We are beginning a series on the spiritual disciplines entitled 'How?' (as in, 'how do you pray?' 'how do you fast?' etc) during our Sunday evening service.  The series will follow Richard Foster's book The Celebration of Discipline. I hope to have the manuscripts of all of the sermons on here, but this one is particularly appropriate for this blog because it tackles the 84th Psalm from which the blog gets its name...

What is your day to day faith like?  A comic book or poetic novel? An info-mercial or a mini-series?

The other day I had the privilege of taking Morgan to her swimming lessons.  This is a privilege that usually falls to Mommy, but since she had to work and I was off I got to take her.  Now the fact that Morgan takes swimming lessons, and loves them, is a small miracle.  When we first started taking Morgan to the pool, or the ‘big-bathtub’ as  a we called it, she would be terrified once she was in the water.  She would cling tightly to whoever had her in the water.  And we wouldn’t even think of swishing her around in the water because we couldn’t loosen her death grip.   However, we tried to take her swimming as often as we could to get her familiar with the water.  The last time I was able to watch one of her swimming practices her instructor was getting her to jump into her arms in the pool.  A feat which she conquered enthusiastically, and of which I was very proud.  But this time her instructor had stepped back about 5 feet and was calling Morgan to leap off the steps and swim to her.

When we first start God is very real and present to us, but as we go along he beckons us to jump out a little farther. 

The psalmist says that the presence of God is something he absolutely longs for.  In fact his soul is completed in the presence of God.   That what he says in Psalm 84:  “How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord… My soul longs, it even faints just to be in your house” – to be with you.   In another place (Psalm 63) it says, “my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water”. 

And we have all experienced this right?  We come to those points in our day or in our life where we absolutely know we need God and we try to pray or we try to put forth extra effort to be a good Christian, but all the things of this world begin to drown out what God is trying to say to us.  And it isn’t long before we begin to turn up the volume on our radios, our mp3 players, we max out our schedules, and begin aimlessly channel surfing, and God’s voice fades into the background of our lives. 

And we do all of this because we are in pursuit of something good right?  Somehow we fool ourselves into thinking we are making our life qualitatively better by chasing after the wind.   We think that by busying our lives we are making our lives happier, when essentially we are just making them crowded and avoiding things we really need to deal with.  A study conducted by researchers at a number of universities in the US have found that people who deal with stress in their lives by avoiding it, whether escaping through TV, music, or other means often create more stress for themselves while people who confront their stress and engage in non-passive activities were better off. 

Our culture does not allow us much time to really think.  All of our thoughts are being provided for us – by billboards, by commercials, by magazines on the rack, by radios, by text messages and emails… I took Morgan to the store the other day and as we rounded the cereal aisle she started jumping up and down excitedly because she saw this cluster of fruit snack boxes that featured just about every popular cartoon character known to a 2 and a half year old.  This world bombards us with the things it wants us to think about – and it is a dry and weary land – and beloved our souls are crying out for something more.

So these spiritual disciplines that we are going to be studying for the next few weeks are really practical ways to hear God’s voice.  They are ways to put us in a position for God to transform us from the inside out.   As we study them we need to be cautious of a few things.  Here is your disclaimer:  There are two big dangers.  The first is turning the disciplines into Law.  We can easily slip into legalism and believe that if we are practicing the disciplines then we are super spiritual and if someone doesn’t then they haven’t quite arrived yet.  We can easily become as Jesus described the Pharisees, white-washed tombs – looking spiritual on the outside but actually being dead on the inside.  The other, and possibly more grave danger, is to merely study the disciplines and fail to practice them.  

When Morgan’s instructor was cheering her on to jump out towards her Morgan knew what to do: “Jump like a kangaroo, jump like a kangaroo.”  But every time her instructor said “Go”, instead of leaping forward into the water Morgan would gently put her head in the water and push of the step towards her instructor.  She knew what to do, but time after time she chickened out.  God is calling us to leap out to him and to meet him where he will change us. 

These practices put you in a place where God’s grace works on you.  It isn’t by our will that we are transformed through these things, but because God has chosen to work through these things to change us from the inside out. 

Later on in the Psalm, the writer says that, “happy are those in whose heart are the highways to Zion”.   Psalm 84 is a particular kind of psalm that was written as a pilgrimage psalm.  It was meant to be thought upon and dwelt upon as Jews traveled from places like Gallilee and Nazareth to the city of Jerusalem, to Zion, where the temple was located, and thus where the very presence of God dwelt.   That is why at the beginning of the psalm the writer dwells upon God’s courts and his presence.  And then here in this verse he refers to the highways a pilgrim would travel.  But it takes an interesting turn in this verse when the writer shifts the focus inward to the state of the pilgrim’s heart.  Happy are those in whose heart are the highways to Zion.   Is the real you… not the church you or the work you, but the real you, is the real you constantly on that journey to have more of God and to be in His presence?  Do you have the journey towards His presence in your heart? 

If you do, it says that you pass through the deserted wastelands on your way and you make it a place of springs.  Because you are letting God’s grace transform you from the inside out you pass through the valley of tears and you make it a place of joy. 

The first 4 disciplines we are going to study are inward disciplines – they help us to examine the state of our heart and hear what God is saying.

Now the first two and probably the most important two disciplines are prayer and meditation.

Meditation and prayer are like close cousins.  Sometimes they blend together.  Yet the church at large doesn’t really have a good understanding of Christian meditation.  In fact some of you are probably thinking of sitting cross legged and humming – but this is not what we are talking about.  Christian meditation is basically this:  listening for God’s voice and then obeying it.  If you got one without the other it ain’t meditation. 

A good down to earth description for meditation is ‘chewing your spiritual cud’.  You know that a cow eats grass and then regurgitates it to chew on it before it is fully digested and produces that wonderful fruit we call milk.  In a similar way before mediation can really be effective we need to have some substance to chew on.  The more you know scripture the better.  If you are not a student of the Bible then now is a good time to start.  One of the best ways to meditate is to take a small passage and read it over and over.  Don’t hastily skip over the seemingly insignificant passages, but rather let them soak in for hours or even days.   Get into the story as you read.  Be the disciple jumping out of the boat to follow Jesus.  Be the woman straining to touch the hem of his garment.  This type of meditation is a place to sanctify your imagination. 

We always say that prayer is essential to our Christian life – correct?   We could say that it is to the spiritual life what eating, drinking, and sleeping are to the physical.  Yet we don’t come up with nearly as good of excuses for skipping a meal or a nights rest as we do for neglecting our prayer life.   We must first off quit giving prayer all this lip service without actually doing it.  We must recognize the importance of it.  When you pass through valley of tears, are their still tears there?  How is your prayer life? 

The beautiful thing about prayer is that we are not going to mess up the whole world if we get it wrong.  It is for beginners.  And the beautiful thing is that we will always and forever be beginners.  God has given this precious gift to us so that we can learn how do it by doing it.  It is a learning process and we can fail at it and keep going.   And every failure provides a new moment of learning.  There are many categories of prayers, but tonight I want to discuss one we often are very weak at and uncomfortable with – prayers of intercession.  So many times we have prayed and nothing has come of it that we begin ending all of our prayers for other people with, “yet your will be done… amen”.   When we look at Jesus’ prayers for others he never ended that way.  But we have wrongly come to disbelieve in prayers that actually make a difference.  For instance, if I were to come home and flip on the lights and they didn’t come on I wouldn’t simply claim that electricity didn’t really work – I would go to the fuse box, or call the electric company until the lights came on.  In the same way we cannot dismiss prayer simply because our prayer did not come to pass.  We check to see what is wrong with it. 

So many times our prayers for others are the only prayers we ever utter.  We come to God and say, “here you go, do this… please”.  And yet we rarely take any decent period of time and listen for what he wants us to pray for.  An effective intercessory prayer presupposes that we are perpetually on that highway to Zion in our heart asking, “what is your will?”  In this type of praying compassion is key.  Foster states that, “the inner sense of compassion is one of the clearest indications from the Lord that this” is something you should pray about.  If your heart cries out about a particular person’s situation then begin to pray. 

There are many misconceptions that keep us from praying that I want to briefly deal with:  one is that praying is essentially asking things from God.  The deeper and deeper we go in prayer the more we realize that prayer is more listening than speaking.  It is essentially spending unhindered time with the one who desires a relationship with you.

Another misconception is that prayer should always be solemn and heavy.  Foster testifies that the more common experience of prayer is one of lightness and joy and is often accompanied by laughter.  Have you ever laughed with God?  It is enjoying His very presence.

We also tend to think that God has everything just as he wants it and he really doesn’t need our prayers, but in reality he has given us the responsibility to pray.  1 Cor 3:9 says that we are co-laborers with God.  God has let us in on the divine Kingdom building and one of the principle responsibilities he has given us is that we should change the world through prayer. 

And a final misconception is that we should pray only once for any one thing – anything more is shows a lack of faith.  However, there is nothing in the scripture that warrants this belief and in fact scripture calls us to do the exact opposite – to pray pray pray. 

So may you be one who has highways to Zion in your heart
May you constantly be seeking God’s presence
May you pass through the dry and weary land and bring joy
May you be one who leaps off the step into God’s presence.




 

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