I have some biblical tension for you to hold in your life that gets to the heart of prayer. Are you ready for it? Perhaps you should pray first.
Consider these verses:
For the Christian, gathering in fellowship should never be considered a chore or a begrudged obligation. Instead, meeting together to serve God and others in the ways we've been gifted is a glorious privilege. It's something that the Lord has designed for us to do for eternity.
There are times when our hearts grumble at the prospect of gathering again. There are times when we refrain from serving because we cherish the lack of responsibility. There are times when we participate in fellowship with the wrong motivations, judging others for not doing what we're doing. These thoughts are foolish at best and evil at worst.
It's hard to be excited about a dead thing.
Consider that old pair of shoes tucked away in your closet, with the worn soles and strings literally hanging by a thread, now fit only for mowing and painting. Or your old cell phone--you know, the one with the cracked screen that slowed down to Windows 95 speeds before you replaced it. How often do you desire to go back to those dead devices?
This concept applies to literature as well. Sure, outdated events (history) can be interesting--and even thrilling. Aged books have a certain look, feel, and smell that add to their charm. But outdated instruction? Lifeless commands? Old riddles? We're more likely to yawn and nod off than to be energized and motivated.
Gratefully, our Bible isn't a dead thing.
It's a widely-known and accepted reality that we (human beings) like to avoid difficult and uncomfortable things. (I have no polling data to reference, but I trust that you agree with me.)
Proclaiming the gospel is difficult and uncomfortable.
Divine appointments are those times when we most clearly perceive the hand of the Lord in arranging our circumstances, especially in relationship to other people.
For instance, when we're broken down on the side of the road and a kind person stops to help--who "just so happens" to be Christian--we reflect on the situation and consider how God put all that together. Or, those times when we're in a waiting room and notice a woman reading a book like The Case for Christ, so we strike up an evangelistic conversation and pray that she comes to know the Lord. These types of events are encouraging for us, as we sense God's involvement in our lives more deeply and tangibly.
But what about the 99.99% of life that isn't a "divine appointment"?
When I was in kindergarten, my family took a trip from our home in Missouri to Mount Rushmore (a popular destination in the Midwest). Aside from my dad driving the wrong way home (he realized it when I read aloud the sign, "Welcome to Wyoming"), the most memorable part of that trip was a little bag of rocks I picked up at a gift shop somewhere in South Dakota.
Some people view prayer as a ritual that is to be practiced by sheer determination of will. It's often considered a religious act performed with or without feeling in order to earn cred with God, for people to prove to Him that they really are committed.
But this is not what Jesus taught about prayer.
I listened to a podcast yesterday in preparation for an upcoming seminar I'm teaching in Illinois. The topic itself is full of all sorts of interesting sub-topics, debates, and questions. It's a complex and curious subject to explore.
However, the two men I was listening to were dreadfully boring. The episode was two hours long but they made it feel like three. It was striking how they could take a hotly-debated Bible topic and make it about as thrilling as the fine-print warranty that comes with a wristwatch.
How would your life change if you were the only Christian in your nation? In your state? Your county? Your city? Your neighborhood? Your family?
For some of you, those last two situations are very real.
When we consider what it would be like to be the only one ultimately responsible to deliver the good news to a group of people, we can start to feel the pressure that brings, and imagine how our lives would have to radically change. But is this hypothetical scenario really that hypothetical?
The Bible is against idolatry of all sorts. This seems like an obvious statement, but it can catch us by surprise when it confronts the idols that we didn't fully realize we were worshipping.