Jesus Course

Jesus was really into praying, he just couldn’t get enough of it. The gospels are full of comments about how Jesus was going somewhere to pray or trying to get some quiet time for prayer, etc.

It surprises me, then, to learn that some Christians don’t pray other than when they are in church. Here is some research on prayer (a few years old now though). It doesn’t include the U.S.A. but here is one just for them. Even if we take a good view of the results (and we must always be wary of surveys) at least 20% of Christians don’t pray. What I found even more interesting is that in the first survey mentioned 86% said they had received an answer to prayer but only 64% pray every day. Even worse only 48% saw prayer as vital to faith.

Surely with Jesus being so hot on the subject we Christians should be doing it more. I also think we should be paying more attention to our use of time because some Christians complain that there just isn’t enough time to pray. I often wonder how many of these watch a soap on the T.V. or read a newspaper, or twitter, or facebook, etc. Anyway it’s not about the time you spend it’s about the quality of the time you spend.

Now I’m really not trying to make anyone feel guilty because what I want is to see more people praying.

So how do you pray? Well that’s one of the easiest things in the world to do. You open a conversation with God. It means having to open yourself up to God and I can’t give you a formula for that but if you have ever had a relationship with another person you will know what this means.

A lot of people get stuck on what to say. Not a problem – the disciples had a similar issue and so Jesus gave them a prayer to say. There are bookshelves collapsing in Christian book shops with prayers that you can use and before you get all uppity about not praying using someone else’s words Jesus never told us not to (in fact the Lord’s prayer and the psalms and nearly every hymn and worship song ever written is a prayer written by someone else).

Like all this stuff though I’m sure Jesus would want to point out that it isn’t about the words or about how many times you say them it’s about what is inside that counts. Whatever words you use make them real and meaningful to you and pour out your heart to God.

Sometimes people think prayer is going to be boring – in fact this is a lie the devil has been pushing on me ever since I became a Christian. Every time I’m going to do some praying a little voice in my head says “this is going to be boring you know”. Experience however tells me different. Not every day is wonderful but some days you just won’t want to stop.

A very important thing I learned about prayer is that the more you do it the better it gets. If you struggle with boring prayer times then you need to persevere and if you do it will improve.

Anyway – let’s pray.

Christian living Jesus, pray, prayer

Fasting has always been a controversial subject for Christians – ever since Jesus defended his disciples who didn’t fast (Matthew 9:14ff). It’s a mistake, however, to think that Jesus had anything against fasting – he did it himself after all.

Fasting in the bible

Fasting pops up many times in the bible and tends to be associated with a need to pray about something. It could be that people wanted to express how sorry they were or that they were asking God for something very important to them.

Jesus was keen on the idea that when people fast they shouldn’t tell others about it. Fasting is something that is done for God and not for others to observe and conclude how spiritual you are. I know that danger myself because I’ve fasted on several occasions and if people find out they are often very impressed (and sometimes confused) – this leaves me wondering if perhaps I shouldn’t have bothered now everyone knows about it.

Is fasting just giving something up?

I think it’s important to not get fasting confused with giving something up for your own benefit. It’s not unusual for people to give something up for a while to try and improve their life (e.g. T.V., alcohol, chocolate, etc) but this is about self and not about God. This is commendable but has little to do with fasting for the spiritual life.

Fasting does involve giving something up – mainly food. This can be a difficult experience and it does have the benefit of helping break dependence on the thing you fast from (e.g. food). However fasting really is about your relationship with God and not the thing you are giving up.

Feeling hunger is a good way of learning to hunger for God

Going without food, for instance, is a good way of learning to depend on God more. The hunger acts as a reminder to think about God and after a while without food you start to feel it constantly. You have to turn that longing for food into a longing for God (it’s easier than it sounds).

Give it a try

So I encourage all Christians to try some fasting, but make sure you do it all for the right reasons.

Christian living christian, devotions, fasting, jesus christ, religion

There is a great deal in the news at present about Abdelbaset al-Megrahi (aka the Lockerbie Bomber) and his early release from prison. Such times always raise big questions about guilt and forgiveness. We want to see guilty people punished and yet we also understand that compassion for someone terminally ill is important. Where does the right path lie?

Jesus had a great deal to say about injustice and forgiveness. Jesus was always very keen to point out that one day we will all have to answer for our actions. This is surely the right thing. We don’t want anyone to get away with the wrong that they do to others – do we? If someone is guilty of a crime, especially a big crime, then we want those people to face justice for the wrong they have done. Jesus says that one day everyone will have to face this.

Then Jesus also wanted to talk about forgiveness, that the only way to win when you have been wronged is by forgiving. I know it sounds mad because we all want justice but that desire for justice can become a lingering pain when the justice seems not to be done, and if you have ever been a victim of a crime you will know that no amount of justice satisfies this hunger. There may be some peace of mind in knowing the perpetrator of a crime is being punished but that punishment can never undo what was done. The only way to beat the pain is to find forgiveness.

This is tough – not easy. It is far easier to be angry and demand retribution than it is to be able to forgive and yet it is the forgiveness that has the power to heal.

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi will one day have to face the ultimate judge of all things, and for him that time is fast approaching. But alive or dead, in prison or free, it is the victims and their families that suffer and need to find peace and that peace can only come through forgiveness.

Politicians exchange insults at such times as this and call each others methods into question and yet it is the victims families that continue to suffer. I don’t want to add any words that will just cause pain to them but I believe Jesus would want them – and us – to think more about forgiveness than retribution, even though it is hard to do so.

Thoughts forgiveness, jesus christ

Being a follower of Jesus can sometimes seem like more of a chore than a joy. We get so worked up about what we should or shouldn’t be doing, or what we should or shouldn’t be believing that we can lose some of our desire to follow.

Then of course non-Christians look at us and think that being a Christian doesn’t look like a lot of fun but just more rules and regulations to follow. We tell them that we get freedom from following but they what they see is lots of rules and regulations.

If you are struggling or starting to drift into thinking being a Christian is just about following a set of rules or beliefs then I encourage you to try and get some more love back into your relationship with God.

There are all kinds of ways of doing this but why not set aside an hour or two (or more) in your diary for just thinking about how great God is. Listen to some music if you like, go walking in a beautiful place, just sit still and think about the beauty of God. We all need this every now and then. It all starts with love.

Thoughts christian, devotions, jesus christ, love

People have often pondered over the question of their purpose. One of the problems faced by those who do not believe in God is that if you exist by chance, a random set of circumstances, then you have no real purpose, you have no reason to exist, there is no right or wrong.

I believe this view is wrong. God created you for a purpose and you have an important reason to exist and there is such a thing as right or wrong. If you think about it for a moment you will understand that somewhere deep within you is the knowledge that some things are right and some are wrong. This isn’t just conditioning and everyone has it. This is something that God has put there.

Let’s not get caught up in thinking about how creation worked (e.g. evolution or spontaneous creation or intelligent design or whatever) because the how is not the most important bit (I know many good Christians who are convinced evolutionists for instance) the important bit is that God caused it.

God created you for a reason, a purpose. We can discover, through reading the bible, that God has a plan for the world. It is incredibly complex and God has to allow for giving people the right to make choices about how they fit into that plan but still the plan exists. It’s end goal (as Jesus pointed out) is to create heaven on earth (God’s kingdom come) and to overcome the power of death.

The wonderful thing is that God wants us to share in the plan and our purpose is part of that plan. We have a part to play in the world that will really make a difference.

I don’t mean we are all going to be world heads of government but that we all can help to make God’s plan come true. We have a purpose that God built into us. God knows us even before we are made in our mother’s womb. It was part of God’s plan to have you born.

You truly are made for a purpose.

Thoughts creation, Jesus, purpose

Don’t you think that following God should make a difference to a persons life? When it comes to God it’s easy to think only in terms of the afterlife, perhaps even of doing everything to avoid going to the hot place. But Jesus was pretty insistent that becoming a follower of his should change life here and now for the better. If you listen to some Christians – you may have met a few – it feels like following Jesus is actually a bit of a chore.

Now I’m the first to admit that some church services I’ve had to sit through have make it feel like a chore but that is not always true and it isn’t the way Jesus talked about things.

Jesus was pretty hot on talking about God’s kingdom. In essence this was the beginning of heaven now. The point being that we can live in heaven right now without having to wait until we die. Of course there are limitations to this because of the way the world has been dented and twisted by so much that is wrong but within the limitations we can start to experience heaven right now.

It might sound crazy but I’ve been in places (some of them church services) where it felt like being in heaven.

The life of the Christian should reflect a bit of heaven on earth. I’m just sorry that so often I’ve made a mess of things and have not been the beacon to God’s wonderful life that I should have been. People make too many mistakes.

So if you want to know where heaven is and what it’s like it’s the place where God is listened to and where his people follow. Jesus reckoned this was available to everyone and all we have to do is follow him.

Christian living discipleship, heaven

Christian’s are always encouraged (and I believe rightly so) to understand as much about Jesus and the bible as they can. But this can become a detremental obsession.

Being a Christian and following Jesus is not about what we know it is about how we respond to what we know. Does anyone seriously believe that when they die and are on their way to heaven that there will be a test about what a person knows about God and the bible? Will those who get something wrong be turned away from the pearly gates? In which case we had all better get worried about this. Is the love of God confined to those who grasp the complexities of theology? Did Jesus die on the cross to overcome the problems caused by lack of knowledge of the bible? The answer is no – by the way.

Being a Christian is almost exclusively about how we put our appreciation of God into action (no, I’m not talking about salvation by works). The actions I’m talking about are things like: faith, devotion, discipleship, service, etc.

Knowing lots of stuff about Jesus is a very good thing but it won’t get you closer to God – only faith and discipleship will.

Thoughts christian, Jesus, knowledge

Sadly too many times Christians have mistaken discipleship with legalism. We trawl the bible looking for rules to obey and then get upset when we can’t obey them. But I’m not convinced that this was what Jesus had in mind in the first place.

Jesus does say that he has not come to abolish any laws but he also wants to go to great lengths to explain that following Jesus is about learning to think like Jesus thinks and not following rules and regulations.

This is always difficult for Christians because we don’t want to sound like wishy washy people who say it doesn’t matter what you do as long as it feels good but this is kind of what Jesus taught. But the feeling good bit is about making God feel good and not ourselves (although we feel good when we do what pleases God). God has given us a description of himself and what it is like in his kingdom but instead of saying, just do all these things and everything will be fine he says follow me and you will start to live like I’ve described.

Being a Christian is not about following rules its about developing a mindset and a way of feeling that pleases God. The benefit of this approach is that we then get to live the kind of life that God intended for us and this means we live life as it was designed to be lived (this is the best way by the way).

This all may sound confusing but simply put we don’t follow rules and regulations we follow a person – Jesus. To live properly we simply ask: “what would my life be like if Jesus were living it?”  This doesn’t mean trying to live like Jesus did (e.g. carpenter, beard, dusty roads, sleeping under the stars, riding donkeys, etc) but trying to work out what Jesus would do given your life.

So next time you are tempted to think in terms of law remember that this was never Jesus’ intention for you.

Christian living jesus christ, law