Prayer (Part 3)

Yesterday, Pastor Kenny really challenged our church to pray, and in light of that, I wanted to share a prayer that has really encouraged me in the past few weeks:

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Sprit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith – that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Ephesians 3:14 – 21

I know that many of us have been struggling through insecurities, sins that won’t seem to go away, or on the opposite end, being consumed with things that we want. Although these are things that need to be addressed, we can lay these things aside and look to our Beautiful Savior, who has already defeated our sins. God himself is the one who has already granted us every good thing (flashback to 2 Peter and Psalm 84!!!). Knowing that this is our God, we have the confidence to come to him in prayer. Paul’s prayer for the church was not for numbers or success or even to be good, disciplined Christians. It is simply that we would know more of who Christ is and rely on the Holy Spirit who is already in us and to understand more of God’s love with the church.

I’m excited to pray with everyone tomorrow!

So Why is Prayer so Hard? (Part 2)

Last time, we discussed how prayer is part of having a relationship with God. But if you’re anything like me, you might ask, “Why is it so much harder to pray to God than to talk to other people?”

Let’s look at four reasons that make it hard to pray. (Disclaimer: These are not all-encompassing. They’re just the ones that have been on my mind the past few weeks!)

1.    You can’t see Him. It’s easier to talk to someone who is right in front of you that can audibly talk back to you. We have to depend on what we believe and not what we see. God is with us, and He does hear our prayers.

2.     We are so determined to do things on our own. Admitting that I need help, not just any help but supernatural intervention, grates against the grain of my independence. The act of praying says, “I am dependent on God.” During prayer, you are not doing anything about your situation. You are simply asking God to move. Other “Christian deeds” involve doing something. When you read the bible, you’re learning more about God and His word. When you fellowship with other Christians you’re actively getting to know, care, and serve them. They all involve actions, and we get to feel a sense of doing and accomplishment for completing them. With prayer, there is no doing. There are no tangible results unless you believe that God moves. In our I-can-determine-my-own-destiny-and-make-a-difference culture, prayer admits inadequacy. Prayer says, “God, I want to love other people, but I have no idea how and need you to pick me up out of my selfishness and change me to care.”  Prayer says, “I’m feeling overwhelmed with financial worries and find myself looking for monetary security instead of God as my refuge. Help me remember that You are faithful and that the whole world is already Yours to give.” Pausing our to-do list and stopping our work to pray is no small feat, but it is one that is essential to the Christian life. We constantly need to be reminded that we can’t do it on our own, and we need our God to work.

3.     That’s just sitting down to pray. Actually praying is hard, because you are standing in the presence of the Holy, Almighty God-King. You can’t hide before Him. Our Father created us and knows every bit of us. He reads hearts and minds and is not fooled by our smiles or carefully crafted words. We have to face our sin and face the One we are ultimately sinning against. It’s here where we often put our human ideas of love onto God. We think that God is out to punish us for what we’ve done wrong. We think that God will get so tired of us repeating the same sin and will one day have enough and disown us. We act like we’ll come before Him in prayer, and He will reject us. But this is not our God. John reminds us, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love” (1 John 4:18). Don’t let fear or doubt stop you from going to God. God knows us down to the dirtiest depths of our hearts, but that doesn’t change his love for us. In fact, it is for our failures that Jesus willingly lay down his life to completely pay for our sins – past, present, and future. And now, God shines his face on us, seeing us for who we honestly are, and it is never too late for us to turn to Him.

4.     What happens when we pray to God, and it does not seem like He’s listening? We often come to God with certain prayers that we continue to pray for again and again. God, please save my beloved family member. God, help me to do well in school (for your glory). God, my family member is sick. God, I’ve been struggling with the same sin, and I’m not changing. And with each unanswered prayer, our faith wears down, bit by bit. Before we know it, we pray without expecting any answer. We pray, but we don’t believe God hears or cares.  We feel like God isn’t listening because He doesn’t give us what we want. If this is where our prayer lives end, we’ve missed out on the life-changing purpose of prayer. When we pray, our desires, hopes, worries meet God, and He prunes our desires to be more like His. God does hear, and He does care. James 4 explains this more (click here). If prayer is merely a litany of our wants, of course it’s going to feel impersonal! Listen to God – He does have answers for the difficult questions. And He always has a grander, deeper plan than we can imagine.

Let’s come before God knowing that we need Him, knowing that He loves us and answers our prayers. 

Prayer (Part 1)

Last Sunday, Pastor Brendon ended his message with a challenge from John 14:13-14:

“Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.”

Instead of making prayer an obligation or duty, Pastor Brendon implored us to believe how generous God is to us. If we really believed that God would give us anything we ask in his name, we would pray. If we realized that our redemption is found in Christ alone, we would pray. Prayer was never meant to be a moral obligation for every Christian. Jesus saved us to have a relationship with God, so prayer is part of that joy.

You might be wondering what in the world does prayer have to do with counseling. But I think it’s on this very challenge to pray that our church will be able to effectively counsel one another. However, this means we need to change how we ask for prayer and how we pray. Since it is a lot to tackle at once, this blog post will focus on changing how we ask for prayer.

We've been learning that having close relationships with one another does not simply mean talking to one another or knowing things about each other. Just because we know a lot about each other, it doesn’t automatically make us care for one another. The best conversations are not ones where you tell me about the events of your day or week; they happen when I get to know how those events affected you – the thoughts, emotions, hopes, and fears. A close relationship means that what you say and do affects my life. It doesn’t matter very much to me if you can recite my schedule backwards and forwards or even if you know my secrets; I want to know you care.

However, this thinking seems to go out the window when we ask for prayer. (David Powlison writes a great article about asking for prayer requests here.) We ask for prayer for topics like “health, travel mercies, finances, doing well on a test, finding a job, or the salvation of unsaved relatives”. If it is not for those things, we often make our prayer requests very general like “pray that I know God better” or “pray for my future spouse”. God does care about these things, but his main focus is for us to know HIM. Prayer is where we meet God. Just like our close relationships don’t consist of an exchange of facts about each other, prayer deals with how God is affecting your life, right now. How is God challenging you? How is God reassuring you? How is God changing you? How is God showing his overflowing love and mercy for you? And on your side: how are you responding to God in your life? How are you grateful for Him? Are you angry that He has not given what you expected? Where are you stuck and need his help? How are you responding to other people? This is the arena where we meet God. This is where the most important issues in life are played out.

Dear Church, let’s meet with God. When we meet with each other, let’s ask for prayer and pray for each other in the things that matter. 

Weakest Link

I hate being sick. The past two weeks, I’ve been infected with a medley of lingering illnesses. More than the actual symptoms of my illnesses, I was so frustrated at the imposition of my plans. I hate being unable to complete my work and meet with people. I hate not being in control. Thinking about my own violent reaction to being sick and appearing weak and incapable made me realize how much I prize being capable and self-reliant. Words like weakness, disability, handicapped, pity, and dysfunctional stick like barbs under my skin. I equate weakness with worthlessness, and I react so violently because I am scared that I actually am those things. Unfortunately (or fortunately for me), I am not alone in my messed up thinking. Our culture holds wealth, beauty, and hard work so highly.

In most churches and especially in Asian American churches, there is a blatant stigma against those who go into counseling. Our culture prides people who are strong and capable, and the church is not much different. In fact, many churches take that same thinking one step further and press expectations of put-together, always cheerful, talented, and capable members, while disregarding or ignoring those that seem less useful. Like Pastor Kenny often says, “We mistake knowledge for godliness and talent for character.” This mindset leaves everyone feeling inadequate, shamed, and afraid to ask for help. This is NOT how God intended his church to be! Let’s look at what Paul writes about the church:

But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.”  On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together, if one member is honored, all rejoice together.

I Corinthians 12:18-26

Beloved CCC, let’s change our church culture. Instead of valuing the people we think can do the most for our church, we have to recognize that we need those weaker parts more than the seemingly stronger parts. And if this doesn’t make sense to you, here are two good reasons why you should think about it again:

1.       We are saved in weakness. As the sermon and bible study this week have so pointedly explained, we need to be washed by Jesus. The only thing we bring to our salvation is our sin and brokenness. And we never leave from this spot. The Christian life is not for someone to better themselves and become stronger and independent. Instead, for the rest of eternity, we are completely and utterly dependent on Jesus for every single moment. So, when you or I look around at the people in our church, know that we are more alike than different. We can let go of thinking of people as so much worse or even so much better than us. We are all weak and pitiable but rescued and honored because of Christ.

2.       And here is an even better reason: Jesus Christ became handicapped for our sake¹. I think we often forget that Jesus is the same God as God in Isaiah 6. He is holy, holy, holy and so incomparable to anything or anyone in this world. Jesus’ “normal” is to sit on a throne and be worshipped by a fleet of angels day and night. He speaks and galaxies come out of nothing. He whistles and nations and empires rise and fall. And then, out of the ridiculous love he has for us, Jesus lays that all aside and chooses to handicap himself. He goes from God of the universe to nothing. Jesus goes from breathing life and creating planets and stars to whittling wood as a carpenter. He became a man who feels hunger and exhaustion, who can only care for so many people in a day, who got sick, who was rejected, judged, and shunned. Because Jesus knew we couldn’t do it on our own, Jesus lived this menial life, and at the end, he gets on his knees to wash our feet and dies a humiliating death to save you and me.

Since we have been given this mind-blowing, humbling love, let’s love and serve one another AND allow others to love and serve you. Whether you have a physical disability, an emotional disability, a mental disability, have anger issues, if you have a hard time caring about people or anything, come from a dysfunctional family, or if you’re just plain lost, let’s share in it together.

1. Joni Eareckson Tada, Diamonds in the Dust, March 2. 

Jesus & Mary & Counseling

When I tell people that I want to go into biblical counseling, the usual response is a wide eyed, polite stare that says, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” There are a good number of people who think of biblical counseling like a Biblegateway keyword search. You’re feeling anxious? Read Matthew 6 about not worrying, Psalm 23 about how God is with you, and top it off with Proverbs 3 to trust in God and not yourself. Now you’re all set to live victoriously, and I’ll call you later to see how it’s going.

As we have been learning, Jesus works very differently. He is not in the business of quick-fixes and patch jobs; He’s after a relationship. As our church has been going through John 11 and 12, I’ve been really struck by the way Jesus cares for (and counsels!) Mary.

***

From Mary’s perspective, her brother was really sick. So sick that Mary and Martha knew that unless a miracle happened, Lazarus was not going to make it. Not only are they faced with losing their brother, but they most likely depend on him for the way they live. With his death, their futures would be very uncertain. So, they send for Jesus, but he doesn’t come. Their worst fears come true, and Lazarus dies with no word from Jesus.

How could Jesus do this? We sent for him; we prayed to him. There are so many times we get upset/disappointed/angry when Jesus does not love us the way we want him to love us.

Mary is no different. Four long, tortuous days pass, and Jesus finally comes. Mary doesn’t even go see him. She stays in the house, surrounded by people who were trying to console her. But Jesus calls for her. Mary hurries to Jesus and just falls at his feet. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Jesus is deeply moved and weeps, asking to be brought to Lazarus’ tomb. He prays and raises Lazarus from the dead.

We live in a world with very real problems.  Jesus does not dismiss Mary’s. He does not tell her that she did not trust Him enough, to pray harder, or to get her understanding of Him right. Instead Jesus weeps with her. And although Mary’s grief over her brother is something terrible and devastating, Jesus is in the process of healing something much more broken than a rotting corpse. He is preparing to pay for all of our brokenness, sin, and the death we deserved by sacrificing his perfect life. Jesus sees our sinfulness and selfishness fully, and He chose to come down to us, die a humiliating death, and pay the debt of our sin.  Facing death is scary. Facing an uncertain future is scary. Facing broken relationships is scary. Facing how deep our sinfulness goes is terrifying.

Jesus cares deeply about the situations and circumstances that we go through, and his main priority is to save us to know Him. Jesus showed his love to Mary not because he raised her brother from the dead, but through raising Lazarus, Mary got to see and understand who Jesus is. In the John 12 we see Mary’s response to the way Jesus cared for her. In an undignified display, she pours out her perfume to anoint Jesus, which is worth a year’s income, and wipes his feet with her hair. Mary gives shamelessly to Jesus.

***

Biblical counseling isn’t about fixing your issues or the circumstances in your life. It’s getting to know Jesus, the only one who can save, and seeing where your life fits with Him, instead of how God can better your life. God’s intention for Mary and for us is not to simply give us what we want; it’s to give us Himself.

A Beginning

At the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, he stands in the synagogue and reads from the Isaiah scroll.

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,

because the Lord has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor;

he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim liberty to the captives,

and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Isaiah 61: 1-2a

Growing up, I loved this passage, thinking that this was God’s plan for my life. I especially grabbed on to the words “bind up the brokenhearted”. In my mind, this meant going to Afghanistan or Sudan to open a hospital or clinic that would physically heal their ailments and somehow restore hope in these war-torn countries. I thought of myself as a savior to the afflicted and brokenhearted. Little did I realize that I was the blind and trapped one.  Thankfully, Jesus saved me from trying to live life on my own strength and day by day has shown me that I am needy for more and more and more of God’s mercy. God has also shown me that I do not need to cross oceans to meet hopeless and hurting people. Right in front of me are people who are paralyzed by insecurity, drowning in expectations, and simply worn down by their circumstances.

Jesus uses this passage to begin his ministry, because He is the one that this passage is talking about. Jesus is the good news that each of us needs to hear. God used this passage in my life as a beginning to reveal that the Bible directly speaks to my life. At CCC, we do not want the teaching and preaching to end as a nice concept. God’s word needs to impact your life. Keep reading Isaiah and you will see a God who takes the down and out, the ugly, the outcast, and the broken and makes them into something new. God brings his people to himself and calls them “mine”, beloved and redeemed.  In this Sunday’s sermon, Pastor Brendon emphasized how God’s priority is not providing materially for the poor; it’s about Jesus. If as a church we only focus on physical needs of people, we missed the good news.

My hope is that these words, prophesied by Isaiah and proclaimed by Jesus, will be the beginning of our counseling ministry at CCC. We are all the poor, the captive, and the brokenhearted. The reason why we are at church is because we desperately need a Savior. Let’s partner together to see the miracles that God is working out in your life. Come and see how He personally transforms insecurity and grief in your life to freedom and joy