Religious Freedom

I’ve been saving this op-ed from The Economist for a few weeks for various reasons. I probably should have included it as additional material in my recent post regarding an Ayaan Hirsi Ali article on a similar subject, but in retrospect repetition is a valuable tool in learning, and this is particularly true for unpleasant topics.

We need to take our Lord seriously when He promises something, and He promised persecution and trouble. It doesn’t help when our own human nature invites it, but that doesn’t mean that persecution is any less real. The Economist article discusses how Christianity is not only thriving but expanding rapidly among people in Africa and actually across the world of Islam, and those converts are paying the price in blood that Jesus paid.

Collegiate Day of Prayer

This Thursday, February 23, is the National Collegiate Day of Prayer. It is a 100 year old tradition of praying for and over our colleges and universities. Many churches and student groups are participating. Many people will be fasting from sundown Wednesday to sundown Thursday.

With many economic prognosticators claiming higher ed and student loans are the next economic bubbles to burst, and the spiritual climate on so many of these campuses, it is well worth your time to go before the Lord at length on this day.

Our universities are the gathering places for world leaders, past, present, and particularly, future. How can we not go before the God of all Nations and intercede on behalf of the saints in classes with the pillars of this world’s system?

As a faculty member, I can say with grave certainty, we are in need of prayer. Pray for us.

On any given week, there are readers from at least 15 countries. All of these nations have some of their citizens at many of these campuses, who will one day return and impact their homeland. Pray, therefore, for your fellow countrymen, that they may find the fruit of the Gospel growing in their hearts because of their time here.

Pray.

SDG

A Simple Reminder to Banish Fear

"If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million enemies. Yet distance makes no difference. He is in the next room praying for me." - Anthony Coniaris

SDG

A Sin To Be Silent...

This is a difficult post to write for a number of reasons, yet, as the title suggests, it would be wrong for me not to. Several weeks ago, I read a series of news articles about a New Jersey family, Army Major and Mrs. Jackson, a Christian family with three biological and two adopted children. For years, they have fostered medically at risk children, a herculean and noble effort that led to them adopting at least two.

However, in April 2010, (nearly two years ago) they ran afoul of New Jersey’s Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS), when they took the youngest, an adopted, medically challenged infant, to the hospital for a fever. The hospital staff initially thought aspects of the baby’s condition were suspicious and contacted DYFS, who immediately removed all five children from the home. Ultimately, in a fairly short time, the medical concerns were determined to come from her existing conditions and likely pre-adoption injuries.

Extremes

Nearly all of us have had thoughts along these lines:  “If I go overboard in this area as a sacrifice, I will more than make up for it in this other desired area.” For example, “if I eat only rice cakes for a week, I’ll lose ten pounds forever and never gain them again.” “If I pull this all-nighter, I’ll keep my 4.0.” “If I max out my credit cards this month, I’ll get what I want and be able to pay it off in a couple of months.” The possible ‘deals’ we make with ourselves are as endless as our imaginations or our situations.

How’s that working for you?

We are One Body

Tonight, I came across the following article, “Muslim Persecutions of Christians: October.” While the source site is a politically based magazine and the article focuses on persecution from followers of Islam, persecutions come from many sides and take many forms. It is imperative that we lift up all of our brothers and sisters in the faith in prayer.

If we really believe that prayer moves the hand of God, and we really believe that the Church universal is one body under Christ, then how can we not? If we will lift up Aunt Bertha’s bunion in our church services, how much more must we lift up those who fear for their safety, their livelihoods and their lives because they confess the name of Christ?

30 Days of Praise

Today at the faculty fellowship, we had our regular time of prayer. One of the attendees shared something she recently started doing with some of the female faculty who meet regularly to pray—committed to something called 30 Days of Praise. Apparently it has its origins in a book of the same name. I’d never heard of it, but as it so often happens, this evening at a cousin’s house, I saw the book on her coffee table. It’s amazing what you see when you know it exists.

A Prayer Request

Tonight’s post is a bit unusual, and somewhat bittersweet for me. I have been leading the faculty ministry at UT for several years now, and it seems to be slipping away rather than strengthening. (Perhaps the answer is as simple as the leadership or lack thereof, who knows? I’m willing to admit that possibility.) Therefore, I am asking you to please pray for the faculty at UT, and for us to have wisdom to see how God would work through us to minister to faculty and the campus.

This is not a one-off prayer request to toss one up while you read it and then forget, though I’m sure God listens to those, too. (I hope so as I’ve done it plenty of times myself.) This is a request for a repeated, fervent, long-term commitment to see God transform the faculty, believing and non-believing alike.

I am not asking for prayer for the ministry known as Christian Faculty Network—there is only one Kingdom here, and I’m not the monarch. This is a request for God to move more in reaching this group of people bound by the moniker of UT Austin. The well-advertised motto here is, “What starts here changes the world.” If that is the case, then how important must it be for the things to start here to have eternal value and impact.

Thank you.

SDG

Please Pray For Rain!

Today’s topic is a bit different, and urgent.

My area of Texas, as I’ve written before is officially under extreme drought conditions. Lakes are less than half full. And today, due to a combination of a cold front moving through and the (DRY!) remnants of tropical depression Lee, we have had severe high winds that have fanned flames of many wildfires. I live near a county line, and both of those counties have been overwhelmed by fires.

One fire has burned over 14,000 acres and is not contained at all in the next county (Bastrop) and has destroyed over 300 homes so far.

Prayerwalking

Tonight, I finally started something I’ve been meaning to for a couple of years now. I tend to work late, so my building on campus is pretty quiet when I leave, usually just the custodial staff and a few grad students working on their chemical reactions. Tonight, I began prayerwalking my building. I started on the top (5^th) floor and walked the entire hallway and dropped to the 4^th floor below, praying all along.

What did I pray about?

Prayer for Fall Term

Father,

As we prepare for a new year of classes,

We ask you to prepare our hearts,

And attitudes

To love our students, all of them;

To teach them with humility and authority;

To see their situations with your eyes and wisdom

That we may fairly treat them

With Justice and Mercy properly mixed;

That we may clearly communicate

Both content and expectation.

May we teach wisdom and discernment

More than facts and figures.

May we flee from indoctrination

Showing them how to think rather than what.

Grant us the energy to do all we can,

The ability to say “no,”

And the grace to be peacemakers in disputes.

May our students come eager

And either maintain or regain

Their sense of wonder.

Shield them from the things that

Distract and derail their progress.

May they teach us as well,

That we not become hardened with the familiarity of our subject.

Fill us with your Spirit, the Counselor.

May we clearly transmit the wisdom, power, love and truth

Of the Gospel

Through our example and teaching,

Such that we earn their desire

To ask the source of our light.

May our colleagues and students both

Smell the aroma of salvation around us

And turn from death to life.

And finally, grant us rest at the end of term,

That we may be renewed for the next.

Amen

SDG

Malaise

A cartoon from some magazine sometime back showed a classroom. On the chalkboard were two words, “ignorance” and “apathy.” Two stoners are in the back row and one looks up at the board with great effort, and with further strain reads the words slowly aloud, and asks his buddy, “what do those words mean?” His friend doesn’t even bother to look up when mumbling, “I dunno and don’t care.”

Malaise is just a cool sounding word, but if you have it, it’s hard to be excited about it.

Dad and I were talking tonight about how agitated so many Christians are about the state of our nation and all up in arms in Tea Party rallies and the like, yet, there are churches protesting “The Response” time of worship and prayer, and the stadium at best looks like it will be 20% full.

Fasting and "The Response"

Governor Perry has caught a lot of heat over his proclamation calling people to fast and pray this Saturday at Reliant Stadium in Houston. It is unfortunate, but it seems because he is the governor, he can’t encourage people to pray. Others have commented more fully on this in various blogs and op-eds. I guess my thoughts are summed up by the cliché, “It’s a free country. If you don’t want to do it, then don’t.” However, I might add for the practical agnostic that we are in such desperate need of rain, that it certainly can’t hurt to pray about it, unless you are afraid He might answer.

The truly disappointing thing is that the 71,000 seat Reliant Stadium apparently will only be hosting about 8000. So, either, 1) there are a whole lot of Christians doing things at home or with their home church, 2) there are a bunch of last minute attendees, or 3) it seems that most of the Christians in this part of the Bible belt are too busy or too apathetic to come together to worship and ask God for rain, or 4) they like drought. There may be other options, but those are what come to mind as I try to think of others. If you do not currently plan to recognize the proclamation in some way, I encourage you to reconsider.

If My People, Part 3: Conditions

“if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

II Chronicles 7:14

Micah 6:8 says simply, “He has shown thee, O Man, what is good and what the Lord desires of thee:  but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.”

As poetic as that verse is, it is hard sometimes to put feet on it—to see how that works in daily life. The 2 Chronicles verse in some ways is a parallel passage, and expands Micah 6:8 into four principle tasks.

If My People, Part 2: Now What?

“if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

II Chronicles 7:14

Yesterday, I explained the primary reason why it is problematic for Christians to claim the above verse, namely that it is a promise explicitly given to the nation of Israel after the dedication of Solomon’s temple, and the context of the verse strongly implies a physical nation with real estate, something that the Church simply does not have (with the possible exception of Vatican City).

But, as Christians (literally, ‘those like Christ’), don’t we have more reason to claim that we are called by His Name than Israel (literally ‘strives with God’)? Yes, but we are not a nation, nor a “kingdom of this world.” Furthermore, as Christians, we are literally under a new covenant with God, and the Chronicles verse is made to those under the old. As St. Paul indicates (in Galatians, I think), why would we seek promises from the old covenant when the new is so much better?

Where does that leave us? Do we have any recourse when faced with natural disasters, war, political crises and the like?

Requirements for a Faculty Ministry 1: Prayer

Today I was talking with a campus minister who works with our faculty group. He mentioned that his organization is going to focus this next year on prayer and evangelism in the various faculty ministries around the country.

Prayer is somewhat of a touchy subject for me. I have been blessed with several spiritual gifts, but prayer is not one of them. In other words, prayer doesn’t come easily to me and it isn’t the first thing I think of typically when I have a problem. However, that does not excuse me from doing it, and it is therefore a discipline I must challenge myself to develop. It is well and good for those with ‘the gift of prayer,’ and I ask any of you with it to lift university faculty up in prayer to the Lord fervently, faithfully, and frequently. (Preaching may be one of my gifts—three points all starting with the same letter—I’m golden!)

For the rest of us, which is probably a majority, we still have a responsibility to pray.

Opportunities in Interruption

Last night I had a hard time getting to sleep. Just as I’d drift off, something would wake me:  the storm that passed through (Thank you, LORD!!!), my charging phone chirping as the power flickered, etc., leading me to unwillingly greet 4 am.

I know many folks who when they have trouble getting to sleep, see it as an opportunity from God to pray, and I admire that, and wish I’d think of that more often. Usually, I’m working too hard trying to get back to sleep to think of it though.

Makes me wonder how many other times I miss an opportunity to pray because I’m trying too hard to accomplish what I’m “supposed” to be doing in spite of interruptions and obstacles.

SDG

Well, What Now?

Why not? Every once in a while, it’s fun to jump on the bandwagon. It’s “Rapture +1” and all those ‘camping’ out on “Biblical” numerology are coming into the rain of disillusionment and chagrin.

Scholar's Prayer

This nugget is from the president of the C. S. Lewis Foundation, Dr. Stan Mattson, inspired by Choristers’ Prayer of the Royal College of Church Music:

Bless us O Lord, your servants who are called to scholarly vocations.

Grant that what we understand with our minds and profess through our words

may be grounded in truth and reflected in our lives,

to the greater good and well-being of our students,

our colleagues, our academic communities and the world at large,

through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen

While God is the hearer of our prayers, I find encouragement from Lewis’ reflection:

"I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time- waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God- it changes me."

SDG