Off the Sidewalk (part 3)

For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father."   -Romans 8:15

‘Spirituality’ has been making a sort of come-back in our culture today. This isn’t necessarily good. There’s a world of difference between egocentric (man-centered) spirituality and theocentric (God-centered) spirituality. Egocentric spirituality uses things like prayer as a consumer tool. Egocentric spirituality primarily asks ‘What do I get?’ It’s basically a form of karma, where if you do good things you get good things. Theocentric spirituality, on the other hand, revolves around God. It doesn’t primarily seek to ‘get things’ but rather to get God himself that we might bring glory to his name.

The theocentric or Christian teaching of prayer is much more realistic than the egocentric or ‘consumeristic’ teaching of prayer. Romans 8:15  says that “by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’” By him we cry. Cry almost always means a person is in distress. In this verse we see that the Christian life will have times of suffering and distress. Christian spirituality is extremely realistic. The Bible never says Christians will have it easier than anyone else, rather the Christian life is full of weakness. In other words, the Spirit saves us through our weakness, not from our weakness.

Everyone is going to experience bad things. The real question is where do we turn in the midst of these bad things. The Spirit gets us to look toward and turn to the Father, toward Abba in our weakness… then we grow. If in our times of weakness and suffering we pray/cry towards the Father as an adopted child, then there will be a deepening of wisdom, development of beauty of heart, and a spiritual clarity. But if we turn away from our Father towards counterfeit gods, we’ll live in denial and shrink under suffering and weakness. Prayer is not a consumer tool, it’s a refiners fire. This is amazing encouragement! When the Spirit comes into our lives, it’s like being born. All the groaning and crying is for a purpose. Our weakness will grow us, out of infancy and into maturity.

(Part 3 of 6 in the series "Off the Sidewalk." Adapted from Tim Keller's sermon "Praying in the Spirit.")

Off the Sidewalk (part 2)

For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father."   -Romans 8:15

Prayer can seem intimidating. We know we should pray, but sometimes we don’t quite know how to pray. We can’t find the right words. Or we can’t find the right time. We might get distracted. We might lose our focus. And this can easily lead to discouragement. God can seem distant. We can feel left on the sidewalk.

But prayer isn’t primarily a technique. Prayer is primarily a relationship, and this relationship is primal. In the Romans verse above, we see that we have received the Spirit of sonship, and by this Spirit we cry “Abba, Father.” Often times we hear ‘abba’ translated as ‘daddy.’ But it’s actually best translated as ‘dadda.’ An 8 year old doesn’t say ‘abba,’ an infant says ‘abba.’ It’s primal and instinctive, the earliest form of language. While an 8 year old calculates, “I want daddy to do this or that,” when an infant cries ‘dadda,’ he just wants dadda, he wants to be brought into the nearness of his presence, into his arms.

Seen through the lens of faith, when you become a Christian you receive the Holy Spirit, and one of the first things that happens is that there is a new kind of language towards God you didn’t have before. Before you could have a language of duty. Prayer could be mechanical—you might have the instinct to pray when you’re in trouble, but when the trouble is gone the instinct to pray disappears. With the Holy Spirit, the language of prayer expresses a desire for God himself (not just for God’s things), for his nearness, to be lifted off the sidewalk and brought into his presence.

But lets be honest, in the Christian life there are still times when we don’t feel like we desire God. There are seasons when we don’t feel the joy of God’s presence but instead experience the concrete realities of suffering. God seems distant, and we feel alone. But in these times we shouldn’t speak of the way (suffering) as if it were the goal (joy in God’s presence). Otherwise we’re bound to lose what C. S. Lewis refers to as our joy in total dependence: “For this tangled absurdity of a Need… Grace substitutes a full, childlike and delighted acceptance of our Need, a joy in total dependence. We become ‘jolly beggars.’” And as ‘jolly beggars,’ we are no longer slaves to fear, but are sons and daughters who can cry out—“Abba, Father”—Knowing that he hears us. Knowing that he loves us.         

(Part 2 of 6 in the series "Off the Sidewalk." Adapted from Tim Keller's sermon "Praying in the Spirit.")

Off the Sidewalk (part 1)

You’re walking down the street. You can see your breath. A few paces ahead, through a curtain of falling snow, there emerges the image of a father walking alongside his son. The father reaches down, picks up his son, embraces him, hugs him, whispers “I love you.”

You wonder, “When is the son more a son? On the sidewalk? Or in the father’s arms?” You replay the image in your head. Over and over. There’s been no change in status. In both cases the son is still the son, the father still the father. But there has been a change in the experience of the status. The son is loved by the father when he’s on the sidewalk, but the son experiences the love of the father when he’s lifted off the sidewalk and brought into his daddy’s arms.

Change the scene. You’re the child, God’s the father. Do you feel like you’re on the sidewalk? Do you know your status (as a loved child of God), but wish you could experience your status? Do you wish God would lift you off the sidewalk and bring you into his arms?

 For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father."   -Romans 8:15

(Part 1 of 6 in our series "Off the Sidewalk." Adapted from Tim Keller's sermon "Praying in the Spirit.")