The God of Miracles: Stepping Out On Faith: A Minnesota Missionary's Disappearance in Mali, West Africa

 

FIND JERRY: Minnesota pilot missing

off West Africa coast

http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/story/22003019/find-jerry-krause-pilot-missing-off-west-africa-coast

 

Updated: Apr 17, 2013 12:48 PM EDT

 

facebook.com/HelpFindJerry

 

By MICHELLE FAUL

Associated Press

 

JOHANNESBURG (AP) - A small plane carrying only its American pilot disappeared 10 days ago just miles from a refueling stop at a West African island in the middle of a tropical storm of thunder and lightning.

 

Since then, searches with a plane and boats have found no trace of the pilot, 54-year-old missionary Jerry Krause, or the twin-engine Beechcraft 1900C that he was flying from South Africa to Mali.

 

Krause's family in Mali, where he has lived for 16 years, and in Waseca, Minnesota, believes he is alive and could have landed in hostile territory.

 

"After much research and digging, there is a 50% chance that Jerry's plane crashed," says a message posted Wednesday to their website www.findjerry.com

 

"That other 50% is the probability that he was captured and forced to fly for some drug lords or guerrilla members. There is evidence now to support both scenarios."

 

Family members reached by email would not elaborate on any possible evidence, and the suggestion could not be immediately backed.

 

The posting said that a missing person's report has been filed in the United States so that the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board can start an investigation into Krause's disappearance.

 

The Krauses have launched a multifaceted campaign to "find Jerry." Family members are lobbying officials, posting messages on social media and using the Internet to encourage a relay of prayers for his safe return.

 

Krause's last contact was apparently with the control tower at Sao Tome island, a couple of kilometers north of the equator and 150 miles (240 kilometers) from the coast of Gabon.

 

"We have no idea what happened to him," Januario Barreto, the control tower chief, told The Associated Press by telephone Wednesday.

 

He said Krause called in to say he was 9 miles (14 kilometers) from the island when lightning struck the tower and knocked out the power. That was just before 4 p.m. local time (1600 GMT), still in daylight, on Sunday, April 7. When generators kicked in, soon afterward, Krause could no longer be reached, Barreto said.

 

He said air traffic controllers immediately contacted the nearest control towers on the African mainland at Libreville, Gabon and Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, to see whether they had heard from Krause. They had not.

 

Navy and Coast Guard vessels are still looking for any trace of Krause's plane, Barreto said.

 

The family's website said they have sent a Portuguese-speaking envoy to Sao Tome, at the family's expense, to "get the official documentation as to what actually took place there from Jerry radioing in to land to their responses and follow-up.

 

"Their stories haven't been confirmed and haven't been consistent," the message complained.

 

Krause's employer, Eric van der Gragt, said the control tower did not inform others that there was a missing pilot and plane until almost 24 hours after the disappearance.

 

"The tower just didn't inform people that he had disappeared," van der Gragt, owner of Bamako, Mali-based Sahel Aviation Service, said in a telephone interview.

 

He said he sent a plane to search for Krause for two days that week, after the Sao Tome Coast Guard had found nothing on the Monday and Tuesday following his disappearance. The Sahel plane searched around the twin-island nation of Sao Tome and Principe, he said.

 

Van der Gragt said the turboprop Beechcraft that Krause was flying did not belong to his company but, he believed, to a company based in Senegal.

 

Krause's family is heartened that searchers have found nothing in the Gulf of Guinea, saying that an absence of wreckage or emergency locator transmitter signals are hopeful signs.

 

The oil-rich Gulf of Guinea, where Krause disappeared, has been increasingly targeted by armed pirates who hijack ships' cargoes, including a British ship in February.

 

At their Web site and on Facebook, the Krause family details how they lobbied officials of the French cellular service Orange, to which the pilot was subscribed, in an effort to get them to try to track his iPhone and discover his last position. At first the company resisted, then said it was unable to help because his subscription was based in Mali, according to the Web site. Orange was able to turn off the iPhone from afar, to conserve its battery.

 

Krause's family last heard from him when he called his wife Gina from South Africa to let her know he was on his way home to Bamako. The two have lived as missionaries in Africa for 25 years, the last 16 of them in Mali, a mainly Muslim country. Krause had served as a missionary pilot for the Nampa, Idaho-based Mission Aviation Fellowship until 2009 when the air service pulled out of Mali.

Jerry and Gina Krause stayed on. Many foreign companies and charities have left Mali since jihadist fighters swarmed over the north last year. France and several African nations sent troops this year when the Islamic fighters, allied with al-Qaeda, started to advance on Bamako, the capital.

 

"God knows where Jerry is," Gina Krause says, expressing certainty and her faith in a posting at the findjerry Web site. "I know I serve a God who can do the IMPOSSIBLE."

 

AP writer Barry Hatton in Lisbon, Portugal contributed to this report.

https://www.facebook.com/HelpFindJerry

 

Read more: FIND JERRY KRAUSE: Pilot missing off West Africa coast - KMSP-TV http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/story/22003019/find-jerry-krause-pilot-missing-off-west-africa-coast#ixzz2TAxm6uRC

 

 

 

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YouTube.com Link -

 

Interview with Wife and Family

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5OknZSZiTNY

 

 

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Missionary Pilot Goes Missing En Route to Mali; May Have Been Captured

http://www.christianpost.com/news/missionary-pilot-goes-missing-en-route-to-mali-may-have-been-captured-94262/

 

(Photo: Facebook/Find Jerry)

 

The Krause family is raising awareness for Jerry Krause, a 54-year-old missionary pilot who went missing on April 7 when his plane hit a tropical storm while en route from South Africa to Mali.

 

 

By Katherine Weber , Christian Post Reporter

April 18, 2013|6:32 pm

 

A family is searching for answers after a pilot, who has served as a missionary in Africa for the past 25 years, went missing 10 days ago when his plane was hit by a tropical storm on his way to Mali.

 

The family worries that the pilot may have been captured by guerilla forces or drug lords.

 

Jerry Krause, 54, went missing on April 7 while flying a twin-engine Beechcraft 1900C near the island of São Tomé, where he was due for a refill of fuel, en route to Mali from South Africa.

 

About nine miles away from the island, an intense tropical storm reportedly hit and the missionary pilot lost contact with the local control tower at São Tomé; he has not been heard from since.

 

"We have no idea what happened to him," Januario Barreto, the control tower chief, told The Associated Press by telephone Wednesday.

 

Barreto claims that the tropical storm caused lightning to hit the São Tomé control tower, causing it to temporarily lose power shortly after it had its last verbal communication with Krause.

 

When the generator at the control tower restored power, Jerry could not be contacted.

 

Jerry's family, which includes his wife, Gina, his brother, Jeremy, and three children, Alyssa, Nathan, and Jessica, has set up a website, www.findjerry.com, to provide updates about their search for their loved one, implore government officials to help with the search, and encourage followers to pray for Jerry's safe return.

 

The family has also set up a social media campaign, starting the Twitter trend "FindJerry" and setting up a Facebook page to spread awareness about their missing loved one.

 

The Krause family wrote on the FindJerry.com webpage that they believe the São Tomé control tower did not follow protocol when Jerry's plane went missing, and could possibly now be trying to cover their tracks to avoid reprimand.

 

"Sao Tome air traffic control DID NOT contact mainland airports to check on Jerry's status as they should have," the family says on the website.

 

Additionally, the family refuted the claims of the control tower that lightning from the tropical storm knocked out the power of the control tower for a temporary time when Jerry went missing.

 

"[The control tower officials] are either stating this now to cover their tracks since they didn't follow protocol when a plane went missing or they are involved somehow with the disappearance," the family argued.

 

"It would have made sense had they come out and said that from the beginning, but such thing was said last week about electricity going out," the family noted.

 

The family also believes that because no plane wreckage has been found, it's possible that Jerry is alive and surviving.

 

Unfortunately, there is a 50 percent chance Jerry could have landed his plane in enemy territory and could now possibly be used as a pilot for drug traffickers against his will.

 

"After much research and digging, there is a 50% chance that Jerry's plane crashed. That other 50% is the probability that he was captured and forced to fly for some drug lords or guerillas members. There is evidence now to support both scenarios," the family stated.

 

In an earlier blog post, the family wrote that Jerry's plane would have crashed into "a million pieces," which surely would have been washed ashore by the changing tide or scooped up by fishing nets, and therefore, because no plane fragments have been found, "there is more potential that he was potentially ambushed or kidnapped."

 

"Again, there is no proof of kidnapping, but it's becoming more of a reality. Please pray for the US Embassy officials to get answers and for other countries to cooperate as we continue to search," the family wrote.

 

The family has also been making progress in spreading awareness of Jerry's absence to the authorities in both the U.S. and South Africa, successfully filing a missing person's report in the U.S. to enable the National Transportation Safety Board and the South African Civil Aviation Authority to begin their investigation into the pilot's whereabouts.

 

Additionally, the Krause family offered a $5,000 reward for information on Jerry's whereabouts, including providing fragments of his plane, but no one has come forward with any evidence.

 

The family continues to remain hopeful and faithful during this time of uncertainty, writing on their Find Jerry website that they are grateful for the prayers given to their family and to Jerry.

 

"We serve a God who can move mountains and whose mighty hand is over this entire situation," the Krause family wrote.

 

Jerry Krause has worked as a missionary in Africa for the past 25 years, spending the past 16 years in Mali with his wife, Gina. He most recently worked for the Sahel Aviation Service, a commercial company which provides air transportation in the areas around Mali.

 

Prior to that, Jerry also worked as a pilot for the Mission Aviation Fellowship for 22 years, which works to help over 1,000 Christian and humanitarian organizations with air transportation and delivery.

 

Jerry worked for the MAF until 2009, when the air service ended its work in Mali.

 

Read more at http://global.christianpost.com/news/missionary-pilot-goes-missing-en-route-to-mali-may-have-been-captured-94262/#xzU8j2BwErEDAUR0.99

 

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Update: May 30, 2013

From Huntington, IN

 

Follow on Facebook 

 

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To those who we will be forever grateful to...

 

Just so you can plan ahead in great anticipation for the next update :), I plan on updating once a week, updating on Monday or Tuesday (even though today is Wed) unless something urgent comes up.

 

My intention for this update is to explain why we believe my dad to still be alive. We are almost at two months since he disappeared. And looking at the evidence, as I've mentioned previously, the most logical perspective would determine my dad to be dead. As time progresses, the easiest solution would be to count my dad dead. That final verdict would end the waiting, the effort of searching, and the perseverance of continuing to pray. I would be relieved to have the test God placed in the lives of my family to have ended many weeks ago, to be in a place where we could just move on. But, God's timing is beyond my understanding and the test has not ended.

 

As I've thought through the reasons as to why we believe my dad is still alive, I've reread report after report of the investigations done searching for my dad in order to come up with the most logical reasons. But even after making a list of those reasons, I don't think they are the main reasons we still believe my dad is alive. Briefly, the logical reasons to believe my dad to still be alive include (in no specific order): 1. Not finding any piece of the plane, 2. The lack of effort on searching for a crashed plane by Sao Tome, 3. The negligence of the refuelers in Sao Tome in providing documentation of planes refueled on April 7th and 8th, 4. The discrepancy of the facts regarding the last conversation my dad had with the tower, 5. The corruption in the area and the benefit of having my dad (pilot, mechanic, and free plane).

 

And the list could go on. If you want more specific logical reasons, feel free to email me (Jessica)...

 

But, the real reason we believe my dad to be alive:

 

Because God is not allowing us to believe anything else. When we reach a point of starting to believe my dad to be dead, God keeps placing people in our lives and providing us with Scripture that does not give evidence to him being dead (including around 15 dreams). God keeps telling us: Pray, Persevere, and Trust Me. And so we have to keep doing that.

 

Please continue to partake in this journey through prayer. I know that is an area that God is testing me. And at the end of this, I don't want to be someone who stopped having faith or someone who believed in the logical and not the miraculous. This situation is one where God wants and is going to get all of the glory. And I have to keep asking, seeking, and knocking till God says I can stop.

 

May God be glorified in me and in you. May we each be able to stand before God and have Him say, well done my good and faithful servant, no matter what situation we each face. For God is good. His Love endures. And He will be victorious.

 

 

Continue to follow on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/HelpFindJerry

 

 

 

A Final Farewell by Clark Pinnock and Tribute to Open Theology

Pinnock, Alzheimer’s, and Open Theology

http://thomasjayoord.com/index.php/blog/archives/pinnock_alzheimers_and_open_theology/#.UXBqrKKsiSo

 

by Thomas Jay Oord

March 24, 2013

 

I received sad news in an email recently: Clark Pinnock is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Clark sent John Sanders and me the following note:

 

Dear Tom and John:

 

I want to inform you that I am now middle stage Alzheimer’s. I will not be able to do my writing etc. I am 73 years now, and I've enjoyed my biblical three score and ten. I am not bitter. I have had a good life. I'll meet you over Jordan if not before.

 

You are free to make this news known.

 

With love,

 

Clark

 

Clark Pinnock is a theological giant in our day. His influence has been great, especially in Evangelical circles. This news of Alzheimer’s disease indicates that his active contribution to theology will now diminish if not cease.

 

Pinnock’s personal theological journey has been intriguing. He moved from affirming a more or less conventional and/or fundamentalist view of God to the Open view he considers more faithful to the biblical witness.

 

In this journey, Pinnock consistently considered the Bible his primary source for theology. He gave particular weight to biblical narrative and the language of personal relationships found in Scripture. Although he rejected a Fundamentalist view of the Bible, he remained committed to honoring the Bible as his principal authority for theology.

 

Open theology offers a coherent doctrine of God, says Pinnock, in which each divine attribute “should be compatible with one another and with the vision of God as a whole.” For instance, Pinnock wishes to offer a vision of the God who “combines love and power perfectly.” Unless the portrait of God compels, he says, the “credibility of belief in God is bound to decline.”

 

Open theology as Pinnock presents it depicts God as a self-sufficient, though relational, Trinitarian being. God graciously relates to the world as one self-limited out of respect for the genuine freedom of creatures. Creatures genuinely influence God. God is transcendent and immanent, has changing and unchanging aspects, gives to and receives from others, is present to all things, and has supreme power. God’s love, says Pinnock, includes responsiveness, generosity, sensitivity, openness, and vulnerability.

 

Open theology rejects traditional theologies that portray God as an aloof monarch. Influential theologians of yesteryear often portrayed God as completely unchangeable, ultimately all determining, and irresistible. By contrast, Pinnock says the biblical vision presents a loving God who seeks relationship with free creatures. “The Christian life involves a genuine interaction between God and human beings,” he says. “We respond to God’s gracious initiatives and God responds to our responses... and on it goes.”

 

The future is not entirely settled, according to Open theology. This means that while God knows all possibilities, God does not know with certainty what free creatures will actually do until creatures act. Classic views of God’s foreknowledge are incompatible with creaturely freedom, says Pinnock. “If choices are real and freedom significant,” he argues, “future decisions cannot be exhaustively known.”

 

Open theology does affirm that God is all knowing. God knows all things knowable. Believers should not understand divine omniscience as the idea God possesses exhaustive foreknowledge of all future events, says Pinnock. After all, future possible events are not yet actual.

 

Biblical evidence for Open theology’s view of omniscience comes in many forms. Dozens of biblical passages, for instance, record God saying “perhaps.” This uncertainty [allowance for free will interaction on the part of man - res] on God’s part means the future remains open, and not completely certain [knowable; nor is it necessary that it be knowable - res]. The Bible also says God makes various covenants. These covenants suggest God does not know with certainty everything to occur in the future. God often asks Israel to choose one course of action over another.

 

For instance, Jeremiah records God offering two possible futures for Israel: “If you will indeed obey this word, then through the gates of this house shall enter kings who sit on the throne of David…. But if you will not heed these words, I will swear by myself, says the LORD, that this house shall become a desolation” (Jer. 22: 4-5). God’s particular course of future action depends in part upon Israel’s choice. God apparently does not know with certainty what Israel’s choice will be. Other Old Testament passages exhibit covenant language in which the future is yet to be decided, and God does not know with certainty what will actually occur.

 

God cannot be in all ways timeless, say Open theologians. We best conceive of God’s experience as temporally everlasting rather than timelessly eternal. To say God is in all ways timeless implies God is totally actualized, immutable, impassible, and outside of time and sequence. Such a God is static and aloof, says Pinnock, not relational and responsive. The temporally everlasting Lord is the Living God of the Bible.

 

Those who embrace conventional theology have difficulty accepting Open theology. This difficulty arises because Open theology challenges certain well-established traditions, argues Pinnock, not because it opposes the Bible. Open theology themes appear throughout the biblical witness: “the idea of God taking risks, of God’s will being thwarted, of God being flexible, of grace being resistible, of God having a temporal dimension, of God being impacted by the creature, and of God not knowing the entire future as certain.”

 

One of Open theology’s greatest assets is its fit with Christian experience. It addresses well the demands of ordinary life and practices of the saints. “It is no small point in favor of the openness model,” Pinnock argues, “that it is difficult to live life in any other way than the way it describes.”

 

Open theology releases people to live their lives meaningfully, says Pinnock. “As individuals we are significant in God’s eyes… the things we do and say, the decisions and choices we make, and our prayers all help shape the future.” Our lives and life-decisions really matter.

 

Open theology is preferable in other ways. It points to a friendship with God possible in cooperative relationship. Most conventional theologies implicitly or explicitly reject friendship with God. Open theology emphasizes the reality of freedom we all presuppose. Many conventional theologies directly or indirectly reject creaturely freedom vis-à-vis God.

 

Open theology corresponds with our intuition that love ought to be persuasive rather than coercive. It emphasizes sanctification in the sense of growth in grace and decisive moments. Open theology corresponds with the view that God calls and empowers growth in Christ-likeness.

 

Christians should especially prefer Open theology to conventional theology on the issue of petitionary prayer. Most Christians believe their prayers make a difference to God, including influencing at least sometimes how God acts. Pinnock argues that petitionary prayer does not genuinely influence now the God who foreordains and/or foreknows all things. Petitionary prayer cannot change an already settled future.

 

“People pray passionately when they see purpose in it, when they think prayer can make a difference and that God may act because of it,” argues Pinnock. “There would not be much urgency in our praying if we thought God’s decrees could not be changed and/or that the future is entirely settled.”

 

Above all, Open theology emphasizes love as God’s chief attribute and priority for theological construction. “God created the world out of love and with the goal of acquiring a people who would, like a bride, freely participate in his love.” Love was God’s goal, and giving freedom the means to that goal. “God is inviting us to join in his own ongoing Trinitarian communion and conversation,” says Pinnock. God “wants us to join in and share the intimacy of his own divine life.”

 

God’s loving nature is unchanging, but God’s experience, knowledge, and action change in the divine give-and-take of interactive loving relationship. “The living God is . . . the God of the Bible,” says Pinnock, “the one who is genuinely related to the world, whose nature is the power of love, and whose relationship with the world is that of a most moved, not unmoved, Mover.”

 

Because of this, Open theology “is a model of love.”

 

 

*Comments mine own - R.E. Slater (res)

 

 

 

When God Doesn't Answer Prayer

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/practical-faith/when-god-doesn%E2%80%99t-answer-prayer

 

By Dorothy Greco
February 18, 2013

Dorothy Littell Greco divides her time not-so-neatly between writing, making photographs, pastoring, and keeping three teenage sons adequately fed. She lives and works in the Boston area and is a reluctant Patriots/Celtics/Bruins/RedSox fan. You can check out more of her words and images at www.dorothygreco.com 

 

When God Doesn't Answer Prayer...

At least, how we want Him to answer it.

 

Our all-powerful, all-loving God encourages us to ask Him for what we want. But sometimes, after we’ve put it out there, He seems to turn and walk in the opposite direction. We are left with questions. Why did He want us to pray if He was just going to say no, anyway? We were praying “wrong” in the first place? What are we supposed to do now?

 

I have repeated this cycle multiple times. More than a decade ago, I began experiencing unrelenting fatigue, muscle soreness and waning strength. Countless tests and doctor visits later, I received the diagnosis of chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia. For the next five years, I politely asked God for healing, then demanded healing, then finally gave up hope for healing.

 

As a result, I have been accused of lacking faith by earnest friends and prayer ministers. I’ve confessed and repented of every sin I can think of, wept, protested and spent more than a few days crippled by despair.

 

We tend to have one of two responses when what we asked for is not given in a timely fashion: trying harder or angry blaming.

 

Apparently, I am not the only one who struggled because of unanswered prayer. Last week, I invited friends to fill in the blank on my Facebook wall: “Unanswered prayer ... ” I received more than 40 responses, including the following: is deeply disappointing, makes me feel unloved, feels like a betrayal, is confusing, can be overwhelming, or is business as usual.

 

Some of our bewilderment emerges because we actually believe that God is all powerful and that He not only wants us to come to him like little children, but also encourages us to ask Him for everything from babies, to spouses, to jobs, to housing to help losing weight. Hence—the disconnect when He doesn’t always give us what we want.

 

This paradox reminds me of our youngest son’s attitude at Christmas. He starts composing his gift list in September, and for the next four months, he will revise, add to and shamelessly share it. Yet when Christmas day rolls around, he is filled with dread—because experience has shown him that though we are good parents, we don’t always give him precisely what he requested. He has told us, “Why bother asking me if you aren’t going to buy me exactly what I want?”

 

Isn’t this how we feel about our heavenly Father? We tend to have one of two responses when what we asked for is not given in a timely fashion: trying harder or angry blaming.

 

My five years of spiritual activism post-diagnosis offer you a snapshot of trying harder. I succeeded only in wearing myself out and spiraling deeper into doubt. None of us can make ourselves worthy—that only comes as a gift from Jesus.

 

Angry blaming similarly leads us into a dead-end. In night four of an insomnia jag, I remember spewing at God, “Why don’t you help me get to sleep? The Bible tells me that you give sleep to those you love! Don’t you love me?” Powerlessness is its own form of suffering. When we’ve run out of other options, anger and blame give us the illusion of control. But it really is only an illusion. It didn’t help my faith and it certainly didn’t help me to sleep.

 

For us to avoid these and other unhelpful responses when our prayers aren’t answered the way we’d hoped, we need to zoom out and glimpse the larger story.

 

What if, rather than interpreting God’s “no” or “not yet” as punishment or indifference, we view it as an invitation to be transformed?

 

Every day, there is an epic battle being waged for our hearts. The enemy of our soul has an entire arsenal at his disposal but his go-to weapon is doubt. Adam and Eve didn’t disobey because they craved the apple, but because they fell for the serpent’s ruse that God was withholding good things from them. If you ever find yourself doubting God’s love or questioning His character, push back—hold to what you know to be true.

 

Expressing gratitude also helps to defuse our despair and suffering. Due to fibromyalgia, I can no longer book all-day photo shoots—but I can still see. I can no longer play basketball with my sons—but I can walk and I constantly thank God for these gifts. Turning our hearts to God in gratitude has the capacity to flip our disappointment upside down.

 

Finally, we must be willing to explore any attachment to entitlement that might contribute to our resentment of how God has answered our prayer. We live in a consumer society and have become accustomed to getting what we want, when we want it. Jesus does not promise to give us everything that we want but rather asks us to sacrifice everything—including our own desires for a specific outcome or result. This changes everything when it comes to how we pray.

 

What if, rather than interpreting God’s “no” or “not yet” as punishment or indifference, we view it as an invitation to be transformed? C.S. Lewis writes in The Problem of Pain, “We are a Divine work of art, something that God is making and therefore something with which He will not be satisfied until it has a certain character.”

 

The possibility that waiting and suffering have the capacity to transform us offers us profound comfort while crushing our fear of God being fickle. Rather than needing God to answer my accusatory questions of “why,” I am free to ask, “How can I find You in the midst of this?” This inquiry provides us with the traction we need to move beyond our pain and into the transformation that God has for us.

 

 

 

An Evening Prayer, by Sir Thomas Browne

 

Portrait, Sir Thomas Browne

English Classic Poet

 

An Evening Prayer

by Sir Thomas Browne, c.1605-1682

THOU whose nature cannot sleep,

On my temples sentry keep;

Guard me ’gainst those watchful foes,

Whose eyes are open whilst mine close;

Let no dreams my head infest,

But such as Jacob’s temples blest.

While I do rest, my soul advance;

Make me to sleep a holy trance,

That I may, my rest being wrought,

Awake into some holy thought;

And with as active vigour run

My course, as doth the nimble sun.

Sleep is a death. Oh, make me try

By sleeping, what is it to die!

And as gently lay my head

On my grave, as now my bed.

Howe’er I rest, great God, let me

Awake again at last with Thee!

And thus assured, behold I lie

Securely, or to wake or die.




... from Religio Medici, the Second Part, Section XII, 117, ed. Pickering

XII. We term sleep a death; and yet it is waking that kills us, and destroys those spirits that are the house of life. ’Tis indeed a part of life that best expresseth death; for every man truely lives, so long as he acts his nature, or some way makes good the faculties of himself. Themistocles, therefore, that slew his Soldier in his sleep, was a merciful Executioner: ’tis a kind of punishment the mildness of no laws hath invented: I wonder the fancy of Lucan and Seneca did not discover it. It is that death by which we may be literally said to dye daily; a death which Adam dyed before his mortality; a death whereby we live a middle and moderating point between life and death: in fine, so like death, I dare not trust it without my prayers, and an half adieu unto the World, and take my farewell in a Colloquy with GOD.

... “In fine, so like death [is sleep], I dare not trust it without my prayers, and an half adieu unto the world, and take my farewell in a colloquy with God. [Here follows the poem.] This is the Dormitive I take to bedward; I need no other Laudanum than this to make me sleep: after which I close mine eyes in security, content to take my leave of the Sun, and sleep unto the Resurrection.”

continued -

 

Select Poems by Sir Thomas Browne

http://reslater.blogspot.com/2013/01/select-poems-by-sir-thomas-browne.html










 

The Merton Prayer

The Merton Prayer

http://www.mertoninstitute.org/aboutThomasMerton/TheMertonPrayer/tabid/64/Default.aspx

 

In Thoughts in Solitude, Part Two, Chapter II consists of fifteen lines that have become known as "the Merton Prayer."

 

MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

- Thomas Merton, "Thoughts in Solitude"
© Abbey of Gethsemani 

 

 

 

Frank Peabody, artist

The Merton Institute Board

 

 

About Thomas Merton http://www.mertoninstitute.org/aboutThomasMerton/tabid/57/Default.aspx   Thomas Merton's remarkable and enduring popularity indicates that he touches the hearts of people searching for answers to life's important questions. For many, he is a constant spiritual companion; for others, his writings provide guidance through life’s difficult moments. He takes people into deep places within themselves and offers insight to the paradoxes of life. He shares how to be contemplative in a world of action while offering no quick fixes, no ten easy steps to a successful spiritual life. At the core of Thomas Merton's spiritual writings is the search for the "true self" and our need for relationship with God, other people, and all of creation. He finds that when we are apart from God, we experience alienation and desolation. Merton believes that we must discover God as the center of our being. It is in this center that all things tend and where all of our activity must be directed. Merton's writings were prophetic; they highlight the major issues that confronted society in his time and still confront society today. They illustrate the growing alienation of humanity. Whether it is war, social and racial injustice, violence, or religious intolerance, the source of the problem is that man "has become alienated from his inner self which is the image of God." The degree of humanity's alienation is reflected in the unrelenting violence of our time. Wars and acts of nations around the globe caused the death of more than 500 million people in the 20th century. Closer to home, schoolchildren kill their fellow students in schools, and incidences of racial and domestic violence and child abuse occur with appalling frequency. The violence surrounds us. We must change direction or perish. This requires a social conversion, a turning away from destructive behavior and a turning toward a relational way of being. The first step in this turning is a transformation of consciousness. Thomas Merton is a preeminent guide in this first step and throughout the journey. There is in the world today athirst for God. People are seeking a reversal of the trends toward consumerism and materialism, prejudice and violence. They are discovering that what one does must be a means of both self-fulfillment and service to others. Throughout history, the role of spiritual master has been recognized and valued. Thomas Merton is a spiritual master whose influence crosses generations and religious affiliations. His message offers us bracing and brotherly advice on how we can be conscious and attentive to God in order to hear the answers to the difficult questions in our lives. Thomas Merton's message and life helps us build a new paradigm for living, one that integrates the contemplative in each of us with our external activities. His message is a source of deep change in a culture of superficial solutions, a window through which we see the possibilities for a peaceful and just world.

 

 

 

Thomas Merton (1915-1968)
A Brief Biographical Sketch

Thomas Merton is one of the most influential American spiritual writers of the twentieth century. His autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, has sold over one million copies and has been translated into twenty-eight languages. Merton wrote over seventy other books and hundreds of poems and articles on topics ranging from monastic spirituality to civil rights, nonviolence, and the nuclear arms race.

After a rambunctious youth and adolescence, Merton had his first experience with Roman Catholicism at the age of sixteen in a church in Italy. On December 10, 1941, he entered the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, a community of monks belonging to the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (Trappists), one of the most ascetic Roman Catholic monastic orders.

The twenty-seven years he spent in Gethsemani prior to his untimely death in 1968 stimulated profound changes in his self-understanding. This ongoing transformation impelled him into the political arena, where he became, according to Daniel Berrigan, the conscience of the peace movement of the 1960's. Referring to racism and peace as the two most urgent issues of our time, Merton was a strong supporter of the nonviolent civil rights movement, which he called "certainly the great example of Christian faith in action in the social history of the United States." For his social activism Merton endured severe criticism, from Catholics and non-Catholics alike, who assailed his political writings as unbecoming of a monk.

During his last years, he became deeply interested in Asian religions, particularly Zen Buddhism, and in promoting East-West dialogue. After several meetings with Merton during the American monk's trip to the Far East in 1968, the Dalai Lama praised him as having a more profound understanding of Buddhism than any other Christian he had known.

It was during this trip to a conference on East-West monastic dialogue that Merton died, in Bangkok on December 10, 1968. He was the victim of an accidental electrocution. By a sad coincidence the date marked the twenty-seventh anniversary of his entrance into Gethsemani.

 

 

 

The Emergence of Prayer to that of Tradition

Prayer is as vitally important to the Christian life as God's living presence is to that Christian life. When we speak to friends we develop a relationship that evolves over time with one another. It grows and seeks to establish a resonance between the two individuals involved. The how-and-why-and-what that creates relationship is mostly undefined and simply acknowledged as the mindful presence of the one person with the other. We don't normally try to define that presence when actively participating in it. We simply receive it as it grows and expands through love, and loving participation, of ourselves to another, and that other to ourselves.

 

At other times a relationship may experience struggle, disappointment, misunderstanding, and the many other things that may cause a relationship to become static or to loose traction. Mostly it is through the ill-communication of words, intents, actions, or misplaced expectations, hopes and dreams (however necessary or needful those may be; if unmet they can sour a relationship's progression). But those who will walk with us and wish to be in a relationship with us (of whatever kind) will abide throughout those times to some degree or manner - sometimes in full participation and sometimes not at all. But by communicating and staying in relationship with one another, many of those difficult times can become understood, with backward insight and invited relational dialogue about those events. Perhaps forgiveness will be required. Perhaps patience and trust during periods of trial and testing. Perhaps a personal accountability must occur. But overall, a relationship is allowed to scuff along until it either ends or can begin again in promised renewal.
 
Parents experience this with their children... more especially with the development of that child into a young adult where the latter years can strain a family relationship. Where both child and parent actively learn to adapt and change to one another through relational reassessment, engagement, and lively interpersonal dialogue in order for that final stage to find its fullest independence and continuance. Different children go through it differently. And the same with parents. Each must be willing to lay down what once was to what is now occurring. It can be a very difficult time. God does this with us. Even as we do with Him. He grows with us in our turmoils and struggles as we sort out our personal identity, meaning, validation, and purpose. It can be messy but staying in communication with God oftentimes helps, not hurts. (Unless it's our imperfect image of God that needs destruction and rebirthing into a truer picture of the God of the Bible... as we grow God grows with us and without this growth God may simply become a fake reality. However, it is we ourselves who have made God fake  - or perhaps allowed to become dissembled at the hands of other people's ideologies and belief structures grown static and impersonal, misleading or destructive, with time and tradition. God is as true as He ever was. It was we that have become untrue or have made Him untrue.)
 
Consequently, prayer is primarily about relationship. About presence. About sharing one's self with another and allowing that relationship to grow or die, to mature or break down, but through it all to attempt a kind of personal responsibility for that relationship. Many times children do not have mindful friends - they will play with anybody at any given time or place. They accept other children into their lives innocently and only withdraw through hurtful experiences or parental whisperings and warnings. By their teenage years children have grown up enough to have created a specialised array of guardedness and acceptance of others. They have been hurt often enough by disappointment or active harm to have a sophisticated set of personal barriers which a new relationship must march through in order to be safely accepted. By mid-life, and with maturity, those barriers may have been lowered as one's personal strengths, understanding, and bigotries have become lowered; or, has grown even higher, through personal mistrust, defeat, suspicion, or even because of the inability to handle any further disappointment.

 

This may result from an individual not having developed the personal tools of artful self-discrimination, self-love or self-acceptance. Later events and friendships might provide these tools and abilities for maturation and personal self-assessment and acceptance. But sometimes the damage has been so ingrained as to make progress practically impossible. Mostly because it is very difficult to love others when we cannot love ourselves. God's love for us is our beginning point. Understanding God's love for us can create a whole other reality that we have never known or believed possible.
 
This is the value of teaching the love of God in Jesus to others. Jesus' love was personal. It was sacrificial. Selfless. Atoning. Redeeming. Freeing. Liberating. Unbinding. Like fresh water to the thirsty. Like meat and bread to the hungry. It stands in our place against all our sin and lifts us up to God's very presence saying "This one is mine and so has this one become yours too." Jesus' love is kind, patient, long suffering. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things to those desperately needing God's love living on the edges of life's abandonment and dark hopelessness. It comes to the realization that God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whosoever believes in Him, trusts in Him, accepts Him, or allows Him in, will not perish, but find resurrected hope and eternal life (John 3.16). This is a promise become a reality throughout this wicked world's history of pain and disappointment. A promise that makes all things new. Including ourselves. That sees the world remade in God's image of beauty and brightness. What once was godless is now filled with God's presence of life-giving promise, healing, and the certainty of His presence.

 

Overall, prayer is a two-way participation between God and ourselves. Just as a relationship is a participation between two individuals in the give-and-take roles that arrive at an intimate understanding of one another. The methodologies of communication will evolve over time but the primary methodology is that of speaking to one another and sharing one's thoughts, heart and mind. It may be in wordless conversation or in a spoken conversation (despite Roger Olson's article to the contrary posted below). But it is a communication that learns about the other person's desires, thoughts, heart, mind and soul. And in this case, when that presence and relationship is very God Himself, we learn to listen and take in what He has to say to us through His Word. For His divine presence is everyday around us - from the people we meet to the world we live in.
 
However, it should also be realized that though Churches and Christian fellowships pray to God, and pray to seek God's face, they each are transitioning in their understanding of God as well. No one body of believers can be absolute in their knowledge, in their beliefs, or in their dogmas. If they are than they have become stagnant and closed off to God's presiding Spirit ministering to mankind. To pretend that everything that has been said and can be known of God has occurred by 400 A.D. (the Apostolic Fathers era and closing of the Canon), or by 1054 A.D. (Eastern Orthodoxy's dissolvement of ecclesiastical ties to Rome), or by the 1600-1800's (the Reformational movement), or even more recently, by the 1980's with Evangelicalism's disposition upon "inerrancy" (and with it, some form of interpretive "traditional/classic Christian dogma) is preposterous. Yes, we must pay attention to what the Church of the past centuries has discovered and taught (which also includes Catholicism as well!), but to say that God cannot speak any longer is to have arrived at a closed Bible instead of an open Bible. A Bible that is evolving with mankind and ministering to societal needs today and not to yesteryear's more austere (or is it revered?) doctrines. The Bible has room to grow - and we with it - this is the nature of language, of communication, of presence. This is the nature of God's abiding communication and presence with us in the here-and-now.

Consequently, we must realize that our subcultural belief systems, our personal alienations, our skewed theologies, even the events in our lives, can speak imperfectly of God. That experience, tradition, or societal mores should never be the final word about God. We are imperfect individuals each with a rich tradition of personhood and heritage. It is both the Church's strength and the Church's weakness. But proper self-doubt is necessary when approaching God through the eyes of His fellowship. Sometimes we are fortunate and will have fallen into a fellowship that speaks God's word good enough (in the classic or traditional sense, but this can also be its own undoing, as we have just noted). More often is the case that the Church's fellowships are in the process of growing in their understanding of God just as much as we are ourselves on a personal level. And it is through the gifting of the body of Christ that God leads and directs His Church into the paths of His Word and unto the gifts of righteousness, wholeness and healing. And curiously, that spiritual gifting may be you, however young or inexperienced you are. You may be the key to your Church's spiritual vitality and health.
 
But it is vitally important to widely read everything from newspapers to best selling books, both popular and academic. And to widely study the traditions and the histories of the Church, of culture and society itself, and most importantly one's present era. And then to add to this wealth of knowledge the vitally important task of communicating with people - from the man on the street, to the person in the pew. To households and schools, to parents and children, teens and college students. To mechanics and pilots, businessmen and bankers, bluecollar workers, field hands and factory employees. To know and understand the very same people you wish to minister to. And to this effort one must research the newer theologies presently occurring. As is the case here in this Emergent blog with its emphasis upon the contemporary advancement of newly proposed theological ideas and researches that are occurring throughout various academic disciplines that are progressively evangelic, or what we are calling, emergent. Without new disciples the Church can (and will) stagnate and die. God's flock needs wise shepherds who can become good and wise leaders. Who can share the Way of Christ, or the Gospel of Jesus (or by whatever name we may call it) with others wherever they are on the road of life. Our belief structures (known as epistemologies) will change and perhaps must change. We are not God. Nor do we know everything about God. In fact, we know very little and must become as much disciples of Jesus, as we are to disciple Jesus to others. As Christians we are always in the process of growth and metamorphosis - learning to die to self while serving others. It is a hard road that often defeats us but must daily be encountered in the power of God and by His mighty Holy Spirit.

Prayer is but one of those relational tools that God has gifted mankind with through the presence of Himself by His Spirit. But that same divine relationship is everywhere around us in the daily events of our lives as we learn to listen and discern. God walks amongst us in the trials of the day and the beauties of the night. He is there. His loving guidance does not dim however harsh the paths of this frail life. However abandoned you may feel. God is there. However unheard you feel. God is listening. His love is yours - as fully in this life as it well be the next life hereafter. That faith-living requires living with some faith-tension. With the unknown. With the mysteriousness of God's plans and purposes. That we give up our desire for control and allow His will to be done. Not ours. And in return what does God promise? He promises to be always with us. He promises His presence in place of answers. He promises that He will walk through every dark valley and every high mountain with us. That He will never leave us nor forsake us. That the peace of His presence will be power enough to lead and to guide us.

And as we have the strength and ability, the gifting and resources, we must now share God's love to this world that does not know God to the furtherance of God's abiding Kingdom. For today is the day that we each must become like children of the Kingdom, seeking that our Father-God lead and guide us unto the giving of good gifts to those around us. Gifts that will birth life and not death. Hope in place of hopelessness. Fulfillment in place of disappointment and lost. For it is in the losses of life that we become rich. It is in the disappointments of life that we might grow. It is in the abandonment of life that we are delivered. Odd? Yes. But never so true as for the sinner saved by God's grace and the believer trying to live in the power of the Holy Spirit.

 

R.E. Slater

October 27, 2012

 

I am the vine; you are the branches.

Whoever abides in me and I in him,

he it is that bears much fruit....

                                                                       - John 15.5

 

1 Corinthians 13

English Standard Version (ESV)

 

The Way of Love

 

13 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ² And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. ³ If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned,^[a] but have not love, I gain nothing.

 

⁴ Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant ⁵ or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;^{[b] 6} it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

 

⁸ Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. ¹¹ When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. ¹² For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

 

¹³ So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

 

Footnotes:

1. 1 Corinthians 13:3 Some manuscripts deliver up my body [to death] that I may boast
2. 1 Corinthians 13:5 Greek irritable and does not count up wrongdoing

 

 

 * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

 

Musings about Prayer: What It Is and Does

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2012/10/musings-about-prayer-what-it-is-and-does/

 

by Roger Olson

October 26, 2012

Comments

 

Prayer is not exactly a controversial hot button issue, but maybe it should be. Not that I want it to divide people or want people to fight over it. My point is that people - and here I’m concerned mainly about Christians - should think about prayer as well as pray. Is everything called “prayer” really prayer in a biblical and theological sense? Does simply calling a practice prayer make it so? Also, can prayer actually change “things” (circumstances) or only the person praying? There’s an old saying that “Prayer doesn’t change things; prayer changes me.” Is that so?

 

I suspect most Christians will agree if I say that positive thinking is not prayer. The other day I saw another newspaper advertisement announcing a seminar on “prayer” with a “nationally recognized expert.” Only the fine print revealed that she is associated with a “church” that believes sin, sickness and even death can be conquered through positive thinking. That religious organization grew out of a 19^th century spiritual movement called New Thought that emphasized mind over matter—that people can change their life circumstances (poor health, poverty, etc.) through aligning their thoughts with the infinite mind of “God.” For most of them, “God” is not so much a person as the Mind or Spirit of the universe. Human beings can harness the power of God by tapping into his or her thoughts. Different New Thought religious groups have different spiritual techniques for this. Some call their technique “Affirmations” (positive sayings). In any case, what is being called “prayer” is really a form of magic—manipulating reality through powerful thoughts, rituals or techniques. There is no idea of a sovereign, personal God in most forms of New Thought. And yet it often goes under the name of “Christian.” In orthodox Christianity, prayer is not magic.

 

Now, having said that, I do not deny the power of positive thinking. What I deny is any guarantee that just the right positive thinking or speaking will manipulate God or Mind or Spirit or whatever to do one’s bidding. Books like Pray and Grow Rich abound in modern New Thought circles and among Christians influenced by New Thought. And I deny that positive thinking or even positive speaking (e.g., “I am a healthy and whole person loved by God who wills my total well being”) is prayer.

 

Now I suspect I’m going to touch a nerve and cause a bit more consternation among orthodox Christians when I say that, in my opinion, “wordless prayer” is also not prayer—at least not the heart of prayer. Much of what goes under the label “contemplative prayer” is wordless prayer. I prefer to call it meditation and wish Christians who exercise it in their spiritual lives would call it that instead of prayer.

 

During the past twenty to thirty years (at least), “contemplative prayer” has swept into evangelical Christian circles. Its sources are diverse. At least some are Catholic mystics and contemplatives. Two who have promoted wordless prayer and influenced evangelical Christians to practice it are Thomas Keating and Basil Pennington. I’ve read their books (at least some of them) and practiced their meditative practices with others in Bible study and prayer small groups. In fact, over the past two to three decades, it seemed sometimes that every time I engaged in spiritual, devotional practice with a group of fellow evangelical Christian educators wordless prayer has come into it at some point.

 

Let me make clear what I am NOT talking about under the category of wordless prayer. I am not talking about “lectio divina” which is meditating on a passage of Scripture and being open to hearing the voice of God speaking to one through the words of Scripture.

 

“Wordless prayer” is silently listening for the voice of God while abandoning all words and thoughts of one’s own. It is silencing what Buddhists call “the monkey mind” (thoughts jumping around in one’s mind) and emptying oneself of all thought in order to be more open to God entering into that silence to speak or influence one’s motives and intentions.

 

I have nothing against such practice; what I oppose is calling it “prayer” or allowing it to become the center of one’s spiritual life to the neglect of real prayer.

 

So far as I know and can think, nowhere does the Bible refer to non-verbal (as in using words even if silently) contemplation or meditation as prayer. Yes, of course, the Psalms mention meditating on God’s Word or God’s law, but that involves words. And it doesn’t (so far as I can recall) anywhere refer to that as “prayer.”

 

My favorite book on prayer (I’m not expecting it to be everyone’s) is Donald G. Bloesch’s The Struggle of Prayer (1988). Bloesch does not dismiss meditation or contemplation, but he argues, rightly I believe, that prayer is normally “dialogue with God.” He says “The thesis of this book is that true prayer will always give rise to words.” (p. 50) He elaborates: “There is no such thing as nonthinking prayer in the sense of prayer that is wholly divorced from rational intent. We will always have some intimation of our deepest concerns and needs, even though we may not comprehend them.” (p. 50) He acknowledges “inaudible prayer,” of course, but refers to wordless prayer, contemplation and meditation, as “preparation for prayer,” “aid for prayer,” etc.

 

Bloesch writes “While acknowledging the mystical dimension in true prayer, I basically stand in the tradition of the biblical prophets and the Protestant Reformation, which sees prayer not as recitation (as in formalistic religion) or meditation (as in mysticism) but as dialogue between a living God and the one who has been touched by his grace.” (p. vii).

 

I agree with Bloesch that we need to reserve the word “prayer” for "dialogue" with God in which words are involved and contemplation, meditation as preparation for prayer or aids to prayer.

 

Bloesch’s concern and mine is that wordless contemplation and meditation, especially when thought of as “prayer,” can lead to or be associated with belief in an impersonal divine or becoming one with the divine (or realizing one’s divinity). It can reduce the relationship with God to something impersonal and/or it can be spiritual therapy that has little to do with an I-Thou encounter with God in which the human subject is challenged, confronted, brought to his or her knees by God in conviction and repentance.

 

I resist the common saying that “Prayer doesn’t change things; it changes me.” Of course it does change me. That’s not the part to which I object. The part I object to is “Prayer doesn’t change things.” Scripture is filled with prayers that change circumstances, not by means of magic but by appealing to God who responds by changing circumstances. I have trouble even understanding why a person whose worldview and spirituality is shaped by the Bible would ever say that prayer doesn’t change things, it only changes him or her. Even Calvinists normally don’t say that prayer doesn’t change things (although that would seem to me to fit better with their deterministic theology).

 

I’ve tried to track down the origins of the saying that prayer doesn’t change things but only changes the person praying. One source seems to be Scottish theologian William Barclay whose little Bible commentaries (often referred to by young pastors as “Saturday night specials” because they’re handy for getting sermon ideas and illustrations) have been popular and influential. But I doubt he coined the saying. Whoever did coin it was, I suspect, influenced by liberal theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher who argued in The Christian Faith (his systematic theology) that petitionary prayer is immature prayer and should be abandoned. His reason was that it implies God’s dependence on us whereas true “God-consciousness” is based on the feeling of utter dependence on God. It was convenient that abandoning petitionary prayer fit with Schleiermacher’s deterministic (Newtonian) worldview in which nature is harmonious and closed to miracles or anything supernatural. (Although he admitted that miracles might happen, he said that they would already be built into the cause-and-effect network that is nature by God and not happen as interventions or responses to prayer not already planned and programmed into nature and history.)

 

I cringe whenever I hear evangelical Christians (really any Christians but especially evangelical ones!) say “Prayer doesn’t change things; it changes me.” I wonder why they are saying that. Is it to avoid the difficulty of having to think about why some prayers are not answered (at least the way they were prayed)? Do they still pray petitionary prayers? If so, how do they reconcile that practice with the first part of the saying? I suspect that for many evangelical Christians, attaching “If it be thy will” to the end of a prayer reconciles petitionary prayer with “Prayer doesn’t change things.”

 

I am personally opposed to attaching “If it be thy will” to every petitionary prayer. If the Bible says something is God’s will, then we should pray that he do it. What if He doesn’t? Then we live with the tension of that and acknowledge God’s sovereignty and higher wisdom. But to always attach “if it be thy will” to every prayer somehow weakens the prayer’s power. Jesus taught there is power in prayer and that we should expect answers to prayers unless they are prayed to fulfill our own selfish wants and wishes. (I am assuming here that James 4:3 echoes Jesus’ own sentiments.) The Bible encourages confident prayer, not weak praying that lacks confidence in God’s desire to heal, to provide and to save. So long as petitionary prayer is prayed with understanding of God’s superior wisdom and sovereignty, attaching “if it be thy will” doesn’t, in my opinion, serve any purpose when the prayer is for something God has revealed to be his will. That something is revealed to be God’s general will doesn’t necessarily mean he will do it in every case when prayer is offered for it. Only God knows the total circumstances and whether something is possible even for him. (I’m not talking about his power here; I’m talking about his plans and purposes.) Generally speaking, in Scripture, healing of bodies is God’s will. But we are told that total healing is eschatological. Nevertheless, the apostles’ prayers and Jesus’ prayers for others’ healings do not normally come with the caveat attached (if it be thy will).

 

When I pray for someone’s healing, especially if the person is suffering, I do not say “if it be thy will.” I understand that God doesn’t always heal in response even to powerful, confident prayer. God knows best; we simply have to rest in that at times. But Scripture models confident praying for healing. I would never presume to command God to heal a person (as some “faith healing evangelists” do). But to ask God please to heal someone is, I judge, thoroughly biblical. Adding “if it be thy will” implies that we’re not confident God wants to heal. Jesus always wanted to heal people, especially when they were suffering. Jesus is the revelation of the character of God. God’s character is that he wants to heal people. When he doesn’t, when we have prayed powerful, confident prayers on their behalf, we simply leave it in God’s hands and [leave it to] God why he couldn’t heal the person.

 

I know many people recoil at the word “couldn’t” in such a sentence. Can’t God simply do whatever he wants to do? Well, yes, if we mean “has the power to.” But, I believe, in his wisdom, God, and sometimes only God, knows why it would not be best to heal someone or answer another prayer that accords with his general character and desires for people. The apostle Paul reports that God simply said “no” in answer to his prayer for healing. Does that falsify everything I’m saying here? I don’t think so. We should always be prepared to accept a clear “no” from God. But to anticipate God’s “no” is, I think, wrong. James says that “the effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man [person] avails much.” He also says “the prayer of faith shall save the sick and the Lord shall raise him up.” My point is that petitionary prayer, in Scripture, is said to change things, not just the person praying, and that anticipating a “no” when we pray is likely to reduce the power of the prayer. Saying “if it be thy will” does not seem consistent with the clear Scriptural instructions about praying. But I also know that there are no guarantees that God will, for example, heal. We have to live in the tension of powerful, fervent, confident prayer (for things God has revealed He wants to do and give) and the lack of response to the prayer as it was prayed.

 

To think that a certain kind of praying guarantees the response one wants is to reduce prayer to magic. To think that praying does not change circumstances but only “me” is to reduce prayer to spiritual therapy.

 

Now, of course, someone is going to ask about Jesus’ prayer in the garden “Not my will but thine be done.” I believe that, at that point, Jesus knew what God’s will was. As God, it was also his will. But, in the moment of human weakness and fear, he was conflicted. I don’t think it’s a sin to pray “not my will, but thine be done,” of course, but neither do I think it is something we need to or should attach to every prayer, especially when we don’t already know (as Jesus did) what God’s special will is in a particular case.

 

Those are my musings about prayer. Don’t carve them in stone and come back to me a year from now and say “But on such-and-such a day you said….” Context is so important in these matters (of musings). If a year from now I’m in a context where everyone around me is demanding that God do their bidding (as one person I knew a long time ago said “I confront God with his Word….”) I might write about acknowledging God’s sovereignty in prayer. I doubt that I will change my mind about not always praying “if it be thy will” in petitionary prayers, but I might emphasize the importance of resting in God’s wisdom and sovereignty. In brief, the majority of evangelicals need to learn to pray more powerfully and fervently and confidently. The majority of charismatics and traditional Pentecostals need to learn to acknowledge God’s sovereignty more.

Continue to -

 

Index to past articles on "An Open Faith and Open Theology"