De profundis

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord!
O Lord, hear my voice. . . .
I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen for the morning,
more than watchmen for the morning.

Lord, be . . .
Lord, be peace to calm the storm.
Lord, be enough, for I am not enough.
Lord, be strength to bear these burdens.
Lord, be wisdom to mend my folly.
Lord, be knowledge, for I do not understand.
Lord, be light outshining the darkness.
Lord, be power to raise up my weakness.
Lord, be hope when I have no hope in myself.
Lord, be goodness to draw my heart.
Lord, be love to heal me, and through me to heal others.
Lord, be grace to set me free from fear of condemnation.
Lord, be faithfulness, for I don’t know how to trust.
Lord, be joy on a bitter road.
Lord, be promise when the way ahead is dark.
Lord, be the next step, for I am lost.
Lord, be healing in the midst of pain.
Lord, be music through the discord.
Lord, be justice against the evil in my heart.
Lord, be protection from my enemies, for they are great and I am small.
Lord, be who you are and have always been, because the waters are over my head.
Please . . .
Lord, be.

Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.”

Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Prayer in the Roman world

[Jesus said,] “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”

—Matthew 6:7-8 (ESV)

This evening, my lovely wife discovered what looks like a fascinating blog, For the Sake of Truth, by a Ph.D. student at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary named Josh Mann. I'll have to explore it a bit to see if I want to add it to the blogroll, but I can already say that the current top post, “How to Pray: Two Ancient Views,” is a keeper.

Commentators generally understand Jesus’ condemnation of “using meaningless repetition” (βατταλογήσητε) and “many words” (τῇ πολυλογίᾳ) as either (1) formulaic and legalistic repetition of intelligible prayers; or (2) pagan magical incantations (probably unintelligible gibberish). I lean heavily toward the first view, not least because of the prevalence of repetitious intelligible prayers carried out in the Roman culture (both private and public).

He then goes on to lay out examples of that (including a remarkable quote from Pliny the Elder), concluding,

It seems that in the Roman view, strict adherence to a formula would obligate the god or goddess to respond in kind.

This, of course, stands in the sharpest of contrast to the view of prayer taught by Jesus:

One should not think to obligate God by some formula. Rather, one ought to pray to God as a dependent child makes request to a Father (Matt 6:9-13). In my view, Jesus gives a model for prayer (rather than a strict formula!), but in any case, he clearly commands that prayer be done with sincerity and humility, recognizing one’s needs and the ability of the Father to provide for such needs. Prayer is no doubt petition at its core, but in Matthew 6, Jesus challenges the crowds regarding the attitudes and motives underlying prayer.

It’s a great post; go read the whole thing.

We aren't islands—we should act accordingly

Tyler Dawn has a very good post up today, one which I encourage you to read, that reminded me of this wisdom from the preacher-poet Dr. John Donne:

The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that head which is my head too, and ingrafted into the body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another. . . .

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

In keeping with this, I also note Tyler Dawn's most recent post; I'll be praying for her, and I hope you will be too.

In honor of Kerry Livgren

Thanks to a commenter on the previous post for tipping me off: Livgren suffered a major stroke three weeks ago. It was bad enough that he had surgery that morning to remove a clot from the language centers of his brain; the surgery went well, and the reports on his recovery (posted on Kansas' official band website; click on "Kerry L. update") are positive. Please be praying.

Since I've been on a Kerry Livgren kick anyway, I thought I'd post a few more videos—this time from the AD phase of his career.

Progress

The Fury

Lead Me to Reason

Evening prayer

The Lord reveal himself more and more to us in the face of his Son Jesus Christ and magnify the power of his grace in cherishing those beginnings of grace in the midst of our corruptions, and sanctify the consideration of our own infirmities to humble us, and of his tender mercy to encourage us.

And may he persuade us that, since he has taken us into the covenant of grace, he will not cast us off for those corruptions which, as they grieve his Spirit, so they make us vile in our own eyes.

And because Satan labors to obscure the glory of his mercy and hinder our comfort by discouragements, the Lord add this to the rest of his mercies, that we may not lose any portion of comfort that is laid up for us in Christ.

And, may he grant that the prevailing power of his Spirit in us should be an evidence of the truth of grace begun, and a pledge of final victory, at that time when he will be all in all, in all his, for all eternity. Amen.

—Richard Sibbes

HT: Of First Importance

Morning prayer

Take, O take me as I am; summon out what I shall be;
set your seal upon my heart and live in me.

—John Bell

This is a simple little musical prayer written by the Iona Community's John Bell, with a reflective melody that ends on an unresolved chord (the melody ends on re); I've seen it used most often as a congregational response, either to Scripture readings or during a time of prayer. For whatever reason, it floated into my mind this past hour, and has been flowing through it ever since. I guess this is the prayer of my heart this morning, for myself and for our congregation.

The terrible beauty of freedom

What's happening in Iran in response to the fraudulent election is nothing short of awe-inspiring. This may be the revolution, and if so, it indeed will not be televised (though the early phases were), but it will be tweeted. The Anchoress comments,

You can feel the pulse. It is a human force for freedom that is pressing, pressing against restraints; fully aware of the danger, it yearns, pressing forward, still. It is a terrible beauty.

Read her post; she has some great comments and, as usual, a terrific roundup of key links on the state of things in Iran. We can be proud of Twitter, and of the people who came up with it and maintain it; we can be grateful that they were willing to reschedule their maintenance to inconvenience Americans instead of the Iranians who are tweeting for their lives, their freedom, and their sacred honor. And we can pray (hard!) for those Iranians, that God would protect them and honor their prayers, that he would work a miracle through them and give them freedom.

Unfortunately, our president hasn’t covered himself with glory in this instance; he seems to think that to “stand strongly with [a] universal principle” is enough, that if he just does that, he doesn’t have to stand with the Iranian people. Don Surber put it well, I think, when he wrote,

As an American, I am embarrassed that a couple of computer geeks who came up with a social network have more brass than my holier-than-thou president. Words, deeds. Odd that Twitter does deeds while the commander-in-chief does words.

Just an observation.

Fortunately, as the Anchoress notes, a 27-year-old Condoleezza Rice appointee at the State Department, Jared Cohen, took up some of the president’s slack when he asked Twitter to postpone their scheduled maintenance. Cohen’s an interesting chap, having spent a fair bit of time wandering around the Islamic world before going to work at Foggy Bottom; in 2007 he told the New Yorker,

“They make alcohol in their bathtubs and their sinks,” Cohen said. “And the drug use—it’s really no different from a frat party. You have to pinch yourself and remind yourself that you’re in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iranian young people are one of the most pro-American populations in the Middle East. They just don’t know who to gravitate around, so young people gravitate around each other.”

Watch out for this guy—he has a very bright future—and be grateful that God put someone in his job at State who knows and cares about the people of Iran, especially since his new boss doesn’t know them and doesn’t seem to care very much. Never mind that, because Barack Obama’s not at the wheel here—he’s on the sidelines, a spectator, pretty much irrelevant; history’s happening somewhere else today. Pray for the people of Iran; pray that God brings the walls down. And pray that when that happens, and the reactions of our government start to matter again, that then they do the right thing.

Thought on prayer and the routine

Today was taken up with a trip down to Indianapolis.  On the way back, we saw two overturned semis—one by itself, one at the center of a multi-vehicle accident (in the lanes going the other direction) that had drawn upwards of a dozen emergency vehicles, all with lights going.  One of my daughters asked, after we passed the big one, why it had happened; I said I didn't know, but the comment was made that probably someone hadn't been paying attention.  There was a little red car, undamaged, stopped a short distance ahead of the accident, which made us wonder if perhaps that car had cut someone off or made a sudden move of some other sort, setting off a chain of events that made the semi swerve and overbalance, among other things—the sort of careless move that people make and get away with all the time, but this time at just the wrong moment to cause a tragedy.

We take so much for granted, most days.  We take for granted that we can drive wherever we need to go and get there and back safely—and if we don't, people call us worrywarts.  We take for granted that we can do whatever it occurs to us to do and it will all be okay, and that if we're a little careless, no harm will be done.  We may pray for God's protection as we travel or do other things—I had asked for prayer Wednesday for traveling mercies for us—but we do so lightly, more in the spirit of "just in case" than with any sense that it's actually important.  We take for granted that the routine and the mundane really is, of its essence, the routine and the mundane.

And it isn't, as the folks involved in that accident were reminded, and as we were reminded, passing by in the other direction.  It isn't at all.  There is always the possibility for the unexpected and the uncontrolled to intrude—and if, at any given point, that possibility may be quite low, it does build up after a while.  There's always more out of our control than we like to admit, and more variables (many more) than we can possibly track, and far more ways that things can go wrong than there are ways they can go right.  We expect routine good fortune, take it for granted, and consider ourselves ill-used when we don't get it, when we really ought to realize that even that much is a great gift, an act of God's grace.  It is, truly, no small thing to pray for traveling mercies—and no small blessing when our request is granted.  Every such answer to prayer is a victory over the chaos in our world; and every such victory should be taken seriously as reason for gratitude.

Is this how we pray?

More often than we'd like to think, I suspect.

Time for prayer

The election is over, and I have no trouble in affirming that the candidates who won are those whom God ordained to their positions, and that God so ordained them for his purposes. I do not, however, believe that those purposes are for what most people would conceive as our blessing as a nation; I do affirm that times of trial and judgment are part of God's blessing, but that's hard to see when we're in them. I feel, at this moment, rather like the prophet Habakkuk: I don't like what I see coming, but I believe that God is sovereign in it, and I am committed to prayer and praise.

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior.
The Sovereign LORD is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
he enables me to tread on the heights.

—Habakkuk 3:17-19 (TNIV)

Therefore, I will be praying for those who will be hurt by the resurgence of the abortion holocaust in this nation. Theologically, I don't believe in praying for the dead, and in any case I trust in the grace and the love of God for those who will die unborn as a result of the policies of the incoming Democratic government; but I will be praying for the mothers who will bear the guilt, felt or unfelt, of planning and consenting to the deaths of their unborn children, and for those who bear the active responsibility for killing them. I will be praying as well for those whom God has called to particular roles in resisting this holocaust, both that they will stand firm and that they will find ways to do so which will communicate the grace and the love of God and the caring support of his church to those considering abortion, rather than merely warnings of judgment.

I will be praying for the media of this country, reporters and editors alike, that they will report on the Democratic administration with the diligence and honesty which they did not show in reporting on the Obama campaign. I'm tempted to pray that they will remember their adversarial role with respect to the incoming administration and pursue it with as much vigor and determination as they did with respect to the Bush 43 administration, but that would be vindictive of me; as it is, I will pray that they will have the intellectual and moral courage never to quash a story for ideological or financial reasons, but that if a story deserves to be reported—in God's eyes, not necessarily in mine—that they will report it, no matter how much it hurts their own political agendas. I'll be praying for this for their own sake as much as anything, since if they don't, they'll regret it in the long run.

I will be praying for the Republican opposition, that they will learn (and learn the right lessons!) from this; I will be praying that they repent of their surrender to business as usual and their accommodation to power and money and the corruption that come with them, and return to a principled conservatism. After all, for at least the next two years, they will be irrelevant regardless; they might as well use the freedom that comes with irrelevance to reclaim the conservative agenda (and, one hopes, find ways to convince people that they actually mean to stick to it this time).

And, neither last nor by any means least, I will be praying for Barack Obama, who has won what may well turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory. He has won the highest prize of all by putting himself in hock to his party's machine and creating incredibly high expectations among a majority of the American electorate; he simply cannot keep all the promises he has made, and the ones he can keep—and indeed, will have to keep, will he or nil he, to the party machine—will only accelerate and worsen his breaking of the rest. Disillusionment is inevitable with any politician, and particularly with any new president, but he's set himself up for a particularly severe response, when it turns out that his election does not in fact mean that "the oceans stop their rise, and the planet begins to heal"; for Barack Obama, there is nowhere left to go but down.

This means that he needs the grace of God in an extraordinary way in order to succeed, and I will be praying for him that he will receive that extraordinary grace. I will pray that he will govern with the wisdom of Solomon and the integrity of Nehemiah, and that he will seek the righteousness and justice of God ahead of the best interest of his party or his own political future. In a sense, he too has won a peculiar freedom: the freedom of having no higher aspiration left to him. If he claims and uses it, rather than becoming the slave of his desire for re-election, he might be able to break free of the chains his party believes it has on him, and actually become, to some degree, the figure of change he claimed to be in his campaign. I will pray this for him. I will pray for him that God will give him wisdom, courage, and resolve in dealing with the enemies of the nation he has been called to serve, that he would do so in ways that will be for the blessing of this country and the world, and that he would stick to his guns and not back down in the face of opposition. And most of all, I will pray that the Holy Spirit will convict his heart on the matter of abortion, bring him to repentance for his past actions, and raise him up again as a defender of the most powerless and vulnerable among us: those who, like the slaves of centuries past, are denied the most basic human protections, in this case not because of the color of their skin but because they have not yet been born.

I will be praying. May God's will be done.

Reflection on the mystery of prayer

Life is filled with mystery, and, much to our chagrin, claiming to know God does not shed any light upon certain dark recesses of our world. In fact, God often appears to cast a very long, very dark shadow, a shadow that can conceal more than we like to admit. Perhaps one of wise King Solomon's more astute observations is found in the introduction to his own prayer recorded in 2 Chron. 6:1: "The LORD has said that he would dwell in a dark cloud." God shows himself in darkness. He invites us to meet in a place where he cannot be seen. Divine self-revelation may obscure as much as, if not more than, it illuminates.

Nothing brings a feeble human being face to face with spiritual conundrums as quickly as prayer, especially petitionary prayer. For many, balancing the prospect of a divine response to our cries for help against the disappointment of heavenly silence in the face of our suffering tips the religious scales in favor of skepticism, atheism, and renunciation. Knocking on heaven's door, asking for an audience with the cosmic king, and then making our requests clearly known is a mysterious enough activity for those of us consigned to inhabit the physical limitations of flesh and blood. But then tracing answers through the fabric of life's chaos, drawing even tentative lines of heavenly connection between the pleas of human uttering and the course of subsequent history—that is a prophetic role for which few of us seem to be qualified. Admittedly, there are always those eager to claim the prophetic mantle, but my experience with life suggests that the longer you live and the more you pray, the less prone you are to give quck, self-assured answers. This is not to deny the possibility of answers; it is merely to acknowledge that nothing in this life, including the realm of the spirit, is automatic, and precious little is ever self-evident. Putting a coin in slot A does not immediately guarantee a Snickers Bar from chute B, especially when the pocket accumulating my spare change belongs to God. The Creator also has his own purposes, which may include sending me something totally unexpected through chute G once I have surrendered the requisite number of quarters.

Prayer comprises the interface between human frailty and divine power. Yet, connection and comprehension are two very different things. Trying to peer from our world into that other domain is a bit like opening your eyes underwater. It is possible to see, somewhat, but not easily, not far, and not without considerable distortion. Light is refracted, distances are difficult to judge, size is deceptive, sticks appear to bend at the surface, brilliant underwater colors vanish when raised to the surface. We may be able to explore both worlds, but it is painfully apparent that we are better suited for the one than the other. This should not stop us from trying to understand how the two realms relate; it ought, however, to curb our human penchant for dogmatism, replacing heavy-handed solutions with a healthy dose of humility and a very gentle touch.

—David Crump, Knocking on Heaven's Door, 14-15

Persistent prayer and the faithfulness of God

Hap has a really good post up on prayer, as of yesterday, which I commend to your attention. I've written about some of this before, here and here; for some people, faith and belief and persistent prayer come easy, but I'm not one of them. I don't know whether the man in Mark 9 meant the same thing when he cried out, "Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief" that I do—but it's something I find myself praying a fair bit anyway, because trust comes hard, and I just have to believe that God's answer to prayer is dependent on his faithfulness, not on my faith. And I do believe that, because prayer isn't about us changing God, but God changing us, and his faithfulness is neither contingent nor in short supply: it is unending.

A prayer for you for the Labor Day weekend

Whatever your faith commitments, whether religious or not, whatever your political beliefs, whatever your skin color, culture, background, or language, this is my prayer for you today: May you live this day and tomorrow in the peaceful rest of the grace of God.

A bruised reed he will not break

and a smoldering wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice.

So it is said of the Servant of God in Isaiah 42:3; so it will be when he comes again. Right now, though, we live in a very different world. I was reflecting on this this morning, thinking about the state of affairs in Zimbabwe. If you've been following the news, you know that it looks like Robert Mugabe's succeeded in hanging on to power (though he said he's "open to discussion" with the opposition), since the opposition party pulled out of Friday's presidential runoff in the face of the Mugabe government's terror campaign, and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai sought refuge at the Dutch embassy in Harare. Freedom and justice in Zimbabwe are smoldering wicks, indeed.

There is one small, very small, bright spot, though: at this year's meeting of the PC(USA)'s General Assembly, the Peacemaking and International Issues Committee approved a resolution in support of the church in Zimbabwe, and against the Mugabe government. I hope and firmly expect to see the whole GA approve it; and I further hope that this encourages the Uniting Presbyterian Church of Southern Africa (UPCSA), to which the Presbytery of Zimbabwe belongs, to take a similar stance at their General Assembly in September. I miss being a part of the relationship between Denver and Zimbabwe—it's perhaps the biggest thing I miss from having left that presbytery—and I wish I could have been there. I'll have to get on top of the schedule and see if I can at least watch the plenary session when this resolution comes to the floor; I suspect my friends from Zimbabwe won't speak then (since they'd be on video for the whole world, including Mugabe and his thugs, to see), but I'd at least be able to share the moment with them a little.

Please, keep praying for Zimbabwe.

Praying on the front line

Something else I've been meaning to post is this passage from Tim Keller:

Biblically and historically, the one non-negotiable, universal ingredient in times of spiritual renewal is corporate, prevailing, intensive and kingdom-centered prayer. What is that?

1. It is focused on God's presence and kingdom. Jack Miller talks about the difference between "maintenance prayer" and "frontline" prayer meetings. Maintenance prayer meetings are short, mechanical and totally focused on physical needs inside the church or on personal needs of the people present. But frontline prayer has three basic traits:
   

   a. a request for grace to confess sins and humble ourselves
   
   b. a compassion and zeal for the flourishing of the church
   
   c. a yearning to know God, to see his face, to see his glory. . . .

2. It is bold and specific. The characteristics of this kind of prayer include:
   

   a. Pacesetters in prayer spend time in self-examination. . . .
   
   b. They then begin to make the big request—a sight of the glory of God. That includes asking: 1) for a personal experience of the glory/presence of God ("that I may know you"—Exod. 33:13); 2) for the people's experience of the glory of God (v. 15); and 3) that the world might see the glory of God through his people (v. 16). Moses asks that God's presence would be obvious to all: "What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?" This is a prayer that the world be awed and amazed by a show of God's power and radiance in the church, that it would become truly the new humanity that is a sign of the future kingdom.

3. It is prevailing, corporate. By this we mean simply that prayer should be constant, not sporadic and brief. . . . Sporadic, brief prayer shows a lack of dependence, a self-sufficiency, and thus we have not built an altar that God can honor with his fire. We must pray without ceasing, pray long, pray hard, and we will find that the very process is bringing about that which we are asking for—to have our hard hearts melted, to tear down barriers, to have the glory of God break through.

This is the kind of prayer the church needs to practice, and the kind of prayer meeting it really needs to hold (not that there isn't value to maintenance prayer meetings as well, as part of the pastoral care of the church); it's the kind of prayer which I'm working to encourage in the congregation I serve, which means first of all in myself. It's hard; it takes faithfulness and commitment and attention; but I do believe the fruit is more than worth it.

HT: Joyce

Morning prayer

For the first showings of the morning light
and the emerging outline of the day
thanks be to you, O God.
For earth's colours drawn forth by the sun
its brilliance piercing clouds of darkness
and shimmering through leaves and flowing waters
thanks be to you.
Show to me this day
amidst life's dark streaks of wrong and suffering
the light that endures in every person.
Dispel the confusions that cling close to my soul
that I may see with eyes washed by your grace
that I may see myself and all people
with eyes cleansed by the freshness of the new day's light.

—J. Philip Newell, Celtic Benediction: Morning and Night Prayer, 40

Prayers needed

for the family of Steven Curtis Chapman, and for the family of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy; and also, as always, please keep praying for Zimbabwe.

Morning prayer

In the beginning, O God,
when the firm earth emerged from the waters of life
you saw that it was good.
The fertile ground was moist
the seed was strong
and earth's profusion of colour and scent was born.
Awaken my senses this day
to the goodness that still stems from Eden.
Awaken my senses
to the goodness that can still spring forth
in me and in all that has life.

—J. Phillip Newell, Celtic Benediction: Morning and Night Prayer, 26.

Belated thoughts on prayer

Over a month ago now, Barry put up a post on prayer asking, essentially, if prayer changes things, why does so little seem to change? I meant to respond at the time, but for a variety of reasons, didn't get to it; but then I was reminded of his post during a conversation last week with several colleagues in ministry. The question of why our prayers so often don't get the answer for which we hope is a live one for most pastors, and it's one for which I don't have any kind of truly satisfactory answer; but I do have two thoughts.

First, I don't believe that prayer changes things. I believe God changes things. I don't believe there's power in prayer, I believe there's power in the God to whom we pray. I do believe Pascal was right, that prayer is the means by which God gives us the dignity of causality—of doing something other than just passively absorbing his actions—but even if in prayer he allows us a voice in what he does, that doesn't mean there's any power in us or our actions, let alone enough power to compel him to do as we want.

Second, I'm learning to trust that God knows what he's doing. One of my colleagues last week, musing on all the times God has not given him what he's prayed for, made a statement to the effect that "I've come to see all those refusals as my salvation." Experience had taught him that God was right not to grant him his requests. The longer I go, the more times I see in my own life where that's clearly the case, and the more I learn to trust him for his "no" as well as his "yes."

So why doesn't God heal more? Why don't we see people raised from the dead? I don't know. I've been a part of churches where that happened; I've seen remarkable healing take place right before my eyes as I and others prayed. I've also been a part of other churches that were, as far as I could tell, no less faithful in following God—but prayers for healing were rarely granted. I don't know why. I don't suppose I ever will know why. Maybe it has something to do with challenging our modern emphasis on cure over care, which has certainly reached the point of being theologically problematic. But whatever the reason, I'm learning to trust God who has promised that whatever we may bear in this life, in the end, "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."

The God who speaks

“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also.
From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

—John 14:1-7 (ESV)

These words are much loved and much quoted, and I’m sure have been for as long as there has been a church. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this passage, though, is the basis for Jesus’ promise: it isn’t based on what he’s taught them so far, or even on his crucifixion and resurrection, but on the fact that he’s going to leave them. It’s his going away that makes the fulfillment of his promise possible.

There are various aspects to this, but perhaps the most reassuring is that when Jesus ascended, when he returned to heaven, he wasn’t leaving us, he was leading us; he was going ahead of us to prepare our way, to show us the way, to be our way. That’s why he says, “If I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, that where I am, there you may also be”; and that’s one reason why he sent us his Spirit, as the agent through whom he leads and guides us in this life, on the way toward the kingdom of his Father. Remember, “the earth is the Lord’s, and all that is in it,” and he’s actively at work in and through all of it. Thus for us, the world is not silent, nor is God silent; rather, God is always speaking to us, and all of life is the medium through which he speaks.

Most basically, of course, and most importantly, God speaks to us through the words he inspired, which include the record of the life he lived for us on this earth; it’s through the Bible first and foremost that Jesus leads us by his Spirit, as he continues to speak to us by his Spirit through these words, and he will not say anything that contradicts what he has already said. But that’s not the only way he speaks to us; it’s not the only way he guides us. He speaks through us sometimes as we talk with each other, making us agents of his wisdom; sometimes he may speak truth to us through people outside the church; he touches our minds and hearts through his creation, the natural world; and sometimes he speaks to us directly, in the back of our minds and the quiet of our hearts. I’ll never forget one time I was absolutely furious at someone—a couple someones, actually—and in my mind I heard Jesus say, “Show them grace.” I knew it was God, since it wasn’t what I wanted to hear, and I protested angrily, “They don’t deserve it.” To which he responded, “I know. That’s why it’s called grace.”

Granted, most of the time God doesn't speak to us quite that clearly; I suspect I was being unusually dense that day. But he does speak to us, and he does lead us, and we can trust that fact no matter what; what’s more, we can trust that he’s good enough at leading us to overcome how bad we often are at following him. We don’t need to worry or be anxious about that, for we can trust God for his grace; we simply need to do our part. We need to spend time with him, in reading his word (the main way we come to know him and recognize his voice) and in prayer—not just talking to him, though that’s important, but also being silent, listening for his voice—so that we learn to know him when he speaks; and we need to learn to expect him to speak, because he is at work leading us by his Spirit every day, in every moment. Christ came down to seek us out in our sin and rescue us from the power of death, and he’s busy right now bringing us home; and what he starts, he finishes. Period. End of sentence.

(Note: those with a philosophical bent might find Edward Tingley’s article “Gadamer and the Light of the Word” a valuable reflection on this matter; though Gadamer was not a believer, he gives a better account of the Spirit's work than many Christians, and Tingley has some excellent things to say on this.)