Newsletter, July 29

Three Important Dates:

• August 1: Curt and Alex will join Bob Wisener in the 5:30 –8:00 session in Interfaith Hospitality Network.
• August 19: Important class meeting during the Sunday School hour. We will eat extravagantly but we will also plan social events and ministry events for the Fall. Bring your appetites, ideas, and calendars.
• September 8: Pot luck supper and class event at the Wheeler’s house on that Saturday evening. Claire will begin the study of the Five Loves that evening and continue on Sunday morning, September 9. {Janet, would you ask Robin is she is available that evening. Thank you.}

Thank you, Scott (Episode 1), Paul (Episode 2), Curt (Episode 3), Janet/Mitch (Episode 4) , Mitch/Janet (Episode 5), Kristen (Episode 6: Prayer Time): In our absence next Sunday, August 5, we have a skilled team of teachers leading the class. Join them as they talk about Dangerous Prayers.

Lesson on Prayer, July 29

Practical Suggestions from Hybel from previous lessons:

Commit to a specific time each day for prayer.
Write your prayers
Pray
using the acronym A C T S

Read Matthew 6:5-8
Snapshot from Hybels:
Jesus warned his followers to avoid lifting up prayers on the street corner in a show of spirituality. Instead, He called them to find a private place for prayer. Why the emphasis on privacy? What is this inner room all about? Certainly one concern was that prayer not be a show to impress others. Instead, it should be a conversation between us and God. But beyond this:

• It ensures a minimum of distractions. “In my prayer life, distractions are deadly,” Hybels records. “Voices, music, phones, kids, dogs, birds, almost anything causes me to lose my concentration.
• Once we identify a special place for prayer, that place develops a kind of sacred aura. Your inner room, whether it is the front seat of your truck or a laundry room or a study , becomes a special and holy place where you meet God.
  
  What are some distractions you face when you try to spend time in prayer?
  If you have a place where you where you get away to pray, describe this place and why it is important to you?
  
  Read Matthew 6: 5 - 13
  Snapshot from Hybels:
  Jesus tells his followers that they should not use meaningless repetition and empty phrases in their prayers. It is too easy to get caught up in using certain jargon or terminology in prayer. Certain phrases may sound appropriate, spiritual, even pious, but after a while, we can find ourselves stringing together a bunch of popular phrases and trying to pass it off as prayer. Heaping up fancy phrases cannot replace heartfelt and sincere communication with God. Jesus invites us to talk to the Father authentically, personally, reverently, earnestly.
  Note from Willimon and Hauerwas:
  Learning to pray this prayer “The Lord’s Prayer,” allowing it to become second nature to us, takes time, habit. We pray out of habit. Sometimes people say, “I feel guilty when I am praying the Lord’s Prayer, I am not really thinking about what I am praying. I just say the words out of habit.” Habit is good. Most of the really important things we do in life, we do out of habit. We eat, sleep, make love, shake hands, hug our children … out of habit. Some things in life are too important to leave up to chance or spontaneous desire.
  

Clearly, Hybels and Willimon and Hauerwas are saying different things about prayer in these passages. Can you sort them out? Is it possible for us to be true to all these different teachings on prayer? What are the thoughts that occur to you as you read these various thoughts about prayer?[Note: Wheeler believes that Hybels and W and H are saying complementary things. It is important to form habits of prayer with saying the Lord’s Prayer a powerful habit for many folks. However, in everyone’s prayer life, it is important to include authentic, reverent, earnest conversation with God.]

Lesson 2 on Prayer, July 22

Getting Started –Ruminations from Ed: As we begin this second lesson on prayer, I should probably offer this bit of confession and testimony:

I am not an ideal teacher of this material, because prayer has not been one of the strengths of my Christian walk. If we looked back over my half century as a Christian, we would probably find that much of that time I did not regard prayer as terribly important, and we would find very few periods of time in which I had a special time and place for prayer each day [A strong suggestion from Lesson 1].

On the other hand, prayer has been a topic on which by my thought and my practice has changed over the years. Whereas when I was younger, I did not regard prayer as terribly important, I now regard it to central to Christian living. You may have noticed that we spend 10 minutes of our 50 minutes each Sunday in prayer. Had you been in my class 20 years ago, you might have experienced a 2 minute opening prayer … if I remembered. I have come to believe that when we gather as Christians there is nothing more important that we can do. And, despite my bad habits – despite the fact that I still do not have a time and place for daily prayer - prayer punctuates my day in ways it never did 20 –30 years ago.

Before we move on to Hybel’s ideas for today (Prayer: Opening Your Heart to God, Hybels and Harney, Zonderman, 1997, available at Lifeway Bookstore), I want talk for just a minute about why and how prayer has become so important to me. In particular, I want to mention three reasons that this transition in thought and practice has occurred. The first two have to do with scriptures:

• Mark 6:46:This unremarkable little scripture became very remarkable to me primarily because I realized how often it was repeated in the Gospels. Scattered among the records of teachings and miracles and conversations of Jesus were brief reminders that Jesus regularly went apart by himself and prayed. Because in my heart of hearts I am a "Jesus person," this realization was an important stimulus to my life in prayer.
• Phillipians 4:4 –7: I ran across this scripture in a Bible Study on Phillipians at White Bluff United Methodist Church some ten years ago at a time in my life when life was a bit dark for me. I was not rejoicing very much. It was a time when I was very aware of some failures in my life and also very aware of my incompetence to supply the healing that the world around me desperately needed. This scripture gave direction on how to pray in a way that increased my joy … and brightened my life and my ability to minister.
• Prayer has also become important to me is because it is the agent in my life through which I change and through which I move a little closer to seeing the world as God sees it. Indeed, if I were asked to give testimony about how I have seen the power of prayer evidenced in the world, I would have to simply say, (a) I know prayer is powerful because Ed is not the same person he would have been had he not prayed. (b) I know prayer is powerful because Ed sees the world through different eyes than he would have seen it if he had not prayed.

Back to Hybels and Prayer: I want to start with where Hybels finishes today’s lesson: with a very powerful, practical suggestion for growing your prayer life. Hybels suggests that he prays most effectively when he writes his prayer … and when he organizes his prayers using the acronym A C T S: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. I will add my endorsement to that of Hybel’s. Over the years, my "C minus" prayer life has been most satisfactory when I have written my prayers and when I have organized them using this A C T S outline. Now, I would like for you to think a little bit about this outline.

Note to readers: At this point the class spent some time responding to the following outline and related questions.


A
Adoration: Adoration is praising God for who He is, focusing on His character and attributes. For what quality of God can you praise Him at this time in your life?

C
Confession: Confession involves reviewing your week and your life and holding up the failures and sins that God helps you see … seeking God’s forgiveness and healing.

T
Thanksgiving is expressing our heartfelt appreciation for what God has done. What are you thanking God for today?

S
Supplication is lifting the concerns of your heart and mind to God? What is one need you are lifting to God right now?


Tthe class members then shared their thoughts in each of these three categories (We permitted omission of Confession, feeling it might be too personal for group consumption). After each person had spoken, we observed that we had just spent time in prayer together … said AMEN… and dismissed class.

Newsletter, July 17

A Blogger: Now that Ed has become a blogger (Ha!), he has decided to deliver class newsletters by blog for a while. If he finds time, he will also post lesson summaries so that those of you who must sometimes miss class can "follow along" electronically if you wish (The wishful thinking of every teacher. Sometimes I even dream that my mathematics students will do their homework!!!)

Thank you, Amy: Amy, thank you so much for teaching while the old folks wandered in France. We had a wonderful time, despite the inadequacy of Ed's 40 year old high school French ... and we returned intact.

Inter-Faith Hospitality: Our next turn to host the Inter-Faith Hospitality Network will occur in the week of July 29 - August 4. As we had agreed, Curt has signed our class up for Wednesday evening, August 1. We will need to provide help in the 5:30 - 8:30 slot and the 8:30 pm - 7:00 am slot. Unfortunately, Ed will be out of town that night so we will need someone to do the late shift. We will seek volunteers this Sunday.

Lessons on Prayer: We began a set of lessons on prayer this past Sunday and will continue this Sunday, July 22.

Volunteer Needed Again: The old folks are roaming one more time before settling down for the Fall. On the weekend of August 4 we will visit our son in Toronto. We would be very appreciative of a volunteer to cover the lesson that day. We will make every effort to become home bodies after that trip.