Prayer and the God Who Wants to Know You

Search me.O God, and know me. (Psalm 139:23)

And he walks with me; and he talks with me,
and he tells me I am his own.
And the joy we share as we tarry there
None other has ever known.

HOW WE ARE KNOWN BY GOD

One of the foundations of prayer is knowing that God wants to know you.  The invitation of the psalmist is not that God would know something that God does not know propostionally, but that God would become familiar with him.  Also, that he would have the experience of being known by God.  That experience is laid out in intimate detail in the psalm:

You know when I sit and when I rise;
You perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
You are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue,
You know it completely, O God.

Perhaps the psalmist intended for this to be read as a description of what it is to be known by God instead of as an argument for God's omniscience.  God knows because God cares.  He knows where I am because he cares about where I am.  He knows my thoughts and my ways because he is so familiar with my voice, how I speak, and what I like to do.  He knows what I am going to say before I say it because he adores me and knows mr as his child with a love I can only dream about.

Maybe this is what it means to walk with God.  If we are to follow Adam's fallen path in the Garden and hide from God, God must hide from us.  We will not be known and familiar to him.  We will escape from the experience of being known as only God can know us.  Walking with God is the opposite of hiding from him.  Walking with God is a continual longing to be known by him.

That longing can only come if we realize he wants to know us.

HOW GOD GETS CLOSE TO US

You hem me in behind and before;
You have laid your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me
Too lofty for me to attain.

It may be that we have trouble grasping God's love for us because it makes no sense.  It is "too wonderful," "too lofty to attain."  The value of each human being is incalculable.  That comes from God's accounting.  It makes no sense.  We are not only small in the scheme of things, we are often despicable.  We may not see this in ourselves, but we are quite conscious of it in others.  How could God bear to have us "hemmed in" so close to him?

The amazing thing in knowing and following Christ is that we discover how God can come to know us even when we can be so small and despicable.  He has a plan to change all of that.  Christ's death on the cross reveals how helpless we are.  Like the Pharisees of Jesus's time, our religions only end up rejecting this God who is with us.  Like the Romans or the first century, our governments gladly crucify him in favor of their own convenience and power.  Like Peter his follower, even our friendship with God turns to betrayal.  We are indeed helpless in our brokenness, in our darkness, in our disregard for God.

If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me,
and the light become night around me"
even the darkness will not be dark to you,
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.

In the cross of Christ, our darkness becomes light.  He sees a way through it and makes what is horrible into a good thing.  The cross shows our deep value to God.  He gave his own Son to keep us near him and to find our worth in him.  He also gave his Son with hope, knowing that we could be recaptured and rejuvenated as rulers over his creation.  In order to know each of us as worthwhile creations of hope, he made a way for each of us to know him.  Through Jesus we can really come to know a God who wants to know us.  He sees us in our darkness and we are not hidden from him.  He reaches out to us with the light of Christ, who died for us.

RENEWED MINDS AND BETTER PRAYER

Here is the ground of prayer.  We must begin with a God who longs to know us.  He wants to walk with us in our hours and days, months and years.  Although such knowledge can be too wonderful for us, we can find certainty of that knowledge in Christ.  As we come to trust him, we find a God who made us, let us go our own way, and yet called us back to him.  The deeper we are grounded in God's heroic love for us in particular, the more prayer will make sense to us as a part of that searching and saving God.  Only in the light of God's work for us through Jesus can we find ourselves able to say, "I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful.  I know that full well."

Our minds must be renewed by knowing God in this way for our prayers to begin to be effective.  God wants to know me.  God wants to know you.  If we do not care about this, then we will not care about praying.  If we do not believe this, then our prayer will be marked by uncertainty.  We must weigh the evidence that we are given in Christ and his followers and allow it to deepen our faith.  Our certainty depends on it.  We must remember how far God has brought us and see it as an indication of how far he will take us.  As we  ground our minds in such thoughts, we will find prayer is more natural, more real, more beautiful, and also more effective.  With a God like this, who wouldn't pray?

The New for the New

WHAT'S NEW?

No, he pour new wine into new wine skins.  (Mark 2:22)

 "New" makes its appearance on labels of products as "new and improved" or "new look."  It also shows up as "brand new" and "as good as new" in the area of resale.  Unfortunately, this sort of marketing is not isolated to the sale of candy or used bicycles.  This concept of "new" has crept into our spiritual lives as individuals and communities.

Such newness follows our worship of human progress and technology.  Last year's computer is not as good as this years model.  The latest fashions are always better than the ones of last year or the last decade.  Even the nostalgic appeal to "classic" or "original" is based on having greater choices and variety - something new all the time.

It's not all bad, but it has little to do with the new wine that Jesus wants to give to us.  Jesus wants to fulfill rather than replace.  What is old cannot hold the new, but what is old points to what is new and lays the ground for it.  The new wine is Jesus's new teaching, which is not confined to a book, but lives and moves in and through and with us.

This new wine is new because it is constantly growing.  It is vital.  It is living.  Jesus's teaching continues and finds life through the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, who will remind us of everything Jesus said and lead us into truth.  Such a new living wine cannot be contained by the same containers; they give out and burst eventually.  No, he pours new wine into new wine skins.

Jesus's disciples are the new wine skins.  They are the ones made new through a living, conversational relationship with Jesus and his Father through the Holy Spirit.  Their lives make more and more room for God rather than shrinking and hardening by trusting in the correct professed beliefs or in the right good actions or in the best informed community.  Beliefs and actions and community are important, but  they cannot hold the new wine.  Only a discipleship of interactive love with Jesus can hold this new wine.

THE OTHER WINE SKINS

Jesus warns against two alternatives to his teaching and Spirit later in Mark (8:15).  He tells his disciples to watch out for the "yeast" or the teaching of the Pharisee and of Herod.  Pharisees taught about a life of service to God, full of deeds good in themselves and under the protection of the Jewish religious institution.  Self-righteousness was their trademark.  Hypocrisy was the outcome.  A life devoted to their teaching was one where they found themselves doing everything so that others would see.  To them Jesus said, "Clean the inside of the dish and the outside will come clean as well."

The teaching of Herod was one that accommodated to the world they lived in.  He was careful to stay on good terms with those around him, especially important people, like rulers.  His life stood in opposition to what was moral and right, but he tried to buy support through building temples for the religious people.  Unrighteousness was his trademark.  Friendship with the world was the outcome.  Such teaching resulted being darkened in the mind and cut off from the life of God.

Self-righteousness and unrighteousness seem to promise "new wine."  One with the spiritual fads, good deeds, or orthodox practice, the other with new pleasures and personal "freedom."  Neither delivers.  Communities that thrive on such teaching and practices reap the same benefits: falsehood and emptiness.

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I am too easily swayed by these paths, especially self-righteousness.  Becoming a new wine skin seems so much harder until I see or experience the fruits of the other ways.  If I take the other paths, I inevitably find myself backtracking and unlearning what I've been learned.  Whether I find myself drawn to professing the right beliefs to be right with God or to doing good deeds for God without coming to know God himself or to taking care of the church so it will take care of me, I find they leave me empty, since God will not fill such wine skins with his new wine.  Jesus's teaching and His Spirit can only reside in his apprentices, otherwise I find myself broken and worn out, unable to sustain the life he longs to fill me with.

Lord, re-new me today.  Yesterday's thoughts and feelings and desires will not carry me through today. Give me this day your daily bread of renewal and transformation so that my life might be a holding place for your Spirit of love, joy, and peace.  Amen.