Face Time With God

By LeRoy Lawson

There”s no doubt about it. When we pray, honesty is the best policy, even though our truthfulness will probably not sound very spiritual. Do we dare, in the presence of God, to utter our sullied thoughts, to strip off our masks of propriety? What will God think if we “let it all hang out”?

When Eugene Peterson teaches people to pray, he challenges them to pray the Psalms. Then he waits for the shock to hit them. “Did you think these would be the prayers of nice people?” he asks. “Did you think the psalmists” language would be polished and polite?” Prayer is not “what good people do when they are doing their best,” he assures them. “Prayer is elemental, not advanced language.”¹

And perhaps, it is fair to say, the more honestly we pray, the more we would shock a nearby eavesdropper. We won”t offend our intended recipient, however. If God were so easily offended, do you think the Bible would include some of the psalms we find there? Would, for example, the third Psalm be in the Bible?

God! Look! Enemies past counting!

Enemies sprouting like mushrooms,

Mobs of them all around me, roaring their mockery:

“Hah! No help for him from God!”

But you, God, shield me on all sides;

You ground my feet, you lift my head high;

With all my might I shout up to God,

His answers thunder from the holy mountain.

I stretch myself out. I sleep.

Then I”m up again””rested, tall and steady,

[When reading this prayer, I usually repeat this line. It”s my favorite.]

Fearless before the enemy mobs

Coming at me from all sides.

Up God! My God, help me!

Slap their faces,

First this cheek, then the other,

Your fist hard in their teeth!

Real help comes from God.

Your blessing clothes your people! (The Message)

Psalm 3, like many others, is the honest cry of an anguished man. Not an example of sanctified piety, perhaps; it does not make anyone”s list of model prayers for beginning disciples. And yet””we who know what it is to be stressed out can identify and can be grateful the psalmist”s Good Friend will accept him at his angriest and hang on to him at his ugliest. He”s cornered, he”s scared, his enemies are taunting; but he endures it all because he is not alone. Thanks to God”s presence he can sleep and rise refreshed and “taller.”

So what do we think of the psalmist”s friend, and how do we talk to him? Our sensibilities are no more refined than the psalmist”s. Do we dare to pray with his candor?

This much the psalmist knows and counts on: There”s power in prayer, because a powerful God hears and responds.

This same conviction compels the apostle Paul in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 to urge Christians to pray continually. What he means by that imperative is similar to what the North American Christian Convention planners had in mind when they adopted their 2005 theme, “Journey into the Presence.” Prayer is entering the presence (which we are to do always, Paul says), as in Psalm 42:1, 2,

As the deer pants for streams of water,

so my soul pants for you, O God.

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

When can I go and meet with God?

So we seek a place and set a specific time for our appointment with God. We bow our heads, bend our knees, and prostrate our bodies in order to properly “journey into the presence.” Even as we do so, though, we can”t exactly claim to be praying without ceasing, can we?

On the other hand, maybe we can. Praying without ceasing is possible because, paradoxical as it sounds, even as we yearn for the presence, the presence is already with us: We thirst for what we already have.

Where can I go from Your Spirit?

Or where can I flee from Your presence?

If I ascend into heaven, You are there;

If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.

If I take the wings of the morning,

And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

Even there Your hand shall lead me,

And Your right hand shall hold me (Psalm 139:7-10, New King James Version).

How do we explain it, this seeking to be in the presence of the presence who is not absent?

My Wife and I

Aren”t we talking about something like a good marriage? If a man is well married to a woman he adores and considers his best friend, then whether he is at the office or playing basketball with the guys or dodging cars on the freeway, he lives in her presence. The strength of their relationship colors, modifies, and enriches all his other relationships. He is never out of her presence.

But he would quickly admit that something more is needed. Some personal time just with her””to see her, to listen to her, to be heard by her, to be reminded of her personality, her quirks, if you please””to know what delights and disgusts her, to feel her touch and to share her joy and sorrows.

He””and I””need what my daughter calls “face time.” It”s quite like what my wife Joy means when she says, “I need your day off.” Usually she is asking for help with the ever-expanding “honey-do” list; the important has become the urgent. But she”s asking for more than tasks completed. She wants more of me.

And I want more of her.

Not that it is always pleasant, this face time. Sitting down for a conversation with my wife is usually refreshing, often uplifting, mostly encouraging. Mostly.

Sometimes it”s not any fun at all. Sometimes I don”t want to talk with her. I”m afraid of what she”ll say. Sometimes she won”t be satisfied with face time. It”s a face-lift she wants. Mine. Charges are made, change is demanded. Things can”t go on this way.

So with God. I can convince myself I am walking in God”s presence. I don”t take his blessings for granted. I depend on his strength; I trust in his providence. But all this demands nothing of me, and real relationships make demands””like face time””and there are consequences. And these consequences lead one even more deeply into the presence, where further change occurs, change in the pray-er.

As someone has astutely noted, “Prayer makes the soul tender.” We might even say malleable, thinking of Isaiah 64:8, like clay in the hands of the potter. Leonard Ravenhill, in Why Revival Tarries, after noting that we never gossip about folks we pray for or pray for people we gossip about, calls prayer “a great detergent.” It cleans us up.

Early in my ministry, when a powerful man was doing his best to get me fired, I learned this lesson. While I was nurturing my grudge against him, in my devotions I ran across Jesus” challenge to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Well, that meant me. Like the psalmist, I was feeling persecuted. No way did I want to pray for that louse, but I did want to follow Jesus, so I prayed for him. It went against the grain, but I did it.

That”s when I learned you can”t pray for a man and hate him. Your hatred turns to understanding, your understanding to compassion, your compassion to forgiveness, and your forgiveness of him leads to prayer asking for forgiveness for yourself.

God and Myself

When we move from walking in the presence of God””praying continually””to more intentional face time with him, we receive yet another benefit. God still remains a mystery, of course; he”s infinite, we are finite. This mystery should not surprise us. Who can claim real knowledge of another person, even another person as close as your spouse?

You may be an expert on other people; counselors seem to have no trouble explaining their clients. But how many counselors do you know who are successfully living with a spouse? Explaining comes easy when your knowledge is superficial, but to dwell in the presence of another is to accept the mystery.

So while face time with God does help us to know him better, it does not fully reveal him. But here”s the real payoff: our conversations with God certainly help us to know ourselves better. We are, after all, in part the result of our genes and in part the effect of our relationships. Praying demands a relationship, and a relationship demands face time.

It”s this relational aspect of prayer that Jesus introduces when he teaches his disciples to call God “Abba.” There”s no precedent in ancient Jewish literature for addressing God in this informal way. Jesus is teaching people who trembled to utter the word God to say something more intimate, more presumptuous than they had ever dared. They are presuming a relationship with the almighty.

This speaks to me because of my relationship with my father, more precious as the years go by. I walk in his presence. And the older I get the more I realize that to know my father well is to know myself better.

I was walking in the business district of a large city when I caught an image reflected in a store”s plate glass window. It was my father looking back at me. But my father was dead. I was so startled I stopped and stared. Could it be? No, of course not. It wasn”t Dad; it was the reflection of myself. (My father, by the way, was a little old man.) But in seeing him, I saw myself. I had become a little old man, too.

No one knows himself or herself except in relation to another. So I live in my wife”s presence and my father”s presence. They help define me. To them must be added the presence of my children and grandchildren. And friends. And acquaintances. And fellow citizens. And fellow human beings. And through face time, I learn more about them, but even more, and often more disconcertingly, I learn more about myself. And in loving them more, I can love myself more.

In my face time with God I learn of his love for them, all of them, and because I want to be more like him, I learn to love more and more the ones he loves.

No surprise here. Jesus teaches this is what God wants most of all. When we get serious about our journey in his presence, we won”t need to be commanded. We”ll want most what Jesus says God wants most: to love God with all we are, and to love our neighbors as much as we love ourselves.

__________

¹“Listen Yahweh,” Christianity Today, 14 January 1991, 23.

 

 

LeRoy Lawson, international consultant with Christian Missionary Fellowship, International, serves with the Publishing Committee and CHRISTIAN STANDARD’s contributing editors.