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Why Young People Are Leaving The Church

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Every few years I find myself writing about this subject. It is one that I care about very deeply, and with each year of ministry experience that I gain the more I learn about the realities of young people leaving the church. This is a problem that is not secluded to one denomination of Christianity or to a small group of churches. It is widespread, in fact, it is an incredibly well organized attack by Satan on the church. Let me share with you three reasons why our young people are leaving the church and what we can do about it:

They Do Not See Authenticity In The Adults Around Them

I believe this is the biggest reason why young people leave the church. If I were to be honest in my own self-evaluation, this may be the biggest contributor to why I am still in the church. My parents are the godliest people that I know. In addition to that, my dad has been my pastor for most of my life. My parents modeled what they taught and they did not act one way on Sunday in front of the crowd and a different way the rest of the week.

Sadly, however, many Christian children and teens do not have the same life experience that I have. Too often do we, as adults, put on our Sunday faces to impress everyone but then the rest of the week we act a very different way.

There are a lot of problems to us doing this, but one of the big problems with it is that we then allow our young people to associate the words “fake” and “church” with each other. It is not a stretch to say “The faith of Christianity is fake” after saying “the people at church are fake”.

What exasperates this problem even more is when “godly” people who preach righteousness to other people end up falling into sin themselves.

We must be so wary of how we behave ourselves! More importantly, we must be wary of our heart. Young people are looking for authenticity more than anything else, they are looking for something that is real. They are not looking for perfection, but they are looking for you to acknowledge that you are not perfect. 

We will keep losing our young people as long as church is a display of our own righteousness and as long as we are not being real with our young people about our imperfections.

They Are Taught “Faith” With No “Facts”

It is important to teach faith. Because, as Scripture says, “without faith it is impossible to please Him”. But consider that one day a week our young people are being taught about faith, whereas the rest of the week they are being taught “facts”. Our young people are being taught a lot of falsehood disguised as truth, and that “truth” is backed by supposed logic and facts.We absentmindedly call the people of the Bible “characters” and the events of the Bible “stories”, and in so doing we subconsciously are telling our kids that the Bible is a book of fiction rather than fact. We have to show our kids that faith and facts are not enemies. 

Someone told me the other day that teenagers are too young to be taught apologetics. I’m sorry, but I fear that if you start teaching apologetics to teens, you are already too late. We need to start teach the facts about our faith when our kids are a young age or else we will lose them as soon as they are given the choice to not come back.

Sunday school teacher, youth leader, let me challenge you with something… Your children and teens have some serious, nagging questions about the Bible and about Christianity. Do not belittle their questions and do not shame them for asking questions. Do the opposite, facilitate their questions, provide them opportunities to ask questions in a meaningful environment and then… ANSWER THE QUESTIONS! And if some of those questions challenge you and you do not know a good answer, you must with humility and authenticity say, “I don’t have a good answer to that, but I will study that this week and get back with you next week.” Does that take extra work? Yep. But it is worth it for the sake of our kids. If the Bible is true (which I firmly believe it is) then it should not be afraid of facts. LEt’s show our kids that faith and facts do not have to be enemies!

They Are Being Entertained

Children’s ministry, in many churches, has become little more than “baby sitting”. We sing some fun songs, play some games, give them a snack, and teach a short Bible story. Children’s ministry workers justify this because “The kids don’t pay attention during the lesson time, so we have to keep it short!” and “they need time to get their wiggles out”. What makes this problem even worse is when that mentality carries over into teen ministry. “What do you mean my teens don’t get a snack every week?” and “Why don’t we have a longer gym time?” are questions that are heard in teen ministries that are trying to do it right. 

Church time is not entertainment time. It is time for them to learn truth. Now I get it, teenagers have a lot of options these days. They can choose to go to the church down the street that has a game room and their entire “youth ministry” time is playing video games or they can come to your church that focuses on preaching truth. If they had the choice, they would choose the games… because their teenagers. Be the adult! Right now they don’t have a choice. Take them to the “boring” church that is going to help them instead of the “fun” church. We have teenagers who have spent their entire life in church who barely know any Bible. A lot of that has to do with our focus on entertaining rather than teaching.

Just a final note on this: Teaching truth does not have to be boring. There are engaging and fun ways to teach truth. Disney uses the word “edutainment”, basically tricking kids into learning by making it fun. That’s awesome, we need that in children’s ministry! Ask yourself, “Why am I doing what I’m doing?” Are you serving in children’s ministry to fill time or are you trying to impart truth? That is where the difference lies.

Our young people are leaving in the droves. Frankly, it really isn’t their fault, it’s ours. We can do better, we MUST do better. Parent, youth leader, pastor, please be authentic in your own walk with God, be willing to answer the difficult questions, and focus on imparting truth rather than simply entertaining. Those things will go a long way in keeping our young people in church.

Check out Curtis’ other writing on his Facebook page.

Why are young people leaving the church?

The Limitations of the Judges of Israel

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God delights in using weak people. God does not just use the popular, rich, handsome, talented, and prestigious; He uses the lowly, injured, and untalented. This is a theme that is clearly seen in the book of Judges. What were some of the limitations of the judges of Israel? Let’s quickly examine it today:

Ehud was Left Handed

We often overlook Ehud as one of the judges of Israel. He was the man who assassinated King Eglon. What makes his story notable though, is that he was left-handed. To understand the significance of that statement, at that point in time being left handed was almost seen as a disability. So today, left-handedness is seen as a minor inconvenience to those who are left-handed, back then is was just a little bit more than inconvenient. We understand that left-handedness is not really a weakness, but they did not see it that way back then. It is interesting that in Ehud’s case, not only did God use him despite his “weakness”, but his left-handedness served an important role in how God used him!

Deborah was a Woman

Deborah was the bravest judge in the whole book of Judges. Prove me wrong! However, Deborah had a small problem… she was a woman. Now, understand today that God loves men and women equally and God can use women just as much as God can use men. The problem is that history has proven that men sometimes have a hard time going along with God’s program. Were there stupid men back then who said, “I will not fight under the command of a women”? I’m sure! Because there are stupid men today that would say that! But again, God gave the Israelites a great victory through the leadership of Deborah!

Gideon was Hiding

Gideon is the most celebrated judge of Israel. But when we first are introduced to Gideon, he is hiding. I would never go as far to say that Gideon was a coward, I do not believe he was. However, There are a lot of people (a majority of people, even) who fall someone between coward and “mighty man of valor”. The point is, although the angel called Gideon a “mighty man of valor”, in our minds, we don’t picture someone who is hiding to survive.

Gideon comes across as calculated and slow, not simply because he was a smart man, but also because he was kind of afraid! Not only was he hiding, but Gideon even said to the angel that he was the lowest person, in the lowest family, in the lowest tribe of all Israel. Basically stating that he was the worst of the worst. Despite all of those things, God used Gideon, arguably in a more fascinating way than any other judge of Israel!

Samson was the Exception

One judge that did not have such set-backs was Samson. In fact, it is in my opinion that Samson should have been the greatest judge in Israel. To take it a step further, Samson was being set up as one of the greatest leaders in all of Israel’s history. Consider this: Samson’s birth was miraculous and promised by God. Samson was to participate in the vow of the Nazarite. Plus, the Spirit of God granted Samson great power. Take any one of those three details by themselves and we find Samson in a small pool of amazing people! When you take all three of these details, it is clear that God had big plans for Samson! However, we see that Samson’s life was one of wasted potential. What happened? Sin. It is a comfort to know that God still did something great through Samson despite the sin in his life, but it is heartbreaking to know that God could have done more through Samson if he had simply done what was right.

The point today is this: God can use anyone. He doesn’t care how talented you are. God is simply looking for a clean and willing vessel to perform His will. 

Curtis wrote a book on the Judges of Israel! Check it out here!

What If Jesus Did Not Rise From The Dead?

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I want you to use your imagination. Today I want to imagine that everything about Easter is the same. We are in church celebrating Easter. We go about our church day the same way we would in our real world. The only difference is, in our imagination, Jesus DID NOT rise from the dead.

We actually do not have to use our imaginations! First Corinthians 15 shows us what the implications are of Christ not rising from the dead. Let’s look at those thoughts today:

Jesus is not our Savior v. 13

This first point is probably the most straightforward and the most simple. If there is no such thing as the resurrection of the dead, in general, then Christ is not risen from the dead. This point runs a little deeper than simply saying that Christ died on the cross but just didn’t rise, what the point of this verse is saying is that Jesus would not be God.

Remember, throughout the Gospels, Jesus claimed to be God. He never made it a habit to hide his identity from people. If Jesus did not rise from the dead then Jesus was a liar.

There are many opinions about who Jesus is and what he was here to do. But I would submit to you today, much as C.S. Lewis did, that if Jesus was not God then Jesus was not someone to be trusted. He had to be either a complete lunatic or a liar. Most people who would argue that the resurrection is not real would at least say that Jesus was a good person. They would argue that he was a very moral person, the Muslims teach that Jesus is a prophet that we all ought to respect and revere, but they do not believe that Jesus is God. You can’t have it both ways, you can’t claim that Jesus was great but he wasn’t God.

The resurrection is important in proving the deity of Christ. I can say all day long until I am blue in the face that I am God. I can even perform some parlor tricks into tricking people to think that I am God. But if you nail me to an old rugged cross and brutally kill me, I am not going to rise from the dead. Why? Because I AM NOT GOD, but Jesus is God, so Jesus rose from the dead.

Understand this today, the resurrection of Christ is the baseline of Christian belief. This is the first domino in losing everything precious to our faith. If there is no resurrection, then we have no Savior. 

Preaching is pointless v. 14

If Jesus is not our Savior, then preaching is pointless. Why would we go to church if Jesus did not rise from the dead? The passage tells us that if the resurrection is not real, then we are wasting our time going to church and hearing preaching.

Think about my situation! If Jesus did not really rise from the dead, I wasted years of my life, preparing in Bible study, learning HOW to study the Bible, praying over sermons and making sure they were Biblically accurate. What a terrible waste of time for me! If Jesus had not risen from the dead, we would all have been better off going fishing every Sunday. I would have been better off selling balloons at a theme park every day! The resurrection of Jesus Christ is what makes the church important. Without Jesus’ resurrection, we would be sitting in a pointless building doing meaningless activity. 

Faith is pointless v. 14

Not only is our preaching in vain, but our actual faith is in vain. What is our faith in? the answer ought to be Jesus Christ. But if Jesus did not rise from the dead, then we are trusting in someone who has been dead for over 2000 years. By the way, the resurrection of Jesus is what makes us different from other religious faiths. The Buddhists, Muslims, and others practice faith in someone who is dead. You can go to the tomb of Buddha and of Muhammed. You can go see the tomb of Joseph Smith. They practice dead religious founded by dead men. What makes our faith different is that our faith rests in a living God and a living founder. But if Jesus were still dead then our faith is in vain.

What is the point of praying if Jesus is dead? And what is the point of trusting in the Lord if Jesus is dead? What is the point of leaning on the Word of God if Jesus is dead? If Jesus were still dead, we would have been better off in placing our faith in something tangible, like ourselves, rather than rely on God. The resurrection does not just add validity to preaching, but it adds validity to our faith.

The Bible is a lie v. 15

One big reason why our faith would be pointless would be because the Bible is a lie if Jesus did not rise from the dead. Think of how much of the Bible hinges on the fact that Jesus rose from the dead!

I am not just talking about the Gospels and what Jesus said about the resurrection, what about the rest of the New Testament? What about Paul’s experience on the Damascus Road? Couldn’t have happened it Jesus were dead! What about all of the writings of Paul that argue for the resurrection, as well as the writings of the other apostles? What about the book of Acts? The apostles went out and were energized by ,of course, the Holy Spirit, but also by the fact that they were eyewitnesses of a resurrected Lord. What about the book of Revelation where Jesus himself gives John what to write. The entire New Testament would be a lie! A lie that the apostles maliciously made up for self gain!

The Old Testament wouldn’t escape our scrutiny. What about all of the prophetic passages about the resurrection of Christ? Or what about the first mention of Christ in Genesis that says that the serpent would bruise Messiah’s heel, I would say that being dead and staying dead is not a simple heel injury! What about the imagery peppered throughout the Old Testament that pointed toward a resurrection? Furthermore, what about all the places that said that the Messiah was, indeed God. If there is not resurrection than there is nothing in the Bible that we can trust, every single word of it is a lie. 

You are lost in your sin v. 17

I have said before that many times, when it comes to salvation, we tend to overemphasize the idea of “going to Heaven”. Understand, I cannot wait to go to Heaven. But the longer I am saved, the more I understand that I was not saved to go to Heaven, I was saved to be forgiven of my sins.

Because I accepted Jesus as my Saviour, God no longer sees me as a sinner, but he sees me as a saint. And that is what salvation is all about, forgiveness of sin, being justified, declared righteous, before God.

But if Jesus did not rise from the dead then I am still lost in my sin. I have not been forgiven, God does not see me as righteous. I will forever be lost in my sin. But, truthfully, that really wouldn’t matter a whole lot because of what we are going to look at next:

There is nothing after death v. 18

If Jesus did not rise from the dead, then there is no life after death. There is no Heaven, there is no Hell. When we die, our bodies go into the ground and we forever cease to exist. If Jesus did not rise from the dead, then this is the only life that we will ever live, and that is pretty miserable!

Christians are worse off than sinners v. 19

Lastly, if Jesus did not rise from the dead, then Christians are worse off than the unsaved. Why? Because then we have given much of our lives to a ridiculous delusion. Many of us have sacrificed so much for something that is not even real. We have given ourselves fully to a lie. The rest of the world has spent their lives in merry frivolity. We should have as well, but instead we spent our lives pursuing a righteousness that was not even real. What a pathetic group of miserable people we are, if the resurrection of Christ were not real.

Don’t you see today! The resurrection of Christ is not just a PART of our Christian faith, it is the most important part of our Christian faith. Tt is the truth that ties everything that we believe together. Everything from Genesis to Revelation hangs on an empty garden tomb.

But…

As bleak and as disturbing as the first part of this post was, I want to remind you again: The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is a FACT. 

Gilbert West and Lord Nyttleton were two young men who hated Christianity in the 16th century and they sought to disprove it. They came to the conclusion that they needed to disprove to major moments in the New Testament in order to unravel all of the Christian faith: the first major moment to disprove was the conversion of Saul of Tarsus on the Damascus Road, the second was the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The two men split the duties and decided that they would meet back up in a year to discuss their findings. After a year, when they finally got back together, the one said to the other, “I have researched and studied the life of Saul of Tarsus and have come to the conclusion that his conversion is an undeniable fact, and I have accepted Jesus as my Savior because of it.” the second man began to beam and he said, “I too have studied the resurrection of Christ and have come to the conclusion that it is an undeniable fact, I too have accepted Christ as my Savior.” These were two men who hated the Scriptures but upon studying it and researching, they walked away with full assurance that the Bible is true and that Jesus did exactly what he said he did!

Because the resurrection is true, we have a faith, we have a Bible, we have a church, and we have a Savior. Because the resurrection is real, we have a way to heaven!

The resurrection is not just important for some abstract reasons, it is important because it is your way to be forgiven from your sins and it is your way to have an eternal home in Heaven.

For more writing by Curtis, check out his author page.

Daniel’s ‘Model’ Prayer

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First, let me welcome Kreig back to the “blogosphere”! Last week Kreig wrote a great post on the Jewish “tefillah”. This sparked a conversation between Kreig and I about how differently the Old Testament saints prayed than we do today. They had a grasp on the nature of prayer and also on the nature of God that we, frankly, do not have today. 

One of those prayers that comes to mind is in Daniel chapter 9. Daniel had just read the prophecies of Jeremiah, specifically where God promised that he would keep Israel in Babylonian (later on Persian) captivity for 70 years. Daniel realized that those 70 years were almost over, and so he decided to pray. It was not as if Daniel doubted God, the issue was that God’s people had still not repented of their sins, they were still as wicked as ever, and it troubled Daniel that God might prolong the bondage of His people because they were still very wicked. This led to a beautiful prayer by Daniel. In this prayer, we see a model for how we ought to pray and how we ought to view both prayer and God. Let’s look at a few key thoughts about Daniel’s ‘model’ prayer:

Lifting Up God

We see Daniel begin his prayer in verse 4. The first thing that Daniel says is in his prayer is in reference to the greatness of God. Most times, we skip ahead to the “asking God for stuff” part of the prayer. But Daniel starts by acknowledging the person of God. That is not just how he starts the prayer, but he peppers the praises of God throughout the prayer. One of the primary functions of the prayer was to lift God up!

Confessing Sin

A part of Daniel’s prayer that takes up a lot of space is his confession of sin, on a personal and a national level. Daniel realized that they were still very much wicked in the sight of God. No verse says it more clearly than verse 5, “We have sinned, and have committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even by departing from thy precepts and from thy judgments.” Throughout the chapter we see Daniel acknowledging his sin, and how heartbroken he was over it.

Understanding Being Undeserving

His acknowledgment of his sin led to an understanding of being undeserving. Throughout the prayer, Daniel pleads for the mercy of God, the concept of mercy is implied throughout because of what Daniel says in verse 9, “To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgivenesses, though we have rebelled against him.” Daniel was praying that God release them of their bondage, but he did not do so with any pretense that they earned it or deserved it. So many times, we go to God and act as if we are entitled to get good things. We need to realize that we do not deserve anything good from God. Anything good that he gives us falls under the category of the Mercy of God!

Requesting God’s Glory

The conclusion to Daniel’s prayer was that God would release them out of bondage, not because they earned it, but for the glory of God. Verse 17 at the end says, “…for the Lord’s sake,” verse 19 says, “O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive; O Lord hearken and do; defer not, for thine own sake, O my God: for thy city and thy people are called by thy name. Daniel’s prayer was ultimately that God would be glorified. We often so get so consumed in asking God for things, that we forget that the ultimate point of prayer (and the ultimate point of the Christian life) is for God to be glorified. Glorifying God is not just saying good things about him, but it even bleeds into the very things we ask for in prayer.

The elements of this prayer ought to look familiar, because Jesus uses the same main points in his Model Prayer:

Matthew 6:9-13

“After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name (1. Lifting up God).

Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven(4. Requesting God’s glory).

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts (2. Confessing sin), as we forgive our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.”

As Kreig so well stated last week: prayer is not just asking God for things. It isn’t even primarily about asking God for things! That very truth is modeled in practically all the prayers in the Bible. Let’s pray in a way that is pleasing to God!

For more of Curtis King’s writing, check out his author page.

Lessons in Prayer From the Jewish Tefillah

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“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.”

Deuteronomy 6:4-9

Recently I’ve been diving into studies on the ancient Jewish context of the Old Testament, especially the Torah (the first 5 books of the Old Testament that we commonly call the Pentateuch). As Christians, we often read these books in a bit of a vacuum. We read them (and in the case of Leviticus, we skim them) in order to make it through a yearly Bible reading schedule. We engage with the action-packed stories, but our eyes tend to gloss over at the more difficult passages that depict parts of ancient near-eastern culture that are entirely alien to us.

What is all of this about Abraham making two rows of dead animals and God walking through them? Why does God seem so merciless and cruel compared to the New Testament? Many of our most difficult questions about the Old Testament stem from the fact that we are thousands of years removed from the people in those stories, and our culture is exceptionally unlike theirs was. As I have read about the patterns of Jewish life in ancient Israel, some things have stuck out to me like signal flares begging to be seen. Jewish life now, and especially in the time of Jesus and long before in the times of the kings of Israel, was centered around tefillah. Tefillah (Heb. תפילה; te-feel-ah) is the Hebrew word for prayer.

Prayer as Service

Tefillah is really a very generic word in and of itself, from a root word meaning intervening and executing judgment. There are a number of other Hebrew words that translate to prayer, but the Jewish people have historically gravitated to this one in particular because of the implication that it is an exercise of the heart and mind, which lines up with the Biblical command to serve God “all your heart” (Deut. 11:13). To serve God with your heart is to tefillah, to pray. Prayer becomes then a labor of worship and service to the LORD God, not just a simple ritual of words.

To serve God with your heart is to tefillah, to pray. Prayer becomes then a labor of worship and service to the LORD God, not just a simple ritual of words.

So often when we pray, we view it as simply taking a list of requests to God. We’re often hoping, like children with Santa Claus, that He gives them all to us if we’ve been nice. Or we just go through the motions, not really reflecting on the incredible act of divine communion we are participating in. Prayer for the Christian is a time when heaven and earth meet as the God of all Creation meets with His creation. Of course, prayer is about asking, but it’s also about interceding for others, about worship and thanksgiving, and overall about being intentionally in the presence of God. As Hebrews 4:16 says, “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” Prayer is an act of service to God from our hearts.

Ritual Can Deepen Devotion

The passage at the top of the article is part of the origin for the tefillin, or phylacteries as we call them in English, which are the two black boxes worn on the arm and the forehead during Jewish prayer rituals. These leather boxes contain small scrolls with Scriptures relating to key passages on prayer: Exodus 13:1-10, Exodus 13:11-16, Deuteronomy 6:4-9, Deuteronomy 11:13-21. More than just a tradition to be kept for its own sake, these were a literal interpretation of the instruction to “bind them [God’s words] for a sign upon thine hand” and for them to be “as frontlets between thine eyes” (Deut 6:9).

When one would perform the daily prayer rituals and strap the tefillin to their arm and forehead, thy would literally be binding the LORD God’s Words to their hand and putting them before their eyes, and in so doing, would remember those Scriptures placed inside. This outward sign was meant to be a moment of reflection on the inward truth about God’s covenant and His promised redemption of His people. The Jewish people could reflect in these moments on their relationship with God.

Similarly, we as Christians should be view our own rituals in the same light. Whether it is praying before a meal, taking the cup and bread as part of the Lord’s Table in Communion, or even just saying a prayer as you begin your day, let them serve to put our great God and Savior before our eyes and bind His Word and promises to us. Believers in Jesus should not shy away from ritual or get too wrapped up in our traditions that we forget why they exist. Rather, let us use them to remember the New Covenant that Jesus made with us and the redemption of the body that we look forward to one day.

Communion Cannot Exist Without Community

We read in Genesis 1:27 that God made humans in His image. This has a lot of amazing implications, but one of them is that we are beings made for relationships. We see this in Genesis 3 when the Lord came to walk with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and again throughout Genesis (and the whole Old Testament) when He speaks to and meets with people over and over again. The original, perfect state of humanity was one of relationship with and service to God, but also with each other. One of the first things God tells Adam and Eve is to “be fruitful and multiply” (Gen. 1:28). He wanted us to make more people!

The Ten Commandments reflect this dual sense of relationship. The first four commandments deal with our relationship with God, while the last six deal with our relationships with other people. Jesus reiterates this Old Testament emphasis when he says that the greatest commandments are to love God and love others (Matt. 22:36-40). Clearly, God intended for us to have right relationship with Him first, and then other people.

The Jewish tefillah reflects this emphasis. The prayer traditions of the Jewish people emphasize that their prayers not just be personal, but also a communal act. The Jewish Talmud (the laws added by the generations after Israel’s return to Jerusalem) speaks of those who would meditate for hours before the communal prayers. Clearly, they saw the Biblical urging to love God and love others as meaning they must be first in communion with God before being in community with people.

Looking to the New Testament, we see the writers of the letters to the churches also emphasize this dual communion/community focus. While there are numerous calls to pray and be devoted to God personally, there are also a number of times where we are reminded not to forsake the gather together of God’s church (Hebrews 10:25). We also see in the early days of the church that after a great moment of worship that shook the place where they were meeting, the next event we see happening was service those in the body of Christ that were in need (Acts 4). 1 John chapter 1 tells us that God wants to fellowship with us. But then it tells us that right relationship with Him results in fellowship (community) with the other believers. There can be no right relationship with people without right relationship with God, and right relationship with God always results in right relationship with people. Prayer is a huge part of that, as we often see the church in Acts pray together.

There can be no right relationship with people without right relationship with God, and right relationship with God always results in right relationship with people.

These are just three lessons from looking at the Jewish prayer traditions which started all the way back in ancient times, but they should challenge us to not take prayer for granted. In fact, prayer should be an act of worship and service to God which not only deepens our own faith in Jesus but also strengthens our bonds with our brothers in sisters in Christ. When we view prayer this way, we can approach with that boldness of the book of Hebrews, and leave changed and ready to be light and salt to a world greatly in need.

3 Things To Do When God Seems Far Away

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In the book of Esther we see that Esther and Mordecai are in a strange land filled with wickedness. God seemed very far away from them, especially as they were strangers in the Medo-Persian Empire as a punishment for their sins as a nation. God seemed so far, in fact, that Esther is the only book of the Bible that does not explicitly mention God. However, we see 3 things that Esther and Mordecai did during this time of silence from God that we ought to also do during seasons of difficulty in our life:

Stand Firmly

Mordecai stood when everyone else bowed to Haman. Now, as we stated in the podcast, there could have been several reasons why he did not bow to Haman, and this one act does not erase some of the bad things that Mordecai had done. However, it is undeniable that what Mordecai did was the righteous thing to do. This one act set the rest of the book of Esther in motion. And Mordecai takes his place among the likes of Daniel, Hananiah, Meschial, and Azariah as one who stood for what was right even when there was pressure to just “go with the flow”.

Even when God does not seem near, it is important for us to stand on truth, to stand on our Biblical convictions, even in a world that is growing increasingly evil.

Pray Fervently

Upon hearing of Haman’s plot, Esther advises Mordecai and all the Jewish people to fast and pray. This was a very serious matter that they could not handle on their own, they needed to seek the strength of God.

I appreciate from this passage the emphasis that is put on fasting. Fasting, traditionally, is giving up food for a set amount of time to pray over something specific and important. I would describe fasting as giving up something important (like food) to express the serious nature of your prayer to God. When I fast, every time I feel a hunger pain reminds me of what I am praying for. It adds a fervency to my prayer, and it adds a frequency to my prayer! Oh Christian, when it seems like God is nowhere to be found, do not forget to pray, do not forget to SERIOUSLY pray!

Live Courageously

Esther walked into Xerxes’ court. She knew she could be killed for doing so, but she did it anyway. She knew what she had to say, and the task that was given her, was of the most importance. Esther acted courageously. The passage does not show the amount of gumption that it took for Esther to walk into the king’s court. Esther was terrified! But courage is not the absence of fear, it is the ability to act despite the fear. We cannot stop doing big things for God during seasons of trouble.

We cannot stop living courageously just because we are struggling. It is easy to be courageous when everything is going well, but it is important to live courageously during difficulty. We make the greatest impact when we are courageous in the face of great difficulty. Do you want to make a difference? Be courageous even when it is hard.

Why do these things? Because although God may not SEEM near, that does not mean that He isn’t near. In the Book of Esther, although God is never mentioned, He is constantly working behind the scenes. The presence of God is all the more glaring in the book of Esther because his name is not mentioned but his actions are so pronounced. Was it a coincidence that Haman’s lot landed on the Pur? Was it a coincidence that Xerxes could not sleep and the records that were read were about Mordecai? No! It was the hand of God. Remember, even in our darkest of times, we must remember that God is near; and, in so doing, we must stand firmly, pray fervently, and live courageously!