Worshiping Exhausted

This past Sunday, I had the opportunity to lead the Lifehouse Nashville worship team. The week leading up to Sunday sucked out nearly all of my energy and I saw the rest of my team dragging a little as well. At the end of rehearsal, I asked, "Who here's exhausted?" Everyone raised their hands.

We went to an empty room to pray together and I said, "So we're all wiped out. What better time to worship?"

I'll admit I often ignore my early morning alarm instead of getting up to spend time with God. My excuse usually has something to do with how tired I feel. But if I think about it, I find so much rest when I enter into God's presence.

In Psalm 84:10, the Sons of Korah famously sang, "For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness."

Last Sunday, I realized if I had to choose between serving in worship or sitting around somewhere to "rest", I would rather worship. If I need to choose between sleeping for an extra half hour and waking up to hear from the Holy Spirit, I would probably find more energy talking to the God of the universe.

When you're exhausted, what do you?

"When Should I Pray?" - A trustworthy impulse.

My friend Funky, yes, Funky, cuts a pretty intimidating pose. He's taller than me, which is fairly tall. He's tatted all over, with a pretty killer one on his throat reading, "Let The Dead Bury Their Own Dead" or something like that. He wears a leather jacket. He played in a great punk band back when he lived in Nashville. What I'm trying to say is the guy always struck me as a tough dude.

So I love it when I get text messages from him every morning with Bible verses and quotes by theologians. After my house caved in, destroying my Bible among other things, this was the only Bible I read. He found out about this and sent me an ESV paperback. He's just about everything I admire in people. He's punk and a solid Christian.

Today, I received a quote via Funky-text: "Always respond to every impulse to pray. The impulse to pray may come when you are reading or when you are battling with a text. I would make an absolute law of this: always obey such an impulse. - Martyn Lloyd-Jones" My pastor made a similar statement recently during a meeting. "There are some things you really don't need to pray about. 'Should I pray?' Yes. 'Should I tell this person about Jesus?' Certainly."

I know I've realized this in my own life. I once felt like God sent me to a particular floor of a particular library so I could pray for someone. I sat in a chair on that library floor without a single person walking in for over an hour. Then a guy popped his head around the corner and asked for directions. I didn't feel a good lead in to pray for him. He didn't have a cast on. There was no look of desperation in his eyes. I felt fear, panic, that I would scare the guy with my asking to pray for him. So I asked God, "Do you want me to pray for this man?" And to both my confusion and relief, I heard, "No." I gave the man directions and decided to wait for someone else.

After a few more lonely minutes, I felt God telling me to go home. I asked Him what happened. "You knew you were supposed to pray, but you were afraid. You didn't trust me even though you were acting obedient. I would rather have someone else pray for him than have you pray for him without faith."

The second half of Funky's text came from Phillipians 4, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God." This leads me to think there's never a good time to feel anxious and always a good time to pray.

I wish I could say I've learned my lesson. I wish I could say I always pray for people when I notice the need or feel the impulse. But I don't. Not always. Maybe the more I think about Phillipians 4:6 and the library incident, the more I'll dismiss the discomfort of praying for people.

Feel free to pray for me to get better at this, should you feel the impulse.

Preventative Maintenance - How I learned to appreciate my least favorite prayer request.

Question: If you went to my fifth grade Sunday School class, what would you say if you couldn't think of a prayer request?

Answer: I don't read my Bible or pray enough.

Believe me, this happened all the time. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure there was a Sunday where this was the only prayer request anyone had at the end of the meeting. Two things about this request made me cringe every time I heard it. One, it didn't really sound like a request.

Them: "I don't read my Bible enough."
Me: "Yeah? I forgot to brush my teeth this morning. Let's pray."

Two, I wondered if it was entirely honest. Not in the sense where I thought these kids read their Bible or prayed all the time and simply lied. I mean I used to feel there was something bigger they wanted to share, but were too embarrassed to do so.

Now that I've said all that, I feel comfortable telling you this. I don't feel like I read my Bible or pray enough. If I were in a prayer circle right now, I would give it as my request. Before my house caved in last Spring, I used to have a morning routine of reading a few chapters and praying for 10-20 minutes before work. But after the Disaster and having my way of life uprooted, I lost the rhythm of my routines.

Last night, I thought about the Disaster and how I felt the presence of God throughout the turmoil. It helped my wife and I endure the hardest trial we had faced as a couple. I realize it's not the routine I miss, but the regularity of coming into God's presence. So even though I do read the Bible and pray, I want more interaction with the Holy Spirit in the prayer and study.

From now on, I'll try to think of my least favorite prayer request as preventative maintenance. Hard times will come, but I want to feel secure in my new life in Jesus when they come.

How Do I Stop Saying Lame Prayers?

Have you ever felt like a wimp when you pray? Your prayer was trying to enjoy a day at the beach, not doing anybody any harm. Then without warning, someone else says a prayer that walks by and kicks sand in your prayer's face. Doesn't it make you want to feed your prayer raw eggs and give it an album by Survivor?

A few weeks ago, I told a woman at my church she didn't have to feel self-conscious about the way she prayed. Prayer doesn't need oratorical magic. I've heard plenty of stories where people prayed stumbling, half-thought-out prayers and saw God move powerfully. John Wimbur once told a story of a woman who couldn't see. She asked one of the church leaders to pray for her and the man misheard her request. So he prays for God to heal her from the flu, or something, and God restored her sight. I mean, shouldn't that make us feel more confident in God to answer our prayers, even if they don't have a set of free weights?

But I've felt like a wimp when I pray. I don't know how else to describe it. I know that Jesus gave his followers authority in Luke 9:1-2 and Mark 16:17-18, but I don't always pray as if I had that authority. Sometimes, I hear myself asking God to please heal someone or to restore a marriage and yet I don't feel very authoritative.

I wonder if I'm still unlearning my childhood lessons on prayer. The "God, if you would just..." or "Be with them, Lord..." schools of prayer. What if I tried a little more boldness, tried to pray like the people in Acts? Wouldn't it be crazy to hear someone throw out a "Be healed!" during a prayer circle?

But what if it came out wrong? Well, what if they've all been coming out wrong? I have the feeling God already gives us a lot of grace. Why wouldn't He overlook stumbling prayers for the flu and heal a pair of eyes anyway? If I'm listening to the Holy Spirit as I pray, I think I can expect Him to tell me how to pray with greater power and authority. Maybe my first question should be, "Lord, how do I pray for this?" Then it's only a matter of following God's direction in obedience.

Pray Quickly - Understanding how to bear one another's burdens effectively

Throughout my years as a Christian, I've participated in a lot of prayer circles. We gather around, share our requests, then pray for each other. Sometimes we call dibs on requests ("I'll pray for Tony's ear thing."), other times we pray as we're lead. If there's a recognized leader, he or she might dictate who opens and closes the time of prayer. Often, the leader chooses one of those spots. The point is, I've done this at least a thousand times in fifty different ways.

Recently, I've thought about one consistent element to prayer circles, and that's the person who unloads all of what they're going through as their request. Now, before you think me heartless, I should say how I really do care about the person's struggle. I feel compassion for their suffering. But my gut reaction says, "I don't need to hear this." When it comes to praying for others, I find my prayers don't much change even after I've been educated on the back-story of the request.

If I'm honest, though, my attitude has tipped toward never wanting to hear about a person's struggles. And I already know it's incorrect. Scripture talks about holding each other accountable. It also tells us to comfort each other. I especially think of Galatians 6:2, which says, "Bear one another's burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ."

My attitude developed slowly during years of prayer circles and other times of ministry. For example, when I was sixteen, I read somewhere that the Greek translation of Galatians 6:2 intended people to bear one another's burdens as if it were their backpack. Literally take on their struggles and give them a break for a while. At the time, I lead worship for six hundred teenagers a week, and some of them would talk to me as if I were their pastor. Seriously, I wish I had never heard some of those things. I remember telling one girl she didn't need the spiritual advice of a teenager, she needed to go to the police. But misunderstanding Galatians 6:2, I kept trying to carry more and more backpacks. One day, I found I couldn't walk with that weight anymore.

I've learned a few things since then. First, I was wrong to take on those burdens the way I had. In a sense, I was trying to be Jesus for those people. But Jesus has already taken on the price and the weight of that evil when he died on the cross. Those people didn't get much help from me in the long run and I ended up wearing myself out.

Second, I never balanced Galatians 6:2 with other verses like 2 Corinthians 1:3-4. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God." Yes, I'm supposed to show compassion and care for people who are suffering, but not out of my own power. I need to first receive comfort from God so I can share it with people who need it.

All that said, I still think it best to pray quickly for people in the setting of a prayer circle. The faster we pray, the sooner we give the burden to God, the quicker we see His peace come into the situation. After that, we can listen to their story. It might even change the way they tell it.

Is This Thing On? – A brief message on why Christians pray.

I knew at some point in this series on basic Christian living I'd have to talk about prayer. Christians do it all the time. But has anyone explained to you why? Haven't we all heard people describe feeling like their prayers hit the ceiling and fall splat on the floor like an undercooked pancake? Haven't we felt once or twice like our prayers don't do any good? Still, those who read the Bible and live by what it says can't ignore verses like Psalm 5:3. "In the morning, O Lord, you will hear my voice; in the morning I will order my prayer to you and eagerly watch." Not only should a Christian pray, but he should expect God to both hear and respond to the prayer.

Early in the drafting process of Stark Raving Obedience, Dad and I added a Lily Tomlin bit somewhere in the text. "Why is it when a person talks to God it's called prayer, but when God talks to a person it's called schizophrenia?" The first half of our book deals with the reality of God speaking to people. I could easily rattle off the verses we cite about God speaking, people hearing His voice, the verbal guidance of the Holy Spirit, and so on. When I thought about verses talking of God hearing people, I had a harder time coming up with examples.

I mean, it's in there. The Bible definitely talks about God hearing prayers. In my search for good examples, I went where anyone would go: The Beginning. Nobody makes an explanation of prayer in Genesis. No, "Adam heard the Lord and called out, 'Who said that?' And thus did Adam speak the first prayer unto the Lord." Nope. People and God talk to each other as if that sort of thing happened all the time. Adam, Eve, Cain, Noah, all sorts of people. It doesn't even sound like prayer was anything different than simply talking to God until Genesis 4:29, "At that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord." I don't think this means God couldn't keep up with all the people trying to talk to Him at once. Prayer isn't like Santa's workshop, receiving millions of letters and sorting them based on importance and a naughty/nice list. It would make more sense to see this text as people realizing just how much sin had caused separation in their relationships with God. Maybe they felt like their prayers hit the ceiling and it freaked them out.

As my research went on, I found lots of passages where God hears the prayers of Kings and Prophets. In 1 Kings 9:3, God tells Solomon he heard the King's prayers. When King Hezekiah finds out he'll probably die of a particular illness, he prays for God to heal him. God tells Hezekiah in Isaiah 38, "I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; behold, I will add fifteen years to your life." The leaders of Jerusalem asked Jeremiah to give them a word from the Lord and Jeremiah, knowing they had wrong motives, responded, "I have heard you. Behold, I am going to pray to the Lord your God in accordance with your words; and I will tell you the whole message which the Lord will answer you. I will not keep back a word from you." I can relate to Jeremiah's frustration. Why didn't the rulers just pray to God themselves? In another passage, Ezekiel tells the people of Edom that God hears more than prayers when he says in 35:12, "Then you will know that I, the Lord, have heard your revilings which you have spoken against the mountains of Israel." In Micah 7:7, the prophet says with straightforward confidence, "My God will hear me."

But those men had special distinction. They were recognized Prophets and Kings. Of course God would hear their prayers. Then I reread a verse in Habakkuk 1. The Prophet feels like his prayers hit the ceiling, too. You can hear his confusion in 1:2 when he says, "How long, O Lord, will I call for help, and you will not hear? I cry out to you, 'Violence!' Yet you do not save." Once in a while, even men of spiritual distinction ask God, "What the eff?" This passage should give us some comfort. God never promises to answer our prayers quickly or in the way we expect.

Isn't that great? I spent all of July talking about the authority and need for the Bible because it lays a foundation for our understanding of a relationship with God. The Bible doesn't just say God will hear and prayers and respond to them, it also says we'll sometimes feel like He's not listening. But that's just how we can sometimes feel. Scripture is clear. God hears us. This is why He laid out the plan of redemption. It makes Him happy when we pray.

As for God talking back to us, I feel like I've written at length on that topic already. Suffice to say for now the Bible also tells us we'll hear from God. I bring up July's discussion on scriptural authority because some people have expressed concern over the topic of listening prayer. One lady told me I was playing a "dangerous game" listening to voices in the spiritual realm. "How can you know it's really God and not something evil?" She wasn't trying to put me in my place. The look on her face told me she genuinely cared about my soul.

I tried to explain, as I often do, "Everything spoken from God has to line up with the Bible."

She didn't seem comforted by my response. "I know you mean well. Just be careful with that sort of thing."

As long as I'm talking about prayer, I may as well attempt to clear this misunderstanding. God will only say things that confirm what He said in the Bible. Listening prayer, hearing from the Holy Spirit, isn't new revelation. It's just personal. It's as if the Holy Spirit was telling you a personal application of the Bible in a way that doesn't feel like a freakin' Sunday School lesson. The more a person reads the Bible, the more they recognize the voice of God because it agrees with what He said in scripture. It might even help us to get over that ceiling-effect. We'll always hear God respond to our prayers in the Bible, even if it's just to say, "Don't worry. I hear you."

Beginning To Live In Stark Raving Obedience

I moved to Nashville in September of 2007. Since nobody in this city is from this city, I always have to answer the question, "What brought you here?" Most people would expect an answer like "music" or "publishing". Well, I have played music for fifteen years, but that's not the reason I moved to Music City. And I did write a book with my father, but I didn't even know that Nashville was a big publishing town until after I had already decided to live in Tennessee. When people ask me why I came to town, I usually laugh before I tell them, "It's a short answer with a long explanation."

God told me to move to Nashville. By that, I mean He spoke to me and said, "Move to Nashville." Yes, God and I have conversations. If this seems like the statement of a psychotic man, I might agree with you if it weren't so Biblically sound. Below, I've included a portion of the introduction to my book, Stark Raving Obedience. Later, I will include the first chapter. Hopefully, these will sufficiently explain how a person can hear the voice of God in his head and not (necessarily) need prescription medication.

Preface to Stark Raving Obedience

People talk to God all the time. Whether it’s someone praying for friends and family, at the dinner table, or at a baseball game, talking to God is pretty ordinary. On the other hand, tell someone that God talks to you, and they might look at you like you ought to be locked up and psychoanalyzed.

It’s hard to deny that people are searching for something in their lives. Dating services try to provide people with intimacy. Some people drink to numb their pain, an attempt at healing their wounds if only temporarily. I remember a professor in college claiming that television was a way for people to have a community experience, a nation of people experiencing the same “events” while sitting alone in their homes. Something exists in every man and woman that longs for something, even if they can’t explain what they long for. I know that lots of people are just searching for answers, and many of them are seeking God for those answers, even if they don’t realize it.

But how can a person ask God a question when they don’t believe that He’ll tell them the answer? How can God give direction if He doesn’t communicate with us? A person might argue that God speaks to us in the Bible. True, but maybe I want to know if I should take a job overseas, or maybe I want to know how to reconcile a relationship with a family member. Personal stuff. Sometimes uncomfortable and complicated stuff. I believe that God wants to direct us and answer our questions personally, not just the deep questions of mankind as a whole.

How in the world can you have a personal relationship with someone who isn’t personal? We say the words “personal relationship” a lot in the church, but I don’t know if the church always does a good job of explaining (or understanding) a real personal relationship with God.
A few years ago, I joined the Rachael Leigh Cook fan club after watching the movie Josie and the Pussycats. I saw all of her movies. I read her biographical information. I read all the news updates, participated in a few of the fan club chats, and sent her a two and a half page fan letter. Even after all of that, I don’t think anyone in their right mind would say that I had a personal relationship with Rachael Leigh Cook.

At a young age, I was told that if I read my Bible, went to church or youth groups, and prayed to God (talked at Him), then I had a healthy, personal relationship with Him. Now I know better. It’s good to do all those things, but it’s not enough. It’s not personal. The only way to have a personal relationship with anybody is to talk with them, to build trust and have a history with them. Is that possible with an immaterial God? I know now that it is.