The Message this morning by Francis Chan is a must listen message. It may at times bother you, make you uncomfortable, and stir you to love God and know Him. But if you don't walk away from listening to this and love your Father more and desire to pursue Him, well...listen again. Click here and scroll down the page.
So glad I am able to be here. What a unique and worthwhile conference.
Love the Gospel, Live the Gospel, Advance the Gospel
Jerry
First let me start by saying I think Francis Chan is an amazing human being. If anyone in America models what a Christian should look like, it is him. His generosity is profound and should be considered as a prime example of Christ likeness.
ReplyDeleteHowever I sometimes have great difficulty parsing some of this type of information presented in the same way others do. In the message Francis mentions numerous ways in how God has answered prayer in his life. The accounts he gives are interesting, and intriguing. However, I find it odd that God will bring a man into Francis' Garage, or give him the money for a much needed vacation, but meanwhile we have all experienced praying for people to get better from some terrible disease, and they haven't. The whole continent of Africa stays riddled with aids, and children dying left and right, but God has time to answer Francis' prayers on what are comparatively, extremely trivial matters.
Further muddy the waters by browsing the forums of Christian Science converts sometime. These people are what we would certainly call "heretical" and you can find post after post about how their prayers for healing are answered.
It is hard to look at the evidence and say that "God answers the prayers of people we call Christians" and not just think that it is possible we just emphasize the hits and discount the misses. All of the things Francis mentioned could be explained in any number of ways that seem more likely than "God answered prayer." Not one of them seemed super-natural in any perceivable way, and so it seems the world in which God answers prayer is indistinguishable from one in which he does not.
If someone is sick and needs help, I know that if I personally help them, or bring them to a doctor chances are high they will get the help the need and get better. If I pray, well it's a mixed bag. So if the question as to why we don't spend as much time in prayer as we should was genuine and not hypothetical, that would be my best answer. Maybe that's arrogance, but it's my experience, and we tend to believe what we experience to be true.
I am not very happy with the fact that I am always the critical voice on everyone's theological highs lately, but it's just how I feel. I really like Francis Chan, and I am glad you got to hear him speak. I wish I could have absorbed the point of his message better, been changed by it, and moved along, but instead I can't help by find ways in which I just feel like it doesn't match up with what I perceive as real.