OnStar OnBoard
From the Series—OnStar Onboard
June 16, 2004This evotional begins a new series of messages titled Onstar Onboard: Always There. Always Ready.
I want to redefine prayer over the next couple weeks. Let me give you two definitions at the outset:
Prayer is a growing consciousness of God
Prayer is an ongoing conversation with God
Next weeks’ evotional will focus on prayer as an ongoing conversation. This week I want to focus on prayer as a growing consciousness of God.
Always There
A few years ago I came across an essay about God written by a boy named Danny Dutton. The theology isn’t bad for eight year-old.
You should always go to church because it makes God happy, and if there is anybody you want to make happy, it’s God. Don’t skip church to do something you think will be more fun like going to the beach. That is wrong, and besides, the sun doesn’t come out at the beach until noon.
God sees everything and hears everything and is everywhere, which keeps him pretty busy. So you shouldn’t go wasting His time by going over your parents’ head and asking for something they already said you couldn’t have.
Jesus is God’s Son. He used to do all the hard work like walking on water and doing miracles. His Father appreciated everything He had done and all his hard work on earth, so he told Him he didn’t have to go out on the road anymore. He could stay in heaven. So He did. And now he helps his father by listening to prayers and seeing which things are important for God to take care of and which ones he can take care of Himself without having to bother God. Like a secretary, only more important, of course. You can pray anytime you want and they are sure to hear you because they’ve got it worked out so one of them is on duty all the time.
What an incredible thought—“you can pray anytime you want and they are sure to hear you.” You’re never out of earshot. God is literally a prayer away.
Conscious
The Message translation of I Peter 1:18 is one of my favorite verses. It says, “Your life is a journey you must travel with a deep consciousness of God.”
All of us go through several phases in life.
At some point we become self-conscious. As a parent I’m watching my kids go through that process right now. To be perfectly honest, it’s sort of sad seeing them become self-conscious. I remember a few years ago having company over at our house and my son, Parker, came running through the house yelling “Captain Underpants.” And sure enough, all he had on was underpants. Adults don’t do that. Why? Because we’re self-conscious! But kids don’t care what other people think. There is a freedom and an innocence that children possess that all of us crave. But we’re so self-conscious we have a hard time experiencing the freedom and innocence of just being ourselves. We become consumed with thoughts about ourselves. I think part of what Jesus meant when he said we must “become like little children” is becoming less self-conscious.
I think there is another phase that all of us go through. Let me talk about it from the male perspective—you become girl conscious. And once you become conscious of the opposite sex there’s no turning back. I remember when I first started liking Lora. It was almost like I had “Lora radar” and it went off every time she was around me. I can only describe it this way—I was very conscious of her presence. Everything I did I did with a consciousness of her being there.
At some point all of us become self-conscious—we think about ourselves a lot. At some point we become conscious of the opposite sex—we think about the opposite sex a lot. Those “states of consciousness” are normal and natural—it is the way God has designed us.
I’d like to describe another “state of consciousness.” At some point we become God-conscious. We’re aware that we’re not alone. I like the way Ellie Arroway described in the 1997 movie Contact. She said we “belong to something that is greater than ourselves” and “none of us are alone.” At some point, all of us become conscious of God. That is the beginning of God-consciousness. We need to nurture those initial inklings of God until they become in the words of I Peter 1:18 “a deep consciousness of God.”
Thought Life
I want to make a pretty simple observation. But I think it’s pretty important. You become what you think about.
Proverbs 23:7 says, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” In other words, your thought life reveals who you really are. You are what you think about. Let me extrapolate and take that principle one step further: whatever you think about the most is the most important thing to you and the most important thing about you.
Who you are is shaped by what you think about. This is a gross simplification, but if you think about yourself all the time you become self-centered. If you think about money all the time you become materialistic. If you think about sex all the time you become sensual. And if you think about Christ all the time you become Christlike.
You become what you think about. James Allen said it this way. “A noble and Godlike character is not a thing of favor or chance, but is the natural result of continued effort in right thinking, the effect of long-cherished association with Godlike thoughts.”
So much of spiritual development comes back to this very simple principle: how much do you think about God?
What does that have to do with prayer? I think prayer is a growing consciousness of God. It is so much more than “saying words to God.” It is a state of heightened awareness of what God is doing in you and around you.
Watchmen
Colossians 4:2 says, “Devote yourselves to prayer being watchful and thankful.” The word “watchful” is a throw back to Old Testament “watchmen” whose job it was to sit on the city wall, scan the horizon, and keep watch. They were the first ones to see an attacking army or traveling traders. People who pray are “watchmen.” They see things before other people see them. And they see things other people don’t see.
There is a connection between verse 2—“devote yourselves to prayer being watchful”—and verse 5—“make the most of every opportunity.”
Life is full of God-given opportunities—opportunities to learn, opportunities to love, opportunities to serve, opportunities to give. Stewardship is making the most of those opportunities. And I’m suggesting that prayer is the key to seeing and seizing those God-given opportunities!
Prayer Mode
I think there are two ways to live your life—survival mode and prayer mode. Survival mode is doing the required minimum to get by on a day-by-day basis. You aren’t believing God for anything. You aren’t praying for anything. Not only are God-given opportunities wasted on you when you live in survival mode. It’s boring! You’re like a pinball—bouncing around based on the circumstances around you.
Prayer mode is the exact opposite. You live in constant expectation of what God is going to do next.
Prayer mode is having your receiver on and your antenna up—you expect God things to happen. It’s amazing how often I’ll pray for someone and bump into them or they’ll call me “out of the blue” that same day. Or I’ll pray for something and something sovereign will happen that day.
When I look back over my life it’s amazing how many good things happen when I’m in prayer mode. Maybe the best way to explain it is with a story.
Six years ago NCC was still a neophyte church. Our church office was actually in a spare bedroom in our house and then Summer was born so that room served as an office by day and bedroom by night. We literally spent months looking for office space. It was beyond frustrating.
One day I was walking home from Union Station and I was in prayer mode. As I walked by 205 F Street, NE I felt like God put a name in my mind. I like to think of it as divine name dropping. I had met the owner a year before, but I’m not real good with names so I honestly wasn’t sure if this was the guy or not. There was no for sale sign outside the house—nothing to indicate that he’d be interested in selling.
To make a long story short, I went home and looked up the name in the phone book and there was a listing. I dialed the number and he answered. I said, “I don’t know if you remember me, but my name is Mark Batterson. And we met about a year ago.” He interrupted me. He said, “I was just thinking about you.” He said, “I was wondering if you’d be interested in buying my house.” And the rest is history.
It was the first piece of property we ever purchased as a church. And not only did we buy it when the market was at it low six years ago. But I believe God gave it to us in preparation for us purchasing the adjacent lot—201 F Street, NE—which will become Ebenezers, our coffeehouse on Capitol Hill.
When I trace back all the good things that have happened in my life personally and in our life corporately as a church it always comes back to prayer mode. All I know is this: when I pray “coincidences” happen. When I don’t they don’t. I believe those “coincidences” are actually “providences.”
Expectations
Psalm 5:3 says, “In the morning, O Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation.”
If you don’t pray, you’re going to have low expectations because you’re not asking or seeking or believing God for anything! But prayer heightens expectations. The Psalmist can’t wait to see what God is going to do next.
Our problem is not asking or expecting too much from God. Our problem is asking for and expecting too little. Ephesians 3:20 says God is able to do immeasurable more than all we ask or imagine! High expectations are the by-product of prayer!
Let me try to explain how it works neurologically.
RAS
At the base of our brain stem there is a cluster of nerve cells called the reticular activating system. We are constantly bombarded by countless stimuli—sights and sounds and smells. If we had to process or pay attention to all the stimuli it’d drive us crazy. The reticular activating system determines what gets noticed and what goes unnoticed. It is the mind’s radar system.
If you buy a new car you will suddenly see that car everyplace you go. It’s not because everyone went out and bought the same car at the same time you did. It’s because before you bought the car you didn’t have a category for the car in you reticular activating system so it went unnoticed. But when you bought the car, it created a category in your reticular activating system so you now notice every time you see the car.
When you pray for someone or something—it creates a category in your reticular activating system. Anything related to those prayers now registers on our radar.
It’s interesting that the Aramaic word for prayer is slotha. It means “to set a trap.” Prayer is setting your mind like a trap so that you catch the thoughts of God. It is a state of total attentiveness. In fact, slotha can mean “to focus,” “to tune in,” and “to select a channel.”
We ought to live in a state of “expectant waiting”—watching and waiting to see what God is going to do next.
Prayers Never Die
I believe that our prayers are eternal—they never die. There have been times in my life where I know that the prayers of my grandfather are being answered in my life twenty-five years after his death. Our prayers are one of the few things that outlive us.
I believe that every good thing that happens in our lives is an answer to someone’s prayer—often prayed long before we were born. And our prayers will bear fruit in the future.
A few months ago I met a gentleman who came to Jimmy Carter’s inauguration in 1976 with a group of Christian square dancers. They came to the visitor center which used to be located in Union Station—right above the theaters where we meet on Sundays. And they prayed that a church would be planted in that place. That prayer was answered twenty years later!
On the sixtieth anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 2004, the following article appeared in the Sunday edition of the Washington Post. It was researched and written by Georgetown professor Jim Moore.
When D-Day finally came, shortly after midnight on June 6, America awoke to the news that Allied troops had just landed on the coast of Normandy, in France. Charles Wilson, the CEO of General Electric, arrived at Washington’s Union Station early that morning to meet a colleague. As he walked onto the bustling concourse, through which more than 100,000 people passed every day, he felt a sense of expectancy in the air. Soon the news quietly being passed from person to person reached him: The invasion was underway. Wilson, describing that day years later in a magazine article, remembered the powerful effect of the news on him and commuters throughout the station.
Looking off into the distance, he noticed a woman sitting on a hard wooden bench quietly fall to her knees to pray. A businessman seated next to her quickly followed, and Wilson watched as soon one person after another knelt and began to pray in silence. The scene was repeated spontaneously throughout the terminal, turning Union Station for a few fleeting moments into what Wilson described as a “house of worship.” Then the audible hush that had fallen over the station lifted as people returned to their business, going off in separate directions.
I emailed Jim Moore because I thought he’d like to know that sixty years later Union Station serves as a “house of worship” every Sunday! He wrote back and said, “Thank you so much for your email. I was delighted to hear of your ministry at Union Station and Ballston. I was very touched by that story from D-Day, and clearly you are the inheritor of that tradition.”
Our prayers outlive us. They don’t die when we die.
I had a thought this week. I was praying outside Union Station and I thought: what would happen if 750 NCCers began interceding for this city? What kind of spiritual resurgence would we see? What kind of miracles would happen? Who would come to faith in Christ? How would we grow spiritually as a result? How would it change the spiritual landscape of this city now and in the years to come?
There’s only one way to find out—do it.
Billy Graham said, “Heaven is full of answers to prayers for which no one ever bothered to ask.”