The Now and the Know

Once I prayed for a pony. As a newly turned 8 year old, I desperately wanted a pony. Let’s be honest, what little girl doesn’t at one time or another want their own majestic stallion? And even though my family had no way of accommodating such a desire, I had the understanding that if I prayed hard enough, God would pull through and provide somehow. After all, why wouldn’t God answer a child’s prayer? His child’s prayer?…
I never got a pony.

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.

Most Christians would find it life changing and downright awesome to have Jesus Christ walking right next to them all day long, whispering advice and direction in their ear. Christians would be sinning less, pleasing God more, and winning the lottery left and right.
Although we don’t have Jesus to walk around with us, he said that it would be even better that he send the Holy Spirit, the Counselor, to be with us. This means that the Spirit of God is readily available to those who believe. Sweet.

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.

I wonder if this question wouldn’t be put more pointedly if it were phrased this way: “If we can’t earn salvation, then why do good things?”  Because what good, after all, is forgiveness if it doesn’t place us among God’s chosen, ‘the saved’ –you know, those smiley recipients of reservations for that old luxury resort in the clouds, which will never have a check out date?  Let’s face it: very, very few of us, really, give a damn when it comes to the entire realm of the Divine without the immediate, explicit, and deeply-ingrained concern of ‘what’s in it for me?’  Let’s just try and be honest here: most of us are only concerned with whether or not we are personally or collectively forgiven insofar as our status before God potentially bears some sort of tangible outcome demonstrable via punishment or reward –suffering or happiness, pain or pleasure. 

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.