what posture for prayer…

now an important point for this beginning time in mastering prayer.  let me ask you, what posture do you use when you pray?  what do you do with your eyes?  what do you do with your body when you pray?

i grew up in a tradition that always used the phrase, “every head bowed, every eye closed,” when we prayed. and i thought that was like a rule of prayer – “every head bowed, every eye closed.” we thought of GOD as real far away so watching while you pray would be distracting.  i thought opening your eyes when you were praying was kind of cheating.  if you were at a restaurant, you had to pray with your head bowed and eyes closed, and if a waitress saw you and you were embarrassed, that counted as suffering for righteousness’ sake.

but it’s interesting when you go to the bible about JESUS’ common posture for prayer.  it will say, “HE stood and looked into the heavens.” maybe that means HE looked up into the sky. maybe that means HE looked into the air all around HIM.

there are records in scripture of people praying as they stand, as they kneel, as they lay prostrate on the ground, as they sit with their hands stretched out sometimes, with their faces lifted towards the sky or bowed down towards the earth.

and the point of it is body language really is an important part of communication.

people who have specialized in this stuff say, “actually most of communication is visual.  it’s body language.”  sometimes when my parents were correcting me, i’d be walking out of the room while they were talking.  there’s a real important message that i’d be sending while i would do that, and then we’d talk about body language.

the point is use your posture, use your body to help you turn your mind and your heart towards GOD.

i walk 6 days a week an hour and a half and a part of my walk time is praying.  now i don’t close my eyes.  i’m walking.  i need my eyes to be walking.  but i have found that it is a great time to commune with GOD.  we were born in a garden, the garden of eden, and out in nature is a natural place for me to talk with my best friend.

just a thought from the front porch…

give an appropriate touch...

have you ever thought about how important a touch is to a person?

JESUS had a habit of touching the people that HE healed. luke 5.13 (lb), JESUS reached out and touched the man and HE said, “of course I will. be healed.” then the last part of the verse. and the leprosy left him immediately.

you may not be a doctor or a nurse, but do you think it is a good idea to touch somebody with leprosy? in that day, if you were a leper, you would walk down the street and cry out, “leper! leper!” and people would clear the way in front of you. but JESUS walked up to this person who no one even wanted to see their sores and HE touched his sores and HE healed him. JESUS used touch to heal. HE taught us to use touch.

when JESUS touched people it was the right kind of touch. it wasn't a phony touch. JESUS’ touch was genuine, real. and it wasn’t inappropriate. it certainly wasn’t sexual or violent. some of you have been the victim of that. but HIS touch was gentle and real. that touch often changed people’s lives. that touch often communicated things that nothing else did. never underestimate the power of touch.

a few years back there was an article on the power of touch. it talked about a study that was done with surrogate grandparents for children who had been abused and neglected. in this study, the surrogate grandparents gave massages to neglected and abused babies in a shelter. the babies slept better. they were more alert. they became more active and more sociable when they were awake because of the power of touch.

but that’s not the end of the story. the adults benefited too. the surrogate grandparents made fewer trips to the doctor’s office, they spent more time with their friends, they reported less anxiety and depression. the stress related hormones in their bloodstream decreased. all because of the power of touch.

someone asked a children’s pastor once, “what’s one of the mistakes you see parents make as their kids start getting older?” he said, “they stop hugging their kids. the guys start to look studly and the girls start to develop and they stop hugging.”

i’m not talking about inappropriate touch. i’m talking about hugging your kids. that touch can make a difference. now that my kid’s are adults, it’s still the right thing to do. you communicate love through touch. JESUS taught us to do that.

who do you need to heal through a simple touch this week?

just a thought from the front porch…

the power of a positive word…

dr. larry crabb, a CHRISTian counselor, and author and speaker tells of as a youngster he personally developed a thoroughly annoying and humiliating problem of stuttering. it seemed two letters were the most troublesome, l and p.

in ninth grade, he was elected president of his junior high student body and during an assembly in front of several hundred students, he was asked to come to the stage by the principle for the induction ceremony.

he said, "standing nervously in front of the squirming, bored crowed, i was told to repeat after the principle the words, 'i, larry crabb of plymouth-whitemarsh junior high school, do hearby promise...' that's how the principal said it but my version was a bit different. 'i, l l l l l larry crabb of p p p p plymouth-whitemarsh junior high school, do hereby p p p promise..."

he said, "the principal was sympathetically perplexed, my favorite english teacher wanted to cry, a few students laughed out loud, most were awkwardly amused, some felt bad for me and i died a thousand deaths. i decided right them that public speaking was not for me.'

a short time later, their church celebrated the LORD's supper in a sunday morning worship service and it was customary to encourage young men to come and pray aloud and it seemed he was pressured by well meaning people to go up front and pray, so he did.

he said, "filled less with worship than with nervousness, i found my theology becoming confused to the point of heresy. i remember thanking the FATHER for hanging on the cross and praising CHRIST for triumphantly bringing the SPIRIT from the grave. stuttering throughout, i finally thought of the word amen, said it, and sat down."

he said, "i recall staring at the floor, too embarrassed to look around, and solemnly vowing never again to pray or speak aloud in front of a group. two strikes were enough.

when the service was over, he said, i darted toward the door, not wishing to encounter an elder who might feel obligated to correct my twisted theology but i was not quick enough. an older CHRISTian man named jim dunbar intercepted me, put his arm around me and cleared his throat to speak.

'larry', he said, 'there's one thing i want you to know. whatever you do for the LORD, i'm behind you one thousand per cent.' then he walked away. "

dr. crabb said, "i have yet to tell that story to an audience without at least mildly choking. those words were life words. they had power. they reached deep into my being. my resolve never again to speak publicly weakened instantly.

and since those days, GOD has lead me into a ministry in which i regularly address and pray before crowds of all sizes and i do it without stuttering. i love it."

just a thought from the front porch…

the power of negative words...

we are looking now at what we say in our communication.

and do we realize, do we have any conception of this power that we have to build into other people’s lives with a few words? to build encouragement into somebody’s life with the simple encouragement, “good job!” or to build a sense of healing into somebody’s life with the simple words, “i’m sorry? will you forgive me?” or to build hope for the future or energy for today with the words, “i love you.”

you know about this. it’s happened in your life. think of the times that your life has been changed by just a few words at just the right time, just the right moment. it may have been a coach giving you encouragement. it may have been a grandma giving you advice. it may have been your husband/wife sharing words of love with you. it may have been a teacher sharing some truths. those words said at the right time, you can look back and say, “my life changed because of those words in that moment.”

dr. larry crabb, a CHRISTian counselor, and author and speaker tells of a middle aged man who had been struggling for years with chronic depression and he came to dr. crabb and in the course of counseling, the man related that his father, the self-made head of a large corporation, had repeatedly told him, "son, when you inherit the family business, i expect that you will ruin it."

those words stung more painful each time he heard them. when his father died, the man felt driven to work unreasonably long hours to prove his father's prediction wrong but the pressure to avoid failure relentlessly gnawed at him and was quieted only by alcohol. soon a serious drinking problem developed, his wife threatened to leave him and finally he succumbed to ongoing depression for which he could find relief only in drugs. his life was devastated by the power of his father's tongue.

some of you have felt that pain. some of you know what I’m talking about. the power of negative words on a life. the power of our words

just a thought from the front…

our words are an overflow of our heart...

JESUS said if you want to have great communication you’ve got to guard your heart. it’s one of the keys. JESUS said that words are never a slip of the tongue, they’re always an overflow of the heart. that’s what he meant when HE said, the mouth speaks the things that are in the heart. matthew 12.34 (ncv),

i may not have wanted to say it, but i felt it or i wouldn’t have said it. communication starts with what i think and what i feel. if i guard that, i’ll talk in a better way.

do you ever let your thoughts leak out into your words? you didn’t mean to. you weren’t going to say it but you got angry or something happened and it just came out.

we’ve all done that. that’s what JESUS is talking about. in fact, JESUS said it’s inevitable. eventually it’s going to happen. part of great communication is guarding your heart. telling yourself, “if i think it, i’m eventually going to say it.”

the truth is, for many of us, we will never experience, in the way we communicate, a real change in our relationships until we’ve had a change in heart because that’s where it begins.

just a thought from the front porch…

broken trust takes time…

we are looking to JESUS to show us how to better our communication with each other so we will have better relationship. and to HIM building trust is an important step. the more you allow what you say to be something that can be trusted, the better communication inevitably you’re going to have.

we all struggle with this. there’s a lot of ways we erode trust in relationships. the top four:

1. lies. lies are always told in the absence of trust. i tell you a lie because i don’t trust you. i don’t trust that you’re going to accept me.
2. flattery. flattery is just a positive lie, a lie that’s designed to manipulate you to get you to do what i want you to do. psalms 12.3 (ncv), the LORD will stop those flattering lips. the bible’s an honest book!
3. broken promises. whenever you break a promise to someone you break a trust. have you noticed how easy it is sometimes to break a promise you’ve made to your kids? sometimes they don’t even complain. but anytime you do it, you’re breaking a trust.
4. silence.
   

i read of this one guy who said that when he first got married he tried to be a good communicator. he said, “i’d set down and try to listen, eye contact, really be a good communicator. but about a year into the marriage, my wife informed me that it might be good if i talked sometimes, too.”

that’s part of good communication. sharing yourself is part of letting someone learn to trust you, opening yourself up. if you’re silent all the time, people don’t know what’s going on. it’s hard to know whether you can trusted.

JESUS taught if you really want to have great communication, you have to build trust. you can’t have high quality communication without high level trust. it’s impossible.

some of you have the question, “how do we/i rebuild trust? i’ve already lied. it’s already been broken, destroyed. how do we rebuild this foundation of trust so we can start to talk again?”

as hard as it is to say, the only answer i have is, you rebuild trust one word at a time. one “yes” at a time and one “no” at a time. and one “you can believe me this time” at a time.

that means it’s going to take time. but it’s worth it.

just a thought from the front porch…

communication fuels relationships…

now it is important to realize that communication is what fuels relationships, what makes them run, what makes them work. i don’t care how great the relationship looks on the outside, if you’re not constantly putting the fuel of communication into the relationship, it’s going to get stalled.

look at any relationship that’s not working and you can guarantee that someone, somehow, someway stopped talking. and whenever that happens, it stalls.

we have been looking at bettering our communication with GOD and today we’re going to start looking at bettering our communication with each other, it’s something we need in a country where fifty-percent of wives say, “my husband doesn’t talk to me like i’d like him to.” where, in 86% of the divorces, the statement is made that one of the major reasons was “we just couldn’t communicate.” in a country where one in four kids say, “i’ve never had a significant conversation with my dad.” we obviously need some help. we need to learn to communicate.

now the world’s greatest expert when it comes to communication is JESUS CHRIST. so what does JESUS have to teach us about communication?

for HIM it starts by building trust. if you can’t trust what i’m saying, then there’s no real communication. if i wrote here, “eighty percent of what i’m going to tell you is true,” that wouldn’t make sense. what about the other 20%? you wouldn’t know what was true and what was false. if you inject any element of mistrust into a relationship it destroys all the communication.

this was important to JESUS. matthew 5.37 (niv), simply let your “yes” be “yes” and your “no” be “no”; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.

JESUS was serious about this. HE doesn’t just say it’s a bad idea. HE says if you don’t build trust into your words it comes from satan himself. that’s how important this is.

in that day, they developed this whole system of trust. that’s what JESUS is talking about. they couldn’t swear on GOD’s name. they had a law against it. so they had this system of trust where the closer you got to GOD, the more you could trust what the person says. if someone said, “i swear based on earth, GOD’s footstool,” you could sort of trust them. but if they said, “i swear based on heaven, where GOD lives,” that’s closer to GOD. you could really trust what they said.

JESUS said, here’s the way to build trust. let your “yes” be “yes” and your “no” be “no”. the more you allow what you say to be something that can be trusted, the better communication inevitably you’re going to have.

just a thought from the front porch…