Fresh Perspective

I am now a pastor at a small, rural church in Texas and I love it! It is so different from being in a classroom of seminary students where the main goal is defend the "right" position (theologically or otherwise). I am not saying that I regret my time at seminary. On the contrary, I value that experience in my life very much. After all it is where I met my wife, where I met friends that I hope will be lifelong friends, and where I grew deeper spiritually. I think seminary is a good thing, I really do. However, I have begun to see things with a fresh perspective. For example, now when I read my Bible, I am not looking to "prove" a position, rather I am reading it and letting God's word rush over me and it is exciting! I feel as though I am regaining an intimacy with Jesus that just wasn't there during my seminary years. It is something I struggled with all of seminary, and it was also a struggle that very few knew about. Now I am seeing things with a new perspective, it is not about defending HOW God distributes His grace, or HOW he sovereignly rules over all of creation, or HOW he does this or that. Now I am simply basking in the fact that he DOES expense grace and that He IS sovereign and not worrying about how to solve the mystery of the "how?" It is truly refreshing.

Yesterday I preached on prayer, and it was encouraging to my soul to look at prayer through a fresh perspective. Our church is going through Acts right now, and yesterday came out of Acts 1:12-26. The apostles are waiting for the Spirit and the Bible says, "they devoted themselves constantly to prayer."

As I began to study this passage and what prayer is really all about, I read this quote in Celebration of Discipline, by Richard Foster: "Of all the Spiritual Disciplines prayer is the most central because it ushers us into perpetual communion with the Father." This got me to thinking (and incidently was the first point of my sermon :) ) that prayer should be a joyful act. As I was telling my friend Austin Evers about this new revelation, he said "we pray to God like we don't really like him, like its something we HAVE to get through." Little did he know that he was talking about me. That is how I viewed prayer, I hadn't enjoyed it in years, and honestly I had a hard time doing it recently. Then I thought about it...

We have the privilege of talking to the God who spoke creation into being, the God who parted the Red Sea and delivered Israel from oppression, the God that spoke to the prophets, and that God that is faithful to all His promises. WE GET TO TALK TO HIM! And as I began to get this fresh perspective prayer became exciting to me again, and my hope is that this excitement continues.

I am fasting this week and my prayer is that I will enjoy praying and communing with the Father, and that it increases as I know Him more.

It is refreshing rediscovering an intimacy with Christ that I haven't know in sometime, I hope that as I spend more and more time with Him, I will simply bask in His glory and fall deeper and deeper in love with the God of the ages.