Brave Sunshine Music

I have uploaded some of the songs that I have written this first week in Mexico to YouTube if you are interested in listening.  I apologize for the poor recording quality.  The songs are all listed under "Brave Sunshine" (ray-bold), and you may read the lyrics in the description.  

You can find the following videos:

1.  "Big Talk" here.

2.  "Jonah's Song" here.

 

3.  "Lev 26" here.

4.  "Lower" here.

5.  "Marvels" here.

6.  "We Need Not Leave" here.

POWER OF PRAYER: Why aren't my prayers being answered?

"Why aren't my prayers being answered?" is a great question that I believe we have all encountered at some point in our lives.  In the past I have heard that God always answers prayers, with either a yes, no, or later.  This is a good saying but is oversimplified.

Our prayer lives may still be disillusioning, especially if he take one verse for our full doctrine on prayer and don't look at the Bible as a whole.

I will break this article into three main ideas:
1.  Butterfly Effect
2.  Free Wills
3.  Miracles

1.)  BUTTERFLY EFFECT

To start us off, it's important to note the concept of chaos theory, which will here be completely oversimplified (sorry about that, but I'm no physics wiz).  Certain laws are followed in the natural world, and that's where science comes from.  We observe patterns of cause and effect to test if they will yield the same results each time.  However, when we see the world as a whole and look at the timeline of the universe, events that occur over time can become quite random because each event is dependent on the many causes that come before it.

Consider the film Butterfly Effect or Ray Bradbury's A Sound of Thunder and see how this theory is addressed in media and literature.  Small events can change everything in the future.

When we then try to understand why things happen the way they do and why God seemingly answers prayer or not, we see that all reasoning becomes slightly muddled.  For example, God may answer a prayer but then another person takes an action to destroy that answer's effect.  This transitions us into an understanding on free will.

2.)  FREE WILLS

We must understand that God's will, according to the Bible, is that everyone would be in perfect relationship with him and that there would be no pain, suffering, or death in this world.  (That's how he first created it.)  However, God also allowed for free will of humans and other entities so that he could have true relationship with us.  Free will is required to have true relationship, after all, because true relationships have an element of mutual agreement.

Therefore, an all-powerful God relinquished some of his power so that he could allow for relationship with us.  This is still incredibly frustrating for me to understand and I hate that this granting of free will allowed humanity to screw it all up.  I still struggle with this understanding, although my qualm is challenged with the idea that God was willing to come to earth himself and die a terrible, terrible death in order to maintain the possibility of genuine relationship.  I may be frustrated with the effect of suffering, but God found the losses worth the gain, and he took on some of the worst losses to prove that to us.  He created free will because he loves us and he suffered much because relationship was worth it to him.

Because we see that free will exists, then, prayer will be influenced by multiple entities, including:

-God's will (1 John 5:14-15)  This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.  Clearly, we must pray according to what God wants to expect the prayer to be answered with such confidence.

-Human will (Joshua 24:14-15) “Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. ¹⁵ But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”  Clearly, God gives options like this to many people groups and especially Israel over and over again.  He gives us choice and free will all the time.  

-Angelic will (Daniel 10:2-14) At that time I, Daniel, mourned for three weeks. I ate no choice food; no meat or wine touched my lips; and I used no lotions at all until the three weeks were over.  On the twenty-fourth day of the first month, as I was standing on the bank of the great river, the Tigris, I looked up and there before me was a man dressed in linen, with a belt of fine gold from Uphaz around his waist. His body was like topaz, his face like lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze, and his voice like the sound of a multitude... Then he continued, “Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia. Now I have come to explain to you what will happen to your people in the future, for the vision concerns a time yet to come.”  In this passage, we see that God's will was that the angel would give Daniel a message.  However, the will of a demonic power kept the angel from arriving in the intended time.

To read more on this topic, look up Gregory Boyd's books:
-Is God to Blame?
-An Intro to Open Theism

3.)  MIRACLES

Concerning miracles, it is first essential that suffering is often nobody's fault in particular.  Yes, we sometimes make mistakes and then suffer consequences.  However, disabilities, illness, and death are not the sufferer's fault (John 9:1-7, Matthew 17:14-21).  In fact, we only see death as the "payment of sin" (Romans 6:23).  Today's world is a fallen world; due to choice and free will, humanity has brought God's perfect kingdom into suffering.  Unfortunately, we now experience the world in its fallen state, which means suffering exists.

Now, when it comes to the miraculous, this means that God is disregarding his normal rules about the natural world and changes something in an unexpected way.  Because we do not have accurate documentation of everything that has ever occurred on earth and because science, by definition, cannot affirm the miraculous, people often choose to disregard miracles.  However, scientists still must assert that there are phenomenons that are no able to be explained.  In this case, they are stating that there are events that stand outside of "science," meaning that which can be explained through patterns.  In other words, the unnatural (or miraculous) does occur.

Why do miracles happen in response to prayer sometimes and not others?  Not only do we have all the wills in conflict as with other forms of prayer, but we also have the conflict of faith (Mark 6:5-6).  According to this Bible passage, Jesus cannot perform many miracles in an area because they had so little faith there. Strange but true.

However, the effects of prayer may not always have to do with human will or faith or lack of faith.  Instead, God will sometimes have purposes for our suffering which is beyond our current understanding (Isaiah 55).  Unfortunately, not everything is explainable. For these frustrating instances, only God understands, and we have to trust his character.

For example, I have dealt with depression for my entire life and have prayed constantly for a healing.  However, he has not yet allowed for this healing.  In this case, I am trusting that MY KNOWLEDGE OF GOD'S LOVE FOR ME IS STRONGER THAN THE QUESTIONS I HAVE ABOUT HIM NOT HEALING ME.

Here are some awesome passages that teach us about his love:
http://www.whatchristianswanttoknow.com/20-inspirational-bible-verses-about-gods-love/ 

To read more on this topic, look up Ravi Zacharias' book:
Why Suffering: Finding Meaning and Comfort When Life Doesn't Make Sense 
Or John Piper's book:
Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die
Or C.S. Lewis' book:
On Miracles

POWER OF PRAYER: Two-way communication

In the last article, I discussed the power of prayer on the body.  I believe that prayer has an additional and far more important benefit, namely, true communication with God.  This benefit includes: 1.) to send messages to God to influence his behavior; 2.) to receive messages from God to influence our behavior.  Consequently, prayer really does make a difference in behavior and events, and prayer is, in fact, powerful.

There are many instances in scripture in which God shows us that our prayers influence his behavior. 

When Solomon is dedicating the temple in 2 Chronicles 7, God speaks to him in verses 13-16, saying:

When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land. Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place. I have chosen and consecrated this temple so that my Name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will always be there.

This is powerful because we now know that we are the "temple of Christ" (1 Corinthians 6:19) and he hears us and responds to us in the same way in today's world.

James 5:13-18 teaches that prayer can help those in trouble, sick, or needing forgiveness.  In fact, prayer can even influence the natural world:
    
Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.  Elijah was a human being, even as we are. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.

The Bible also teaches us to pray without ceasing, in confidence, and for good gifts.  Luke 11:5-13 provides Jesus' teaching:

Then Jesus said to them, “Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.’ And suppose the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.

“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead?  Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?  If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

We see God honoring truly desperate prayer, as well in Luke 18:1-8.  In the rest of the scriptures, we see God answering prayer over and over again.  However, the Bible even gives us an instance of God changing his mind when he saves a king from death.  Isaiah 38:1-6 says:

In those days Hezekiah became mortally ill. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came to him and said to him, “Thus says the Lord, ‘Set your house in order, for you shall die and not live.’” Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, and said, “Remember now, O Lord, I beseech You, how I have walked before You in truth and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in Your sight.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly.

Then the word of the Lord came to Isaiah, saying, “Go and say to Hezekiah, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of your father David, “I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; behold, I will add fifteen years to your life.  I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria; and I will defend this city.”’

In Numbers 14:11-20, God also changes his mind about destroying the entire nation of Israel due to prayer:

The Lord said to Moses, “How long will these people treat me with contempt? How long will they refuse to believe in me, in spite of all the signs I have performed among them? I will strike them down with a plague and destroy them, but I will make you into a nation greater and stronger than they.”

Moses said to the Lord, “Then the Egyptians will hear about it! By your power you brought these people up from among them. And they will tell the inhabitants of this land about it. They have already heard that you, Lord, are with these people and that you, Lord, have been seen face to face, that your cloud stays over them, and that you go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. If you put all these people to death, leaving none alive, the nations who have heard this report about you will say, ‘The Lord was not able to bring these people into the land he promised them on oath, so he slaughtered them in the wilderness.’

“Now may the Lord’s strength be displayed, just as you have declared: ‘The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.’  In accordance with your great love, forgive the sin of these people, just as you have pardoned them from the time they left Egypt until now.”

The Lord replied, “I have forgiven them, as you asked..."

God honors prayer so much that he is even saddened when nobody prays on behalf of a people group to save them.  He wants to hear our prayers, according to Ezekiel 22:30-31:

“I looked for someone among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found no one. So I will pour out my wrath on them and consume them with my fiery anger, bringing down on their own heads all they have done, declares the Sovereign Lord.”

God asks for intercessors in Isaiah 59:15-16, as well.  Also, we can see throughout the Bible all of the beautiful ways in which God responds to our prayer, as miraculous as it sounds to us feeble humans.

There are also many instances in scripture in which God shows us that our prayers influence our behavior.

It is first helpful to recognize that the Holy Spirit is who helps us pray.  Ephesians 6:18 says, "Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit."  Furthermore, Romans 8:26-27 says, "In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God."  1 John 3:24 says, "The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us."  We pray through the Holy Spirit's help.

Jesus even explains that the Holy Spirit is here to help us to be with the Son and in the knowledge of the Father in John 17:20-26.  He wants us to be one with God and in his love.  How better than through connection with the Holy Spirit and through prayer?  The passage reads: 

“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,  that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
“Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.
“Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”

We see in this passage that God does, in fact, want to provide revelation to us.  He wants to make himself known at all times.  All we need to do is ask.  Ask for him to speak to you.

James 4:2-3 reads, "...You do not have because you do not ask God.  When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures."  In this passage, he may be discussing physical entities, but how much more does he want to give us knowledge?  2 Corinthians 2:14 says, "But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere."  If we are the aroma of the knowledge of God and we represent him to the world, how much more deeply does he want intimacy with us?

God is a personal God, speaking to his people in personal ways.  We simply need listen.  

I am going to end this post with the book of Habakkuk.  The book is set up with the prophet questioning God and then getting response.  How much more should our prayer be both communicator and receptor?

I am confident that prayer allows for many benefits, including the ability to be heard by God and to hear God.  He wants the effects of prayer to be a change in behavior.  He wants true, intimate relationship with us.   

This means that, in prayer, we should not only expect to be speaking to the living God, but we should be happily entering into conversation with him, listening for what he has to teach us as well about himself, us, and the world.

POWER OF PRAYER: Bodily Health

It is amazing to see the power of prayer on our physical bodies.  We see that prayer has two main benefits concerning our bodies: 1.) Health benefits; 2.) Emotional state. 

When people claim prayer only affects the individual, the first example is often for their own health.  According to WebMD, "In fact, people who pray tend to get sick less often, as separate studies conducted at Duke, Dartmouth, and Yale universities show. Some statistics from these studies:

• Hospitalized people who never attended church have an average stay of three times longer than people who attended regularly.
• Heart patients were 14 times more likely to die following surgery if they did not participate in a religion.
• Elderly people who never or rarely attended church had a stroke rate double that of people who attended regularly.
• In Israel, religious people had a 40% lower death rate from cardiovascular disease and cancer."

Many non-religious individuals recognize these benefits and find their "quiet time" to still be helpful to their blood pressure and other physical ailments.

Obviously, these health benefits related to stress are connected to the person's state of mind.  In this way, prayer also helps the individual's emotional state.  Many make this claim because of the self-reflective nature of meditation and focus.  According to the online health magazine Waking Times, during meditation, the frontal and parietal lobes, as well as the thalamus and reticular formation all slow down.  Because of the slowing of all this activity, the brain slows down it's constant state of planning and emotions.  It focuses incoming sensory data.  Finally, your brain softens its "alert" signals so it is less alarmed by its surroundings.  The article continues to ask, "Could an increase in mindfulness, happiness, care, and empathy for others make an impact on our world? How about reduced stress and better memory?" Many non-religious people assert that meditation can help people be happier and more focused, as the study shows.

This science also agrees with the scriptural teaching found in Philippians 4:6-7:

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

To me, these studies are very encouraging, in fact, because they show us that our Creator designed us for prayer and designed prayer for our health benefit, happiness, and morale. 

Compassion in Action

The goal of this blog is to keep people updated on the teachings and experiences that I will be receiving in Baja California these next few months.  The first three months, I will be in classes, local ministry, and practical worship on base.  For the last two months, I will be in outreach somewhere around the world.  Please, keep me in prayer for this decision!

I have already met some really incredible people here, including both staff and students.  I have also heard many testimonies over the last week of how God has drawn the DTS staff and students to himself and then to this base.  It has been so encouraging and beautiful.

This first week, in classes, we are presently learning about the character of God.  I will soon be posting what I have been learning about prayer from this very relational, personal God.  Also, I was just assigned today my local ministry.  I will be a part of the ministry called "The Ranch," where I will be teaching, serving, and visiting with individuals in rehabilitation.  I am super excited to be able to share my own experiences with the people there!  Further, my "practical worship" on base will be a variety of work, including tutoring, reception, and outdoor cleaning/landscaping.  I am excited to see that I was assigned all things that match my strengths. Finally, I was asked to join a worship band here as well, and I agreed to sing with them and lead in musical praise.

Stay posted and I will post soon!