adam robinson | journal

Walking with God is a journey with lots of little revelations along the way. I thought I'd share some of mine. Hopefully some of them will border on the profound, but most will fall easiest into the category of "random."

I’m looking out my window right now at blue skies, puffy white clouds, all swimming in a 78 degree day. Which is funny, since the storm to end all storms is supposed to be bearing down on me right now. Local schools closed at 1PM today in anticipation of this latest display of Mother nature’s wrath. (It's past 5 now) Stores sent workers home early and the obligatory run on milk and bread has begun at all the local supermarkets. May God have mercy on us all.

Wait. . .let me check. Yep. Still clear.

Now it’s probably taboo to pile on the weathermen at this point. They didn’t ask us to act this way, they simply made a prediction. But with all that fancy equipment and the radar that no one can pronounce that apparently can predict the weather on Venus, you have to wonder, what’s the deal? We have come to trust these people because often they are very trustworthy. Most of the time they get it right. Days like today however serve to bring those demigods of meteorology down to earth. And all it took was to remember one simple fact: You can’t predict the weather.

I know, obvious, but we forget this fact. They sometimes may forget this fact. But it’s the weather, and last time I checked God is the only one who can accurately predict that kind of thing. We can get close, we can be pretty sure, but we will never be able to accurately gauge exactly what the weather will do. Perhaps that’s what God was reminding Job of during His soliloquy on Sovereignty.

But let’s take the opportunity of this lesson on humility to reflect on predicting things beyond our control. I have noticed a trend in others (and unfortunately myself as well) to speak with supreme confidence on the will of God. During the crusades it was the cry of “God wills it!” as the crusaders mercilessly hacked up unbelievers. During early American history it was the stance of southern landowners who looked to Scripture for their justification of slavery. Today our arrogance may not lead us to such evil in the Name of God, but it leads us astray nonetheless. Whether it’s the overconfidence of the Calvinist who assumes he knows the intricate workings of salvation down to a T or the braggadocio of the holiness preacher who knows exactly who’s saved and who’s not, we too can make the mistake of assuming we know more than we know.

The Pharisees had this problem. In John 7 Nicodemus tries to broach at least the possibility that maybe, just maybe, Jesus might be who he says he is. In reply they announce “Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee.” So confident. So sure. These were devout men, men who studied the Law more than anyone else. But this very knowledge (righteous knowledge by the way) led to a pride that blinded them to the Savior standing in front of them.

This is not to say that we can’t be confident about what we believe. After all, God is not entirely like the weather. He has revealed Himself through nature, our conscience, and best of all through Christ and the Scriptures. We can be confident indeed about many things that our brothers and sisters under the First Covenant didn’t understand.

But He’s still God. And we do not know all of His counsel. His ways were so different from what the Pharisees had assumed that they couldn’t see Him at all. We run the same risk when we hold so tightly to our interpretation of Scripture that no other possibility is allowed. No other denominational leaning is accepted. No brotherhood among those who disagree with us is encouraged.

Now hear me. Passionate pursuit of Truth is Biblical. Working out our theology is helpful and necessary to an extent. But we cannot become so sure that we have figured God out that we don’t allow Him to work outside the box we’d like Him to stay in. it might be helpful to ask ourselves the question, “Am I sure that God only works in this manner?” or “Can I be absolutely confident that this, and only this, is true about God” or “Can I be sure that I know everything there is to know when discussing this issue?”

I don’t have this life with Christ figured out yet. (This will come as a shock to some of my friends who know me as a rather opinionated person, but alas, ‘tis true.) I’m becoming more and more comfortable with a God that I can’t completely pin down, who refuses to be systematized, whose ways are not my ways. The mystery of God is a comfort to me, and my need to understand everything is slowly being replaced by a quieter dependence on His Spirit and life. I’m sure I’ll be thinking this one through for a while. But for now, I think I’m going to go lay in my hammock.

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If you have spent any length of time as a believer you’ve probably become acquainted with the basic practices of the Christian faith. Prayer. Bible reading and study. Worship. And at first these acts are filled with promise. Remember when you read a passage of Scripture for the first time? It can be thrilling, exhilarating, a brand new experience! Or those days when you sought out opportunities to read the Word just to see what new treasures you would unearth?

But time does what time does and moves on. Initial experiences give way to habits, habits become routine, and routines become ruts. Until finally you find yourself in a place where you just don’t want to do those things anymore. I have wandered into this valley many times before and find myself curiously open to a subtle temptation. Do you know the one I’m talking about? It’s the one where you wake up and pick up your Bible and sit in your quiet time chair (or wherever you normally talk with God in the morning) and you hear this: “I don’t think I want to read my Bible today. I think I will just pray. That sounds refreshing. I mean, I’ve read the Bible before, haven’t I? I’m not really going to find anything new in there anymore. So maybe I’ll just skip the reading and jump right into prayer.”

Now on the surface this doesn’t sound all that bad, which is why it gets me. I’m still praying, I still have my time with God, I really have read the Bible, and I still believe what it says, so what’s really the difference? That’s where Satan pulls out his concordance and piles on, throwing in that the Spirit will remind you of all the things that Jesus said, so if you really need to hear some Scripture the Spirit will just remind you of it. Oh, well isn’t that great. Why didn’t I think of this years ago?

Thus your Bible remains unopened and your quiet times get shorter. And since you’re still praying you don’t really sense the change until much later. Or at all. But one day, by the grace of God you get a glimpse of where you are and find you’ve drifted a lot farther that you thought you could. And you wonder how it happened.

This is the struggle we will all face in those middle times between glorious encounters of the Spirit. One of the major ways to avoid it is simply reading your Bible. I realize even as I write that how legalistic it sounds. And if the Word seems dry to you right now you’ll be tempted to stop reading now. But hear me out. There’s a reason behind the routine.

Prayer is always going to be one of the greatest and most intimate forms of communication between us and our Father. But unfortunately hearing the Spirit can be a tricky endeavor. How many times have you found yourself trying to discern one of those voices in your head? “Is that God or is it me? Maybe it’s Satan? Is it God, is it me, is it Satan?” Etc., etc. ad nauseum. We can learn to hear the Spirit but there’s an easier solution to this problem. The Word. If you want to hear God clearly it doesn’t get much clearer than simply reading His Word. I have often heard the Spirit tell me to do something specific, but much more often have I heard Him reminds me of Scripture, give me insight into a text, or encourage me with a verse. I hear the voice of God clearest through His Word.

Which answers our objection that we’ve already read it. So? Read it again. The point of reading the Bible is not to win at Bible drill. But He is concerned that you know Him. When you read the Word daily, repeatedly, you are opening the door to hear God clearly. Which is why we cannot afford to simply assume that prayer will get you by. Prayer on it’s own will be so colored by your own opinions that you will drift too far before you even recognize a problem. Scripture is real, blunt, meaty, and wasn’t written by you. The Spirit has the opportunity to dash our finely crafted arguments and rationalizations and bring us back to center when we submit ourselves to the reading of His Word.

So to all my friends who are beginning their journey with Christ: Read the Word! Make yourselves experts, hide it in your heart, meditate on it day and night. And to my other friends who have walked this path for years: Read it again! God has much, much more to show us and we don’t know nearly as much as we think we do.

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Christians aren’t very adept at getting good press. “Oh it’s the liberal media, it’s the pagan reporters, etc. etc.” Possibly. But regardless of who’s doing the reporting it seems that Christians are very active about some very odd things. Chief among these is the current debate about the use of “Merry Christmas.” I will admit, initially I was just as incensed as everyone else as people began removing this phrase from common usage while decorating their holiday trees. Political correctness is silly in almost all of it’s forms and these latest incarnations are no exception. But as this debate has dragged on (and on and on), I began to wonder: So what if we win?

Now I’m all for a culture war. Believers are just as much a part of the culture as anyone else so we have a right to make our voice heard. But in trying to win battles like the “Merry Christmas” struggle I’m beginning to think that Christians have missed the point. What good is there in “winning” the culture war in the way it’s being fought today? Here’s a fun game, let’s assume we win the whole “Merry Christmas” thing. So what? Even if everyone says “Merry Christmas” this won’t mean in the least that they actually appreciate or even understand the meaning of our Christian celebration. What good is it to ask non-believers to pretend to believe something they don’t?

This holds true for the rest of our issues: the 10 Commandments monuments, prayer in school, Intelligent Design in the classrooms, “In God We Trust” on our money, etc. Let’s assume we could win all these debates. What would we have accomplished? We’d have students being taught a theory by teachers who don’t believe it, encouraging students to pray to a God they don’t know. We’d have our monuments in courthouses, but only as historical reminders, not ethical guides. We’d get God on our money but no one would consult said God in using said money. And while we would cheer in our sanctuaries we would have done absolutely nothing in spiritual terms. Nothing.

There is a deeper lesson to be learned in the culture war.

We lost.

But this may not be a bad thing. Christians in the American South especially have the idea that we still live in a Christian culture. So of course it’s shocking when a predominantly Christian culture begins to chuck cherished traditions and abandons Christian principles. But this is not shocking at all when we realize that there is no Christian culture. It’s gone. We do not live in a society where a majority of the people we meet love and worship Jesus. Don’t believe me? Look around today. As you go to work, to school, as you drive down a busy highway, or shop at Wal-mart. These people don’t know our God.

Wait, how did this happen, when did it happen? Could it be that when you think that you live in a Christian culture it’s not as important for you to live out your faith? I mean, if everyone else is a Christian, surely someone else will pick up my slack. Since everyone else believes, they don’t really need me to be intentional about witnessing (who needs to hear it if they all believe?) or live a godly example in front of them (I bet they love God more than I do anyway). Slowly we stop actually influencing the culture we live in thinking it will take care of itself. What we are seeing in these cultural battles is the results of an apathetic Christian culture that has become just as secular as everyone else. Winning these battles are useless because they are only symptoms of this larger cultural collapse. It’s too late for a band aid solution.

So what do we do about it? Forcing fellow citizens to say “Merry Christmas” won’t help our cause or (more importantly) their souls one bit. Nor will asking them to act or live as if they did. But once you realize how much this society needs your witness, certain aspects of the New testament may begin to make more sense. Such as why Jesus says “Wake up! Look around! The fields are ready to be harvested RIGHT NOW!”(John 4:35-38). You may begin to relate with an early church that was surrounded by a hostile environment (1 Peter 2:11-12). Peter’s call to be ready to defend your faith at all times might take on more urgency ( 1 Peter 3:15-16). The people you meet don’t need your culture, they need your Savior. It’s up to us, and no one else, to share Him with them.

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Prayer can be tough. It seems like the easiest thing and the hardest thing to do all at the same time. I expereince prayer like sunsets. They happen every day with regularity and some of them are spectacular, awe inspiring events while others pass by wihtout fanfare. But trying to make your prayer life "work" is like trying to make last Thursday's sunset do an encore. And you can't predict it either. You never know when a life-altereing truth will come screaming out of the clouds of your prayer life to give you hope, joy, or a new view of God. It seems that God makes talking with Him simultaneously easier (I have instant silent access to Him at any moment for any length of time) and harder (it's not a back and forth conversation, I hear Him differently) than any other form of communication. This had to have been Peter's reason for asking Jesus how to pray. It's not as if he didn't know how, but there had to be a better way, a way that was more "successful", whatever that means. What Peter got in return probably wasn't what he expected, though. Jesus gives him an actual prayer, and a short one at that (You can find it in Matthew 6). But what do we do with it? You can probably recite the Lord's prayer by heart, but how does this prayer, or type of prayer, really help us pray? I feel like a grandfather who's just been handed an Ipod. "I'm sure you know how to use this thing, and you seem real excited about it, but I have no idea what to do with it." Jesus didn't have a problem praying long prayers (see the end of John) so why does he offer this as the model for prayer?

I just finished reading C. S. Lewis' Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer. You might like it, it's just a collection of letters, which is much more informal than his other writings. One of the things Lewis mentions is how he used the Lord's Prayer in his personal devotions. When reciting the Lord's prayer he would meditate on each phrase and what it meant. In this way he would "festoon" or hang things on each of the phrases. For example, "Our Father." Instead of rushing on to the next part of the prayer, or just saying it over and over, stop and think about the fact that God has adopted you as His child. You have the privilege of not calling him just Sovereign, King, Ruler, Creator, God (all distant descriptors at best) but Father. Or take "Your Kingdom come." You can stop and think about what the Kingdom is. Is this the invisible church? is it my local church? Is it both and you need time to think about both of them in relationship to God's Kingdom. How am I helping God's Kingdom to come about?Am I hindering it? Do I care? See? Instead of rifling through a form prayer we can slowly digest each phrase, letting each one be a guide deeper and deeper into God's intentions for our day.

You're not going to like this at first. We're information gluttons and we'd rather read or write a volume than meditate on a few words. But try it. Slow your prayers down. Let it sink in. Prayer isn't like your blog, it's. . . something else, something other than anything else we do. If you've found your prayers becoming dull or boring, go back to the elements our Lord gave us. I promise there's more there than you thought. It's helping me.

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