Balaam

In Numbers 22, there is an interesting story about a man named Balaam. It seems that Balak, king of the Moabites, had heard about the Israelites coming out of Egypt, and that God was tearing down any opposition to them along the way. Balak was worried that the Israelites were going to roll right over him and his people and there was nothing he could do about it. Balak had heard about this guy Balaam that had some kind of power, and whoever he cursed ended up in bad shape, and whoever Balaam blessed ended up prospering. So Balak thought to hire Balaam to curse Israel for him, so that they would, essentially, self-destruct, and solve Balak’s problem. Apparently the idea of creating an allegiance with the Israelites never occurred to him (Of course, in those days, forming an allegiance usually meant an exchange of money, and Balak probably thought he couldn’t afford an allegiance with such a powerful people).
So Balak’s messengers came to Balaam, and made their proposal. Balaam told them to stay the night, and he would give them an answer in the morning. Balaam did something that a lot of people would probably consider odd; he prayed about it. I wonder how many of us, if offered a huge moneymaking business opportunity, would stop to pray about it? “Why, that’s a no-brainer! Surely God would want me to have the money, so that I can better support His work…” It strikes me as particularly interesting that Balaam was not an Israelite, yet he clearly had a relationship with the one true God. How does one outside the true faith develop a relationship with the true God? I’m not sure that I have a good answer to that, but I think that it shows that God has always been accessible to everyone, even in a time when most people didn’t think that he was.
Balaam had a conversation with God, and God told him not to go with these men back to Balak. So, Balaam told the men that God wouldn’t let him go. These men went back to Balak, and told him simply that Balaam wouldn’t come; they did not explain why. The why might not have been important to Balak, anyway; Balak seems to have thought that this was a negotiating tactic. So Balak sent more men, with a bigger financial offering (I would think that he could probably have bought an allegiance with Israel with that amount of money, but he was in the mindset to do things his way—actually, I suspect that if he had sent messengers to Israel offering a simple non-interference treaty, that is, I won’t mess with you if you don’t mess with me, the Israelites probably would have gone for it, as long as there were no Moabites living in the Promised Land, and as frightened as Balak was of Israel, he might have been willing to forcibly evacuate any of his people that were living in the land that the Israelites claimed).
So, now Balaam is meeting with more powerful men in Balak’s kingdom, and they are offering him more money to come curse the Israelites. He tells them that he will not go against God; whatever God tells him to do, that’s what he’s going to do, no matter how much Balak offers. Again, Balaam invites them to stay the night, and again, he prays. This time, God tells him that, if the men ask again in the morning, then he should go with them. So Balaam gets up in the morning and saddles his donkey. He doesn’t wait to see if the men will ask, he gets ready to go. Now here’s a guy that, just hours before, said that he wouldn’t do anything more or less than what God told him to do, and now he’s going beyond his instructions.
Is he in trouble? Well, an angel met him along the way, only the angel was invisible to him. Balaam’s donkey saw the angel and took evasive maneuvers. Balaam, not understanding why his donkey wasn’t following his instructions, got upset with the donkey, and began to beat her. God opened the donkey’s mouth, and she asked Balaam if he had ever known her to disobey him. At this point, Balaam began to realize that something weird is going on (cue Twilight Zone music), but he still didn’t get it. God made the angel visible to Balaam, and explained that if the donkey hadn’t disobeyed Balaam, then Balaam would have paid the ultimate price for disobeying God. The angel even goes so far as to suggest that the donkey would have been better off obeying Balaam—at least she wouldn’t have gotten beaten.
Balaam, of course, repented, and told the angel that he was going back home. The angel told him, no, go ahead and go with these men, but keep in mind what will happen if you don’t do exactly what God tells you to do. Balaam assents, and he goes with the men.
Balaam meets with Balak, and Balak shows him the Israelites, and asks him to curse them. Balaam tells Balak that he will not do anything that God doesn’t want; and he tells Balak to prepare a sacrifice unto God. Balak does that, and Balaam pronounces a blessing on Israel. Balak, understandably, gets upset, but Balaam reminds him that he said he could only do what God would have him to do.
Balak leads Balaam to another mountain, and says that perhaps it will please God to curse them from there. Long story short, no matter what Balak does, Balaam will not speak a word against Israel. The harder Balak tries to get Balaam to curse Israel, the more Balaam blesses the Israelites.
The points we can take away from this are: Just because one has a relationship with God, it doesn’t necessarily follow that one is in the right religion. On the other hand, just because one isn’t following the right religion, it doesn’t necessarily follow that what one has to say about God is wrong, or even that God can’t speak through that individual. Also, if one has instructions from God, one should follow those instructions to the best of one’s ability. Also, if you think you’re doing the right thing, but things keep going wrong, you might want to take a minute and check to see just who it is you are fighting against. There are sometimes barriers to doing the right thing, but perseverance and God’s help will get you through, but God will also try to keep you from doing the wrong thing, but if you ignore Him long enough, He will eventually let you have your own way, but the price for that may be more than you were expecting. So pray about it; you don’t want to fight against God.

Does God Know the Future?

Let us suppose that I have a friend who is convinced that if he can get an anvil into the air, he can levitate it using his mental powers. He has gone to a lot of trouble to build a gallows-type arrangement, and set an anvil on the trap door. He has asked me to come witness his grand performance. I, having a great deal less confidence in his levitation abilities, predict that, when he opens the trap door, the anvil will come crashing to earth. He calls me a skeptic, and proceeds with his performance. He concentrates on the anvil just as hard as he can, and when he feels that he is ready, he releases the trap door, and the anvil falls to the ground. Thud. He then becomes extremely angry at me; obviously, the problem isn't that he can't levitate the anvil; the problem is that I am using my mental abilities to counter his, just so that my prediction will come true. I am, at this point, starting to suspect that it isn't a question of who has what ability; it's a question of which of us is mental (and I'm as confident in my assessment of that as I was of the anvil not floating in midair). There is a clear confusion of cause and effect. Just because I knew what would happen, doesn't mean that I caused it to happen. There is a big difference between knowing something will happen, and causing it to happen.
It has come to my attention that some people object to the idea that God knew the end from the beginning, on the grounds that we have freedom of choice. If we truly have freedom of choice, then, the logic goes, God couldn't possibly know the outcome of the culmination of all those choices. It seems to me that this idea is essentially rooted on the assumption that God can only know what will happen if God causes it to happen. I think that I have shown, in the first paragraph, that we have a limited ability to know what will happen (in certain circumstances) without being the cause. God is much smarter than we are, and he has an unlimited ability to know what will happen without causing those things to happen.
Open Theists like to use examples like, in Genesis 2:19, God brought the animals before Adam to see what Adam would call them. Now, is this an example of Adam having free will, and God waiting on Adam to decide? Shouldn't God have already known what Adam would call the animals? It seems to me that this is an example of empowerment. God is saying, "Adam, I have given you dominion over all the earth, so I want you to start by naming the animals." Now God could have introduced Adam to all the animals, "Adam, this is a horse. If I had let you name this animal, you would have named it a horse, but to save time, I'm going to tell you that it's a horse, so that you don't have to waste time thinking about it." God was willing to give Adam a say in the process, even though God already knew what Adam would say. This was for Adam's benefit, not God's.
In Job 1:11-12, Satan is willing to wager with God over how Job will react. Okay, but nobody ever said that Satan knew the end from the beginning. It was pretty foolish for him to bet against somebody who did, though. If Satan truly understood the end, he would have surrendered a long time ago; but Satan has been betting for ages that God doesn't accurately know the future.
In Genesis 18:23-33, Abraham negotiates with God over the fate of Sodom. This, again, is an example of empowerment. God allowed Abraham to think that he had some say in the process, but, in the end, God did exactly what he told Abraham He was going to do to start with.
In Deuteronomy 1:8, God promised the Israelites that they would enter into the Promised Land, but they didn't. No, actually, the Israelites were ordered to go into the Promised Land, and they refused.
In Exodus 32:7-10, God tells Moses that He will destroy Israel, and create a great nation from Moses, but Moses talks God out of it. Again, God is empowering Moses, and, at the same time, making sure that Moses understands the seriousness of the situation. God already knew what Moses would say, but He’s giving Moses a chance to say it.
The bottom line is, even though God always knows what's going to happen, sometimes He wants us to feel that we have some input. I know that more than once I have gotten myself into a situation, and I prayed about it, and as the situation developed, it became clear that God had answered my prayer before I prayed it. Would He have answered my prayer if I hadn't prayed? I don’t think so, that doesn’t make sense to me. Yet, there it is; He put things in motion before I even asked. It occurs to me, too, that some people think that time is a barrier to God, as it is for us. It isn’t. God created time, and it does not limit Him.

My Sis

When I was growing up, in a lot of ways my older sister was my mentor. Don't misunderstand me, she picked on me sometimes, and did other things that I didn't agree with, but she helped me to understand some things that would not otherwise have been evident to my young mind.
Some of it I don't really think was intentional. When I was a preschooler, she challenged me with mathematics. Of course, this was done more in the attitude of, "I learned this in school, and since you haven't started school yet, you don't know how to do it. Nyaah, nyaah,” but the end result was that I learned basic mathematics before I started school.
Some things she clearly did out of a sense of watching out for me. I remember walking through a cemetery one time and making a stupid comment. I don't remember exactly what I said, but something along the lines of, "I'm just a kid. I don’t have to worry about dying. I won't die until I'm old." She challenged me to look around at the tombstones and see if I could find any markers of people younger than me. I found several, and it didn't take long, either. Granted, a lot of those were infants that had probably been born with health problems and hadn't lived to their first birthday, but some were kids that had just died for one reason or another. That was a real eye-opener; I started taking my own mortality much more seriously after that.
Another time she became concerned that, when asked to bless the food at dinner, I recited a rote prayer as quickly as I could. She asked me if I could explain the prayer to her. I had never really thought about the meaning of the words before. In retrospect, I'm a little surprised that she was able to keep from laughing at my attempts to explain this little prayer that I had memorized (apparently phonetically). When I tried to break it down, the words that I was trying to explain were, "Goddess great, goddess good, lettuce sankim for our food. Amen." For some reason, it had never registered with me, until she asked me, that I was praying to a goddess instead of to God. I knew I wasn't supposed to be praying to any goddess...
Another time she noticed that, when we went to church, during the time that some of the congregants came into the sanctuary early to pray for the service, I mostly just goofed around. That may have been distracting to some of the people that were doing what they were supposed to be doing; that may even be the real reason why she did what she did. She tried to impress upon me the importance of prayer, but I didn't see the need. Praying for service didn't make sense to me, because service was going to happen whether I prayed for it or not. The idea that I might get more out of it if I prayed for it didn't make sense to me, partially because I wasn't aware that I was getting anything out of service (although perhaps if I had prayed about it, I would have received something from service). I didn't feel like I needed anything from God (boy, I wish I could get that feeling back in my life, but I guess that's really just the bliss that comes from ignorance—I’m still ignorant, just not as ignorant as I was). This was during the cold war, so finally she tried to at least get me to pray for that. Even then, I did not, at first, see the need. The USA and the USSR had been at a standoff for years, with neither one seeming particularly inclined to attack the other, even though people on both sides kept worrying that the other side would. Finally she told me something outrageous: She told me that the Soviets had come over the North Pole, and had captured Detroit. That got my attention. I'll tell you something else, too, that got me praying, and I prayed hard. I was afraid to even look at the news for the next several days, because I knew that most of the coverage would be about the Soviets occupying Detroit. Eventually, though, I looked, if only to find out if my prayers were being answered. Much to my surprise, I found out that the Soviets were no longer in Detroit, and, what's more, nobody else seemed to remember Detroit even being invaded. That taught me an important lesson about the power of prayer.
In retrospect, it also teaches an important lesson about “childlike faith.”

Living Beneath Our Privilege

Yesterday I posted about seeking first the Kingdom of God, and about how often God tries to do for us, and we just get in the way. It occurs to me that we live so far beneath or privilege. God wants us to have so much more than what we end up with. The Bible says that we have not because we ask not, and when we do ask, we ask amiss (James 4:3). Sometimes that’s as simple as not going to God in faith believing that He will give us the desires of our hearts. Sometimes he gave us those desires, to start with. How’s that for a conundrum: God lays something on my heart, but I don’t believe that it’s of God, so, even though it something I want to do, I don’t think it’s something that God wants me to do, so I try to push that out of my mind, and do what God wants me to do, only I’m really avoiding what God wants me to do. Wow. That even sounds confusing to me.
The point is, sometimes we don’t ask God, because we’re sure He’ll say no, before we even ask. Sometimes when we do ask, we feel so guilty, because we know what we’ve done, and we feel that we don’t deserve what we are asking for, even though we know that God has forgiven us, we don’t feel forgiven. Because we don’t feel forgiven, we go to God as if He hadn’t forgiven us. It’s kind of like asking dad for the car keys, when just this afternoon we got into trouble. Even if dad has forgiven us, we still kind of feel bad about asking. If we don’t ask, though, we can’t receive (of course, we may ask, and still not receive, but if we don’t ask, we definitely won’t receive), and if we ask, not expecting to receive, then we mess up our own chances.
One of the times that David got in trouble with God, God sent Nathan to remind David how much God had already given him, and then to say, “If that had been too little, I would moreover have given unto thee such and such things.” That always struck me as some kind of awesome. That particular instance, it seemed to me that David was being just a little bit greedy (well, maybe a lot greedy), but you notice God didn’t get angry with David for wanting more, only for not asking God for more, and just going out and taking what he wanted.
In the parable of the prodigal son, the Father tells the other son that he could have had, if he had only asked, “All that I have is thine.” The other son is the one who has been faithful all this time, but then when his brother returns, he gets miffed, as though his Father treats his miscreant brother better. The Father has to remind him that, all along, he has gotten exactly what he has asked for; no more, and no less.
Keep in mind, also, though, that Jesus set the example for us in the garden, when he said, “…not my will, but thine, be done.” He knew what was going to happen, and He understood why. He prayed that prayer to set the example for us. Sometimes we will ask for things, and the answer is just, “no,” because what we are asking for is not God’s will. Remember that Paul prayed three times to have a thorn removed from his flesh, but God told him that Paul needed that thorn. Sometimes, though, the answer will be, “Yes, I’m so glad you asked! I’ve been waiting for you to ask that!”
So how do you pray, in faith believing, if you aren’t sure that what you want is what God wants for you? Start out by asking God to help you to understand His will for your life, and ask Him for direction, even in your prayer life. Then work your way from there, remembering that God wants the best for you, even if sometimes you don’t know what that is.

The Power of Prayer

Yesterday I wrote about the proper position of women in the church, at least, according to Saint Paul. It occurred to me last night that some people object to Paul’s writings (particularly with regard to women) on the grounds that “Paul had a problem.” Indeed, in 2 Corinthians 12, starting at verse 7, Paul tells us that he had a thorn in the flesh, and that he had prayed that God would remove the thorn. He goes on to tell us that the answer that he got from God was that the “thorn” was good for Paul, it helped him stay humble. It never tells us what the situation was that Paul prayed about: Some say that it was that Paul hated women; others that Paul wanted desperately to be married, but knew that he couldn’t do what God had called him to do as a married man. I don’t know what it was, I think if it were important, then Paul would have written it down—God would have compelled him to write it down. I also think that if his thorn in the flesh interfered with Paul writing down what God wanted written down, then God would have removed it, and found some other way to reinforce Paul’s humility. Keep in mind that, of the twenty-seven books in the New Testament, Paul wrote Romans, First and Second Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, First and Second Thessalonians, First and Second Timothy, Titus, Philemon, and Hebrews. Yes, I know that some say Paul probably didn’t write Hebrews, but, in any case, the man wrote either thirteen or fourteen out of twenty-seven books in the New Testament. If we are going to discount his writings, without actually knowing what his problem was, shouldn’t we remove all of his writings from the Bible? Let’s face it, people who attack Paul’s character really just want to cherrypick the Scriptures they want to believe. The Bible is not a cafeteria: either you believe it, or you don’t. Either you believe that God directed the writing and the compiling of it, or you don’t. God could certainly have weeded out anything that slipped into the original edition that shouldn’t have been there.
Paul praying about his problem reminds me of Daniel praying to God, knowing that there was a Babylonian law that any person who petitioned anyone other than Darius King should be put to death. Daniel surely didn’t know what the outcome of that would be, but he did what he believed he needed to do, even if the law said he shouldn’t. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t recommend disobeying the law of the land, but, when the law tries to come between you and God, then you are justified in disobeying the law (don’t misunderstand me, I know that there are some people that do bad things and use religious belief to justify that, such as bombing abortion clinics, that’s just plain wrong). I think that it’s important to note that Daniel, after he became aware of the new law, prayed three times a day, as he did before. In other words, he didn’t start praying three times a day because of the law; he continued his normal relationship with God in spite of the law.
Some people have objected to the account of Jesus praying in the garden of Gethsemane. If He was God manifest in the flesh, then whom was He praying to? Himself? Keep in mind that in everything that He did in the flesh, Jesus set an example or the rest of us fleshly men to follow. If He hadn’t prayed in the garden, then some people would use that as an excuse not to pray: “Well, I never read in the Bible where Jesus prayed, so I don’t have to pray.” That’s kind of a silly excuse, but there are a lot of silly people. Also, the Scriptures tell us that all flesh needs to come to God. Some men refuse, I understand that, but all men should. So Jesus, in the flesh, prayed to God in the Spirit. In the process, He taught us the importance of putting God’s will first. Keep in mind that, God manifest in the flesh would have to deal with the flesh, and His flesh didn’t want to die, even though His Spirit understood, and was willing, to make that sacrifice for you and me.

Spiritual Gifts

Last night when I got home, I noticed that most of my neighbors had their “curbies” out by the street, reminding me that today is trash day. Which also reminded me that I needed to take out the trash. Last night the weather wasn’t very good, though, so I wheeled my curbie out to the curb before I went in the house, knowing that I wasn’t going to want to come back outside. I went ahead and bagged up my trash, and left it sit by the door, so that I could drop the trash in the curbie on my way to work this morning. I got up this morning, got ready for work, grabbed my stuff, grabbed the trash on the way out the door, and my curbie was gone. After a little research, I discovered that someone had wheeled my curbie back up to the house. Obviously, they thought it was stupid to have an empty curbie down by the street. I can’t blame them too much (although I kind of wonder who was looking in my curbie to start with—but I don’t really feel like my privacy was invaded, so I’m not too worried about it). Clearly, they were trying to help. It occurs to me that not everyone has the gift of helps.
Apostle Paul wrote about spiritual gifts on several different occasions. In 1 Corinthians 12:28, he lists gifts of healings, helps, governments, and diversities of tongues.
I think we all understand the concept of gifts of healings. Do they still exist? I believe that they do, but they are not nearly as common as they used to be. They certainly don’t seem to be nearly as prevalent in this day of modern medicine. I have heard of faith healers, of course, but I tend to believe that most of them are really just taking money from people that are either desperate or gullible or both.
The gift of helps is more common. Some people just find themselves helping other people. Most of the time, there doesn’t seem to be anything at all supernatural about it; they are just doing whatever they can to make things better for those around them. There are also a lot of people that try to help other people, and their intentions are good, but, in the long run, they really aren’t much help. That’s really how you can tell the difference.
The gift of governments? That’s a gift? It must be, the Bible says so. Unfortunately, those people almost never actually get involved in politics. Seriously, though, some people have a natural talent for organizing things, for making sure things get done.
The gift of diversities of tongues. That’s a really rare gift. It would really come in handy for someone doing missionary work, to be able to hold a conversation in a language that one has never studied, but, like I said, that’s really rare. There are some people that put a lot of stock in speaking in tongues as part of worship. I don’t think that’s what it’s about. Two chapters later, in 1 Corinthians 14:22, Paul says that tongues are a sign, not to them that believe, but to then that believe not. In the very next verse, though, he turns around and says that if all speak with tongues, and there come in those that are unlearned, or unbelievers, will they not say that ye are mad? If you stop and think about it, though, if somebody comes to visit on a Sunday morning, and one person is praising God in Russian, another in Greek, and another in Farsi, and so on, and our visitor doesn’t know or understand any of these languages, what is he going to think? What would you think, if you went to church and a whole bunch of people that you don’t know are speaking languages that you don’t know? Don’t tell me that you wouldn’t at least be tempted to call for the whitecoats to come and take these people away. On the other hand, though, what if you are praying and seeking God, and you’ve been praying and seeking God, and it just doesn’t seem like you are getting anywhere. Are my prayers even getting past the ceiling? If you haven’t been there, just wait, it happens to the best of us. So you’re praying and seeking God, and getting discouraged, and the thought comes to your mind, “Is God listening? Is God even real?” but you keep praying and seeking anyway, and at some point you break through, you know it, you feel, it, but there are some lingering doubts, and then you start speaking in a language that you don’t understand. You know what you’re saying, because the words are forming from your thoughts, but the words don’t make sense, even to you. Doesn’t that erase any doubt that you had? Don't you know, at that point, that it has to be God? That’s what tongues is about; it’s for those times when we, in the body of Christ, have unbelief.
Paul also told us in 1 Corinthians 14:12 that spiritual gifts are for the edifying of the church—the body of Christ. That applies to all spiritual gifts, not just the ones I have listed here.

The Voice of God

Lily Tomlin once posed the question, "Why is that when you talk to God, that's called prayer, but when God talks to you, that's called crazy?" It's an interesting question. Of course, she was being humorous when she said it, but it points out a basic flaw in the conventional wisdom of our society. The vast majority of Americans (and probably any other country, as well) believe in some form of God or gods. Most religions advocate prayer, but most people don't believe that God talks back (some say that they do, but they would be pretty surprised if God spoke to them, and might even consider psychiatric treatment). A lot of this stems from the fact that, in recent history, at least, the vast majority of people who claim that God has spoken to them have gone on to claim that God them something ludicrous, or proved themselves to be lunatics in some other fashion. Personally, I think it's not so much that God doesn't talk, as it is that we, generally, don't listen. Even the people that claim to have heard from God, aren't listening to God. We have a tendency to hear only what we want to hear, and, most of us don't expect to hear what we want to hear from God, so we just don't listen. We'll go to church and sing the hymns that the choir director has picked out, and sit quietly while the preacher preaches (and not really listen to him, either), and we expect that at the end of life, God will critique us, but ignore the fact that we barely acknowledged Him in this life. We all want to hear God say, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant." I mentioned yesterday that, in order to hear those words, one must first be a good and faithful servant. How can you do God's will if you aren't listening?

Some of you are probably wondering if I've ever heard from God. I believe I have. To be honest, I don't know how to describe it. I didn't hear a voice; I just suddenly knew something that I didn't know before. Let me give you an example: Several years ago, I moved to the area where I live now. There was a woman at the church that I had not known prior to moving here that started flirting with me. She was a widow, and a good bit older than I was (she mentioned once that she had four sons, and then she told me their ages--three of the four were older than I was), and I thought it was funny, so I flirted back (yes, yes, I know: bad idea). After awhile, though, it stopped being funny, and I prayed about it. Part of me really thought that God wanted me to marry this woman. I wanted to do what God wanted me to do, even if it meant marrying a woman old enough to be my mother, so I prayed hard. I will admit, that was one of the most focused prayers I have ever prayed. In the midst of the prayer, I didn't hear a voice, I just suddenly knew that the only way that she would marry a man my age was if she was backslid. It struck me as odd that it was phrased that way--a simple 'no' would have sufficed (although, in retrospect, I'm not sure I would have believed that it came from God if the answer had been that simple). In any case, I stopped flirting with her after that. A couple of years later, she left the church and married a man about my age (actually, a couple of years younger than me, so the same age I was when I got my answer from God. Of course, I never told anyone about that (until now), so you just have to take my word that it happened. Of course, I give this as an example, and I will admit that, there have been other occasions, when I suddenly just 'knew' something, and I really didn't know anything at all. The Bible says to try the spirits to see if they be of God. In other words, be familiar with what the Bible says, so that you can judge for consistency when a thought comes to mind that may be from God, or when someone tries to give you advice about whatever situation you are in. Does it match up? Does it seem like something God would want you to do? Notice I didn't ask if it makes sense: If David had asked that question, he never would have gone up against Goliath; Jehoshaphat would have never sent a choir into battle; Abram would have never left Haran.

A Little Bit More

I have mentioned before that I am a Navy veteran. When I was on the ship, there was a guy that had a drinking problem, and knew he had a drinking problem (there are a lot of people in the Navy with drinking problems--few of them know they have a problem). He normally avoided drinking, because he knew that one drink led to another, and two drinks led to four, etc. As long as he didn't take that first drink, he was okay, but if he took a drink, then he felt like he could 'handle' a second drink... We pulled in somewhere in the Bahamas, I think it was, and at the liberty brief they warned us that they didn't have a local Coca-Cola bottling plant, which meant that Coke had to be imported (Pepsi, too, in case you were wondering). They did have local distilleries, though, so liquor didn't have to be imported. This means that rum is cheaper than rum-and-Coke, and rum-and-Coke is cheaper than Coke. So, our intrepid thirsty friend goes out to but a Coke, and, even after the liberty brief, he was surprised at what a Coke cost. To be honest, I was a little surprised, too, but I knew what I wanted, and I was already expecting to have to pay more for it (after that, I bought Coke on the ship, and carried it with me out into town). He decided that for that much money, he should get his money's worth. The flaw in the logic is, that if what you want is Coke, then the only way to 'get your money's worth' would be to get a larger Coke, which, of course, wasn't going to happen. Conditioned by American values, though, he felt like he was getting a better deal by getting a rum-and-Coke, as opposed to a 'virgin' Coke. I've already mentioned that rum was cheaper than Coke, so, take a guess at how much Coke he got in his drink. So now he's paid extra for the privilege of having just enough Coke in his rum to taste. And, he's getting a much stronger drink than he anticipated, and it doesn't take long for the alcohol to go to his head and convince him that another rum-and-Coke is a good idea.

Later on that evening, he was walking through the streets, and noticed a hotel that tried to create the impression of being an international entity by flying flags from many different countries from the building's facade. He was inebriated enough at that point to become very insulted that these 'foreigners' were flying an American flag, so he took it (we were, of course, the foreigners, but in his state of mind that wasn't clear to him). By the way, in case you are wondering what I was doing during all of this, we didn't get liberty at the same time--I didn't see him all that night, but he told me about it in the morning.

When he sobered up, and realized what he had done, he took the flag back, and explained himself, as best he could, to the manager of the hotel. The manager was gracious enough not only to not press charges, but also to thank him for returning the flag.

I think what brought this incident to mind was Gehazi trying to get something for nothing, in the story of Naaman the leper. I can understand Gehazi's desire, but, of course, the fact that he tried to sneak around behind the back of the man of God shows that he knew he was wrong. My friend should have known he was wrong (he knew he had a drinking problem, but he had a drink anyway), but he let money cloud his judgment. Granted, he wasn't trying to get something for nothing, exactly, but he did try to get more for less. Generally, more for less is a good thing, unless the 'more' isn't what God has for you. David ran into the same problem with Bathsheba, and that turned into a real tangle.

So often, we think we know what's best for us, but God has something better in mind. Sometimes, when we pray, we get what we want; sometimes we get what we need, instead. Sometimes we get things that we didn't even know that we wanted, and yet, it makes us forget all about what we thought we wanted.

Interfaith Relationships

There was a discussion on the radio this morning as I was driving in to work: It seems that a pastor has been suspended from his church because he participated in an interfaith event where he prayed with a group of people from other faiths (or other denominations--I'm not clear on the details, the discussion started before I got in the car). From what I heard, most of the callers didn't seem to think that the suspension made sense, but some did. Some of the callers didn't seem clear on the details, either, one caller commented something to the effect of, "Why would you invite someone to pray at your church when they aren't even praying to Jesus, so you know their prayers aren't going anywhere?" and the announcer reminded her that they weren't talking about at his church, that he was invited to speak at a public function.

Personally, I have to disagree with the caller, anyway. I mean, I understand her viewpoint, but I think she's taking the wrong approach. It's interesting, because we had a Muslim man visit our church yesterday, and our pastor asked him to come up and speak. Understand, that, first, this man and my pastor have been friends for a very long time. This is not the first time he's attended our service. He came, yesterday, to ask us to attend a dedication (a road in our town is being renamed for a former mayor [who is not Muslim, by the way]). Why did our pastor invite him to speak? Well, for starters, he wasn't talking about doctrine. Quite frankly, even if he was, he knows what we believe, and has enough respect for us, as a church, and for my pastor, as a friend, that he wouldn't have stepped outside of the common ground (I know the man well enough to be sure of that). Secondly, it's hard enough to get non-believers into the building to start with. If we treat the man as though he's not worthy to even talk to us (is any of us really worthy of anything anyway?), how in the world can we expect to see him saved? Yes, I understand that he already thinks that he is saved, and I have no intention of arguing that point with him.

Now, I will grant you, this sort of thing can be misconstrued into a belief that the pastor thinks that Muslim doctrine is okay. He doesn't, and I don't. I think that there are a whole lot worse things out there than being Muslim. I also think that if you don't have friends outside of your church, then you're not going to be able to bring people into your church. Apostle Paul told Timothy to "do the work of an evangelist." You can't do that if you are pushing people out the door.

I should also point out that we have a man in our church who was raised Muslim. I'm not going to go into a lot of details, but, at one point in his life, someone very close to him was very close to death. He had been taught that praying for a situation like that was a waste of time, that Allah wasn't going to lower himself to intervene in a situation like that, but, this was a person that he couldn't bear to lose. So he prayed. Hard. And he got an answer. The answer he got was, "You are praying to a god who cannot save." (BTW, we're not talking about hearing voices, here, we're talking about an understanding and a feeling that was just inarguable.) He felt like Saul on the road to Damascus, so sure that he had been serving God for so long, only to have incontrovertible evidence that God was not at all who he thought he was. This began a journey that ended with him finding Jesus real to his life.

So many times, we, as Christians, act like anyone who is not of Christ is evil. Let's be honest with ourselves: Any one of us is capable of evil, Christian or not. There are a lot of good people that have not accepted Jesus as Lord. We need to be patient with them, and compassionate towards them; setting the example, and encouraging them to follow.

Does God Really Answer Prayer?

The big news this past week was the death of Ruth Bell Graham, wife of Billy Graham. I just recently heard an interesting quote from her. She said, “If God answered every prayer of mine, I would have married the wrong man seven times.”

I was taught in Sunday School as a kid that God answers every prayer, but sometimes the answer is 'No' and sometimes the answer is 'Not now.' We colored a picture of a traffic light with the green light marked 'Yes,' the yellow light marked 'Wait,' and the red light marked 'No.'

In the movie, "Bruce Almighty," Jim Carey's character is given God's powers for part of Buffalo. This includes hearing and answering prayers. Bruce finds out quickly that there are a lot of people in Buffalo that pray an awful lot. Still being somewhat self-centered, he worries that "this is going to suck up my whole life!" so he simply answers everyone's prayers, "Yes." Soon there is rioting in the streets. And with good reason. (By the way, I avoided seeing this movie for a long time, because it seems to me that Hollywood makes enough fun of religion, and because I think Jim Carey has a bad tendency to go way overboard with his characters.)

There is a quote going around something to the effect that you must be gullible if you believe that God answers prayers, even though he only answers .001% of yours, and the rest of the time, 'it just wasn't God's will.' I think that it's easy to scoff at such things, when you are predominantly looking at quantity, rather than quality. I will admit that most of my prayers are of the "Please let that light stay green until I get through it" variety. And most of those, the answer is a resounding, "No!" Big deal. It's easy for me to look at situations like that and say, "Well, that just wasn't God's will." It's harder, when a loved one is severely sick or injured and one prays for a healing, and the person dies anyway. At the same time, this world would be really overcrowded if God only let people die that nobody was praying for. On the other hand, it's really exhilarating when the doctors have done all they can do, and the church joins together and prays, and that person walks out of the hospital. Granted, that's generally not what happens, but when it does happen, it becomes hard to deny that God answers prayer.

We have a man in our church who, several years ago, had heart problems. His doctor got him on the list for a heart transplant, but it looked like it was going to take awhile. The doctor tried not to talk about what his chances were, but it was pretty clear that the doctor didn't think that he was going to live long enough to get a new heart. We prayed for him as a church. After his next examination, the doctor took him off the transplant list. He said his heart was fine.

I've been healed, myself. I don't really talk about it, because it's kind of silly. To be honest, I was being kind of stupid. But, anyway, here it is: I grew up a very nervous individual. I learned to direct my nervous energy into things that were socially acceptable; things that most people wouldn't find annoying. One of my nervous habits was chewing on the insides of my cheeks. By the time I finally made my personal commitment to follow Christ, I had a line of scar tissue down the insides of both cheeks. One day, I accidentally took a chuck out of my right cheek, about the size of a dime. I suppose I could have gone to the doctor about it, but I was afraid that He was going to pull together the edges of the hole and stitch it up, leaving me with a deformed cheek. Of course, I knew I couldn't just put a band-aid on it. So I prayed about it. The next morning, I woke up with a mouth full of blood. So I prayed some more. And the next morning, I woke up with a mouthful of blood. So I prayed even more. And the next morning, I woke up feeling that something was different. It didn't register right away, but there was no blood in my mouth. When I did realize that I wasn't bleeding, I checked the inside of my right cheek. It was perfectly smooth. Not only was there no hole, but all the scar tissue was gone. I actually tried to convince myself, at the time, that I had not been healed, that I had just healed. After all, it's been three days. But there was a hole there the night before, and it wasn't there that morning. And that wouldn't explain the scar tissue being gone either. It occurred to me that the scar tissue has had years to heal, so I checked my left cheek. The scar tissue was still there on that side of my mouth. Now I know I've been healed. I prayed a little bit more, just telling God that I felt stupid with scar tissue on one side of my mouth. A few days later, the scar tissue on the left side of my mouth disappeared.

So, okay, it's kind of a silly story, it's not nearly as impressive as the guy waiting for the heart transplant that suddenly didn't need it anymore, but this happened to me. How can I doubt that God answers prayer (even if the answer to most of my prayers is "No.")?