Monthly Archives: March 2008

The Hardest Prayer I Ever Prayed

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I’m very aware of the tabloid mentality of our generation and the love for scandals, but, sorry, none today, not here. However, what I will tell you is that I was in a valley of depression, Margaret and I were going through a terrible time in our marriage, and absolutely nothing I was doing was of any interest to me. Furthermore, I could not find any alternative that offered hope for anything better.

Classic depression, I’d call that. My first bout with it. I was 39 years old and truly miserable for the first time in my life.

And a pastor. Yep, I was still in the pulpit, still going to the church office every morning, still holding funerals and weddings and counseling people with problems. And me a basket case.

I looked into becoming a college professor, which had been my original career plan until the Lord called me into the ministry while a senior at Birmingham-Southern. Since we had a good college in the town where we were living, I asked a professor what a beginning instructor would earn, someone who had just received his Ph.D., which I had not done, of course. The figure he named was so low, about half of what I was making, that it was like cold water in my face. It pricked my little pretentious balloon in record time.

Margaret and I had gone into, suffered through, and emerged on the other side of a solid year of marriage counseling. We had learned much about ourselves and our different backgrounds and the completely opposite drives that had brought us into this marriage in the first place. She had had an unhappy home life and was latching onto the “prince charming” who would take her away from it. I was a young minister who wanted a wife of low maintenance who would keep the home fires burning while I saved the world. We had not been married a month when we began to see that the reality of our marriage was light years away from what we had anticipated.

And yet, all the while I knew that this marriage was God’s will for me, and that Margaret was the person He had chosen for me. Even in my rebellion, I knew that, and it even made me angrier. Like a spoiled child, I did not want anyone telling me what was best, what was the will of God, and how I should repress my own agenda to find happiness in life.

A rebellious heart is a terrible thing. I was my own worst enemy.

Two years later, when Margaret and I took the Sunday night worship service at our church and gave our testimonies as to how the Lord had changed our hearts and saved our home, I told the congregation how I had continued preaching during this bleak time: “I never said a thing I didn’t believe; I said a great deal I didn’t feel.”

My adult children will read this and probably have only vague memories of any of it, which is good. We both always adored our children, and in fact, that only added to my complete frustration. I wanted what I wanted–which was out of that marriage and in a teaching profession and to continue being the father of Neil and Marty and Carla–and was torn right down the middle. I was holding onto two dead-opposite goals in life.

A perfect recipe for misery.

So I began to pray.

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The First Ten Lessons I Learned about Prayer

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Disclaimer: I’m still a learner, and most definitely not an expert on praying.

1. The only real mistake we can make in prayer is in not praying.

If we pray earnestly, almost anything we do is better than not praying. After all, no father rejects the child’s plea because she did not use the right words or form. He welcomes his child into his arms.

Someone has said, “Nothing never happens when we pray.”

2. No matter how much you pray, you will never be completely satisfied with your prayer life.

You will always feel the goal is out there beyond you somewhere. We must work against perfectionism, that mental disease that convinces us because we’re not doing something perfectly, that we should stop it altogether. No matter how ineffective you think your prayers are, believe that they matter to God and keep on praying.

3. The Holy Spirit helps us in our prayer.

Romans 8:26 assures us “He helps us in our weakness because we do not know how to pray.” The Greek word translated “helps” is a compound Greek verb “synantilambanomai.” The “syn” means “together, with us.” The “anti” means “opposite to, in front of.” And the “lambanomai” is a form of the verb “to lift.” Together they tell us the Holy Spirit gets on the other end of our task, opposite to us, and together with us lifts the burden. He does not do this in our place, but works with us.

4. Keep on praying.

Persistence in prayer is taught so many times in Scripture. My favorite is blind Bartimaeus in Luke 18. Let nothing stop you from praying. Not your own inadequacy (of which there is much), your own needs (which can be overwhelming), not your fears (which never tire of assaulting you), and most definitely not other people (discouragement is all around us). Just keep at it.

5. Our emotions and feelings are irrelevant to effective praying.

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The Hardest Church Member I Ever Loved

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There’s no contest for this “honor,” although quite a few made it into the “honorable mention” category. These are members of the seven churches I pastored over 42 years who dedicated themselves to making life miserable for the pastor. Looking back now–with much clearer vision and perspective than I had at the time–I find myself thanking God for everyone of these people. Those that didn’t teach me something by their opposition drove me closer to the Father in desperation. Anything that does that is not all bad.

Mr. Wyatt stormed into my office one morning during Sunday School, a few minutes before the worship service. “Preacher, you have offended me and upset my wife!”

I said, “Tell me who you are, then tell me how I did that.” I had never met the man.

He told me his name, then explained what had happened.

“Yesterday, you came into the fellowship hall where they were taking pictures for the pictorial church directory. You spent time with everyone in the room and I saw you drawing sketches for the children. Then, before you left, you stood in the doorway and looked around. You looked my wife and me squarely in the eyes, then walked out without speaking to us.”

I apologized all over myself and assured Mr. Wyatt that if I did that, it was completely inexcusable, but that I had no memory of ever seeing him and his wife there.

That didn’t do the job for him. He was angry when he entered and angrier when he left.

That week, I ran by his house to apologize to his wife. He was not at home, so she and I visited at the front door. “Oh, preacher, don’t worry about that,” she said. “That’s just Wyatt.”

Even if it was not an issue with her, it continued to be with him. From that moment on, Mr. Wyatt went on a tear against me. In church business meetings, he rose to speak against motions on the floor, usually with an anger all out of proportion to what we were discussing.

In worship services, he sat in the rear of the sanctuary, wearing a scowl that would have lasered a hole through me if it could.

Had Mr. Wyatt been the only church member despising me, I probably would have dealt with it more directly. But the truth is, for the first several years at that church, he had lots of company. One inactive deacon stood in the foyer of the church and told everyone who entered that I was a liberal and destroying the church. Another small group of older members met in a corner before and after the services to compare notes and feed off each other’s misery. Wyatt was the least of my problems.

Then came the sermon I preached in June of 1997, the message posted on this blog a couple of days ago under the heading, “The Hardest Sermon I Ever Preached.”

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How to Tell if You are a Liberal or a Conservative

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We throw those terms around so much, you’d think one was godly and the other evil. Which is which depends on where you stand and what you believe.

We may have found the perfect litmus test to determine which you are.

This week, police in a community just west of New Orleans arrested a woman for killing her newborn baby. She had hid her pregnancy from the family and her boyfriend, given birth by herself, and then–sorry, but this is what happened–buried the just-born baby in the backyard. Wait, it gets worse, if you can believe it.

It appeared she had pulled it off without anyone being the wiser until the family dog dug up the remains in the backyard and–again, sorry–began chewing on the body. The boyfriend found the dog and what was left of the child and, clueless concerning the facts of the situation, called the police.

The police came out, studied the situation, and arrested the woman. They charged her with two crimes: murder of her baby (she said she thought it was dead when it was born) and cruelty to her dog. The animal, it turns out, was malnourished and that’s why he was digging up and eating the poorly buried body.

Sordid tale, I grant you, and I apologize for even telling it. However, we needed to tell the story in order to pose a question.

“Which charge concerns you more–killing the baby or neglecting the dog?”

Your answer tells volumes about you.

If ending the life of the child concerns you more, you are a conservative. If neglecting to feed and care for the dog bothers you more, you are a liberal.

Diane Sawyer once spoke to the chamber of commerce’s annual banquet in the city where we were living. She gave us a memorable distinction between liberals and conservatives.

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The Hardest Sermon I Ever Preached

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(It was Sunday, June 21, 1997. After putting up with the immature rants and raves of a few church members for seven years of that pastorate, I decided it was time to air this dirty linen on a Sunday morning, something pastors are loathe to do. This became the watershed moment for our church. Afterwards, I remained as pastor another 7 years, and they became some of the sweetest years of my long ministry. Recently, I ran across the typed version of that sermon, and decided to reprint it here in the hope that it may help some other pastor who may be going through his own private hell in the church where the Lord Jesus Christ assigned him.)

The title was “Our Church is in Crisis–Just Like All Those Other Churches.” The text was Revelation chapters 2 and 3.

I want to say a word to you who are visiting with us this morning. Normally, pastors hesitate to ‘hang out the wash’ on a Sunday morning. If we have problems in the church, we deal with them at other times. On Sunday mornings, we have a lot of visitors and we naturally would like you to feel good about this church and come back, maybe even join us. However, we have some church members who never come to church except on Sunday morning and they are some who need to hear this.

In my last church, I learned that one of our deacons and his wife, Pat and Betty Hance, had witnessed a fist fight on their first day at our church. I found that hard to believe, and could not wait to ask them about it. Pat told how two men in the church had a grudge going and one was bullying the other. As the Hances sat in the Sunday School assembly, the bully walked by and made a snide remark about his opponent. With that, the man got up and knocked the daylights out of the bully.

I said to Pat, “Here’s my question. We pastors bend over backwards to impress visitors so they will come back. But on your first Sunday, you witnessed a fight–and not only did you return, you even joined the church. Explain that to me.”

He smiled and said, “Oh, we like an active church.”

I need to tell the visitors this morning, we have an active church.

Bernice Nicely was around 80 years old and sickly when she sent for me. She’d been in and out of hospitals, and I figured she wanted to talk about “last things.” But she had something else on her mind. She said, “Pastor, I know I’m saved. I know I’m going to Heaven when I die. But there’s something else troubling me.” She paused a moment and said, “Pastor, I haven’t done right by the church.”

The next Sunday she joined the church and began sending her tithe.

I need to ask each of you in this building, “Have you done right by the church?”

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In Your Face, Death!

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Saturday, Northrop-Grumman’s New Orleans Shipyards dedicated the “New York,” the one billion dollar amphibious transport ship that will belong to the Marines. The front of the ship, the bow, the section that parts the waters and leads the way, is made up of 65 tons of steel salvaged from the World Trade Center. A number of New Yorkers were on hand Saturday for the dedication.

My son Neil who works for Northrop-Grumman in Human Resources was assigned to one of the buses moving dignitaries around the area. He stood at the front, held a mike, and gave explanations and answered questions for the guests. Later, when asked if he had seen any celebrities, he said, “Charlie Daniels.”

I love the “in your face-ness” of this gesture, taking steel from the twisted girders of the collapsed skyscrapers and recycling them into a mighty vessel that will defend this nation against the Osama bin-Ladens of this world. I applaud whoever first thought of doing this, and doff my hat to everyone responsible for pulling this off.

In the crest–not sure what they call those things–on the side of the ship, its motto clearly proclaims: “Never Forget.”

Godspeed, New York, and all who go with you.

“They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters, these see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep…. He bringeth them into their desired haven.” (Psalm 107:23-24,30)

This business of taking the ruins of life’s failures/disasters and recycling them into mighty forces for good has a long and honorable tradition. In fact, Scripture teaches us that God is always at work in our lives pulling off the same trick, turning our stumbling blocks into stepping stones.

“The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.” That’s Psalm 118:22 and it’s quoted again and again throughout the New Testament. The various writers of Scripture thought it summed up this divine transaction in a way that was uniquely God-like.

Divine alchemy, we might call it. Taking the mundane and turning it into precious.

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What Makes You Different

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Some four or five years ago, the Sunday “Parade” magazine ran a cover article on the actress Sandra Bullock in which they quoted her with a wonderful line. “What makes you different,” she said in huge letters on the front cover, “makes you beautiful.” I thought it was a maxim for the ages and eagerly devoured the article, only to discover that the writer included the line in the final paragraph of the story and it was never elaborated on. I was disappointed, because it’s one of those lines which, if original with Sandra, surely carries a history.

A couple of times every year, I find myself talking with teenagers about their self-esteem. No segment of our society struggles more with issues of personal acceptance than American teenagers, particularly in their early teen years, and most especially, the girls. Somewhere in the presentation I never fail to drop in that line, assuring them that they should not try to look like everyone else, that “what makes you different makes you beautiful.”

Now comes a movie which uses that line in its advertisements. My wife and I took our eleven-year-old granddaughters Abby and Erin to see “Penelope” Saturday afternoon. Margaret said the girls chose the movie; I was drawn to it by the desire to see what the movie did with this truism which had imbedded itself in my mind ever since Sandra Bullock coined it. Assuming she did.

“Penelope” is the story of a girl born with a pig’s snout and ears, the result, we’re told, of a curse on the family by a witch from a couple of centuries back. Only when the child thus cursed is successfully wed to a blue-blood “for better or for worse, til death do they part,” will the curse be lifted. When the child is born, the parents are mortified and hide her inside their mansion until she is of marriageable age. They are revolted by her appearance and so is every suitor whom they parade by her as a possible mate. We the viewers never quite see what all the excitement is about. She has a wide turned-up nose, but is not the monster they all make her out to be.

Eventually, the curse disappears–not as a result of a wedding, but simply when Penelope quits hiding and says, “I like myself the way I am”–and she becomes “normal,” whatever that means. In this case, it means she gets the nose of actress Christina Ricci who plays her. A child in a class Penelope tells the story to suggests that the moral of the story is that a curse has only the power we grant it. It’s true, but too profound to come from the mouth of a seven-year-old.

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50 Ways to Overcome Boredom in Prayer

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I threw this question out to members of the last church I pastored and quickly wrote down their answers. Aside from an entire discussion on why in the world would anyone get bored visiting with the Ruler of the Universe, which is a great question and one that deserves its own treatment, here are their answers.

50. Repent of it. Praying boring prayers is an insult to Almighty God.

49. Determine to start believing in God. You’re already saved but you need to start taking the Lord seriously and His promises at face value.

48. Sing a hymn prayerfully.

47. Be thankful for your blessings.

46. Pray for others: friends, family, those in need.

45. Get a prayer partner, especially someone experienced in real prayer.

44. Keep a prayer journal. Write your prayer list, insights God gives you, Scriptures that help you, answers to prayers, etc.

43. Find new things to pray for.

42. Pray a complete prayer–praise, thanksgiving, for God’s will, supplication, and forgiveness.

41. Study the promises of God and claim them in prayer. Begin expecting.

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