanswered prayer sorely tests faith. His observation does not sound very comforting, that God may have us “to lie a long time in the mire before he gives us a taste of his sweetness.” The continuance of asking at such times, with eager patience, is the outworking of faith.

Psalm 56:8 records: “You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.” Yet, like Job, we know how easy it is to give up and question the viability and veracity of asking. Why not just crumple the script of our asking and throw it in the ever-filling trashcan of unanswered prayer? The prelude to the Bible’s great chapter on heroes and heroines of faith is addressing those who stood their ground “in the face of suffering.” (Hebr. 10:32): “So do not throw away your confidence… have need of endurance… receive what is promised…. He who is coming will come and not delay.” (10:37) Of course, this sounds a bit rich given the fact that delay, denial, deprivation, diversion (whatever you want to call it) is characterizing the present problem. At least it affirms us, and we know that God himself is not unmindful that it really is a delay. So we have a choice. Though there is pain in what is experienced by us as unanswered, will we throw away our request into the trashcan, or will we trust our tears to the bottle? Avoiding the dismissals and disqualifications, bearing the delays and deferrals, accepting the denials, will we be discreet in trusting God’s discretions? What will our response be to unanswered asking? The trashcan or that bottle?

Pastorally yours,

Stuart

(2015) UNANSWERED PRAYERS, PT. 1

Dearest family,

CONTRARY TO MY REPEATED REFERENCES ON SUNDAY TO WHAT I WOULD BE COVERING ‘NEXT WEEK’ (I WAS WAY TOO EAGER!) MY NEXT MESSAGE ON ‘UNANSWERED ASKING’ WILL BE ON JUNE 14TH. NEXT WEEK, AS YOU ALL KNEW, IS THE WOMEN’S RETREAT AND OUR SERVICE LED BY THE MEN’S MINISTRY TEAM. SORRY ABOUT THAT!

Anyway, back to the matter in hand. There is no disagreement, either in scripture or in the historic testimony of the church, its teachers, and its congregants that there is much asking that is not answered. But there are divided opinions about how this should be perceived and understood. The trite truism that there are no unanswered prayers, because the answer is always ‘yes, no or maybe’ is a somewhat facile sounding and unhelpful place to start. No jaunty jingle will serve to provide healing balm or resolution for an unanswered asker who feels caught in the no-man’s land between the request and the response. The longer the answer is in coming, the more that space is marked out by emotional and theological barbed wire and spiritual land mines. Although silence is at first the mark of a good listener, the protracted silence to asking raises some questions: was the phone off the hook, was the phone picked up, was it just a recorded message, was it heard, did it register, will there be a return call, is the line cut?

Precisely because of the nature of the challenges, it is tempting to avoid them altogether and refuse to admit there are any possible problems. Or one can adopt the approach of the happy sloganeers whose platitudinous, ‘bumper-sticker’ style theology shouts things like ‘Let go and let God’ – peppy cheers that are always delivered from the sidelines of another’s pain. If you are hanging on to every word, when there is not even a word, then ‘letting go’ is not good advice. The other temptation is to try to impose a fool-proof, fear-proof, mystery-proof template on all the inchoate thoughts and feelings that arise, and come up with a one-stop explanation. When things do not make sense to us, it is our wont to try and rationalize what is happening as best we may, in the hope that some coherence will emerge from our confusion that will make us feel better about ourselves and more pointedly, about God. We want a system that will provide some order, that will be comforting enough to distract our attention from the irregular shaped thoughts and concerns that cannot be accommodated. It is not that the scriptures are short on counsel, but we have to resist the temptation to take all that they do say, and force it into a construct that rationalizes everything to our satisfaction. The bottom line is that there are going to be some things missing that we just do not know and some things present that we just do not understand. “A determination to know what cannot be known always works harm in the Christian heart…We dislike to admit that we do not know what is going on, so we torture our minds trying to fathom the mysterious ways of the Omniscient one. It’s hard to conceive of a more fruitless task.” (Tozer) This does not mean that we do not try at all to seek understanding - we should do so. But it does mean we are not going to be tortuous in trying to explain everything that seems to be torturing us. We are not going to call something a ‘mystery’ as a convenient cover-up for not engaging the truths and realities of a situation, nor are we going to try and rationalize what is indeed a ‘mystery’. In all our asking, there will be times when we need to discern the boundaries of our questioning an un-answering God. Others would put it more strongly: “Our insistence on being answered means we are always off track…The purpose of prayer is that we get ahold of God not the answer.” (E.M.Bounds) But as Spurgeon said: “There is no fanaticism in expecting God to answer prayer… There can be no reason for praying if there be no expectation of the Lord’s answering.” Can we have a godly expectation that does not become a fleshly insistence?

For now, “What do you define as unanswered?” is a reasonable question. The most obvious unanswered asking is simply that which was never asked in the first place – sadly. The way we most generally define ‘unanswered’ is the silence of God, the absence of His apparent response to something that has been asked to be effected on our terms and our timing, according to the needs of ourselves or others, as we perceive them best. By ‘our terms and our timing’ I am not suggesting a selfish view of things but simply the nature of the need as best understood by us. Indeed, our perceptions are not necessarily complete or even fully accurate, but our asking is unanswered to the extent that the fullest presentation of our request, with the strongest expectation possible, remains unfulfilled. Reasons why our presentation may have been inadequate or why our expectations were possibly unfounded are open for discussion, with the proviso that such an exchange is conducted with neither an offensive posture towards God, nor a defensive posture towards oneself.

On Sunday, we looked at a number of different images that have been used to capture the feelings and frustrations, the pains and problems of unanswered asking. One of these was in Lamentations.“You have covered yourself with a cloud so that no prayer can get through.” (Lam. 3:44) In the previous chapter these people described themselves as being “covered…with the cloud of his anger.” (Lam. 2:1) They are sitting alone “in the silence” of unanswered asking. “Even when I call out or cry for help, he shuts out my prayer. He has barred my way with blocks of stone.” (Lam. 3:8-9) Clouds sound more hopeful. It is a catalogue of woe. In fact, outside the crucifixion of Christ, there is no darker presentation of dereliction in scripture. This is unanswered asking of a kind that is second only to the unanswered asking of Jesus on the cross.

However, there is something for us to learn here. The silence of unanswered asking elicited some responses that many can identify with: “He has walled me in…He has weighed me down…I have been deprived of peace…my soul is downcast...” The lack of an answer that wears you down becomes the loss of much else: “My splendor is gone and all that I had hoped for from the Lord.” (3:19) All this asker can do is “remember my affliction.” The challenges of unanswered asking are not in question. However, there are three things here that teach us how to hold on and be held up.

  1. We do not have to succumb to accusing God sinfully, even though we feel that we are somehow being sinned against by the silence. They do not accuse God of being deaf, dumb and blind to their unanswered state. They know that He hears their asking: “Do not close your ear to my cry for relief.” (3:56). They know He can still speak other things to them and is not mute: “You said, Do not fear.” (3:57) They know He can see their situation: “See O Lord how distressed I am…Look O Lord…You have seen the wrong done to me…” (1:20; 2:20; 3:59) The answer they want may not have appeared but God is not absent. He is very much present.

  2. When he remembers the affliction concomitant with the silence, he chooses not to limit his remembrance to the immediate only: “Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope.” What makes the difference in what has already been described as a hopeless circumstance? “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” (3:22) The well-known hymn that we sing inspired by these words is not the confession of worshipers at joyful ease with their lovely lives. It is a classic example of the kind of praise that is forged in the furnace of affliction, in the prison cell made with those “blocks of stone” he was talking about. There is no unanswered asking that can keep out the truth about the character and nature of our God, unless we choose to refuse their remembrance, and in the process of dealing with what seem to be God’s apparent denials of us, we become deniers of Him.

  3. These acts of remembrance have a knock-on effect. They renew their asking by inviting God to join the remembrance review: “Remember O Lord what has happened to us; look and see our disgrace.” (5:1) There then follows an iteration of all the terrible things that require an answer, but this time, it does not end with a focus on their unanswered plight. It is not that they are suppressing anything because in the middle of their Godward affirmation (“You O lord reign forever”) the pained frustration unashamedly breaks through again without mincing the words: “Why do you always forget us? Why do you forsake us for so long?” (5:20) But here is the point. Despite the awful facts of their predicament, they are not asking for all the things on the unanswered asking list to be taken care of so much as for the relationship to be recovered with the unanswering Answerer: “Restore us to yourself, O Lord…renew our days as of old.” (5:21) Precisely because it is the sense of relational intimacy that is affected by unanswered asking, especially the longer it drags out, it is what becomes the greater subject of renewed asking. They were clear what they were after but was this what God was really after all this time? Their desire for Him was now more than their need for their answer. The things they wanted had been trumped by the Person they needed, even though they are still struggling with the fear that they may have been rejected.

Thus in these times of unanswered asking, closed doors are not necessarily the final word when the lubricating oil of the Holy Spirit is applied to their hinges. It is not inevitable that the sky will be as iron; cloudy, almost certainly, but as Lamentations shows us, they ultimately cannot stop us getting through, or shafts of God’s light getting through to us. But we still remain ‘unanswered.’ Is it possible to close the gap between our asking and His answering; between our actual speaking and His assumed hearing; between our wanting and the waiting; between what we expect and what we experience; between what we are hoping for and what is actually happening? What bridged that gap between Abraham’s childlessness and the sight of Pleiades and Orion? On starry nights was he tempted to stop looking up. It seems that he found a way to keep staring at stars. “Against all hope Abraham in hope believed.” (Rom. 4:18) Does that settle everything for us? We do not want to accept specious rationalizations as to why our asking is in the pending tray, if in fact it made it even that far. But is it not reasonable to at least ask about some possible explanations for the “gap” that might help close it somewhat? Can we look for some reasons? More about this next time….

Pastorally yours,

Stuart

ANSWERED PRAYERS

Dearest family,

On Sunday I argued that the lack of our response to asking when it is answered should be as significant a concern to us as our unanswered asking. We need to stop and take stock once in a while. The first thing that should move us, and uncork our gratitude, is how gracious God is in answering us at all, given the inconsistency and infrequency of our asking, or as someone put it, “the intermittent spasms of our importunity.” Just to realize that our weak asking gets such a strong response, because of the strength of the one asked, not the one asking, should be sufficient to unstop the wells of worship of the character of God.

The more we think about it, the more shocked we should be at the minimal returns from so much answered asking. If our asking is accompanied by thanksgiving anyway, then the lack of it suggests two possible things:

  1. There is actually a lot less asking going on than there could be

  2. There is a lack of thanksgiving for all the answers received to asking

We are familiar with Jesus’ healing of the ten lepers, only one of whom “came back”. (Lk. 17:11-19) He is described as “praising God in a loud voice.” I am arguing that given the responsiveness of our Father to what we ask of Him, He should be hearing a lot more noise!

The words of Jesus have a disturbing echo: “Was no one found to return…” (Lk. 17:18) If this incident was a rough guide to the return of our responsiveness to the answering response that God returned to us, then we are looking at a 10% return. (Did I say return enough times!) Again, the thought that only one in ten answers may provoke a volley of God-worthy thanksgiving is hard to take and unacceptable. In this case, the non-return of the nine is a bad return on the answer. Speaking of ‘bad returns’, having asked for the answer of forgiveness and received it, let there not be a return of unforgiveness in our hearts towards others, or a return to the confessed sin. Having asked for the answer of deliverance and received it, let us not return to a “yoke of bondage’. Having asked for the answer of guidance and received it, let us not return to a pattern of self-direction. Having asked for the answer of provision and received it, let us not return to any indiscipline that accounted for unnecessary lack. Having asked for the answer of wisdom, let us not return like a fool to his folly. Having asked for a way of escape from ungodly cultural influences and received it, let us not look back like Lot’s wife. These are clearly bad ‘returns’ on good answers.

The return of thanksgiving and praise is what asking has always been about – not the answer per se but the glorifying of God. “Call upon me…and I will deliver you and you shall glorify me.” (Ps. 50:15) His glorification trumps my gratification every time. The psalmist’s ‘return’ of praise is the fact that God “has not turned away my prayer or withheld His love from me.” (Ps. 66:20) We might add, “Therefore I will return my thanksgiving because he has not withheld an answer from me!” Commenting on this psalm, Spurgeon writes: “What a God is he thus to hear the prayers of those who come to him when they have pressing wants, but neglect him when they have received a mercy; who approach him when they are forced to come, but who almost forget to address him when mercies are plentiful and sorrows are few.” How is it then that we can be so blessed yet so ‘blah’? How is it that we take for granted what God has granted in answering our asking?

One reason for a lack of sustained expressive affection in response to answers is that our asking is often not imbued with expectation that trustingly lives in anticipation of what God is going to do when we ask. “Petitioning God entails that the petitioner expects an answer.” Sometimes the ‘blah’ begins with our ‘might-as-well’, ‘you-never-know’, ‘can’t-do-any-harm’, and ‘sure-hope-it-gets-through’ kind of asking. How different this is when compared to Solomon’s conviction that his requests would be “near to the Lord our God day and night that he may uphold the cause of his servant.” (1 Kg. 8:59) I have been taught by those like Thomas Goodwin (1600-1680) whose writings providentially ended up on my reading lists as a younger Christian. He was emphatic about the need, once having asked of God, to look earnestly for the answer, and to discern what was going on while the asking continued or while waiting ensued. “It is not enough to pray, but after you have prayed you have need to listen for an answer that you may receive your prayers. The sermon was not done when yet the preacher is done, because it is not done till practiced.” Even so, our asking is not done until we have considered the answers, even if the answer is ‘no answer’.

The fact that we received an answer speaks volumes to us of the loving, purposeful provision of God, but it will also whisper a lot of affirmations and confirmations that perhaps need to be heeded for future spiritual growth and future asking. Did you hear a dog barking? What dog? The asking for deliverance by the enslaved Israelites was raw and raucous: “the Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help…went up to God.” (Ex. 2:23) They are asking to get out of there, and they do not care how, but there are so many exquisite details in God’s answer that served to ‘quietly’ underline his power. On the night of the Exodus, who could forget “the loud wailing in Egypt”? (Ex. 11:30) But imagine a conversation a few years into the wilderness journey between Zak and Zeb:

“Hey Zeb, do you remember that night?”
“Are you kidding me, Zak? My ears are still ringing with the noise!”
“You know what’s weird Zeb? It’s not the noise I remember but the silence. Do you remember that antsy dog of mine, Nimrod? He never made a single whining, whimpering sound all night. What do you make of that?”

The text tells us what they were meant to make of that, if they “observed” the full answer. “This is what the Lord says…among the Israelites not a dog will bark at any man or animal.” But why? “Then you will know that the Lord makes a distinction between Israel and Egypt.” Through the dog’s silence, God speaks loudly about himself. The answer to their asking that was their massive national deliverance included these details, that if considered, conveyed awesome revelations about the power of God in this world, but also about how he feels about what opposes his purposes. Do you not think that Zak and Zeb, having considered how God answered their asking on that Exodus night, would want to be sure that they always stayed on the right side of God’s affections?

The point is that God’s answers, when “observed”, yield so many instructional encouragements, and sometimes, whimsical clues about who He is and how He feels about things, and about what is yet possible if these answers are stewarded well. It is understandable that given the relief of the answer, we are now ready to move ahead where we were once stymied, take care of what was on hold, renew our engagement with what was in limbo. Like the nine lepers, it is the most natural thing to get right on with our lives, now that the brake of our unanswered needs, which did everything from slowing us down to bringing us to a full stop, has made way for the accelerator of answered provision. But the truth remains that “You lose much of your comfort in blessings when you do not observe answers to your prayers.” (Thomas Goodwin) Is there any chance we can improve on the lepers’ 10% return? Do bad returns or good ones characterize your responses to God’s answers to your asking? We got what we asked for. Did He get what He was asking for?

Pastorally yours

Stuart

COMMUNION AND RECONCILIATION

17 But in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse. 18 For, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you. And I believe it in part, 19 for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized. 20 When you come together, it is not the Lord's supper that you eat. 21 For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk. 22 What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not.

23 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

27 Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. 28 Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 29 For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. 30 That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. 31 But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. 32 But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.

33 So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another— 34 if anyone is hungry, let him eat at home—so that when you come together it will not be for judgment. About the other things I will give directions when I come.(ESV)

1 Corinthians 11:17-34