August 2023 – Jerry Lout ⚬ Writer ⚬ Speaker ⚬ Mobilizer

August 31, 2023

For Normal People

The guitarist who does the strumming is vital to the exercise of generating attractive sounds. The most artfully crafted instrument only reflects practical worth once it is held and strummed. The instrument’s purpose for being does not get realized until it rests in the musician’s hands. It is here where movement and melody get set in motion.

Probably the most wonderful thing about offering up praises and petitions is the fact that praying is not a solo act. The disciple is not on his own. Any Christ-follower taking up the instrument of prayer in hopes of bearing fruit, does so with the chief maestro closely at hand. “The one who remains in me and I in him”, promises Jesus, “bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”*

As apprentices of Jesus ‘shadow’ his movements – praying, as he often did, passages from the Book of Psalms, etc. – they happily draw upon resources beyond themselves. Just as the first disciples needed help along the way – “Lord, teach us. . .” – the wise seeker after Jesus takes up helpful praying tips from fellow travelers. Guidance offered up in easy-to-grasp ways can usher oxygen into a person’s place of prayer.

A book with an appealing title, How to Pray – A Simple Guide For Normal People, by Pete Greig serves as an example.

A present-day marvel reflecting sustained, fruit-bearing times with God has emerged on the scene. A worldwide movement, organic in its spread, known simply as 24-7 Prayer.

Pete Greig, self-deprecating pastor of a church near London, references himself as “the increasingly bewildered founder of 24-7 Prayer”. The interdenominational movement of prayer, mission and justice got its start in 1999. Since that time, continuous, non-stop praying has taken on a life of its own. Thousands of prayer rooms dotting the earth’s surface have sprung up across more than half the world’s nations. The spread growing.

Our world – ourselves – can stand to gain much from a crisper understanding of and nearer walk with Jesus. What better approach than by entering the sensible, mysterious, Spirit-empowered means available to us, through him.

Lord, teach us to pray.

August 24, 2023August 25, 2023

Means Aplenty

The thing that sparked my interest in guitar was my brother’s interest in guitar (a trait of the junior sibling).

A 25 cent chord book (fingering charts included) paired together with a nine-dollar second-hand acoustic was our father’s investment in us launching our musical enterprise. Tim, giving diligent attention to the chord book, taught himself. And tutored me along as he went. The ‘two-bit’ resource proved priceless.

That modest publication with its folk songs and fingering charts was vital for our picking-and-grinning advancement. Its few pages helped transform my brother, a teenaged guitarist-wannabe, into an effective musician.

In much the same way effective (gratifying, fruit-bearing) communion with God lies within easy reach of any believer. Any who with willing heart chooses in good faith to simply practice.

Praying the words of a select few lines of a Scripture Psalm over and over. Pondering a phrase or a single word. Expressing this or that fervent heart cry as though it were penned by the one now reading and voicing it. This tool alone has helped bring many over time into lives of vibrant communion in God.

Without notes and chords in place the music room lies silent. Without the apprentice’s heart-strings brought to movement in prayer, no life of flourishing in Jesus will bloom.

Finally, discovering that the Christian is not called on to pray perfect prayers brings unspeakable relief. God goes so far as to let us know we are, in fact, quite ignorant when it comes to the spiritual practice we call prayer. What comfort! No need to fake it.

Without apology God reminds us via a terse confession of his tentmaking apostle, “We do not know what to pray for as we ought”*.

With this truth in mind Christ’s apprentices have the door of a whole toolshed flung wide open before them. His treasure-trove of tools (our means) is not restricted to the book of Psalms. Talking with God in our own personal words (nothing fancy, please!) we also have full permission to give voice to a host of prayers offered up across the pages of Scripture.

Consider this.

How might you feel knowing that a friend or family member was earnestly interceding the following for you, “that he might know the love of Christ. . . that she may be filled with all the fulness of God.”?* Be assured, God would be more than pleased our invoking as our own, Paul’s petition. For anyone whose name or image might show up on the radar of our petitioning heart.

August 17, 2023August 16, 2023

Tooling Up

How does the apprentice of Jesus bring about the shift in his prayer life that he really wants and needs? What raw material can he draw on to grow more a participant than spectator?

It is heartening to know that once anyone – anyone – purposes to advance in the holy enterprise of communing with the Almighty, the Lord himself supplies the means. Ingredients called for to see it through. He sees to it that whatever helpful tool, whatever effective resource is needed, it’s there in easy reach.

Any field of human endeavor that results in life-enriching expression does, of course, call for tools.

Great soul-stirring music – whether gentle and melodic (think Bach) or thundering and strident (think Beethoven) – comes to us because of ‘means’. Sheet music, for instance, helps a good bit!

For a long while, especially in the earlier years, I struggled with what to pray. And how to pray as well, with meaning or effectiveness. It was a welcome day when simple tools (helps) got brought to my attention. I confess I felt a bit foolish having passed over some elementary resources that had been available all along. They simply had not registered on my radar. They were also, most likely, being broadcast in lesser measure to the family of faith than today. Thankfully, that is changing.

Opening my Bible (or Bible app) nowadays, I sense a permission in spending time lingering in just one of the many Psalms, returning to it day after day. This grand book of scripture – a prayer book all its own – has proven a treasured onramp (even a camping spot) for the rhythmic set-aside times with God.

Sitting in stillness, welcoming awareness of God’s presence, I can now borrow from the precise language of the man-after-God’s-heart-worshipper himself. Soon it comes to me that I – employing the tools of the Shepherd-king’s language – am worshipping and petitioning out of the wellspring of my interior soul. How encouraging. Lifegiving. Faith has stirred wakefulness – my prayer life made richer in assurance and trust – in boldness and joy.

This by simply lifting the latch and opening the lid of an ancient toolbox: The Book of Psalms.

August 10, 2023

Super Model

Our role model, Jesus, was intentional at the start of his mornings, carving out space and time to personally give himself to the direct presence of the Father. We in our day might label this as his quiet time. Regardless, the action was predictable. Conversing with God is a thing he looked forward to, this life rhythm of communion.

Inhaling and exhaling air is an activity we (as did Jesus) practice a lot while seldom ever consciously thinking about it. Breathing comes automatically. In his repeated ‘practice’ of meeting with God upon his daily risings, Jesus had grown to ‘automatically’ pray. Not robotically, as in responding to external commands, but meeting with his Abba Father as a much-beloved offspring. He (unlike me whose mind far too easily might get hijacked by distraction) purposely – eagerly? – pushed aside the many lesser attractions vying for attention.

Nothing going on around Jesus on any given occasion commanded his attention more than nearness to Abba. Communing with the father trumped all.

The Spirit of Jesus invites us, his beloved apprenticing friends, to this same lifestyle he enjoyed while navigating the many winding, hilly terrains of earth’s pilgrimage. He really does.

Christlike living, simply put, involves prayer-centered living.

Jesus’s predictable beginning-of-day habit of prayer was no less familiar to him than his other common practices – breakfasting, teeth-cleaning, sandal-strap latching.

Doesn’t it seem reasonable that apprentices of Jesus are those persons who regularly apply themselves in patterning their lives after him? In dependence on him, routinely employing those practices that clearly marked his own life rhythms.

Summing up. It is not complicated. The call of the disciple is to,

(1) Engage the common practices that he, the son of man, routinely undertook

(2) Often ask Jesus for his help in putting in place a practice (such as prayer in its varied forms)

(3) Mark out a space where, upon waking each new day, the practice gets underway.

Remember. The disciple is not one who faultlessly follows, but one who follows the faultless One. Receiving from his table generous servings of grace at every step.

August 3, 2023August 3, 2023

Smart Steps

“If God wanted me to be a morning person, he would cause the sun to rise later in the day.” A good many people today might share this sentiment.

While the amusing line can strike a sympathetic chord in some, we would likely all benefit from at least giving thought to a practice common in Jesus’ day-by-day living.

And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.*

When we think of it, every new day gets its start in the morning. A no-brainer insight, but one which can help us engage a common-sense truth if we are willing.

Morning persons or not, each and every day begins when we wake from sleep to launch (sometimes maybe shuffle) into it.

Jesus’ personal practice was to rise from sleep (in that normal way his fellow humans routinely do). Shortly after waking Jesus engaged his will to consciously direct his thoughts. Toward God. He was intentional at the start of his day, carving out a space and a time to individually give himself to the direct presence of the Father. We, in our day, might label it his quiet time. Regardless what we name it, this action of Jesus was predictable. Conversing with God is a thing he looked forward to. He would never consider choosing not to.

Inhaling and exhaling air is an activity we (as did Jesus) practice a lot, while almost never thinking about it. Breathing comes automatically. In his repeated ‘practice’ of meeting with God on his daily rising, Jesus had grown to pray ‘automatically’. Not as a robot responding to external commands, but as a much-beloved offspring. He purposely – eagerly as well – set aside those many lesser attractions, lesser voices clamoring for his attention and time. My mind by contrast can often get hijacked by relentless distraction.

Nothing going on around Jesus on any given occasion commanded his attention more than this. Communing with the father trumped all.

Jesus invites us, his beloved apprenticing friends, into much the same kind of lifestyle he enjoyed while navigating the many winding and hilly terrain of earth’s pilgrimage. Christlike living, simply put, is prayer-centered living.

Hanging out with God was a centerpiece in his “being-about-my-father’s-business”. This predictable first-of-the-day habit was no less familiar to him than other common practices – breakfasting, teeth-cleaning, sandal-lacing.

.Anyone acquainted at all with Jesus Christ knows that he understood the best way to live life as a human from day to day. Most of us would probably be wise to ponder this for a moment. Jesus knew the smartest kinds of practices to engage in as a flesh and blood human person. He supplies every apprentice the pattern to follow.

“And he went out. . and there he prayed”.