Underdog.

From Philip Yancey:

Underdog.

I wince even as I write the word, especially in connection with Jesus. It’s a crude word, probably derived from dogfighting and applied over time to predictable losers and victims of injustice.

Yet as I read the birth stories about Jesus, I cannot help but conclude that though the world may be tilted toward the rich and the powerful, God is tilted toward the underdog.

“He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty,” said Mary in her Magnificat hymn.

What Could be Less Scary?

 Among people who walled off a separate sanctum for God in the temple and shrank from pronouncing or spelling out the name, God made a surprise appearance as a baby in a manger. What can be less scary than a newborn with his limbs wrapped tight against his body? In Jesus, God found a way of relating to human beings that did not involve fear. 

-Philip Yancey 
The Jesus I Never Knew

More Questions than Answers on Prayer

PHILIP YANCEY from the book Prayer:  Does It Make Any Difference 

"Everywhere I encountered the gap between prayer in theory and prayer in practice.  In theory prayer is the essential human act, a priceless point of contact with the God of the universe.  In practice prayer is often confusing and fraught with frustration.  My publisher conducted a website poll, and of the 678 respondents only 23 felt satisfied with the time they were spending in prayer.  That very discrepancy made me want to write this book.

Advances in science and technology no doubt contribute to our confusion about prayer.  In former days farmers lifted their heads and appealed to brazen heavens for an end to drought. Now we study low-pressure fronts, dig irrigation canals, and seed clouds with metallic particles. In former days when a child fell ill the parents cried out to God; now they call for an ambulance or phone the doctor.

Prosperity may dilute prayer too. In my travels I have noticed that Christians in developing countries spend less time pondering the effectiveness of prayer and more time actually praying. The wealthy rely on talent and resources to solve immediate problems, and insurance policies and retirement plans to secure the future. We can hardly pray with sincerity, 'Give us this day our daily bread,' when the pantry is stocked with a month's supply of provisions.

Increasingly, time pressures crowd out the leisurely pace that prayer seems to require.  Communication with other people keeps getting shorter and more cryptic:  text messages, email, instant messaging.  We have less and less time for conversation, let alone contemplation.  We have the constant sensation of not enough:  not enough time, not enough rest, not enough exercise, not enough leisure.  Where does God fit into a life that already seems behind schedule?

 

"Prayer to the skeptic is a delusion, a waste of time.  To the believer it represents perhaps the most important use of time.  Why, then is prayer so problematic?  The British pastor Martyn Lloyd-Jones summed up the confusion:  'Of all the activities in which the human engages, and which are part of the spiritual life, there is surely none which causes so much perplexity, and raises so many problems, as the activity which we call prayer.'

"I write about prayer as a pilgrim, not an expert.  I have the same questions that occur to almost everyone at some point.  Is God listening?  Why should God care about me?  If God knows everything, what's the point of prayer?  Why do answers to prayer seem so inconsistent, even capricious?  Does a person with many praying friends stand a better chance of physical healing as one who also has cancer but with only a few people praying for her?  Why does God sometimes seem close and sometimes faraway?  Does prayer change God or change me?

   

The psychiatrist Gerald C. May observed, 'After twenty years of listening to the yearnings of people's hearts, I am convinced that human beings have an inborn desire for God.  Whether we are consciously religious or not, this desire is our deepest longing and most precious treasure.'  Surely, if we are made in God's own image, God will find a way to fulfill that deepest longing.  Prayer is that way."  (pp. 15-16)

The Graveyard at Miango

This may be one of the most difficult things I have read in years. I have read it over and over for a couple of years and still can't get past it. I know I have sent it our multiple times but here it is again.  The photo is of the graveyard and the Goossen Grave

 

 

No Fixed Formula (Phillip Yancey from Prayer: Does it make a difference?)

Even after spelling out some of what we do wrong in our prayers, however - especially after spelling that out - I must repeat that prayer does not work according to a fixed formula: get your life in order, say the right words, and the desired result will come. If that were true, Job would have avoided much suffering, Paul would have shed his thorn in the flesh, and Jesus would never have gone to Golgotha. Between the two questions "Does God answer prayer?" and "Will God grant my specific prayer for this sick child or this particular injustice?" lies a great pool of mystery.

Charles Edward White, a college professor in the state of Michigan spent several terms as a visiting professor at the University of Jos in Nigeria. While there, he visited a missionary graveyard in a quiet garden beside a chapel on Nigeria's Central Plateau. Most of the graves he noticed were small: two and three-foot mounds to accommodate child-sized coffins. 33 of the 56 graves in fact held the bodies of small children......Two infants lived just one day. Others lived a few years, falling victim to the tropical diseases common in that part of the world. Melvin Louis Goossen was twelve when he and his brother fell off a suspension bridge over a rain swollen creek. Their missionary father, Arthur Goossen dived in the creek to save one son. But when he dived after Melvin, both father and son drowned....

Charles Edward White wrote:

 

The graveyard at Miango tells us something about God and about His grace. It testifies that God is not a jolly grandfather who satisfies our every desire. Certainly those parents wanted their children to live. They plead with God but He denied their request.

The graves also show us that God is not a calculating merchant who withholds his goods until we produce enough good works or faith to buy his help. If anyone had earned credit with God, it would have been these missionaries. They left all to spread the gospel in a hostile environment, But God does not hand out merit pay.

Not only do we learn about God's nature from the Miango graveyard, but we also discover truths about God's grace. God's grace may be free, but it is not cheap. Neither purchasing our salvation nor letting us know the gift was inexpensive.

Beginning with Abel, many of the witnesses to divine grace sealed their words with blood. Jesus asked the Jews which of the prophets was not persecuted? When he first sent out his disciples, he promised them betrayal and death. Then, at the end of his ministry, he promised his followers that as they carried out his word, they would face trouble and hatred.."

"The only way we can understand the graveyard at Miango," White concluded, "is to remember that God also buried his Son on the mission field."

For a missionary couple who stand beside a mound of earth in a garden in Nigeria, no logical explanation of unanswered prayer will suffice. They must place their faith in a God who has yet to fulfill the promise that good will overcome evil, that God's good purpose will, in the end, prevail. To cling to that belief may represent the ultimate rationalization----or the ultimate act of faith.

Trust God with what God already knows.

From Phillip Yancey's book on Prayer:

I know what happens in human relationships when I remain at a shallow level. With casual friends I discuss the weather, sports, upcoming concerts and movies, all the while steering clear of what matters more: a suppressed hurt, hidden jealousy, resentment of their children's rude behavior, concern for their spiritual welfare. As a result, the relationship goes nowhere. On the other hand, relationships deepen as I trust my friends with secrets.

Likewise, unless I level with God - about bitterness over an unanswered prayer, grief over loss, guilt over an unforgiving spirit, a baffling sense of God's absence - that relationship, too, will go nowhere. I may continue going to church, singing hymns and praise choruses, even addressing God politely in formal prayers, but I will never break through the intimacy barrier.

"We must lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us.", wrote C.S. Lewis.

To put it another way, we must trust God with what God already knows.

What if God Answered Every Prayer?

“Apart from prayers impossible to answer – those that involve a logical contradiction such as opposing sides praying for victory, or farmers and athletes praying for conflicting weather patterns – what would happen if God answered every prayer? By answering every possible prayer, God would  in effect abdicate, turning the world over to us to  run. History shows how we have handled the  limited power granted us: we have fought wars, committed genocide, fouled the air and water, destroyed forests, established unjust political  systems, concentrated pockets of superfluous wealth and grinding poverty. What if God gave us  automatic access to supernatural power? What  further havoc might we wreak?
 
                   Philip Yancey:  Prayer: Does it Make a Difference?

Respectable Types

Phillip Yancey taught a class at his church in Chicago about Jesus. He reflects on what he discovered about Jesus in his book The Jesus I Never Knew.   

"The more unsavory the characters, the more at ease they seemed to feel around Jesus.  People like these found Jesus appealing: a Samaritan social outcast, a military officer of the tyrant Herod, a quisling tax collector, a recent hostess to seven demons.

In contrast, Jesus got a chilly response from more respectable types.  Pious Pharisees thought him uncouth and worldly, a rich young ruler walked away shaking his head, and even the open-minded Nicodemus sought a meeting under the cover of darkness.

I (Yancey) remarked to the class how strange this pattern seemed, since the Christian church now attracts respectable types who closely resemble the people most suspicious of Jesus on earth.  What has happened to reverse the pattern of Jesus' day?  Why don't sinners like being around us?"

By answering every possible prayer...

Quote from Philip Yancey's book, Prayer: Does it Make a Difference?

"Apart from prayers impossible to answer - those that involve a logical contradiction such as opposing sides praying for victory, or farmers and athletes praying for conflicting weather patterns - what would happen if God answered every prayer?

By answering every possible prayer, God would in effect abdicate, turning the world over to us to run. History shows how we have handled the limited power granted us: we have fought wars, committed genocide, fouled the air and wather, destroyed forests, established unjust political systems, concentrated pockets of superfluous wealth and grinding poverty. What if God gave us automatic access to supernatural power? What further havoc might we wreak?"

The Scandalous Mathematics of Grace

Philip Yancey in "What's So Amazing About Grace" discusses Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard found in Matthew 20:1-16.

"Jesus' story makes no economic sense, and that was his intent. He was giving us a parable about grace, which cannot be calculated like a day's wages. The employer in Jesus' story did not cheat the full-day workers. No, the full-day workers got what they were promised. Their discontent arose from the scandalous mathematics of grace. They would not accept that their employer had the right to do what he wanted with his money when it meant paying scoundrels twelve times what they deserved. Significantly, many Christians who study this parable identify with the employees who put in a full day's work, rather than the add-ons at the end of the day. We like to think of ourselves as responsible workers, and the employer's strange behavior baffles us as it did the original hearers. We risk missing the story's point: that God dispenses gifts, not wages. None of us gets paid according to merit, for none of us comes close to satisfying God's requirements for a perfect life. If paid on the basis of fairness, we would all end up in hell."