Monthly Archives: November 2008

Still trucking along on Krishnan’s book — The conquest of inner space!

To bring you into the book’s dialogue —  What is the miracle of the burning bush experienced by Moses in the wilderness?  As you may remember in Exodus 2 Moses was tending sheep and saw a bush that was burning  but did not burn up.

So Moses thought, ‘I will go over and see this strange sight – why the bush does not burn up.’ (Ex. 3:3)

OK, so to really get this you have to understand where Moses is at!  He was no longer the young man with a mission and vision — to deliver his people who were being oppressed by the Egytians.  His passion had faded after his attempts to fulfil his mission were wrongly interpreted and his life put in jeopardy.  He was living in a “desert place” and his purpose in life seems to have merely become survival.  He married, tended sheep and kept his nose clean.

Moses wanders over to the bush that is burning and hears a voice (Ex. 3:6-10).  “Go, I am sending you to Pharoah to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”  (Just a little aside here — ask Jews what is one of, if not the most important, event in Jewish history.  They will answer the Exodus, whose initial impetus was found on a patch of ground in a deserted place with a bush burning without fuel!). 

So, here’s Moses.  His mission, passion and purpose were pretty well sapped and zapped.  He couldn’t get a thing going if he tried.  He had done the ministry thing (tried to accomplish getting the Jews out of Egypt on his own — failed!).  He had settled for a good life (with a good wife and kids and a steady job).  And he was surviving.

He had no fuel to fire a revolution!  His fire was pretty well out.  If this was going to happen the fuel would have to come from somewhere else.

A burning bush would burn out in seconds — I’ve watched a tumble weed grab a spark, ignite in flames, explode in light and equally as quickly subside into ashes.  Had Moses just seen the bush glow large and then implode in ashes it would be just another event in an uneventful day.

But the bush was not the fuel.  The bush was merely the receptor.  And the bush remained to bring the light to the desert.  And when God said he wanted Moses to be the light and the saviour, Moses could see (imagination) that God could do the impossible.  Moses was not the fuel, God was.  God’s purpose, vision, mission and passion were the things that would keep the fire going.  And so we pray to see God’s will done, to know God’s purpose, to be attached to his plan, to imagine his imagination!

As Krishnan quotes Eugene Peterson:

we require an act of imagination that enables us to see that the world of God is large — far larger than the world of kings and princes, prime-ministers and presidents, far larger than the worlds reported by newspapers and television, far larger than the world described in books by nuclear physicists and military historians.  We need to imagine – to see – that the world of God’s ruling word is not an afterthought of stock exchange, rocket launchings and summit diplomacy but itself contains them . . . if we fail here, prayer will be stunted; we will pray huddled and cowering.  Our prayers will whimper.” (p. 19)

Krishnan includes a prayer guide for some of these thoughts in his book.  Here is one question to ponder — “If God were to light a fire in your heart that did not need you as fuel anymore, what would that mean?”  What obstacles would God have to overcome to ignite your passion, vision, mission and purpose to do what God wants you to do?

Could it be that burnout, as we know it, is not so much a matter of too much work as it is working without listening to God, so that our work is not rooted in His coventantal purposes for us and the world?  (Sunder Krishnan, The Conquest of Inner Space, p. 12)

Yesterday was into listening to God — prayer priority #1!

Now, let’s talk a bit about imagination.  Sunder is a pastor who wants to see the will of his listeners changed to conform to God’s will.  This he has done through intellectual integrity, excellent delivery (I speak from experience) and a sincere desire to speak God’s words.  And yet, there seems to be another approach to reaching the will of the hearer.  As his brother-in-law, Ravi Zacharias, said, “Imagination has the power to bypass the intellect and get directly at the will.” (p. 16).

“If I was to be obedient to my calling as a preacher of the Word, it was not enough that I take God seriously as a theologian and offer my mind to Him; it wasn’t enough to take people seriously and listen carefully; I had to take words seriously and begin to exercise my imagination.  I have never regretted that decision.  Not that I have abandoned intellect.  It will remain my primary forte.  But it is being increasingly empowered by the imagination. (p. 17)

And so, two mental operations (as Krishnan quotes Eugene Peterson) work in tandem — Explanation and Imagination.  Most of us have grown up with a strong dose of explanation.  We pin things down so we can handle them, we define and restrict things to understandable chunks, we keep our feet on the ground so we can get work done.  On the other hand, we may have missed imagination that opens us up so we grow into maturity — we worship, honor, trust and obey; we risk and expand our thinking, we lift our heads into the clouds and live with mystery. 

I’m not one inclined to imagination, although when I let go I can certainly think outside the box, and even outside the warehouse!  But, because these two mental faculties balance one another the great discipline of the mind is to discern where I am on the tetter-totter!  When my prayers merely become recitation of the mundane, then I need to risk the impossible.  And where my prayers become foolish flights of fancy I need to ground them in God’s Word which is past, present and future unchangeable!

Well, there’s a start.  Looks like a good book.

Just before holidays a propitious (“propitious” — ‘likely to result in or show signs of success’ ) event/book jumped onto my reading table .

A book arrived at the church.  The author is an acquaintance of ours.  He has pastored a church for two decades or more, was once working for Atomic Energy of Canada, and is a truly intelligent, wise and discerning man.

The book’s subtitle is “learning the language of prayer.”  In reality the content is basically taking the Jewish Psalms and using them as triggers, prompters, and any other word you wish to use, to prayer. 

In the introduction, Sunder makes a clear statement that the first two chapters are paramount for the understanding of the book.  These chapters are not about the Psalms, but about listening to God.

First — Who speaks first? 

The Word of God is, and always was, intended to be the Voice of God that pulled hearers into dialogue with Him, permanently affecting them in the process, by either hardening or softening their hearts. (p. 5).

With the invention of the printing press (which meant we read individually instead of hearing corporately) and a shift in teaching methods (from dialogue, dispute and modelling to the current dispensing of datum) we lost something.

Hence the scriptures are no longer a Voice that pulls us into relationship with the Lord but something to be read to obtain data. Given what the Word says about itself, we have to reverse the shift.  Reading the scriptures must somehow be seen as a means of listening in order to relate to the speaker. (p. 6)

Quoting Henri Nouwen, Krishnan makes the following summary —

For Jesus, the order was always communion with God, which drew a community around Him and through which he accomplished ministry.  We, however, usually follow the opposite order.  We desperately try to accomplish something (ministry).  When we fail, we try to get people to help us (community), and when that fails, we pray (communion).  (page eight)

You might see where this is headed!!  I’ll blog on the second chapter in my next post!