Stop Praying?

Psalm 27:4 (NIV)
One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.

Francis Chan wrote in his book “Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God” the following:

What if I said, “Stop praying”? What if I told you to stop talking at God for a while, but instead to take a long, hard look at Him before you speak another word? Solomon warned us not to rush into God’s presence with words. That’s what fools do. And often, that’s what we do.

We are a culture that relies on technology over community, a society in which spoken and written words are cheap, easy to come by, and excessive. Our culture says anything goes; fear of God is almost unheard of. We are slow to listen, quick to speak, and quick to become angry.

I am arrested at this thought tonight. I am guilty of this very thing… just running right into his presence and throwing up my prayers and running out, like a 3 year old comes in and makes his bold announcement to his parents in the midst of their dinner party and then makes his exit just as promptly.

I just need to spend some time gazing on His beauty.

1 Samuel 19

Saul wants to kill David…..again.  Johnathan tells his dad that David hasn’t done anything wrong and that Saul would be sinning against David if he killed him.  Saul says David is pardoned and will be alive and well as long as Saul lives.  Saul tries to kill David……again.  David goes home and his wife covers for him and David flees to see Samuel.  They hang out and God moves.  Saul sends 3 different groups of people to retrieve David and bring him to Saul so Saul can kill him.  One by one they show up and start to prophesy and never return to Saul.  Saul gets pissed and goes to get David himself.  When Saul shows up he gets naked and prophesies all day and night.

Can you and I sin against each other? I get that we can get angry and unforgiving but ultimately that is sinning against God.  Here it says that Saul would sin against David.  Saul makes vows and breaks them, bad idea.  Why did David run instead of fight Saul.  I mean the bear and lion and Goliath, why did he run from Saul?  That doesn’t seem to be in the nature of David.  When everyone got into the presence of God nothing else mattered.  The people Saul sent disobeyed their orders and worshipped God and forgot about try to grab David. God in one breath gave Saul an evil spirit and the next had the Holy Spirit fall on Saul.  Saul forgot everything.  The evil spirit was gone, Saul didn’t want to kill David, the hatred and unforgiveness as well as the pride were gone.  For one brief moment nothing else mattered but being in the presence of God, naked, sprawled out and prophesying.  I need to get into that presence more often.  I usually think of a lot of different things in the presence of God, none of them matter.

1 Samuel 15

Pretty famous chapter I think.  Most of us know the story.  Saul is told to go and kill all the Amalekites and everything they own.  Destroy it all God says.  Saul goes in and destroys most of it, but leaves the King and the best of the cattle and what not to sacrifice to God.  Sammy hears about it and God speaks to Sammy.  Saul comes back and talks to Sammy.  Sammy tells him that God is disappointed and has now taken the kingdom of Israel and given it to someone else.  Saul is pissy and cries out to God.  Sammy and Saul never talk again until Saul dies.

This is where we get that obedience is better than sacrifice.  Saul had good intentions when wanting to sacrifice things and worship God like that, but Dad never said to do that.  Dad said kill it all.  Like Saul we hold on to things sometimes and that is dangerous.  We don’t want God to strip us of our title and things and His presence.  The last verse in this chapter might be the saddest verse in the Bible.  Because of Sauls disobedience Samuel never visited him again till his death.  Samuel was the only line to God at that time which means Saul never had another experience or voice or anything from God ever again.  What a sad life, to go from a king that God appointed to never being with God again.  All because of his disobedience and pride.  By the way, a couple times God says He regrets putting Saul in that place.  What does that mean?  Can God regret doing something, wouldn’t that mean He messed up or did something wrong?

1 Samuel 6

The Ark stays with the Philistines for 7 months.  1.  Why after all that time with tumors and rats and plagues did they keep the Ark that long?  2.  How come no one from Israel came looking for it?  It times of trouble people are more concerned with their liveliness, family and countries above the Ark of God.  We have been given the Gospel and yet it is treated with neglect or contempt.  They straddle the Ark up to some cows and send it on its way.  What is kind of surprising is that they now obviously believe in the God of Israel or they wouldn’t have offered guilt sacrifices and burnt offerings.  So they make golden tumors and mice and in vs 5 it says they gave glory to the God of Israel and He released His hand from not only them but their puss gods and their whole land.  Wow, what power from our God.  He is not someone to be messed with.  The cows they stradle the Ark to dont even look to the left or right they go straight to Beth-shemesh.  The people get the Ark and and rejoice and offer a bunch of sacrifices, then some dummies look in the Ark and its Indiana Jones time.  Everyone who looks gets their faces melted off and burnt up.  God will not stand for sinners and unrighteous people to look into the hidden things of God.

I Samuel 4

Really some interesting stuff spiritually happening here.  The presence of God was a big deal to them.  Even in spite of 30,000 + Israelites dying and his sons Hophni and Phineas dying Eli didn’t kick the bucket till he found out the Ark was taken from them.  Phineas’ wife in the midst of giving birth was only thinking of the Ark and the Glory of God.  She is having a kid, her husband and father in law died and she is still lamenting the loss of God in their city.  Wow.  What have we missed here?  The presence of God isn’t that important to me.  I don’t know that I would name my kid after the circumstances of whether the presence of God was in my city or not.  I don’t know that loosing that would cause my death, and it should.  I wonder if when I go into battle I do the same thing the Israelites did.  Instead of asking God, or just falling in the presence of Him, to assume that just because we have God we are going to win every battle we walk into.  Parading it around to win our battles instead of revering it like we ought to.  I am kind of disgusted in me and you and our generation of “Christians.”  The presence of God was the only thing that mattered to Israel at that time, the Glory of God is what caused life and death in their physical bodies.  It was everything to them, and now it is not to us.  How do we get back to that?

Promises, Promises

I read Psalms 91 tonight, apparently I’m a big fan of Psalms. Psalms 91 is about safety in the presence of God. Verse 1, “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.” Now that’s  a pretty comforting verse for me, because I believe that the presence of God can be anywhere, so knowing that I abide under the shadow of the Almighty regardless of where or when is great. The main thing about this chapter that stuck out to me is verses 15-16. “He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble;  I will deliver him and honor him. 16 With long life I will satisfy him, and show him My salvation.” I guess this blog goes along the lines of Chan’s post on Leviticus 26..again.  For me particularly, because in my mind, I focus on the consequence of things way too much.  In school, work or whatever, the thing that keeps me from doing something I shouldn’t is the consequence. But how often do I think to myself, “I don’t need to do this because of the benefits of Papa’s promises.” Again, Papa has changed the way I saw something. Apparently I looked at a lot things the wrong way back in my youth.