Interrupting Heaven! The Practice of Prayer

This Saturday, Feb. 24th, we continued with the “Life You’ve Always Wanted” series by John Ortberg. We read from and discussed Chapter 6 “Interrupting Heaven”.
Some of the main points from our reading:
1. Many people only resort to prayer when they are desperate but “[desperation] prayers are not sufficient to sustain spiritual life.”
2. Usually we think of life as normal here on earth as being “interrupted” by action in heaven but in the book of Revelation prayers of the saints interrupt heaven and then heaven takes action upon the earth as a result of these prayers. He quotes Walter Wink who says “History belongs to the intercessors – those who believe and pray the future into being.” Real prayer, as depicted in the Bible, is not the religious stylized prayer that we often hear but “impertinent, persistent, shameless, indecorous. It is more like haggling in an oriental bazaar than the polite monologues of the churches.”
3. Prayer does not come automatically upon becoming a Christian but must be learned and practiced. The disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray like he did (as observant Jews they already knew how to pray in the religious way) and he did.

Next week we will continue on the subject of prayer, reading from Ortberg’s book and using some of his questions and discussion starters to stimulate our thoughts and reflections.

See you there!

More "Slowing and Celebrating" Feb. 17th

This Saturday we did not watch a video but continued our discussion on the concepts of "slowing", solitude and celebration with 14 men present.
Several men related their experiences during the week that illustrated these concepts, especially "slowing". It seems life presents many opportunities for us to slow down, wait on and reflect. If we are willing to reflect and not react, they may reveal much about ourselves. Perhaps much that we don't really want to hear. Waiting in lines, being stuck in traffic we are confronted with our anger, impatience and self-importance. We have a God-given desire for justice but when it comes to justice for ourselves, we feel it's a right and we need to take care of it ourselves, RIGHT NOW, rather than trust God for our outcomes. Life is about us. NOT!

Next week we are going to read selections from Chapter 5 in John Ortberg's "The Life You've Always Wanted", titled Interrupting Heaven, The Practice of Prayer. We are going to be purchasing copies of the book as well as the participant's guide for use by the men's group.

Also, don't forget about the Iron Sharpening Iron men's conference on March 10th. If you are interested in attending with the men's group, please contact Gary Halbedel at ghalbedel@gmail.com or 424-0941. The cost is $48 but if we get 10 or more as a group, the cost will be $39 each. I'm not collecting money yet, just looking for interest.

Slowing Down and Celebrating! Feb. 10th

Today the BCC men's group viewed Session Two of the John Ortberg series, The Life You've Always Wanted, Slowing Down and Celebrating. John says we are a people plagued by "hurry sickness", a disease of the soul! The cure is to practice "slowing" and solitude. Also, God commands us to be joyful, to celebrate life and the good things He has given.

Ortberg gave us some practical steps to help us to slow down and celebrate including practicing solitude, ... take time to reflect each day. Plan an 8 hour period of solitude with nothing to do, no contact with people, media. Just quiet.
Some other "slowing" exercises are: deliberately driving in the slow lane, eat your food slowly, get in the longest line at the grocery check out and let someone get in front of you!

He also said that hurried people cannot love. It's a matter of priorities. If we are trying to accomplish what we want rather than what God wants we will miss the work God has set for us to do. God wants us to love people and we have to set aside other things to do that. Opportunities to love and help people come at unexpected times and we have to be ready. We have to train ourselves (there's that word train again!) to be the kind of people that catch those opportunities and see that God has placed them there for us.

Please add your comments, thoughts and experiences in putting slowing and celebration into practice and we'll see you next Saturday at 7AM for coffee and donuts and the next installment of life in the slow lane!

God bless!

........BCCMan

It's "Morphing" Time! Feb. 3rd

This week we watched the first installment of the John Ortberg series "The Life You've Always Wanted." In it, John talked about personal transformation or "morphing", changing into what we want to be. Hopefully that is more like Christ. He introduced the concept of training instead of trying. In trying, we just will ourselves into being different. It doesn't really work. But by training according to God's word, we eventually find ourselves being different. We set up a space for God to work and He does it.
Ortberg also talked about "boundary markers". These are things we put on, ways of appearing or speech perhaps that set us apart from others not in the "group". In this case, Christians or church men. By doing this, we have really despaired of real transformation. It's just a cheap substitute and it doesn't really do what God intends.

As always, we invite your comments.

See you next Saturday at 7AM! Coffee, juice and donuts will be served.