Conversation with a Hindu (4)

Last night I had a conversation with my Hindu friend. He has invited me to go to a meditation class he leads next week. This led into a discussion on prayer. I told him if I were to go, I would take that time to focus on God. I would take the time to pray and listen to God.

He explained to me the idea of meditation. That the goal was to remove your thoughts from the conscious (10% of the brain we use) and move to the subconscious part of our mind. He said the deeper we get into our subconscious the closer we get to becoming one with god (meaning we become god).

Here is the thing though, I learned something about prayer. Many times we pray intellectually. What I mean by that is we pray within the 10% of our brain we use to reason. There is something to be said of clearing our minds of our thoughts and focusing on God. Paul tells us to "pray in the Spirit on all occasions" (Ephesians 6:18). I am not saying we need to go into a subconscious state of mind(there is a danger in relying on our subconsciousness to lead us), but we do need to clear our minds of fleshly things so we can engage in a authentic conversation with God rather than a surface conversation.

The second thing we talked about was Jesus. The enlightened master my friend is a disciple of speaks of Jesus as an enlightened master. My friend would consider Jesus as an enlightened master as well. My Hindu friend said that his perception of Christianity is that it is anti-christ.

Why would he say such a thing? He has studied the teachings and life of Jesus. As a matter of fact he knows the Bible pretty well for not being a follower. So he looks at the life of Jesus and compares it to the lives of those who profess to be Christians and sees two different lifestyles.

We can be angry that he would say such a thing and react in one of two ways. 1) We could blow off his statement and not believe it, continuing to live our life the way we always have. 2) We could listen to what he says, look at the life of Jesus and examine ourselves to see if we really are following Jesus. The Bible tells us, "Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you--unless, of course, you fail the test?" (2 Corinthians 13:5)

I believe we all need to examine ourselves to see how we are doing when it comes to following Jesus. The problem is we will most likely need to make some life adjustments. We may need to take some unpopular stances within our church. We may be seen as a radical or revolutionary. If this is the case chances are you are on your way to following Jesus.

The Frist Missional Church - Pray for everything (Part 3)

The first missional church as described in the book of Acts Prayed for Everything.

They prayed for direction after Jesus ascended into heaven. (Vision and Direction)

They prayed for a person to take the place of Judas. (Leaders)

Their prayers were not just ritualistic. They were going to the temple to pray when they ran across the man who was lame. They never made their ritualistic time of prayer and it was OK.

They were committed to prayer in Acts 2:42.

One of the main jobs of the leaders of the early church was to be devoted to prayer (Acts 6:4)

Stephen prayed for the Lord not to hold his stoning against the ones throwing the stones. Jesus did say "love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us."

Peter was praying on the roof when he had a vision from God that the gospel was now for the Gentiles (Acts 10) It is during times of prayer we receive direction from God. Sometimes that direction will takes us places we never thought we would go.

The church prayed for Peter while he was in prison and was amazed when God saved him from the hands of Herod. When you pray for it do not be amazed when God moves. This shows us we should pray for the impossible.

They prayed and fasted before they sent Paul and Barnabas out to the Gentiles (Acts 13:3). We should be praying for those who are ministering to people.

Paul constantly thanked the churches he went to for praying for him. They prayed for everything because it was a art of the first church's DNA.

What about you and your church? Is prayer a high priority? And I am not talking about taking prayer requests following a meeting. DO you stop and pray for everything and anything you want God to be a part of? This type of prayer life is not ritualistic, this type of prayer life requires followers to pray anytime, anywhere and for anything.