The tidy lie, the ugly truth and the liberating reality - Part 3

This is part 5 in an ongoing series entitled “Becoming a People of Prayer” Click here for a listing of previous posts in this series if you want to catch up on what you’ve missed.

The tidy lie, the ugly truth and the liberating reality

Despite the obviousness of the scriptural teaching our human nature and our own insecurities often captain the helm of our soul and we buy into destructive lies that hinder our ability to extend and receive the comfort of God through sharing and prayer in the community of his people. Worse than that, as I listen to some of you become transparent with me (and I’ve really been blessed by the candour some of you have extended me – so thank you) what I see is that there is a lie – under the lie in most cases – that you don’t even really know what the lie is that you’re believing.

Today we conclude the first section of this series with the third great lie.

Lie #3

You say...

Sharing answered prayer is insensitive to those who are struggling with real needs

This is one of the MOST destructive lies that we can believe in our Christian walk – let alone in the worship service.  It’s a lie that Satan desperately wants us to believe because it’s a lie that robs the church, and specifically those going through the deepest of personal valleys – of hope. It robs the church of the hope that God is interested in our problems; it robs the church of incentive to share those awkward circumstances and be authentic because it fosters in us a subconscious belief that prayer accomplishes nothing. When you believe this lie, whether you realise it or not what you’re really saying by your lack of forthrightness is:

What you are really saying is...

I don’t love you enough to encourage you with the good news that God answers prayers

Now you may gasp at that accusation and think I’m being too harsh but let’s be honest. Who are you really helping by staying silent? You see we have this unbiblical post-modern mindset that says it’s better not to offend than to share truth. We have a value system that would rather have a person suffer perpetually without hope than to engage in an uncomfortable dialogue that could help them find strength to overcome their situation. We are more concerned with being nice than we are with being loving – and it’s killing the church! Is that the testimony of Scripture? Of course it isn’t!

How it really is...

Keeping praise to yourself dishonours God and robs the church of hope

When the Pharisees and teachers of the law scold Jesus for the boisterous praise of his followers during is triumphal entry into Jerusalem he tells them plainly that if they do not declare his praises the very rocks will cry out in their stead. We have an obligation to return praise to God when he has done something wonderful in our lives, and to do so in such a way to keep the rocks quiet. Returning to our framing text from 2 Corinthians 1, we need to tell the world what God has done for us and trust that what Paul says is true:

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.

2 Corinthians 1:3-4

We need to trust God that our praise will be an encouragement and a comfort to those who are farther behind the curve of suffering and restoration than we are. It’s like we’re all in a long dark tunnel and those who are at the front of the group are shouting to those in the back to not despair, because there IS light at the end. Don’t lose hope – God has not forsaken you!

I remember one poignant example of this during a routine prayer and sharing time at the church in Estevan.  In the disastrous Spring of 2011, when things were really hard for our farmers wanting to get out in the field and unable to because of the water – I remember one Sunday when one of our saints stood up and gave us all some perspective. His prayer was simple – we need to thank God for all the good years we’ve had leading up to today. It was a profoundly different prayer than anyone else was praying at the time (and who could blame them, the situation was pretty dire) but it was an encouragement and hope that the God who has carried our farm families through difficult years before will be faithful even through this unprecedented disaster. Not everyone may have noticed it, but from my vantage point at the front I could see a visible change in the demeanour of the congregation as one man’s testimony of faithfulness injected our fellowship with a fresh dose of hope.

I remember another time in a sharing service when one of our women stood up and shared about the amazing story of how after years of infertility God had made her a promise through scripture that within a year she would be a mother. And how miraculously almost exactly one year from receiving that promise she discovered she was pregnant with a baby who is now a healthy and happy three year-old girl. Now I don’t know if she was aware of it or not at the time, but I was aware of several couples in our congregation who were going through similar struggles and as she shared I could see hope welling up in some of these couple’s eyes. God DOES answer prayers and our church needed to hear that message so that we could grow in our trust of God.

Do you see how it is? God wants us to share the comfort that we have received from him with each other so that through prayer and transparency we can be the arms of Christ to support and uphold one another through our times of crisis.  When we buy into any of the lies that Satan would have us believe about sharing and prayer in the church we diminish and impede the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on people who need to feel his presence the most!

These three lies that we have looked at are false beliefs that are absolutely killing the spirit of prayer in the church, and unless we are willing to confront them, and explode them with the truth we will be held in bondage by them and never get where we are going as a people of God.

You see “It is only in steadfastly committing to radical transparency in suffering and celebration that we can become the type of congregation that God uses to heal a broken and desperate world looking for a safe place to hurt and directions toward hope. This is what it means to pray as the body of Christ.”

In our next post we will move into the second section of this series and talk about surviving and thriving in corporate prayer.