living awake
Devote yourselves to prayer with an alert mind and a thankful heart (v.2).
READ: Colossians 4:2-6
In Germany, the ancient legend of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa persists. According to lore, Barbarossa never died but continues to watch over his kingdom from his stone table in the mountains. For centuries now, Barbarossa “has slumbered away,” his intermittent blinking and nodding the only signal that “breath” still flows in his lungs.”
Too many of us live like Barbarossa: alive, but just barely. We live nothing like Paul encouraged us to—prayerfully “watchful” (or “alert”) for the signs of God’s movement. Too often, we numbly fulfill our responsibilities to family and church and work. We “punch the clock.” Living (if you can call it that) this way, we are not alive to the people or the world or the wonder all around us. We are not attuned to God’s surging activity.
For Paul, the posture of prayer helps us resist a listless or self-absorbed existence (Colossians 4:2). Prayer is a way for Jesus’ followers to be alert, attentive, and engaged, living with wide-eyed expectancy to see where God is at work (v.3).
Is this how you have always viewed prayer? I haven’t. In my experience, prayer has often lacked that alert, engaged edge. Too often, I’ve viewed prayer as a soft, pious activity placing me in a quiet space where I meditate on “heavenly truths” and sublime notions, an exercise that actually removes me from striving to “proclaim [God’s] message” (v.4) to the world. Further, I’ve even twisted prayer so that it provides detachment from chaos or pain—”I’ll pray for you” is my escape more than a genuine commitment to intercede on another’s behalf.
Prayer is far more dangerous than those skewed perspectives. Prayer prods me to be awake to God’s work. I echo Robert Benson’s desire voiced in Living Prayer, “It is a life lived at attention that I seek.” —Winn Collier
Where are you most numb and disengaged in life? How can you begin to experience God’s activity in that place?
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http://www.audiobooksonline.com/The_Secret_Rhonda_Byrne_unabridged_compact_discs.html
May 15, 2009
READ: 1 Corinthians 2:6-16
We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages. —1 Corinthians 2:7
If you believe Rhonda Byrne, author of the bestselling book The Secret, “The shortcut to anything you want in your life is to be and feel happy now!” According to Byrne, this has to do with something called the law of attraction. If you think only about things that make you happy, she says, happy things will be attracted to you.
Sounds easy enough.
However, the Bible says that “the secret” to life is something very different. It has to do with “the law of the Spirit of life” that sets us free from “the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:2), not with the “law of attraction.”
According to the apostle Paul, the most important thing to know is “Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). To those who are concerned with happiness now, this is indeed foolishness (v.14). They do not recognize the power of God in what appears to them as weakness.
The Lord created us with a desire to know what is secret. In His wisdom, He kept certain things hidden in mystery for a time (v.7). But now, through His Holy Spirit, He has made them known. And the secret He reveals has nothing to do with having happy thoughts in order to obtain happy things; it has to do with having the mind of Jesus Christ (v.16). — Julie Ackerman Link
To know lasting happiness, we must get to know Jesus.
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