Tag: performance

Posted on

Fountain

“Real prayer comes not from gritting our teeth but from falling in love.”

By the time Richard Foster penned these words in his important book, “Prayer – Finding the Heart’s True Home”, he had gleaned some insights through years of learning to walk with Christ.

Richard had come to recognize that Christian prayer, in its most basic form, is not an exercise to enter into as a religious performance.

Many good and sincere church-goers become burdened down over time under the load of dutiful praying.  Conversing with God (the actual meaning of what it is to pray), if engaged as a religious duty becomes a load that crushes.

Yes, serious praying like intercession (deep-hearted appeals for God’s watch-care over other people’s concerns) can feature intense times of wrestling in the arena of spiritual conflict. Still, when the Jesus-follower prays – even with intensity – the praying carries a quality of hope and of trust. Sitting quiet before him – recalling good that he has brought to one’s life – voicing thanksgiving. Prayer entered into in such a heart posture allows the stirring of a fountain within. The love fountain.

The reason? Communing with God in Christ, regardless the form it takes, is marked by faith and hope, of confidence and assurance in Father-God’s loving care. Unlike a vending machine where what happens is all about transaction, the relationship between Jesus and his apprentice is centered in just that. . . Relationship.

Thanksgiving mingled in worship invariably leads to prayer rising heavenward in some fashion. In fact, where these two expressions are offered up in one’s life – thanksgiving and worship – prayer is happening.

Love works that way. It is not self-seeking but generous – even when the answer we may have hoped for does not get realized. Love leans in. Navigating life out of the love fountain ensures teeth-gritting finds no place to land.

©2023 Jerry Lout

Posted on

Living Springs

What now should be done?

For quite a good while my Christian journey centered on “shoulds”.

I had believed on Christ  in my youth. I knew he had pardoned my sins through his sacrifice on a cross. When I turned to him, confessing my wrongs and trusting in him, I knew deep down that I was now his.  The Bible speaks of being born anew from above. That was me.

I also knew in those earliest years of grace that my life in Jesus was not meant to plateau. It was meant to keep changing. I was not meant to live my life any longer on my own. His salvation was to go deeper than just getting me into heaven after this life.

But there was a problem. I lacked some critical knowledge about how that might work.

Over time I came to think and live as though “pleasing God” was the central purpose of my being his child.  Some poor thinking took form, ironically, through things I often heard in church. My understanding of the gospel – God’s good news for all people – had gradually changed to something called  “performance-living”.

I was no longer fully living my faith from the inside out. Rather, becoming Jesus-like seemed to call for taking on the next God-pleasing task assigned me. Such tasks, I was reminded, were what I “should do” if I were indeed a true Christian.

It’s worth noting that none of the Christian performances I undertook were bad. Not at all. They were good, sometimes noble, acts of service.

Like many Christians, as I later realized, many of my “wants” were in the right place. Discovering this brought a measure of comfort. After all, I hungered to please God and longed to be a truly “good Christian”.  One thing that seemed lacking now was joy, the happy measure of joy I had tasted in those earlier God-companioned days.

And too, the sweet empowering love of earlier days began to wane. My good Savior’s springs of abundant living were being traded for an overburdening list of shoulds.

Only later would I recover the way of living Jesus had in mind for his disciples all along. More of a fruit-bearing kind of living. While not all things going forward would prove fun or easy, my way would become characterized more as a joyous, teamed-up partnership with him.

In the company of fellow disciples-in-training, I could move ahead under his accepting, empowering Spirit. The season was to become a very special period of training for me – especially in discovering how eager Jesus was about all this. His label for it, “life in abundance. . . in the easy yoke”.

(c)2022 Jerry Lout