The struggle of times with God

The wisdom of the centuries is that regular personal quiet time with God is a great help in following Jesus.

Yet, it is also a battle ground as we struggle against the devil and our own flesh and blood to establish and maintain habits and disciplines of time with the Lord.

Some time back, I was asked for my thoughts on the topic. The following MP3 file records a 'conversation' in which I discuss these matters from my own experience and with some Biblical and theological reflection. http://web.mysites.ntu.edu.sg/assgkhoo/public/docs/Burke_on_quiet_time.mp3

If its useful to encourage and help others in their times with God it will have achieved its purpose.

God save our gracious Queen

This week I have watched telecasts of some events surrounding Queen Elizabeth's diamond jubilee.

I'm a republican by inclination but readily acknowledge the strength of the Queen's contributions and the worthiness of the celebrations.

However, my mind strayed. If we greet an earthly monarch's jubilee with some jubilation, how much more the jubilation at the reign of him whose kingdom will be 60x60f years and have no end?

Come king Jesus, come!

Pray without ceasing (1 Thess 5:17)

Every Christians hears the call to constant prayer in 1 Thess 5:17.

It fits with the whole pattern of the Bible - that we are to live every moment and do every action in a spirit of worshiping God by depending on him to meet our needs and those of others.

How many of us do that?

Not me.

Prayer has always been a battle ground for me, for it strikes at my pride and reminds me of my weakness. For me, prayer has to be a matter of disciplined routines. It is not the natural habit that it should be after decades of following the Lord.

Not so for a lady that I met last weekend.

I went to a church in the area where I was ordained in 1979. As a lady left the church she commented on the sermon and said that she had been praying for me since I was ordained. And she has said the same on the two visits I have made to that church since leaving the area in 1983.

I thank God for that lady who has surely lain a foundation for whatever usefulness I have in ministry. I stand in awe of her example.

Reading the two books

Its an old view that God speaks through the two books of creation (natural revelation) and the Bible (special revelation). Psalm 19 has these two books in view and writers such as Calvin comment on them.

Here's the theology (with thanks to Calvin):

1. In the beginning people could and did look at the creation and 'read' the creator.
2. One quick effect of sin was to blind humanity such that we look at the creation and see only creation (Rom 1:18fff).
3. This blindness led us deeper into sin and that increased the blindness.
4. The end result is that we look at the creation and are unable to see the creator and thus worship the creation more generally or ourselves more specifically (thus turning the image of God into an idol of itself).
5. When a person is regenerated, God restores the sight such that we are able to read special revelation with the aid of the Spirit (1 Cor 2:6fff).
6. The regenerate person is also able to read the book of natural revelation, but only when using special revelation as the spectacles or hermeneutical frame. (Jesus gives examples of this when he draws lessons from the lilies of the fields and the birds of the air.)

This morning I went out into creation to reflect on it as part of a intensive residential course that I'm helping to lead in a stunning mountain setting.

And so I saw a tree and mediated.  I noticed its rootedness; its cycles of rest, nourishment and growth; and the way in which it accommodated to the environment at its margins (blowing leaves) while remain steady at the centre (trunk). When all this is read through Scriptural frames, the tree speaks of Christian matters that many of us can easily identify.

My point in all this is two-fold:
1. There is real value and point in Christians meditating on creation because because God reveals himself there and enables us to understand it and because the differentness of the form in which the revelation is given catches our attention.
2. We can only make Christian meaning of natural revelation when we read it in the light of special revelation. The person who is most soaked in the Bible will most see God's handiwork in the heavens.

So I will gladly go back into the creation tomorrow morning and again look for God's fingerprint. But I will go having first read my Bible.

A theist at an a-theist convention

Over the last few days I was one of 4000 people from 40 countries attending the Global Atheist convention (GAC) in Melbourne.

GAC was simply fascinating as people like Richard Dawkins, Peter Singer, Laurence Krauss and Geoffrey Robertson took to the stage.

If you are interested to read more check on my purpose-created blog: http://christianatheist51.blogspot.com.au/. But make sure you also check in over the next week as I add some more reflective pieces.

What to pray for

I was praying about various things this morning.

With some things it was easy to know what to ask.

Thus, I am due to give some Bible talks at a camp over the next few days and so I prayed that God would send his Spirit to work through me in faithful preaching and to work in the hearers for effective hearing.

Again I prayed for some unconverted people that I know and the prayer was easy: that God will being them to see their need of Jesus, to know that that can come to Jesus and that he will bring them to Jesus.

Yet again I prayed for my missionary brother: that he will be protected (he is in a dangerous area), that he will be well-used and that he will know contentment and fulfillment.


But then I started praying about some other things. And realised that I didn't know what to ask. And then it occurred to me: I don't need to know what to ask in order to pray about them. For God knows. How easy: I just had to mention the situation and to ask God to do what is best for himself and the people involved.

Why do we make prayer so difficult?

The worship of silence

Our worship often consists of doing things.

I sometimes introduce church services with these words: ‘let us worship God by singing of his goodness, thanking him for his mercy, depending on him to meet our needs, admitting our wrongs, listening when he speaks, offering ourselves for his service and encouraging one another by our presence and conversation’.

I sometimes end services with these words: ‘let us continue to worship God by going to live lives worthy of our Lord in the wherever, when ever and whatever of our week.

I think that’s right and proper. It has a good balance of the intentionally of gathered worship which is framed within the primary sense of whole-life worship.

However, I also think that God is to be worshipped in the empty space of inaction and silence.

Thus I hear of a devotional routine that includes times of talking to God in prayer but also a time of sitting as still as possible, settling the inner person by focussing on your breathing, saying nothing (whether vocalised or in the mind) and just consciously being still and knowing that he is God and we are not. This is a time to just rest in God and bathe in his presence – much as we might sit in a companionable silence with the dearest of friends.

Of course, this silence is given shape by the surrounding acts to vocalise prayers and read the Bible. Thus it is not a time of egocentric stillness, but one of theocentricity.

So now we can add: ‘let us worship God in our silence and stillness’.