Much later in my life, I asked God to aid in the recovery of my very badly broken heart (I know I’m getting personal here, but stuff like this happens often enough that I figured some people could relate…). I endured many long and, what seemed to be, very lonely months. I was praying for relief, hoping for freedom, and wishing for instantaneous rebirth…which never came…or at least, not in the way I wanted or was expecting. Along the way, there were situations and people which were carefully placed into my life. They taught me that sometimes you have to be broken down completely before you can be built back up, and it hurts…but it’s something some people have to endure. After a year of ‘trauma,’ relearning how to trust, and trying to love myself, I met somebody who changed my life and how I viewed it…
But a broken heart never heals completely.

Every Christian wonders now and then if there’s a listening ear that hears the pain that’s cried out…and if that ear belongs to God. What good does it do to voice pain and concern to a god we can’t physically see? I often wonder whether or not acknowledging my struggles through prayer and conversation with God helps at all… I mean, God IS, right? He’s all around, made and sees everything…Wouldn’t God just know? And if God does know…how do we? If I ask Him something, how will I know if I get an answer?

After reading through the previously published entries, I resonated with what last week’s author, Nick Brannen, said about how hearing God is like the fundamental communication process. As a communications major myself, I am well aware that the sender-receiver process is crucial, and is often understated in its importance. What is also very key is recognizing the barriers that can permit the message from getting to its intended recipient. In this context, the barriers of our communication with God are not only found on our turf (meaning we’re not listening to God when He speaks to us), but also on the Heavenly home-front (we can’t see God, so how do we know He’s there?). It’s kind of like when you’re trying to talk to someone who is clearly occupied with some other nonsense and isn’t giving you their full attention… No eye contact. Mumbled responses. Really loud and questioning ‘HUH?’s at any given moment. It’s hard to talk to someone when you feel like they’re not listening to you. It’s even more frustrating when that person should be listening to you.

Somebody told me once that praying doesn’t do anything for us but help us vent and let out our stresses and fears. Their argument was that God is going to do what God is going to do, so for us to put so much stock into Him answering our prayers is just silly. I guess the purpose then, if there is one, is the psychological comfort that comes with voicing the things that consume us. The psychology-nerd in me says that does actually make a little bit of sense and is very true for me atleast. It’s like going to a close friend (or in many of my cases, a certain professor in one of my departments of study at Simpson College who dopes up on Rockstar and likes to confuse people with theological jargon) and telling them your problem(s) but they don’t really have any novel advice to give you. You feel better after talking, but the problem doesn’t just go away…
 
Yeah, that’s a nice idea…but I’m not about to take out my credit card and buy it.

I don’t know how many people know this, but the Bible talks about prayer a lot. According to an online source, the Bible has over 500 uses of the words pray, prayer, prayed, or praying quoted, in any given translation. Bible editions aside, let’s look at some of the biblical stories themselves: In Genesis, a pregnant Hagar prays in the desert after running away from Abraham and Sarah (and is actually the first person to give God a name other than ‘the Lord’). Moses prays and talks directly to God a lot (via burning bush or on a mountain). The Israelites complain in the desert, Moses prays, and they get stuff like food and water. David prays for strength and wisdom. Jesus prays when he’s tempted in the wilderness, in the garden at Gethsemane on the night he was betrayed, and as he was about to die nailed to a wooden cross… God seemed to be very present when these people prayed, so why do we all of the sudden have to question His authority? ‘Oh, but all of that stuff happened a long time ago in the Bible. Of course God was there then, but he’s not here now.’

So why pray?

Before we start looking at the initial question of this entry, I think it would be wise to identify some different kinds of prayer. There are many ways of praying and types of prayer, but I think by examining a few of them a little more closely, it could help give insight to the topic in question.

Let’s start with one we all might know: the standard, “I want to ask Jesus into my heart” prayer. Most Christians tend to have prayed this prayer when they come to some understanding of who Jesus is, why he’s important, and recognizing that they want to know him. Personally, I don’t remember praying this prayer. I started going to church on my own when I was pretty young, and I just kind of always felt Jesus was very real and present in my life, so there was no need to ask, “Hey would you come into my life Jesus? Because I think I could really use this God thing…” It differs from person to person, but typically, I think a lot of Christians can identify with having prayed a ‘prayer of salvation.’ This is where we can probably acknowledge the beginning stages of “praying.” It’s the initial act of identifying and putting faith into something you can’t see… When you pray, you acknowledge God’s existence… You see that there is someone to pray to.

Another kind of prayer is praying for oneself. (I want to make the distinction, though, that I don’t mean praying for reconciliation of sins. That is a type of “self-prayer”, which is very important to our relationship with God, but for this example I wish to exclude it.) When talking about praying for ourselves, right away I start to guilt trip myself. I’ve prayed a lot of selfish prayers over the years. But we all do it, right? “God, please help me get this job so I can have enough money to buy a new laptop or some trendy new clothes.” “God, it would be awesome if you could help that guy like me so I can have a date to my friend’s wedding.” “God, could you please make my life easier? Thanks.” If only it worked that way… The problem I have with self-prayer is, not only is it almost always selfish and egotistical, but often times it’s about really dumb stuff that’s probably not good for us anyway. It would take more than two hands to count how many times I’ve asked God for something that, in hind-sight, if it would have been answered how I wanted, would have been disastrous to my well-being. This is where I feel comfortable saying that God knows what’s best for us…especially since we often don’t. As humans we’re almost guaranteed to fail without a little direction. When I don’t know what to do, I pray, and this is the thing I have learned about praying: When you ask God something, there’s always an answer…it just might not be the one you want. God looks out for us. He doesn’t want us to fail. And even if we do mess up really badly, there’s always a way for us to come back to Him if we want to. 
 
The praying that I do a lot of the time is praying for others. I’m not trying to be all self-righteous by saying how much I pray for other people, but I think there’s something important about recognizing the pain and struggles of others, whether they are Christians or not. To me, claiming to be a Christian means knowing and accepting the challenge of helping to spread what Jesus started, and that’s Love. Praying for others is a very simple way of expressing the love and compassion I have for people simply because they’re people…God’s people. I’m not always the best at doing this, but God knows what’s in our hearts…by acknowledging that we see the hungers of the world (and care about them), I think that shows God that our faith is real, and that it’s not just some prayer we prayed when we were 5 and forgot about…  A lot of the time we can feel so small and helpless in situations that exceed our realm of changing. Sometimes all you can do is pray and hope that the situation is rightfully in God’s hands… But when we do acknowledge this, miraculous things can happen: People are healed, relationships strengthen, and circumstances improve against the odds.

There’s a verse in Hebrews that explains faith pretty simply, but to me, appropriately. It’s Hebrews 11:1 – “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, and the conviction of things unseen.” (NRSV)

What praying comes down to is a connection between a person and God, a communication process of sorts. The more you pray, the more it is possible to know God, hear God, see God, or at least, know there is a God. But I think praying has to mean something also… Not in the sense that you’re a “better Christian” if you pray a lot, but it should come from the heart. If it’s a genuine prayer, God will know. It still might not get the answer you want, but by recognizing that God does exists and that He can answer prayers, it helps to build something beautiful…a relationship. And isn’t that what we all want as Christians? A relationship with our Creator? Feeling the love that has always been there for us? Knowing that living out our faith in a world where it is often shunned means something?

If we return to the question, “Does God really answer prayer?”, it’s obvious that there is no simple or correct answer. I can point to many times when my prayers have clearly been answered in my favor, but there have also been times when I have felt a void and vacancy where God should be. Looking back on those times, it would have seemed that God answered, “No” to whatever I asked for or consulted Him about. But no one ever thinks that at the time…we all want to be optimistic because we’re good Christians, hoping that if we do what God wants we’ll be rewarded accordingly… The reality is we want the instantaneous results that have been demanded by our society. Wanting things in a timely fashion has almost become innate to us. It’s almost as though patience doesn’t exist anymore, and especially when it comes to relying on God. We don’t want to slow down, be quiet, and wait. After all, time is money (and believe it or not, by reading this, you’re actually wasting both of those things…or so it would appear). But how hard is it to pray? The thing is, it isn’t. Praying doesn’t have to be time consuming, formatted with a title page and subject line saying, “Dear God, I am about to pray! You better be listening because this is important stuff. If I don’t hear from you in a week, consider us not friends anymore. To You, From Me.” The hard part comes when we expect immediate answers from God…and then don’t get them. Our inevitable disappointment which comes with such high expectations fosters our lack of faith, and we steer clear of praying because we don’t want to waste time on something that isn’t going to happen. But did it ever occur that maybe God doesn’t have to operate according to our standards? What does He owe us anyway?… Maybe we owe it to God to spend more time trusting in and waiting on Him than hoping He’ll make our lives more convenient.

What may or may not always be evident to us is that God does hear and He does speak…we just may not always be looking and listening for the answers which we seek. My experience tells me that every prayer has an answer, whether we want the one we get or not, and those answers aren’t something we can earn, predict, or expect in a timely manner. I mean, it’s God…maybe we’re not supposed to know how everything is going to play out…and I’m ok with that. Well, the control-freak part of me isn’t, but the faithful part of me is… With knowing God comes the challenge of trusting God, and when we trust, we can develop a relationship that is far beyond our expectations.

By Contributing Author: Erin Guzman
Erin currently attends Simpson College, where she studies communication and is active with the Religious Life Community. She is spending her summer in an internship in Okoboji working with a local church.

I feel it is important to make the distinction that the heart of this question is not so much as to if God is speaking, but what God is saying. So the question becomes ‘How do we know what God’s message is for us individually?’

In all good communication there is a sender and receiver of a message. The sender constructs a message to be sent to the receiver, and the receiver tries to understand the intended meaning of the sender’s message. BAM! That’s an entire semester of communication 101 in a few short sentences. We go through this same process in hearing God. We receive and decode the message that God sends us to understand what God desires of us.

My biggest fear as a Christian is hearing God incorrectly. What if there is a communication breakdown between the divine to the profane? What if God gives me his divine direction for my life and I misinterpret it? What if I think God is calling me to reach out to someone and he actually wasn’t and a make a fool out of myself? What if I am so hyped up emotionally that I just think God is speaking to me? What if I put words in God’s mouth? What if I get it wrong?

I want to feel secure in what God is really calling me to. But this is extremely difficult because God seems send two very different types of messages.

1. God says things that make a whole lot of sense.  Don’t murder anyone. Makes sense right? Whether God is telling me this or not it’s a good message to live by because it makes sense. It makes sense, given the emotional and domestic scars left by adultery, that we should be faithful to our spouses. It makes sense to gather wisdom. It makes sense to do what is just. Few people have to wonder if God is really calling them to do these things or if they are making something up on their own. However, not everything God said has made perfect sense to the receiver of his message. 

2. God says things that make almost no sense. Noah was told to build a huge boat. Abraham was told to sacrifice his only son. Moses was told to lead Israel out of bondage. Mere fishermen were told to follow this rabbi named Jesus, when only the best and the brightest became disciples of such a man. In all these cases God asked for something quite peculiar. Though in hindsight everything God asked his people to do had a purpose; however, it required great faith and obedience at the time these messages were given.

My fear of hearing God incorrectly at the time when he gives me a message is rooted in a problem that I call the ‘God, devil, or burrito dilemma ‘. When I think that God might be communicating something to me I always second guess myself asking, ‘am I just making something up in my head because I just really want to hear from God? Is Satan trying to confuse me so I can never fully hear and understand God’s voice? Maybe this bad feeling I have is just the burrito I had for lunch and not God’s spirit.’

I feel that is first important to understand who God is and how he communicates if we are to understand his message for us.

God is a multimedia communicator. We have thousands of ways to communicate a message. We have phones, internet, even the way that we look at someone communicates something. We have to consider that God also has multiple ways of sending us a message, and some are not so traditional.  Scripture shows a few of the ways that God communicates with us.

- Scripture – God’s written word
- Other people or prophecy
- Spiritual “messengers” known as angels
- Dreams and visions
- Theophany (which is a fancy word for God shows up in burning bushes and such)
- Miracles
- The Holy Spirit interacts directly with our spirit

We should understand that God speaks through these traditional methods found in scripture as well as many non traditional methods such as weather, what some call coincidence, repetition, etc.

God is a master communicator. Part of being a great communicator is knowing your audience. God has a wonderful advantage here because he knows his audience better than the audience knows themselves.  If God has a something to say to you, he knows exactly how to communicate it to you in a way that you will understand at the right time.

But if that is true then why do so many reject the Gospel? Perhaps its not because God is failing to communicate, but that the audience has no faith to listen. Many say they might believe in God if he would just speak up. To me, this seems very arrogant before the God of the universe. I imagine God thinking, ‘Do you even know who I am? I am God – you are man. Since when did God owe anything to man? Since when did man not owe everything to his creator?’

To hear from God requires first submitting to God. ‘Do not copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect his will really is.’ If you allow God to mold you how he wants and allow him to shape way you think then you will be in a position to understand God’s message and know it is good.

What gets in the way is selfishness. You mold yourself. You need to get something from God before you give anything of yourself. Imagine an ordinary man writes a letter to a king saying ‘Hey big royal important king dude! If you want me to be your loyal subject then you must give me a very good reason why. Oh, and I need you to come to my house in royal garb, with trumpets, and present your case. Once you do all this in the manner of my choosing (and don’t forget to present two forms of identification so I know it’s really you) then I will consider following you as king. Unless, of course, following you as king is uncomfortable or difficult.  Until then, I am my own boss, thank you very much.”

How would a King respond to a letter like this? Arrest the man for opposing the throne? God responds with patience and grace. He continues to speak, but on his terms. Without submitting, it as though our spiritual cell phones have no signal. God is calling, but we don’t receive the call. If we open and submitted to God we are in the position where we can begin to learn how to hear his voice.

Here are some quick tips from my own experience in listening to God.

- If you are just beginning to learn to hear God’s voice reject anything that you feel God, satan, or the burrito is telling you to do that benefits you. Instead whenever it could benefit the kingdom, go for it every time!
- Learn to be quiet – God is said to speak in a still, small voice
- Confess your sins regularly. Sin is the opposite of submission to God. It is much easier to communicate with him when present sin isn’t in the way
- Remember that God will never communicate anything that contradicts scripture!

How do you communicate with God? How do you learn to know what he is telling you? 

Shalom,
Nick

From contributing author Nick Brannen
Nick is a graduate of Valley High School and currently studies Speech Communication Iowa State University. A very talented musician and gifted communicator, Nick spends a lot of his time digging into God and God’s word in multiple venues and mediums. Nick is recently engaged and is excited about his future with his fiance Michelle.

These are the terms which naturally dictate our thought process, so the way we will almost always respond to such a question will be in response to this very self-concerned perspective on human motivations.  Within this realm of human logic, we’ve got about four options for responses when it comes to the question of Why should I do “good” things (assuming that we actually can do “good things”; but more on that in a minute)?  And those are:

A.)  Otherwise You’ll Spend A Really, Really, Really, Really Long Time In a Very Burn-y Place.
B.)  So Others Will (Hopefully) Do Good Things For You (At Some Future, Indeterminate Time and Location).
C.)  Just Like Eating Your Vegetables, ‘It’s Good For You.’ (Perhaps, Morally Speaking, You’ll Be Able to Drop Trou and Shake Whatever God Gave You in the Direction of the Poor Degenerates Who Cohabitate This God-Forsaken Planet.)
D.)  It Doesn’t Matter, So Let’s Chew Some ‘Shrooms and Get Naked!

Now, given that pretty much any rationale for positive action boils down to one of those first four responses (at least, that’s about how I see it –feel free to argue with me about it if the urge arises), let’s ponder the prospects of actually doing something ‘good’ for God.  If your motivation for pulling over to help an elderly woman change a flat tire is scoring some Heaven Points, or making society a better place (which will be better for you and your offspring in the long run), or to get that warm-fuzzy feeling when the old bat says ‘thank-you,’ then it sort of seems less ‘good’, doesn’t it?  And this is clearly because you’re intentions never extend beyond self-interest.  Or, to put the matter in financial terms (because every conscientious American understands these things when cast under this particular light), lending money to an acquaintance who happens to be in need seems like a nice gesture –but it becomes a different matter entirely if you charge 15% interest, compounded daily.  Clearly, at least from the borrower’s perspective in this scenario, what separates benevolence from being unable to sit down for weeks on end is the presence and degree of selfish motivation.

Now the question arises on whether or not it is actually possible to do anything that is purely and intrinsically selfless –and I’m not sure there’s a clear answer on this one (which thankfully isn’t the point).  I’ll momentarily go post-modern here and say my opinion is a good, solid: Maybe.  But what is clear is that some motivations are more heavily and explicitly selfish than others.  For instance, if you do charge interest when you lend money, there is a difference from charging 20% and charging 1%.  Charging only 1% is on the surface less selfish than the alternative.  Moreover, beyond concern for the involvement of interest rates, it makes a difference whether or not you expect a return of the favor down the road, or even if you expect the money back at all.  And then, of course, there are different kinds of currencies that can be returned that don’t involve money, such as public recognition and approval, the potential reception of God’s favor, sexual attention for being “a good person”, etc., etc.   And again, in all of these areas of conceivable reward/benefit, selfish motivation comes into play in varying degrees.
   
Therefore, given that selfishness varies in its level of intentionality and awareness, “doing good” in vague, practical terms means progressively minimizing selfish motivations.  To theologize this on-line, monologous (I think I just invented that word) discourse, doing good means acting purposefully and continually to minimize things like greed, vanity, pride, lust, envy, gluttony, sloth, (1,2,3,4,5,6…) and wrath –in both their internal and public manifestations. 
Yet, just when it seems like we’ve accomplished something, we once again return to the same, old question: if we can’t earn some sort of reward for our efforts, why make the attempt to do ‘good’? 

Look around at the world for a while and let me know how your impulses toward either wrath or sloth turn out.  

And thus the question is further qualified: why [try to] do good?  Period.  And any attempt to rationalize or justify doing good will reduce to cyclical logic, continually feeding back in upon itself, taking your sense of goodness and rotting it from the inside out.  (As a side note, this has been what’s convicted me of the reality of the doctrine of Original Sin.)  Hey, and I’m with you in you’re thinking that even ethical arguments, and the promotion of self-betterment are more worthy alternatives to letting greed and selfishness (evil) run rampant.  But it still doesn’t answer the question.  Not really.

Strangely, I’ve thought a lot about this question over the years, and the only sort of resolution I can come up with is to return to that old Sunday School Teacher cliché: ‘Because God said so.’ And I’m not sure that we can, as human beings, ever get beyond that. 

God knows what is Good.  Indeed, ontologically speaking, God is the only thing that is Good, in the purest sense of the word.  So doing ‘good’ means obeying God, and that is the end of our justification.  There is no ‘well, it will have this result’, or ‘God will in turn do this for you…’  You don’t know that –you can’t know that (unless perhaps God tells you, in the form of a promise… which is another, equally sticky debate).  Thus, the command of God is the last answer to the question –everything beyond that is speculations, counting on Grace that hasn’t been dispensed yet in the moment, making it unreal, untrue –a lie.   

Obviously, this is going to be a troubling conclusion to draw, and for a number of reasons.  There remains a vast multitude of impending wars to be fought over the authentic claims to God’s authority; it upsets our vision of the ‘goodness’ of this life; and it calls into question the very nature of our relationship(s) with God. It may even reshape the way we envision God.  Then, in turn, everything we do in connection to God is disrupted.  Can we even Evangelize anymore?  How and why should we spread what we believe about God and Jesus –without explicitly appealing to the language of selfishness (which is our only given common language)?  What would our proclamations sound like?  ‘Believe in God, because God said so!’ ? 

Well, I suppose it’s a start isn’t it?  Yet, indeed we can speak more clearly about God to others, because we are in relationship with God.  We try to obey what God tells us, because God has given us life.  Because God has created.  Because God has given.  Because God is loving and merciful, and just (in a way that humans can’t be), and vengeful, and amazing, and terrifying.  And all of our lives are a response to that, a bold and hopeful testimony of thanksgiving and passing along.  And so we do good, because that is the only way that we can ever participate in any real sense of goodness.  We give and receive; those around us give and receive; God gives and receives.  And it’s good.  Or we’re simply here, together; and maybe that’s even better. 

With one last thought (and then you can go back to screwing around on Facebook or Youtube or whatever): consider the cross, which has been and still is a heavy sticking point for those who give Christianity any serious thought.  However, in my mind, it is at precisely this point that Christianity presents a unique perspective amidst the vast sea of worldviews and religions.  ‘If you want to be my disciples,’ Jesus says, ‘take up your cross and follow me.’  This sounds to me very much like a call to at least prepare and face suffering, humiliation and death.  It doesn’t suggest that suffering and death aren’t real, and it doesn’t minimize the terror of the view as it draws near; but it’s a command, which somehow, incomprehensibly, connects the path of suffering and death with God’s goodness.  How it does this is something worth talking about and maybe even speculating upon.  But regardless of the ‘how’, it nonetheless stretches our experience of what “Goodness” means in a way that I can’t imagine otherwise.  And may we share this Goodness unto death. 

By Contributing Author Jeremy Poland
Jeremy is a graduate of Simpson College in Indianola, the college of choice for several of the authors on this website. He attended Drew Theological Seminary in New Jersey where he earned his Masters of Divinity. Jeremy currently resides in the Des Moines Metro area with his wife, where he serves as a youth minister.

Sin.  Sin entered this world, from the Christian standpoint, when Adam and Eve directly disobeyed God and ate the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden.  Three chapters into the sacred text, humanity has already disobeyed God!  Only three chapters into the Bible, humanity is faced with the reality and the need to reconcile with the creator.  Throughout the Old Testament, animal and grain sacrifices were given to God as a way of this reconciliation. 

The New Testament comes, and Christ, the second person of the Holy Trinity, is sent to take the place of the animals and grain, becoming the living sacrifice for those who believed.  The Father gives the Son up and is mediated through the Spirit.  We are told the Spirit of God continues to guide us and lead us if we obey. 
But there is that tricky thing that continues to get in the way, continues to harm not only you and me, but harm our relationship between God and creation.  No matter how upright of a life we try to live, sin is still a constant threat.  Sin does not cease to exist in the life and heart of a Christian.  Just because a person has had a change of heart, has accepted Christ as their savior and committed themselves to live a Christian life does not mean sin does not still attack.  Justified Christians are not completely and wholly transformed into the image of God simply because they are justified.  Christians are inundated with greed, lust, and other desires of the heart that are unclean and unholy.  This, for John Wesley, is proof for the need of continued repentance throughout the Christian life.  Wesley states, “In this sense we are to repent after we are justified.  And till we do so we can go no farther.  For till we are sensible of our disease it admits of no cure.”  If Christians do not continue to repent, to acknowledge their brokenness before God, then they grow stagnant, no longer being able to move forward in the life of Christ. 

But what happens when the repentance of our sin stops?  What happens when the sin that fills our lives becomes the chief focus, blocking out any and all traces of our relationship with God?  If someone is not responding to God’s love, if there is not a mutual indwelling, by all means the Spirit would grow stagnate and should withdraw.  But, how much does it take for the Spirit to do so?  How long must we ignore God before the Spirit departs?

At times, this thought of quenching the Spirit, disallowing the Spirit to actively work within our lives, almost seems like the moral of the story from “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.”  This concept is oversimplifying the theological matter, but at the same time is insightful about proving the point.  In the story, a bored shepherd boy thought it would be fun calling out “wolf” as he tended his flock.  Villagers who responded to the wolf calls found that the alarms were false and that they had wasted their time trying to help. When the boy was actually confronted by a wolf, the villagers did not believe his cries for help and the wolf ate the flock.  At times, humanity’s sinful nature seems exactly like the boy crying out wolf.  We get bored, we are enticed to do something we know we shouldn’t, and then we feel bad about it.  But, then the cycle repeats itself.  Eventually, we don’t feel as bad about the mistake we made, and the mistake becomes a part of who we are.  When Christians know they have made a mistake, the right thing is to repent, fall on our knees and ask forgiveness.  But, according to the cycle described above, when we repeat a mistake enough times, the idea to need forgiveness for said action begins to erode.  We may go to God in prayer and ask forgiveness, but if it has become second nature to sin, we may not fully mean what we are asking God to do.  We are crying wolf.  Eventually, usually in times of trial or grief, we may find ourselves finally going to God in earnest.

But, when we continually sin, continually cry wolf, there has to be consequences.  If people did not adequately have a fear of God, they would simply live a life without care, which could end in a type of lawlessness.  The popular thought with Justification was that once a person was justified, this action wiped the slate clean, absolving the newly justified from all past and future sins.  This scared Wesley, because he believed in a proper fear of disappointing God. 
This is where the theology gets a little dangerous.  I agree with Wesley to an extent.  Wesley states, “For it plainly appears God does not continue to act upon the soul unless the soul re-acts upon God…But if we do not then love him who first loved us…his Spirit will not always strive; he will gradually withdraw, and leave us to the darkness within our own hearts.”  There has to be a mutual indwelling, of God in us and us in God. 

The quenching of the spirit is a theological issue, but is also a moral issue.  Living a life where we live in a mutually indwelling relationship with God, where we recognize the grace given to us to save us from what we truly deserve based on our actions, rescues us from forcing the Spirit out.  We cannot expect there to be an exact timeline when it comes to the Spirit departing a wayward sinner.  Time to God is not the same as time to us.  However, doesn’t there need to be some sort of “point of no return”?  Logically, this would make sense, but does not hold true to the nature of the grace of God.  Wesley thinks, and I agree, that even if one falls away completely, one can still be restored to life anew.  However, there must once again be a rededication of one’s life to the aims of Christ.

We cannot know what the timeline is for the Spirit leaving; therefore we should not worry about it.  Instead of focusing on the negative, how much it will take, we should worry more about the upkeep of the relationship with God, praying genuinely to overcome our sinful nature.  If we dwell in our sin, letting it control our lives, we simply allow ourselves to ask useless questions.  When we are able to look past our sin, when we are able to keep our mouths shut instead of crying wolf, we can see God’s grace and acceptance, the calling to be in relationship.  The question of when the Spirit will depart becomes irrelevant if we continue to allow our souls to breathe towards him.  The question of how much sin it takes for a human to force the Spirit out becomes moot if we strive to continue to grow in God’s grace.

You without sin cast the first stone.  A simple phrase spoken from the lips of Christ.  But in those words is great knowledge.  Even those who ran the temples, the holiest of holy, were not without sin.  They were not beyond reproach from God; they were not beyond Jesus knowing every wrong they did.  And neither are we.  We are not beyond God’s scope.  We are not beyond the need to ask for forgiveness.  It is only through continual repentance throughout our Christian life that we can continue to grow in faith and righteousness. 

By Contributing Author Andrew Bardole
Andrew attended Northwestern College in Orange City, IA where he received his degree in history. He then went on to Dubuque Theological Seminary and currently serves as the Associate Pastor at First United Methodist in Indianola, IA. He lives with his wife and two daughters.

What was the point of this exercise? It’s a fair question, and I promise the answer wasn’t to depress you or make you feel hopeless (though, if I did, it won’t have been entirely a waste).

When Chris asked me to write about why the world is such a mess if an all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving God is in control, I instinctively went back to Genesis to re-read the stories of the creation and fall of man. I believe the answer is there, and that it’s simpler than we want to think, I just don’t think we talk about it much outside of the realm of a college-level philosophy course.

“Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”

Does this sound at all like the exercise you did a minute ago? It should. I wanted you to think more deeply about what it must have been like before God began his masterpiece, because I think that verse has some pretty heavy implications if we think about it in light of the proceeding parts of the story. Additionally, as Genesis goes on to recount the story of creation, I think some pretty important parts of God’s character are revealed.

From the darkness, God adds a light to provide a contrast between the two. “God saw that the light was good, and separated the light from the darkness.”

God took the formless, endless body of water and gave it shape. God made a distinction between water, and not water (sky). He then brought dry ground up from within the water, further defining the water from the sky and land. “God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.

Again later, God further distinguishes light from dark, and night from day, and when each would cover the earth. “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night…”

All these things, I think, are God creating relativity where there was none before. And, at the risk of sounding horribly cliché, I’ll go on to say that the things we so often see as bad, hurtful, negative, or undesirable can, and should, be accepted as gifts right alongside all the coincidentally good, pleasurable, positive, and desirable things.

Am I saying that we should celebrate when people kill each other, when diseases ravage entire countries, and when seemingly unavoidable accidents hurt us at the worst of times? Absolutely not! I would never in a million years assert that we should kid ourselves into believing that the pain we experience isn’t real; or worse yet, that it’s unfounded and easily manipulable with some new age mind trickery garbage. However, I believe it’s entirely possible to experience pain in life, and at the same time, accept that it’s an inevitable part of life on Earth without blaming others, or God.

In Finding Darwin’s God, Kenneth Miller gives an excellent reconciliation of God’s goodness in light of the existence of the mess we’ve made on Earth:

“Can God be good when there is evil, even murder, in the living world? Of course He can. To religious people, God is the embodiment of good. Why, then, does He allow evil to exist? How could a kind and loving God allow a father to murder his child? How could He permit the carnage of war, the terror of natural disaster, the inhuman agony of famine and disease? He allows such things because He made us material creatures, dependent upon the physical world for existence. In such a world, the destruction of one form of life comes about as natural a consequence as the existence of another. We are connected to the natural world. We are born in pain, we struggle for our food and drink and shelter, we age, and eventually we die. He allows such things as a consequence of the gift of human freedom. The ability to do good means nothing without the freedom to do evil. In a world of individuals, some will always choose the latter, and their actions form an unfortunate backdrop to which the moral choices of virtue, charity, and honesty stand in contrast.”

Evil sucks, there’s no way around that. It’s never easy to standby and wonder, “God, where are you!?” But, as Kenneth brilliantly put it, those things provide us a “backdrop” against which we can see a contrast of the goodness that manages to permeate all the evil. God hasn’t forced us to see his goodness all the time; instead, He put us in a world that gives us the option to.

I’ll leave you with this. It’s a common verse, but I’d like you to think about it in a new way:

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you face trials of many kinds.”

Considering trials pure joy isn’t to jump around gleefully when you’re staring evil straight in the eye. It goes to say that we should think carefully about, contemplate, and reflect on our trials. And that, after the dust has settled, when we are allowed to carefully think about how God is allowing us to experience this trial in order to develop perseverance, we are free to be joyful, knowing that God is using it to help make us mature and complete, not lacking anything.

Post by: Luke Brown
Luke earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Technical Writing from Iowa State University in Ames. Currently employed by Nationwide Insurance, he has contributed to publications such as the Immersion Blog and Veritas Mag. A talented musician, Luke serves regularly at Lutheran Church of Hope in West Des Moines, where he plays multiple instruments. Luke is recently engaged and plans to marry his fiance, Tere, this summer.

Simple, yet profound. For Bear Grylls, it’s not too complicated. As a child, Bear’s understood faith to be a very simple thing. He says it was natural; knew that God existed and that God was his friend and that was easy enough. But as he grew up he learned that faith didn’t actually work that way and the picture lost its color and eventually faded altogether.

Does Bear’s story sound anything like your story? I can tell you, it certainly sounds like mine. A lot of people can tell you about the moment they were “saved” (their language not mine), but I’m not one of them. For me, God has always been a part of the picture. I’ve got my parents (who I think read this blog) to thank for that! And when I was young, it was simple. Jesus died for my sins and because of that I was going to heaven. And honestly, that was enough, even through high school. But then I got to college and the picture changed some. Thanks to some excellent professors, I was challenged… in a big way. Almost all of things I thought I knew about being a Christian got put through the ringer. Makes me think that line from “Fight Club”… “You know you who you are? You have no idea.” At the time it was easy to get annoyed, and even down right upset, with those professors. I had a simple faith that answered all the questions sufficiently (yep, used that word on purpose) and that was all I really needed or wanted. How dare these people that I barely know question the faith that I’ve always had! Who did this people think they were exactly???

But now I get it. Through that grab-bag of intellectual and emotional experiences, I’ve learned a lot about myself and God. I learned to ask questions that I’d never thought to ask and learned new ways to think about the answers. And I’m still learning everyday.

Christianity has a rich tradition of asking questions and challenging everything we thought we knew. It’s happened countless times throughout the history of the faith. Bear Grylls understands faith to be simple, and he’s not wrong. At its core, when we get down to basics, it’s all about God loving us. But we can’t use that as an excuse not to think and ask big questions of a big God. As Rob Bell wrote in Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith:

It’s the spirit of people like Rob Bell, Stanley Haurwas, Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther, and countless others that drives this series I am starting today. For the next 9 weeks here at chrispetrick.com, we’re going to explore together some of the big questions of faith and Christianity. You’ll read some essays by people close to me who have influenced my faith journey and asked some very critical questions of their own. If you’re looking for all the answers, you won’t find them here. If you’re looking for a bunch of people telling that you’re wrong and they’re right, well you won’t find that here either. If you are looking for a group of people who are doing their best to follow this Jesus person, then you are in the right place. My goal here on this blog has always been to contribute to the on-going conversation, and for the next several weeks I’ve invited other voices to chime in. Some of these voices are pastors, but most are not. Some have gone to seminary, but most haven’t. Each and every one of them has asked tough questions and taken the steps necessary to try and find the answers. I’m going to kick things off with a paragraph that introduced Rob Bell’s book:

I hope that you’ll join us for this journey.

For a long time I was doing this just because I was told I was supposed. It somehow came with the whole Christianity thing, I had to spend quiet time with God. I didn’t like this for several reasons:

Eventually I just stopped doing quiet time altogether. If God wants to say something to me, let him do it while I’m eating a sandwich or, better yet, while I’m sleeping. He spoke to people in dreams all the time in the Bible, didn’t he?

Here’s a question: how do you expect to hear and see God in your life?

One of the things we do as church people is we use the Bible as a source of authority. Nothing wrong with that at all. But we tend to highlight all of the big, flashy ways God spoke to people. Moses and the burning bush, the angels appearing to the Mary and the shepherds, God coming down from the heavens like a dove, and so on. So what conclusion could we draw other than: when God speaks, I’ll know it! So we go through life as we do, all the while anticipating a burning bush of our own. And one day we stop and look around and realize that he hasn’t shown up… at least not in the way we anticipated.

Here’s the kicker: some of are waiting for a God that never showed up.

We said the prayers, sang the songs, and took a solid 30 minutes for quiet time everyday and still nothing. God did not come down to tell us where to go and what to do, much less give us the ability to part seas and turn our walking sticks into snakes… Okay no one really carries a walking stick anymore, but you get my point. Let’s go a little deeper: maybe you didn’t get that job. Maybe you prayed for that girl or that guy to notice you and s/he never did. Maybe you prayed for that relative or friend to miraculously healed and they died anyway. And the only conclusion you can reach is: God didn’t show up.

We have to understand how ridiculous it was for John to ask, “Are you the one? Or should we look for another?” John knew Jesus, he had always known Jesus. There had never been a doubt in John’s mind that this was the one, the true Son of God, the Messiah. He had dedicated his entire life to following this Jesus and even found himself in prison because of it. And it is in prison, in the face of certain death, that John wavers. Are you the one?

And Jesus’ answer to John is an answer for us too. “Yes John, I am the Messiah and yes, I am the one leaving you in prison to die.” To John in his situation, God “showing up” meant that Jesus would come and rescue him from his fate. But that wasn’t in the cards. God showed up, he always does, just not always in the way we expect.

Remember the question I asked earlier? How do you expect to hear and see God in your life? John expected to see him at the prison door, setting him free. But that wasn’t what happened. I have no doubt that there are countless stories we could share about all those times we expected God in a certain way and he showed up completely differently.

Remember the story of the Road to Emmaus? The risen Christ walks with them, eats with them, talks with them, but it’s only after he’s gone that they realize who he was. What that says to me is this: God is all around us, we just fail to recognize it.

The other night at worship band rehearsal I had my band try something a little different for our devotional time. I played a song by The Album Leaf (great stuff) for them and invited them to close their eyes and allow God to speak to them through the music. There were nine of us in the room and everyone came up with something different. One person saw the devastation of Parkersburg, an Iowa town ravaged by a tornado last year, and saw everything put back together around her. She saw, as she put it, restoration. Another saw a bride coming down the aisle and was overwhelemed with a sense of hope. Another shared that he and his wife, for medical reasons, were forced to terminate a pregnancy. Through the song he heard God saying, “everything is going to be all right.” What’s fascinating is that the song is five and half minutes of instrumental music. Not a single word was spoken, but much was heard.

One of the things we as a church should focus on isn’t so much the recognition of the big signs from God in our lives. Believe me, if God chooses to speak to you in that way, you’ll know. As Donald Miller put it in his blog:

When big things happen you’ll know, that’s what makes them big things. What we as people who follow this risen Jesus need to learn to do is atune ourselves to hear and see all of the not-so-obvious ways God is speaking to us.

Can you hear?

I was one of those kids that went to youth gatherings in jr. high and high school. In fact, I can remember every year one of the highlights was going to the Iowa District West Senior Youth Gathering in Des Moines for a weekend in the fall. Not only did I get to spend time with my best friend, but there was cool music, great speakers, and fun mission opportunities. All in all, it was always a good time. I can remember coming home from those gatherings as excited about God as I’d ever been. It seemed that Scripture made more sense, that Christian music was all I wanted to listen to, and that I could hear God speaking to me like never before.

If you ever went to church camp as a kid, you probably know what I’m talking about. You spent an entire week immersed in God, reading your Bible, singing worship songs 3-4 times a day, praying, and learning all kinds of new and exciting things about what it meant to follow Jesus. So you went home “on fire” for the Lord. And maybe you even managed to maintain that same level of excitement and commitment for about a week or so… But we all know what eventually happened, don’t we? You forget to read your Bible one day and it turns into a month. You skipped morning or evening prayers. You lost interest in wrestling with questions of faith. And maybe you felt like God had left you. You asked questions like, “Why can’t I hear God like I did at camp?” and “Where is God now?”

Eloi, eloi, lema sabachthani? [Mark 15:34]

Regardless of whether it was a youth gathering, a camp, a concert or whatever, we’ve all had those “mountain top” experiences. And if we’re being honest with ourselves, we can admit that there are times when it is easy to believe in God and times when, well, not so much.

In case you didn’t know, one of the things I’m passionate about is EMS. My full-time career aspirations lay in EMS and fire service, and it’s something I’ve been doing part-time for 3 years now. When people find out that you’re in emergency medicine, one of the first questions they always ask is, “What’s the worst call you’ve ever had?” I always hestitate to answer. No doubt what they are expecting is something like they’ve seen on “Third Watch” or “Rescue Me”, a story of fire or car accidents or something like that. My worst call ever was nothing of the sort. I’m not a huge fan of talking about it, but in January of 2009 my partner Brad and I coded a 15 week old baby girl, who later died. Like I said, there are times when it is easy to believe in God and times when, well…

I would love to tell you that, more than a year later, I’m “okay” with it. The truth of it is, I’m not. It’s not one of those things that I think I will ever truly come to terms with. Babies aren’t supposed to die. This poor girl never had a chance to ride a bike, have a first kiss, fall in love, tell her parents she loved them or anything of the other things that make up a life. Never had a chance. I don’t think about it often anymore, but when I see so many people around me contributing so little to society and wasting the gifts given to them, I can’t help but wonder why this girl died and others live.

Just like any relationship, faith has its good days and its bad ones too. I’d count that cold January day as a bad one for me. The truth is that sometimes it feels like God is no where to be found, doesn’t it? And it’s not just in the face of physical death, it’s the people we lose to addiction, to decite, and to shame.

Ask yourself this quesiton: have you ever felt like their was more evidence for God’s absence than his presence?

Me too.

“Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘I will cause all of my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion… There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back…” [Exodus 33: 19; 21-23]

I would love to be able to sit here and tell you why that 15 week old baby girl had to die and why all of the bad things that happen to people happen. The honest truth though, friends, is that I have no idea. What I have realized is that sometimes we don’t see God until he has passed by. In the moment of our grief and our brokenness, God is mostly certainly present, but more often than not it doesn’t feel that way.

I have to believe that God is not sitting by and watching his creation fall to pieces. I have to believe that in the moments when I would swear God is no where to be found, he is present in hidden ways. I have to believe that when we cry about death and brokeness that God cries along with us. Because if not, then this is all we have, and that is something I refuse to believe.

Why didn’t God reach down and bring that child back to life? Why weren’t we able to bring her back? Why? I honestly I have no idea.

What I’m considering now is that sometimes we don’t see God except after he’s passed by. I’ve been changed forever by what I’ve experienced and even though I can’t tell you what God is up to in my life, I’m trusting that one day I’m going to look back on that day and understand. I fully expect that, in this lifetime, I will come to understand what I am supposed to understand about that January morning. That doesn’t make it okay and it doesn’t make it any easier.

Our desire is to know exactly what God is up to all the time. Why can’t we see and hear God all the time? What possible good could come from the brokenness that you and I have experienced? In the face of the pain that we have all seen and see everyday, how can we possible believe that God even exists, let alone is on our side?

The answer, I believe, is resurrection.

“The story, the big story, of the Scriptures is not, ‘Hey, someday we all abandon this place,’ the story is ‘God has not abandoned this place,’ and in fact something new has begun to put this place back together. To renew this world, to redeem this world, to restore this world, to reconcile this world. To bring heaven and earth together here. The Bible begins here and the Bible ends at the end of Revelation, God takes up residence here… It’s about this world, the world that God loves, the world that God has not abandon.” – Rob Bell, “Resurrection”, a sermon from April, 04, 2010.

The Bible, the story of God and his people, tells us that the day the women went to Jesus tomb they found it empty. He is not here. The good news of the resurrection is not where you get to go when you die, the good news of the resurrection is that God’s restoration of this world has begun with declaration that everything you thought you knew about death and life has gone out the window. With the empty tomb God institutes a new world order, a creation that is has he intended, a world in which love wins. The good news of the resurrection is not “you are going…” the good news is, “God has come.”

It started with Jesus and it continues with us. Just as we can look around and see death, pain, and sadness, we hear stories of lives changed, of miracles happening, and of a God who has not given up on this world.

I recently had a conversation with a good friend who’s grandmother had passed away. He said to me, “It’s difficult now, but we know we’ll see her again.” I asked him a question that I’ve asked to many people, “Can you imagine going through this without knowing that? Without God?” He said back to me, “It would be impossible.”

Even in the midst of his sadness and grief, my friend understood that even though it felt as though God was distant, he was present.. and he knew that was better than no God at all.

I don’t have a good explanation for that baby girl’s death.

I do have an empty tomb.

He is not here. He is risen.

As you might imagine, I frequently find myself in conversations about God, God’s nature, and what it might mean to follow God and/or profess faith in God. There’s a lot of God talk. I was having one such conversation recently with a friend of mine. She is an intelligent girl who asks intelligent questions. She is something of a self-proclaimed humanist. What is a humanist, you ask? Well, AmericanHumanist.org defines at as:

…a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism and other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity.

In essence, a humanist believes in, well, humanity. You will note the denouncing of the need for any kind of, "…theism and other supernatural beliefs…". It is the belief that we can make the world better and we can do it without God or any semblance of an organized believe structure.

#1 – Zero Sum Game

Here’s one of the problems with this thought: it seems to me that "personal fulfillment" and "the greater good of humanity" find themselves on opposite sides of the fence more often than not, especially in American society. We, often under the banner of American individualistic, pull yourself up by your bootstraps mentality, have created a culture that is a zero sum game: your loss is my win.

Let’s ask ourselves this question: if I were to live a life of personal fulfillment by cultural standards, would I find myself aligned with the greater good of humanity? If we’re being honest, then I think the answer is no.

#2 – The Good

If you’ve been exposed to philosophy or theology in at all in your life, you’re probably familiar with concepts of "the good". And therein lies my second issue with humanism, as briefly defined above: it lacks a common understanding of the good.

In this system (or lack thereof) I have no basis for saying that, for example, it is wrong to take something that isn’t yours. We can certainly attempt to make the argument that people behaving in this manner is somehow unhealthy for the community, but without any shared understanding of the "greater good" the argument has little weight.

Perhaps the best way I think to explain this is stoplights. We have a shared understanding of what the colors on a stoplight mean, red means stop, green means go, yellow means go faster… and so on. It is this shared understanding that allows traffic to flow and thus enables us to commute safely. Now imagine for a moment that we lacked that shared understanding. Say, for example, there was just one man in your town that decided red meant go and every red light he accelerated, because in his understanding of stoplights that’s how that light is supposed to be interpreted. What would happen? There would be chaos and more than a few fender benders.

However, because share both an authority (the government who created and maintains the traffic system) and a common interpolation of said authority’s rules, we can drive and not die… speaking of…

#3 – Lifeboats

As we often said in our theology classes when having discussions of this nature, the only shared understanding of the good that humanity apart from God possesses is that we don’t like dying. No one wants to be dead, there aren’t too many people who would argue that point. And, for the sake of argument, let’s say we got everyone in the world to agree with this common understanding of the good. I’m not a fan of recycling material (although I do it frequently) but Don Miller’s quote from his book Searching for God Knows What is too pertinent to exclude here:

The thing is, if people are in a lifeboat, the reason they feel passionate about being a good person and all is because if they aren’t, they are going to be thrown overboard; they are going to be killed.

If all we can agree on is that we’d rather not be dead, we’re existing in a lifeboat. The only reason I’m nice to you, the only reason I don’t steal, the only reason I don’t cheat, the only reason I behave in a way that vaguely resembles morality is so that you don’t kill me.

#4 – Forward Motion

So let’s say again that we understand goodness to be us not dying. At best all we can do in this system is run in place. One of the things I love about Christianity is that there some sense of moving forward, towards something. If our only desire is to not die, all we can do is sit around and devise better ways to not die. That’s no way to live… or well it is but… nevermind…

#5 – Why We Need Favre (and Jesus)

This is the question I ask myself when facing humanism: do I honestly believe we (humanity) can do this on our own? The answer, I think, is Brett Favre.

So Favre now plays for the Vikings, which I could talk about but I’m not going to. Favre was brought in by the Vikings last year pretty late in the day, after the majority of OTAs and training camp was over and done with. Instead of going with one of the three QBs already on their roster, the Vikes opted to go out and get Favre. This begs the question: why? My answer to that question is pretty simple, it’s all about hope. With Favre they gained a guy who had a history that included kicking a drug habit, winning a superbowl, breaking a bunch of passing records, and helping the people around him become better players. Based on the things he’d done, based on his story, the Vikings put their hope in Favre, knowing that he gave them the best chance to accomplish their goals.

At a certain point in the aforementioned conversation with my friend, she said that she agreed that what Jesus taught us about how to treat one another was the best way. She even went so far as to say that she modeled, in some way, the teachings of Jesus. Where we eventually arrived was at this question: why is it important that Jesus was God? Why is Jesus divinity important? The answer again is hope.

Let’s say for a moment that we are willing to concede that Jesus teaches us the best way to exist in community. In doing so, we arrive at a common understanding of the good, so yay for us. But if Jesus is in no way divine, we are saying that we believe we can attain perfect community all on our own. We’ve all had numerous experiences that indicate the opposite, we can’t do this on our own.

Jesus has a history. God has a history. We know from the Scriptures and (perhaps more importantly) from our own experiences that God is the one who provides, the one who shows up, the one who abides with us. We have seen and heard things that God has done and now we put our hope is a God we know can get the job done.

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