Chapter 7: THE COMMUNITY OF PRAYERFUL LOVE.
No Condemnation
Once Again, the Centrality of the Order. To understand and implement Matthew 7:1-12, one first has to conquer anger, lusting, verbal manipulation, getting even, and worry. Then, the messages in 1-12 can be worked on:
- Not condemning of blaming
- Not forcing wonderful things on them
- Just asking for what we want from others and from God.
Judge Not.
Who Can Correct Others?
- “First, we don’t undertake to correct unless we are absolutely sure of the sin.”
- “Second, not just anyone is to correct others. Correction is reserved for those who live and work in a divine power not their own.”
- “Third, the “correcting” to be done is not a matter of “straightening them out.” “It is a matter of restoration.”
- “Fourth, the ones who are restoring others must go about their work with the sure knowledge that they could very well do the same thing that the person “caught” has done, or even worse.”
Condemnation’s Involvement with Anger and Contempt. “Of course more than half the battle with condemnation is won once we have given up anger and contempt. Condemnation always involves some degree of self-righteousness and of distancing ourselves from the one we are condemning.”
That You Not Be Judged.
Eliminate condemnation and Then Help. If we condemn people, then we are not have kingdom rightness.
Judging and Discerning. Discernment is important, but it is difficult to not turn discernment into condemnation.
A Family without Condemning.
When Good Things Become Deadly
Of Pearls and Pigs. “The long-standard use of this verse is directly opposed to the spirit of Jesus and his teachings.”“The point is not the waste of the “pearl” but that the person given the pearl is not helped.” “And just as we are not to try to manipulate others with impressive language of any kind (Matt. 5:37), so we are not to harass them into rightness and goodness with our condemnings and our “pearls” or holy things.”
The Serpent and the Dove.
The Request As the Heart of Community
The Dynamic of the Request. “… as long as we respect them before God, and are thoughtful and gracious, we can keep asking, in appropriate ways, keep seeking and keep knocking on the door of their lives. We should note that the ask-seek-knock teaching first applies to our approach to others, not to prayer to God.”
The Unity of Spiritual Orientation. “To understand Jesus’ teachings, we must realize that deep in our orientations of our spirit we cannot have one posture toward God and a different one toward other people. We are a whole being, and our true character pervades everything we do. We cannot, for example, love God and hate human beings.”
The Continuum of Prayer.
Where Quarreling and Fighting Come From.
The Mediator in the Community of Love. “In ... Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer provides a striking characterization of the community of prayerful love. ... There he stresses that in the spiritual community there is never any immediate relationship between human beings.” “Another way of saying this is that among those who live as Jesus’ apprentices there are no relationships that omit the presence and action of Jesus.” “Because Christ stands between me and others, I dare not desire direct fellowship with them. As only Christ can speak to me in such a way that I may be saved, so others, too, can be saved only by Christ himself. This means that I must release the other person from every attempt of mine to regulate, coerce, and dominate him with my love.”
Laughter and Redemption. Laughter is or response to the incongruity of humanity. There will be laughter in heaven.
Prayer in the Cosmic Setting
On Not Getting What We Ask For. “We do not know enough, and our desires are not perfect enough for us safely to be given everything we want and ask for. It is as simple as that.”
Reaching for Further Understanding of Prayer As Such.
Prayer is Basically Request. “ I believe the most adequate description of prayer is simply, “Talking to God about what we are doing together.” That immediately focuses the activity where we are but at the same time drives the egotism out of it. Requests will naturally be made in the course of this conversational walk. Prayer is a matter of explicitly sharing with God my concerns about what he too is concerned about in my life. And of course he is concerned about my concerns and, in particular, that my concerns should coincide with his. This is our walk together. Out of it I pray.”
Other Valid Aspects of a Praying Life. Prayer includes praise and thanksgiving, but the heart of prayer is request.
Can We Change God? Moses and Hezekiah are two examples of prayer changing God.
A universe Responsive to Personality. Not all of reality is physical.
Scientific Studies of Prayer. There does appear to be scientific evidence of the efficacy of prayer.
Prayer Trains Us to Reign. “Praying is mistakenly thought to be like plunking your money into a soft drink machine or like dropping a bomb. You do a simple act one time, and then mechanism takes over to produce the inevitable result. I have even heard people seriously teach that if you ask God for the same thing a second time, that only proves to him you didn’t believe the first time—as if he didn’t know already.”
Does This Offend God’s Dignity?
The Grandes Prayer of All
The Lord’s Prayer. We need to take the Lord’s prayer seriously as this is how he taught hi followers to pray.
God Must Be Addressed. Addressing God in prayer differentiates prayer from worrying out loud.
Our Father, the One in the Heavens. The important thing in prayer is to enter in the reality that God is present. The use of singular heaven in most translations makes it seem like the God is far away. Heavens, what the text says, makes him more present. The rest of the prayer mimics Matthew 6.
“Hallowed" Be Thy Name. Hallowed has lost its meaning in our time. Sanctified, or uniquely respected.
Thy Kingdom Come.
Give Daily Bread Daily. “The emphasis is on provision today of what we need for today. This is because God is always present today, no matter which day it is. His reign is the Eternal Now. So we do not ask him to provide today what we will need for tomorrow. To have it in hand today does not guarantee that we will have it tomorrow when we need it. Today I have God, and he has the provisions. Tomorrow it will be the same. So I simply ask today for what I need for today or ask now for what I need now.”
Don’t Punish Us for Things We Do Wrong. “We forgive someone of a wrong they have done us when we decide that we will not make them suffer for it in any way.” Having pity on others is key. “Once we step into this kingdom and trust it, pity becomes the atmosphere in which we live. Of course it is his pity for us that allows us in to start with, and then it patiently bears with us. “The Lord is bursting with compassion and full of pity” (James 5:11). But we also are to “be of one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous” (1 Pet. 3:8 KJV).”
Don’t Put Us to the Test.
The Enduring Framework of the Praying Life.
“Dear Father always near us,
may your name be treasured and loved,
may your rule be completed in us—
may your will be done here on earth
in just the way it is done in heaven.
Give us today the things we need today,
as we are forgiving all who in any way offend us.
Please don’t put us through trials,
but deliver us from everything bad.
Because you are the one in charge,
and you have all the power,
and the glory too is all yours—forever—
which is just the way we want it!”
Quotes from: Dallas Willard. “The Divine Conspiracy.” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-divine-conspiracy/id360632495