Yes, I'm disagreeing with something I read in an Oswald Chambers' devotional, and just two days after he figured so prominently in a post here.
The August 24 classic devotional is here. The modernized version is here. Ready?
OK, I do see what he means by "good child." For our prayer life to be effective, our relationship must be right with God and with our fellow man. We can't come to God clinging to our rights or hanging onto grudges. But if we waited until we were "good children" to pray, how would we become "good children"? We have to come to God as we are, period. The relationship will evolve as we meet Him daily in worship and learn to live in surrender to Him.
Here's the other thing:
"Prayer with most of us is turned into pious platitude, it is a matter of emotion, mystical communion with God. Spiritually we are all good at producing fogs."
Pious platitude, emotion, and mystical communion aren't the same thing. They're not even from the same place.
Pious platitude is religious hot air. Even if it contains all the "right" words, it's still empty. A person can say lovely spiritual things in a morning prayer, then head off to work and obliviously toss self-centered muck at people.
Mr. Chambers is probably using "mystical communion" as a way of describing prayer that's experience-focused -- centered on seeking the next tingle down the spine. I get what he apparently means here. I sometimes say, "Where are You God? I can't feel Your presence!" If that's what Chambers means, I agree that this is not ideal. God wants us to become dependent on Him, not on feeling His presence. When I pray like this, there's inevitably something I'm not being totally honest with God about. I'm looking for a palpable experience of God because my faith is either a bit wobbly or I'm mad at myself and therefore doubtful that God really wants to be around me.
But back to "mystical communion." I believe this can also describe moments of deep, genuine communion with God, where emotion tends to be involved but it comes out of something very real and honest shared between us and God.
Next, "...it is a matter of emotion..."
These words stuck in my craw for hours. Am I supposed to shut down emotion in my prayers? Oswald Chambers did in fact seem to suggest exactly this in the previous day's devotional. He said, "Having a secret stillness before God means deliberately shutting the door on our emotions and remembering Him." Is this a guy thing? No, that's sexist of me. Remembering some of the prayers of certain men in my church, I see that it's not a guy thing. And emotion and prayer are certainly not mutually exclusive. So surely he means something else.
I let these things bother me too long yesterday, and lost a lot of precious fellowship time with Jesus as a result. Finally, He sat me down and cleansed my thinking. The rest of the day was sweet. He concluded the day by blowing my mind with a challenge (via Louie Giglio*) to stop grovelling around and be used of Him. There are hurting people out there, and not all of them are me. Yes, He cares about my hurts, too. They're what He's used to get me ready to serve Him.
Which leads me back to Oswald.
"Spiritually we are all good at producing fogs," he said.
And that's a very good point. It's probably the essence of what he meant by "pious platitude, ...emotion, mystical communion." Surely he meant we put our own spiritual verbiage and need for reassurance ahead of seeking God's deep and judicious will. We make prayer all about us. And it's not. We have to bring Him everything and be honest, letting Him reach in where He can heal us. But we also have to allow Him to lead us in prayer. And when we allow Him to do this, He will lead us to places where what we're feeling and experiencing will be the least of our concerns.
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* I referred to this Louie Giglio sermon on the main page yesterday, but I didn't post a link to it. First, because I'm not positive the video was posted with permission of the Passion 2013 conference organizers. It may have been, but I have no way of knowing. The other reason I didn't link to it was that the comments section has been taken over by someone who is ranting obsessively and religiously against Louie Giglio, and I didn't want to direct you there; the rant gets quite disturbing. However, if you decide to look up the sermon, try to disregard the rant and just listen to the sermon. It's a powerful, important message.