WHAT DOES PRAYER ACCOMPLISH?

With all the talk about the alleged benefits of Eastern meditation, I was surprised to find an article in Psychology Today about the many studies pointing to the benefits of prayer:

·       Prayer appears to help boost people’s will power, making it easier for them to exercise self-control.

·       Across multiple experiments, researchers found that having participants pray for someone reduced aggressive responses to being angered or provoked. This research suggests that prayer may be a good anger management tactic.

·       Prayer similarly makes it easier for people to forgive. Researchers found that having participants pray for romantic partners and friends made those individuals more likely to forgive their partners and friends. This work can be found here (link is external) and is consistent with other research suggesting that prayer improves romantic relationships.

·       Researchers found that having couples pray together increased both feelings of unity and trust and did so more than having couples talk about positive experiences. This work suggests that prayer is more than just an emotionally positive experience. It helps bring couples together. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/more-mortal/201603/science-reveals-the-benefits-prayer

Although I would assume that the majority of participants are Christians, the article makes no explicit claims about Christian prayer. However, in an interview on Pat Robertson’s 700 Club (3/27/2018), Lee Strobel discussed his new book, “The Case for Miracles: A Journalist Investigates Evidence for the Supernatural,” and the many findings that Christian prayer brings positive results.

However, the skeptics often cite an extensive study funded by the Templeton Foundation, which found that prayer didn’t make a difference. For a long time this study had silenced me about the benefits of prayer. However, Strobel revealed a key factor that the skeptics had not disclosed. The participants were not chosen among Bible-believing Christians, and this makes all the difference in the world.

James had written, “You do not have, because you do not ask” (James 4:2). The studies inform us that we can bank on this truth.

FAILURE AND SELF-AWARENESS

I must admit that I admire many traits that I observe among non-believers. One was telling me about his success:

·       I just push on. I have failed many times, but I just get back up and continue. I regard every failure as an opportunity and a learning experience.

What a great attitude! I compared this with own failure-avoidance patterns. Failure was so painful that I would avoid any possibility of it at all costs. Failure told me that I wasn’t the person I wanted to be. Instead, it attacked my self-esteem and left me naked before a threatening world. Consequently, failing was more than I could endure.

I had won the chess championship of my high school and went on to the state competitions and lost my first game. I was devastated and withdrew.

I still do not relish the prospect of failure. It is painful, but I can now endure it. My identity no longer rests upon my performance or what people might think of me. Instead, it rests squarely upon the thoughts and plans of my Savior who loves me and gave His life for me.

I have admired many other traits found among people who do not share my faith. I have met some who are trying to be scrupulously honest with themselves, something I had been totally incapable of doing.

I wondered, “How are they able to face themselves – their lies, failures, jealousies, and selfishness?” I was never able to face myself. Instead, I always had to be right. Consequently, whenever there was a dispute, I was convinced that it was exclusively the other person’s fault, even as I wrestled to suppress thoughts that proclaimed my guilt.

Instead, it was only through the assurance of Christ’s love, forgiveness, and acceptance that I was enabled to accept myself.

I am not saying that there are many ways to salvation. Instead, the light that provides self-awareness and correction is the very same light that reveals a moral design and the moral law-Designer. According to Jesus, this light comes from God:

·       But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun [light] rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. (Matthew 5:44-45 ESV)

It is this goodness and light of God that should lead us to repentance (Romans 2:4). How does this work? If we truly see ourselves as sinners and then find that, despite our best efforts, we remain condemnable, this should drive us to despair.

Consequently, if we stop short of receiving the full disclosure of the light and its Answer to our moral failures, we condemn ourselves to have to find our own answers. The light tells us we are damned. However, we cannot face this fact any more than we can look into the glare of the sun. So what do we do? We make excuses for ourselves:

1.    I’m doing a lot of good for others, or

2.    Comparatively speaking, I’m a good person, or

3.    God knows that I am trying the best that I can, or

4.    Everybody has their faults – no one can be perfect.

Instead, what does the light tell us? The light tells us that there is still something terribly wrong with us. Our ongoing sense of guilt and shame attest to this fact. Self-forgiveness and rationalizations do not work, at least, not for long. We need the mercy that can only come from Above. The light should make us sorrowful and lead us to repentance and salvation (2 Corinthians 7:10), if we are truly willing to see what it exposes. As Jesus taught, it should make us mourn and not minimize our sins (Matthew 5:3-6).

Therefore, Jesus pronounced this judgment on humanity:

·       "And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.” (John 3:19-21)

I am amazed that these wonderful people have been able to endure far more light than I was ever able to endure. However, if they continue to shield themselves from the intense scrutiny of the light-Giver’s light, their defenses and rationalizations will become their self-judgment and destruction.

RICHARD DAWKINS ON THE HYPOCRISY OF THE WEST

Leftist, evolutionist, and Christian-baiter, Richard Dawkins, had been dis-invited to speak on KPFA Radio in Berkeley, California following complaints about his past negative comments regarding Islam. KPFA explained:

·       “[W]e didn’t know he had offended and hurt – in his tweets and other comments on Islam, so many people.”

Dawkins understandably responded that he had been equally critical of Christianity, but no one had ever objected. He therefore protested:

·       “Why do you give Islam a free pass? Why is it fine to criticize Christianity but not Islam?”

According to Dawkins, the media’s defense of Islam is worse than hypocritical because Christianity is “benign” compared to Islam and a “bulwark against something worse”:

·       “There are no Christians, as far as I know, blowing up buildings,” Dawkins said. “I am not aware of any Christian suicide bombers. I am not aware of any major Christian denomination that believes the penalty for apostasy is death.” https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/richard-dawkins-benign-christianity-is-about-to-be-replaced-by-something-wo?utm_source=LifeSiteNews.com&utm_campaign=dd7763e091-Daily%2520Headlines%2520-%2520U.S.&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_12387f0e3e-dd7763e091-401443397

How then can we understand the hypocrisy of Western media and leadership? For one thing, the more that Western culture has rejected its Christian values, the more it has felt both restricted and judged by them. In this sense, the West is like a teenager rebelling against the restrictions and judgments by which he feels bound.

But how is it that he cannot see that by rejecting his parents, he has partnered with a killer. Does he believe that life will be better under Islam? Is he not aware of the rapes, sex-slavery, killings, and oppression found throughout the Islamic world? Muslims are already crowing that soon Europe will be theirs.

I can understand this. They have consistently observed that bullying will get them everything, and that Europe does not have the character or convictions to stand up against anything, even violence and rape.

However, I cannot explain the capitulation of the West through any rational or pragmatic considerations. Yes, it is insanity, but what has caused their abandonment of rationality? It must be satanic. As the West has rejected Jesus, they have filled the vacuum with moral relativism, multiculturalism, and secular humanism, and this has utterly blinded them, no less than if they had plucked out their eyes.

PHILOSOPHY AND SURRENDER

 

Brian confessed that he had been interested in philosophy. I thought I had sensed a note of surrender in his confession.

Brian had given up. Trying to grasp the meaning of life and his purpose within it was like trying to grasp the wind, as the wise King Solomon had concluded. However, there was an important piece of the puzzle that Solomon had lacked - the existence of the eternal, the culmination of God's justice and mercy.

Without this essential piece, Solomon railed that he hated life, even though he had more pleasures than anyone could dream of. However, Brian lacked more than just one piece of the puzzle. For him, God was no more than an uncaring energy-force.

I tried to explain that a satisfying philosophy was like starting to button our shirt in the right hole. If we succeed at the bottom, every other button will fall satisfyingly into its correct hole. If we don't, everything else will be out-of-place. Sadly, when our buttons fail to fit, we seldom go back to the starting place.

Brian wasn't biting. He knew his buttons were out of place, but he was content to just "enjoy" life, but could he?

King Solomon needed to know the purpose of life. From his limited perspective, it seemed meaningless. We die like the animals, the righteous and unrighteous alike, and we are forgotten. In light of this absurdity, even his endless supply of women and money could only provide a fleeting sense of pleasure.

A poor man who knows his purpose is richer than the rich man who cannot see his way. There was nothing further I could say to Brian. I could only hope that I had given him a candle for his journey.

WHY DOESN'T GOD PERFORM MORE MIRACLES TODAY?

God is always at work, and His work is always supernatural. However, we seldom perceive this. Consequently, someone just asked me:

• Wouldn't it be nice if He could appear to us now. Why only then and then nothing after? 

I answered:

• Along with many others, I have had numerous supernatural encounters with the Savior. However, these intense encounters came to an end about 35 years ago. Why? Here is my understanding. I had struggled with decades of depression topped with panic attacks which had left me devastated. The Lord knew that I needed those intense supernatural encounters to keep me afloat. 

Now, He expects me to walk "by faith and not by sight," even though there are times when I long for something more tangible. But why this miracle-lean diet? Why must we walk by faith and not by sight?

According to Jesus, we are blessed by walking in faith. When the Apostles had reported that they had encountered the risen Jesus to Thomas, he refused to believe without seeing Jesus himself. However, Jesus reprimanded him:

• Then he said to Thomas..."Do not disbelieve, but believe." Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!" Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." (John 20:27-29)

Why are we blessed by believing without seeing? Jesus wasn't teaching His disciples the blessedness of blind faith. Instead, He was addressing disciples who had witnessed His hundreds of authenticating miracles for three years. Elsewhere, He had taught that they should not believe Him in the absence of evidential corroboration - namely, miracles:

• “If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father." (John 10:37-38; 5:31-37)

Instead, Jesus was reprimanding Thomas' stubbornness for refusing to believe in light of the many miracles he had already observed and the testimony of His fellow Apostles that Jesus had risen.

Well, how can having a miracle-lean diet be a blessing? Such a lean diet means little instant gratification. Instead, God prefers character over comfort, and character is the product of waiting:

• Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (Romans 5:3-5)

If God had given me everything I wanted and when I wanted it, I would never have poured myself into His Words in search of answers. I would not have grown to know Him and to enjoy a relationship based on truth.

Consequently, David thanked God for making him wait by withholding a miraculous deliverance:

• It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes. The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces. (Psalms 119:71-72)

Had David been miraculously rescued whenever he asked, he would not have received something better.

We are too ready to indict God when He doesn't answer our prayers and wrongly conclude that He is untrustworthy. We esteem our own understanding more than we ought. Instead, if we examine ourselves during these times, we should find that untrustworthy-ness belongs to us.

When we were babes, our mother held our hand as we took our first steps. However, eventually, she removed her hand to enable us to learn to walk on our own. She stood a distance away to beckon us to come. When God stands away and beckons us, we rail against Him.