Christian by Association

Cory's back today for your weekly edition of "Shameless Audacity". If you missed the first few chapters check them out here:

Introduction
Owning Disgrace
The Father

Don't just skim, take a few minutes to read it, and be thorough. It's good stuff. 

Oh, my head! Where am I? Oh, my head! What happened? Why am I lying in the street? Is my wallet gone? Oh, my head! How long have I been here? It wasn’t dark when I started walking this way. I have to get up. Maybe I can find some help. Ouch! I think my ankle is broken. I’m starving. How long was I out? Why was I out? Where is my wallet? Where is my cell phone? What? Did they take my shoes too? Really? C’mon! Wait, there’s a house. Maybe they will help me. What should I ask for? I have a broken ankle, an obvious concussion, a burning belly, no money, no phone, no proof that I am who I say I am. I need so much help, where do I begin?

That may seem like a dire situation, but it is actually how I feel right now. In the first chapter, I described what I felt after reading the words “shameless audacity” as a haunting conviction, and I meant heavy on the haunting. There is a part of me that wants to begin praying with a blatant disregard for my own disgrace to the One I proclaim to be my Father, but my golf swing keeps getting in the way.

In the last two years, my ministry partner and I opened an online store and started writing curriculum for youth groups and children. Also, my wife and I had our first child, Linda. Needless to say, my near weekly golf outing has diminished to a bi-annual golf outing. After writing that last chapter, Our Father, my thoughts were entirely too heavy. It was time for golf. Golf can be a frustrating game. A few years ago, I logged a 79 as my best golf score ever. Now, I struggle to break 100. Today, I struggled to break 100 on the front nine. Inside this body hides a scratch golfer longing to play on the tour. If I could only learn to embrace my 100 and enjoy myself, life would be grand. However, the rust on my golf skills breeds more frustration than relaxation.

As I struggled to clear my head, I kept coming back to the same question, “What should I pray for?” I suffered from a drug problem as a kid. I was drug to church every Sunday (that’s funny in Texas). Don’t get me wrong. I know how to pray for the lost, the missionaries in Africa, and Aunt Gertie’s ingrown toenail procedure. Those are a given. What I mean is: for what life changing, faith-filled thing should I seek God with a shameless audacity? Now back to my golf swing.

As I stared down Hanson’s Hollow on the number two par 3, I thought about praying to God for a good shot. Then I thought, “Well, should I pray for a good outcome or a good swing?” Then I thought, “Should I pray for a good swing or that I would keep my head down?” Then I thought, “Should I pray for my head to stay down or for my arm to stay straight?” Then I thought, “Should I pray for my arm to stay straight or should I pray for forgiveness for asking God’s help in something that I never practice?”

Christianity can be described as a place where intellect meets spirituality. When the concrete meets the abstract, something out of this world is created. Think about it. Every real superhero (sorry batman fans) begins with a normal person or situation meeting an abnormal, unrealistic person or situation. Superman was the product of an unrealistic alien traveling to our very real planet. Spiderman was the product of an abnormal radioactive spider biting a normal, pimply, lovesick teenager. I want my Christianity to be a superhero kind of Christianity, but getting the concrete and the abstract to play nice is tricky.

I praise my God for leaving me with my intellect and allowing me to experience His Spirit. It makes me sad to see the large mass of people who feel that Christianity means either ignorance (to the world) or blind faith (to the saved). God always intended for us to use our brains. Any decent Christian should believe in freewill. Why, then, do so many expect freewill to stop after salvation? I don’t want to be lead around blindly by God, and God doesn’t want to lead me around by the nose. All that being said, my intellect and my spirit struggle to agree on how to pray. It was on that ragged, budget friendly golf course that God’s word seeped into another crack in my thick skull. Maybe, just maybe, a superhero was born.

In Luke 11, just after Jesus tells the story of the midnight friend, Jesus speaks one of those iconic lines that make good sermons and bumper stickers. He said, “Ask and it shall be given to you. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door will be opened. For everyone who asks receives, everyone who seeks finds, and everyone who knocks sees an open door.” There it is; there lies the answer to the conundrum that has haunted me for years.

In the context of a man in need in the middle of the night, much like the story that started this chapter, Jesus doesn’t teach us how to find the most “ask-worthy” request or the “most likely to be answered” request. He says ask, seek, and knock. You need bread, ask for bread. As I think back on the conversation I had with myself on the golf course, I now realize that all I really needed was calm. My golf game was not televised. No giant cardboard check waited for me in the clubhouse. The outcome of the shot didn’t matter. The technique didn’t matter. When my wife said, “Go play golf,” she intended to end the day with a calm husband, not an impressive scorecard.

Spiritually, I feel like the man at the beginning of the chapter. What do I need? What do I really need? I realize this may be counterintuitive in a chapter on defining a prayer need, but my need is a need. I vow today to reach out my battered hand and knock my bloodied knuckles on the door of my Friend. I’m in need. I need help. I just need someone to know.

Lord, I want to see You move in mighty ways through my prayer life. For what would you have me ask? Show me my need. Move me through the petty requests of a self-centered man to the true needs of one of Your disciples.