Answering of Prayer

Saw a chain-like email sent to a Christian friend of mine. It was titled something along the lines of top 10 reasons Christians are stupid. One was reflecting the supposed poor success rate of answered prayer requests. Whoever sent this email placed the success rate in single digits of percentage. I’d like to know how they came up with that magical figure, anyway moving on.

Got me thinking though about how to respond to a non-Christian friend that might revel in hearing such information and treat it as ‘gospel’ despite its dodgy source. It’s always good to be prepared to respond. Some thoughts:

We humans are sinful by nature and our prayers can often reflect this, praying for things we think we need. Other times our prayers might be completely selfless such as praying for the improved health of a loved one. We might not get what we think we need and the loved one’s health might not improve quickly, but that doesn’t mean that prayer has not been answered. What happens in fact is the answer.

God hears prayers, ultimately He is in control. Maybe you don’t get that thing you think you need because you don’t really need it, you never did. Maybe the loved one continues in poor health to build up some perseverance. Everything happens for a reason (heard that before? It’s true). Unfortunately it can take a while to figure out what it is, and most don’t have the patience.

Think of Lazarus. He was sick and his family wanted him to get better. They cried out to Jesus to come and assist. However it was not until Lazarus was dead that Jesus acted. Meanwhile, the family were surprised that he didn’t act sooner. His reason for acting when he did?

“It’s for God’s Glory, so that God’s son may be glorified.” (John 11:4)

“…I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.” (John 11:42)

Not a bad starting point when searching for a reason for our struggles.

Perhaps we should all pray about it

Story of Caroline Byrne

“A Journey To Justice” – Robert Wainwright

True crime stories are sometimes the most interesting of stories. It is said that truth is stranger than fiction. I find this to be the case more often than not.

This story is of Caroline Byrne, the model and teacher with June Dally-Watkins who was thrown like a spear off the gap way back in 1995. It took many years to convict her suspiciously behaving boyfriend. In a very unique case filled with circumstantial evidence Gordon Brown was convicted of her murder 13 long years later.

As I read this story I wondered which was more tragic. Was it the means to her death or that she got involved with such a man in the first place. It’s more a rhetorical question as it all moulds into one big tragedy of a wasted life at the hands of a callous, selfish, egotistical man. Just when she felt she wanted out she felt trapped.

This is a good book if you are into the true crime genre. Recently made into an excellent telemovie starring Garry McDonald.

The Opposition Factor

Respected AFL journalist, Mike Sheehan, recently interviewed Sydney Swans coach, Paul Roos, for his show on Fox Sports called ‘Open Mike’.

They covered many topics from his career as a player with Fitzroy to his decision to retire as head coach and hand over the reigns to assistant coach, John Longmire. One topic in particular caught my attention, it was the perception that the Swans have a negative and ‘ugly’ game plan.

I have some good friends that get carried away with this notion and even go as far as to say that they “hate” the Swans due to their style of play. I take offense to this allegation as it is baseless.

The Swans were a very successful team during the Paul Roos era of 2003 -2007. As a successful team there is always an opposition wanting to beat you week after week. Teams now are well prepared in working out how to negate the game plan of the opposition.

Roos points out that “people fail to see that there’s an opposition”. Watch them at training, “If it’s 18 on zero we’ll bring it down the corridor every time”. They don’t practice ‘ugly’ football. Of course they have played some shocking games of football, Mike Sheehan used an example against St Kilda. But it is no different to any other team. They have all used negative tactics and have produced ‘ugly’ football.

So why are the Swans singled out? Who knows? Who cares? People who bag my team should instead look at their own team and pump them up instead of hating the Swans.

Same But Different

“Nothing In My Hand I Bring” by Ray Galea

My favourite type of book: short, interesting and educational.

Galea chronicles his Catholic upbringing and the process he went through to convert to Protestantism. This included the arduous task of going against his family.

He struggled with aspects of the Catholic Church as he explored the bible and found some major differences between the denominations, some were surprisingly huge.

The obsession with Mary, mother of Jesus, I found particularly interesting. Some of the Catholic rituals even have no biblical reference whatsoever.

This book would be good especially for reformed or reforming Catholics or those Protestants wanting a broad overview of Catholicism.

Catch The Foxes

Song of Songs is an interesting book to study, but is there a relevance for singles like me to read a book targeted towards married couples? Of course there is, as statistically most will marry and what’s better than learning what a biblical marriage should look like – a man and a woman deeply in love with each other.

Mark Driscoll has done a series of talk on the Song of Songs called “The Peasant Princess”. There was one talk in particular that I found to have immense relevance to us singles in our quest for marriage. Titled ‘The Little Foxes’, in reference to the following verse:

Catch the foxes for us, the little foxes
that spoil the vineyards, for our vineyards are in blossom." (Song of Songs 2:15)

The foxes being used as a metaphor for those little things that get into a relationship to spoil them. Driscoll used this verse as a platform to point out how best to set up a biblical marriage and to avoid spoiling a relationship. He worked under the headings of Foxes, Fears and Friends.

Here’s a run down but I recommend you have a listen for yourself here.

Foxes

Architecting issues

• As in agree on a blue print
• Have the same priorities – Jesus (grow as a Christian), be a good spouse, be a good parent, other responsibilities (e.g. employment)
• Anything else puts a fracture in the relationship

Organising home – open or closed

Technology – switch off to spend time with family

Extended family – their involvement in conflicts, decisions and holidays

Scheduling and budgets – know each others schedules, plan a ‘date night’

Disagreements – find the best way to deal with them, give and take, understand the other person’s perspective

Annoyances – differences are interesting initially, with time they can get annoying

Attitudes – have biblical attitudes

Fears

• Some fears are good, others are bad
• None have to be paralysing
• Fears should give us caution

Friends

I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the does of the field,
that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases. (Song of Songs 3:5)

• Think about who is speaking into your life, they may be a ‘little fox’
• If single, what foxes are already in your vineyard
• Should conduct yourself in a way that prepares you for marriage

This is by no means exhaustive. I would need to listen a couple more times to be more conclusive. I got a lot from it and I hope other singles do too.

While visiting the Mars Hill sermon podcasts why not download others that take your fancy. I recommend the ‘Proverbs’ and ‘Trial’ series. There are so many to choose from.

Dumbed Down

GPS units are taking over from street directories. So much so that street directory manufacturers are losing sales and may in fact shut up shop.

I hope this doesn’t result in the creation of a dumber generation that is ever reliant on technology. Technology has a knack of failing enough to require a back up

Map reading is an important skill and everyone should have knowledge of it and not be so reliant on a GPS. People seem very willing to have no idea where to go and blindly follow where the GPS is taking them.

I have enjoyed the benefits of having a GPS but they aren’t the be all and end all. Nothing beats having local knowledge and seeing the general layout of a journey.

A GPS doesn’t always take you the best way, and you don’t realise you’re not going the best way until you are at your destination, or until you check your journey in a street directory.

Society’s Failure

If the media is to be believed then we have too few police. But would they ever flip the argument and suggest that we have too many idiots that require police intervention?

If it weren’t for sin then we wouldn’t even need police at all.

It’s the immense failure of society that leads to situations like the recent Melbourne riots. Police attended and were massively outnumbered and felt vulnerable. They had to deal with the wilful and malicious damage and looting of private property. All that over the cancellation of a drag racing event.

There seems to be a growing uncivilised element to the population. They aren’t able to think rationally anymore and show scant regard for the results of their actions.

Conflicted

It was put to me recently that there was no way I could call myself a Sydney Swans fan, as I have done for 17 years, while giving any form of support to the new GWS franchise preparing to join the AFL in 2011.

I have proclaimed that I am a Swans fan for life after a childhood of changing teams on a whim as a rugby league fan.

With GWS one has to look at the bigger picture and put parochialism to one side. Ask what is best for the game. If GWS doesn’t get enough members it will be embarrassing for all fans in this region, and I don’t want the doomsayers to be right. So I will be buying a membership and attending a few games. I might stop short of buying merchandise even though I love ‘the merch’.

I will be doing all this because I enjoy Australian Rules football first and foremost. My support of the Swans comes after this. I have played, coached, umpired since I was 10. It’s officially my sport, there is no other for me.

I understand there would be some conflicts in the hearts of fellow Swans supporters, especially in this region. I believe it is more important for the game to put aside parochialism for a little while and buy a membership of GWS when they come up for sale. In the meantime ‘Sign up for Sheedy’.

Bill Cosby Books

“Love and Marriage”

and

“Fatherhood”

I have watched a lot of ‘The Cosby Show’ and listened to most of Bill Cosby’s comedy albums as I grew up. So good was he that frequently a Cosby reference would be thrown into conversation at the Haynes dinner table.

At the height of Bill Cosby’s appeal during the years of ‘The Cosby Show’ he wrote these two books and some others that we don’t have. They mostly reflect his stand up comedy so must have been relatively easy to write.

For me they were easy books to read as I could imagine Bill Cosby’s voice as I read. That way I was always captivated and was on the same wavelength as him. I could pick up the tone in which he would say the words. Therefore there would be no rereading of pages.

It really makes for entertaining reading and perhaps when I am closer to marriage and fatherhood I may even read them again. They would be better than any instructional book anywhere.

Jerilderie Letter

‘The Jerilderie Letter’ by Ned Kelly

These are words direct from the mouth of the infamous bushranger. Very brazen and even funny at times. Kelly had shot many policemen by this time, merely out of self-defence if you believe his story. As if to say how dare they come and try to arrest me for “allegedly” stealing someone else’s horses.

He hated police with a passion, and it shows. His words were merely a curtain raiser to what happened in the famous siege at Glenrowan in country Victoria. Where he emerged in his homemade armour yet was ultimately arrested and hanged in Old Melbourne Gaol.

An interesting and short read, if you can get over his lack of punctuation and occasional lack of correct grammar.