An Honest Prayer: Part 3
“The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it!”
How many times I heard that proclaimed from the pulpits, then parroted it back to others confidently and triumphantly.
Those were good times…times when I didn’t have to think…just take it all “by faith”.
Questioning the Bible in any way was to question God and questioning the interpreter of the Bible was usurping authority…both grave sins in the places I dwelled.
Let me be clear…I still believe the Bible is “true” and contains all things necessary for salvation.
I just don’t think it’s true in the sense that I was taught.
We were led to believe that the Christian faith and our relationship with God was transactional.
If I do this, then God will do this…
We would “claim the promises”…as if that were the key to beginning the transactions…and as if all the promises belonged to us today.
We had little boxes of index cards or “prayer promise” books where we could search for the one that would solve our problem.
If we pleased God then we could pray and God would answer our prayers because He was pleased with us….if our prayers weren’t answered then there was obviously something wrong with us.
The neurosis that this creates is not what God intended.
Let’s get down to brass tacks…God doesn’t always answer our prayers, even when we are praying rightly and for “good” things.
The stories of most of the “saints” of the church are full of pain and hardship, often ending in martyrdom.
He doesn’t always heal, He lets the families break up, He allows the beloved friend or family member to die, and evil is everywhere.
I would go so far as to say that answers to most of our prayers are rare.
The “promises” don’t always apply to us.
Our relationship with Jesus is not transactional…it’s familial.
The only transactions necessary were done unilaterally by Jesus in His Incarnation, life, death, and resurrection.
The Bible is not always “literally” true and was not intended to be read like it is.
In fact, a “literal” reading most often will cause you to miss the actual intent of the Author.
Some things in it are literally true, but they are part of a much larger purpose.
The Bible is a narrative… a story if you will, or better yet a collection of stories that are primarily about how God is rescuing the world from itself through Jesus.
It is not a history book, a science book, or simply an ancient moral code.
It is wondrous…it explains the human condition in graphic terms and introduces the Creator who is in the process of redeeming His good creation gone wrong.
It shows us the one true and living God in Jesus Christ and beckons us to follow Him…and promises us that following Him will demand we carry a cross built for our shoulders and be ready to lay down our lives for Him and each other.
It invites us to find our place in that glorious story and be part of the plan of redemption.
It tells us that life will often be hard.
It does promise us that our prayers are heard and someday will be answered …
“Then I saw a Lamb that looked as if it had been slaughtered, but it was now standing between the throne and the four living beings and among the twenty-four elders. He had seven horns and seven eyes, which represent the sevenfold Spirit of God that is sent out into every part of the earth. He stepped forward and took the scroll from the right hand of the one sitting on the throne. And when he took the scroll, the four living beings and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp, and they held gold bowls filled with incense, which are the prayers of God’s people.
And they sang a new song with these words: “You are worthy to take the scroll and break its seals and open it. For you were slaughtered, and your blood has ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.
And you have caused them to become a Kingdom of priests for our God. And they will reign on the earth.””
(Revelation 5:6–10 NLT-SE)
Today may not be that day…but that day is coming.
Follow Jesus.
Thank you Michael. As a formal “no creed but the bible” guy, I am struggling to navigate this new world.
Former, not formal.
Josh,
Once I allowed myself to ask questions without fear of damnation…or loss of others approval…things started to come together for me.
There are things I don’t understand…the OT raises lots of ethical questions as well as historical ones.
I do know I love the book more than I ever have and that is quite the surprise…
That inspires hope. Haven’t gotten there yet, but have been brave enough to imagine that in the futue.
Josh,
In some way I don’t understand, all of this allowed me to find a deep love for Jesus and a trust I never really knew before.
Your process doesn’t have to look like mine…Jesus raises all His kids uniquely, like He made them…
Yippee!
These last 3 posts on prayer totally capture where I am at. Been in church since the day I was born (literally). I was confirmed and baptized into the lutheran church before being thrust into Pentecostalism then CC..
We were taught, or it was inferred, that doubt is a sin (even though most of the great men and women of god doubted) and to never question scripture or the pastor.
But then I started asking questions.
So, like Josh, I really appreciate this series of articles on prayer.
I think your thoughts resonate with a lot of folks
Officerhoppy,
I hope they encourage some hope and discussion…I’m also well aware that they will make me a target…but that’s ok…
Michael,
Good thoughts! I remember someone explaining to me that Christianity wasn’t transactional, and I was absolutely floored. Of course it was-if I did good things for God, He would do good things for me. That’s not the way He works at all. I do get HIm…all of HIm that I could ever need, and He alone should be enough.
Linn,
The transactional component is really one of the toughest to get past…even when you know that’s not how it works…
Michael,
I feel like the Lord wants me to say this to you, and say it here.
I sense the Holy Spirit in your words. No one else that I know of are saying the things you are saying, and they need to be said, and heard.
You still very much have a ministry, by the way. Your faith in God and obedience to Him are carrying you forward. Your reward won’t be here, it’ll be in heaven, but you will be rewarded.
You show me, and others, what it is like to follow Jesus.
If you ever write a newsletter, I’d like to be on the mailing list.
BD
BrianD
Thank you, my friend.
I’m just trying to finish well…unloading the wagon of what I’ve acquired through the years…hoping to make a difference.
You would be one of the first I’d sign up if we move to that format…you’ve been a part of this from the start.
Michael wrote:
“Questioning the Bible in any way was to question God and questioning the interpreter of the Bible was usurping authority…both grave sins in the places I dwelled.”
I used to live there too Michael.
Not any more.
The Bible is a great and wonderful thing to be sure.
But I also think that it suffers from abuse and misuse.
It’s prone to two great ills, not giving it the credence it deserves at one extreme, and making way too much of it at the other.
I can’t believe that while I was in the hospital the nurses tried to give me fentanyl for pain. Home and losing sleep from pain and wheezing isn’t fun but I am still trying to unpack that. Hard to read more than one page or so and I m glad that I kept it up for many years.
Have Mercy on me
Give Wisdom to me
Show Favor to me
Show Kindness to me
Have Mercy on me
At the end of Job, after Job has done nothing but question God and complain about his situation, God says to Job’s friends:
“I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has.”
Job makes zero sense to me.
It looks at the question: “Why do the godly suffer?” I believe that the answer is assuredly they will, God allows it, and ultimately He will deliver us from it for all eternity. Thus we can be encouraged by this book through the example of Job.
Just my opinion, you may find your own.
I’m with Josh…I find Job to be highly problematic.
According to the book, the godly suffer because of Yahwehs gambling habit…
The best treatment I have read regarding Job is by Herman Wouk in War and Remembrance–the part when the Jewish prisoners mush reckon with their impending deaths and the Rabbi addresses his congregation using Job. I think it takes a Jew to unlock the book.
bingo on the prayer series–excellent.
fil,
Thanks, my friend…hoping some folks found it helpful.
“mush”??! must.
junior high spell check.
I’m with Michael
All of Job’s problems were the result of a wager between God and Satan
Job hangs in there fending off the criticisms of his friends and wife.
Then in the last part of the book, Job asked, essentially, why is all this crap happening to me a righteous man? God bellows back, “who are you to question me?”
Then, like all fiction or a country song played backwards, he gets his truck back, his cattle, and his health. One big happy ending
But I think I find it hard to serve a God who took my kid’s life – even though he got a new family
Read job through the cross and though the Christ. Nothing else makes sense.
I am not a man in Job. I am in Christ. The union with Christ at his table is life itself.
He gave himself for us and to us. We live in Union and communion with him. He is ever present through his flesh and blood given to us and received in the Holy Spirit.
There is life abundant.
“Read job through the cross and though the Christ. ”
I’d like to know what that means, if you have time.
Alan, AMEN
Josh and Michael, Job has much to teach us …. IMHO
I’ve never gleaned much from it, Em…but it’s Scripture and there is value there.
“Have you considered my servant, Job?”
Em, I’m sure you are correct, I just can’t figure out what it is that I’m supposed to be gleaning.
Josh, ever been tested by God?
Em, I hope not. I hope the torture that I am currently enduring is not a “test” from God. If so, I am out. What I go through daily right now, I would not wish on my worst enemy, much less my own children.
In Jobs case, if an “all-knowing” God had to test Job by killing his kids…that’s insanity. I don’t understand it, and don’t really want to. That’s not how a good father acts.
Josh, you will be in my prayers…..
strength of mind and body and the wisdomm and discernment that comes from an understanding and fear of God
As I now pray for Michael and the Captain
Thanks Em. Sincerely. My fam can definitely use the prayers.
faith and prayer go together ….. somehow
We’ll said Josh
Job, IMO, is bad press for God.
Kills Job’s kids because of a bet between God and Satan.
Should change the name of the book to “The Gambler”
How can anyone vindicate God in Job? I don’t know how, but Christians do.
I want an answer rather than just blindly accept every thing God does saying he’s sovereign- he’s gonna do what he wants to do without accountability; but he’s a good god
I don’t see that god I’d good in Job.
Sorry. I don’t want to be a pain on this one but I don’t like the book of Job.
Officerhoppy,
Can you judge whether an early start in heaven for Jobs kids was inferior to a couple extra decades spent in this sin-filled world?
jean? AMEN ! ! !
I was walking down the hospital hall with a nurse – she pointed to all the sick children and said something – I don’t remember what now
I thought to myself, “I don’t care if the all die, if Robbie can live.”
I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to see who was there. no one
And I heard a voice say (nurse didn’t), “If there was any other way, this wouldn’t be happening!”
I felt a peace sweep over me that was so intense. We lost Robbie to encephalitis and my Mother, an unbeliever, snarled “You never loved that child!” Yes, I have forgivven her…..
Without faith in the gospel of Christ crucified for your sins and raised for your justification, God according to human reasons appears either absent/nonexistent or capricious. But with such faith, one will recognize that this temporal life is not the main event. It’s just a blip in the course of eternity. The situation of Job was not unlike the man in John 9 or Peter or Paul. In each case God deemed them worthy to display his works in them through their circumstances.
I find some of these responses odd and even disturbing.
God slaughters a mans family to win a bet and some of you think that’s a good thing for God to do.
What this says to me is that some folks fear thinking at all critically about the text…and I don’t think that is either healthy or holy.
I am open to reading any other applications or interpretations of Job, as long as they are faithful to the text.
IMHO – there is a good conversation going on here
Jean,
With Job, the text is the problem.
God allows Satan to wipe out a mans family and all that constituted his life on a bet with the devil.
The moral of the story os that God can do as He pleases because He’s God.
I’ll stay in the NT , thanks…
Could the moral of the story be: Don’t judge me or your blessedness by what you experience in this temporal life, but judge me and your blessedness according to my promises given you in the gospel and in the sacraments?
Which promises?
I won’t ever teach his book again…you simply have to do too many moral gymnastics to make it work.
This confession, so early in God’s plan of salvation is absolutely breathtaking! It reflects the heartfelt trust Job had in the promises of God in the midst of afflictions that most of us can scarcely imagine.
“For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!”
â€â€Job‬ â€19‬:â€25‬-â€27‬ â€ESV‬‬
Jean,
Great verse…doesn’t change the terrible narrative.
Jean
Appreciate your comment. But, do you have kids?
Would you be happy if god took your children as a result of a wager?
How would you personally, receive the counsel you just gave?
Just asking you to think
Officerhoppy,
There was never a wager. God forenew how Job would react to each event beforehand. Everything that happened to Job and his family (and us) happened according to God’s foreknowledge.
If I have profligate adult children, I may wish that God would take them before they fall away. I would rather see them given rest from their labor, than their given only condemnation. But I nevertheless confess that God is just and that he works all things together for the good of those who love him.
So I cannot judge God who is above me.
Alan, I too would sincerely like if you could expound on what you mean by reading Job through the cross.
I added Job to the conversation because the book gave me the freedom to question and vent to God. Before that, I simply took every verse as somehow instructions on how to live, and not to be questioned.
I consider Job either fully fiction, or a fictionalized story based on an actual person. The opening is a crazy setup for the monologues that follow. I don’t consider it intended as “here is a picture of what God and the Devil are up to in heaven”.
Terry,
I think I agree with you…well said.
I read these comments about the Book of Job with great interest. I had never liked reading from the book of job until I experienced an intense depression brought on by the sudden job losses of both my husband and myself during the Great Recession with losses of our health insurance and our house. In addition, I was experiencing both Empty Nest Syndrome, menopause, and marital breakdown at very same time. I was on antidepressants suddenly, ( a first for me) Andi suddenly I couldn’t get enough of reading Job. At that time the book was a lifeline for me. Job expressed exactly what I was feeling, and amazingly, Job even described to a T the reaction to our circumstances of even our closest Christian friends! “You MUST have done something wrong if God has abandoned you to this degree!” Christians actually said that to me. The Book of Job gave me such comfort, because God loved Job through all of his terrible circumstance, even if Job didn’t FEEL loved as he experienced the agony of it all . As far as the wager with Satan, I’ve never taken that part literally. I always felt that Satan was saying to God, “Your people only follow you because you bless them personally. My power for evil us more powerful than your blessings, and I will ultimately control mankind because of my destructive power. ( This was before Jesus and I think Satan really believed back then that he would control all of mankind ultimately.) As Jean said, God knew Job would remain faithful. Perhaps Job’s ordeal was necessary to show Satan and other fallen angels, how wrong Satan was about humankind! I’m watching ”The Chosen’ right now on Netflix. The apostles’ lives weren’t easy, either. As Christians we may be called on ultimately to share in the sufferings of Christ. It’s the ‘Health, Wealth, and Prosperity’ doctrine that has it all wrong in my opinion. Job is the balance to that errant theology.