Everytime I read the New Testament I see Jesus quoting the Old Testament quite a bit. As I learned in my Bible interpretation classes in seminary, parallel passages and repeat quotes are there to drive points home more directly. Maybe it’s just me, but for a while now I’ve wondered if Jesus quoted any one verse(s) more than others to really drive a certain point home?

So what I did was go back and read all of Jesus’ words and made a chart of every OT verse he quoted. As it turns out, it was recorded that Jesus quoted 49 different Old Testament verses (not including the repeats of the same verses throughout the different books). Of those 49, Jesus quoted three particular verses more than any other.

Jesus quoted different parts of the Ten Commandments on four separate occasions:

Matthew 5:21 – Exodus 20:13

Matthew 5:27 – Exodus 20:14

Matthew 15:4 & Mark 7:10 – Exodus 20:12, Deut 5:16

Matthew 19:19 & Mark 10:19 & Luke 18:20 - Exodus 20:12-16, Deut 5:16-20

But other than the Ten Commandments, Jesus quoted two individual verses on two separate occasions – more than any other he quoted in all of Scripture!

Hosea 6:6 – For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings. (Matthew 9:13 and Matthew 12:7)

Leviticus 19:18 – Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD. (Matthew 5:43, Matthew 22:39 (with a repeat in Mark 12:31))

I don’t see how it is any coincidence that Jesus separately quoted the Ten Commandments, a subversion of the dogmatic religious institution of the day, and an expectation of love, more than any others in all of Scripture.

Let that sink in to your life! Jesus repeatedly gave us three very clear instructions on how to live a Jesus-shaped faith…

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

In the last post I talked about my belief that the label “quiet time” should actually be called (and lived out as) “spending time with God” throughout the entirety of a day—due to the pressure (internal and external) that is put on a person to feel or hear something significant in a designated time slot having to be with God.

Here’s where this all came from:

I just got done speaking at North Park University (NPU) and I was waiting on Foster St. for the #92 bus to take me back to my office. I had a great talk as the undergrads at NPU really resonated with my thoughts, stories and challenges (can I just add a side note to say how much I love the folks over at NPU’s Center for Youth Ministry Studies—every time I’m there it’s a total first class event). I was flying high, and yet when the final Q&A time had finished and I packed up my stuff to head out, by the time I got to the bus stop I felt very incomplete. I hadn’t had my quiet time that morning, or the last ten or twelve mornings for that matter.

And I felt like a huge hypocrite.

How could I stand in front of a bunch of undergraduate students at a Christian university and teach them about building bridges with gays and lesbians and tell them how important the Holy Rock is in the process, and then know in the back of my head I hadn’t done what I thought I needed to do?

I started to cry at that bus stop. I felt like a fraud and I couldn’t stop apologizing to God. And that is when his gentle and loving voice swept through my spirit and brought peace. He said:

“Andy, spending time with me isn’t just an extended chunk of silence. You’re not less connected to me because you haven’t sat down in a traditional form of quiet time. Your quiet time with me is all day, because you talk to me all day Andy. Relationship is not about the ask, it’s about the communication. And your daily communication with me is full and loved. Keep your spirit open and keep talking, and stop feeling bad or guilty about missing what you think is a proper amount of quiet time.”

We are all to live our daily lives fully encompassed in relationship and conversation with God, with the cognitive recognition we’re in his presence even when we don’t feel it. I have come to believe that many people think a successful quiet time has to be based on a feeling of … [fill in your own blank] rather than the cognitive recognition of the sacrifice of being intentional to be in relationship with God throughout the day. So let’s then concentrate on the process of the relationship with our Creator and not just the block of time.

The lingering question then, is that: “You said in the beginning of the first post that alone time with God is not only a good practice, it’s also needed—what’s up with your contradictions?”

I’m not asking anyone to go wholesale and ditch a traditional form of quiet time. But what I am asking is for people to put a proper perspective on what quiet time is meant to be—not limiting yourself or God to a half hour, an hour, two hours, etc. of time in a day that is meant to be the time to communicate with—or be communicated by our Father. My words are not an enlightenment on quiet time, they are a not-so-subtle reminder that the burden of being with God does not just have to permeate within a label of what we recognize as quiet time.

Therefore we are to “spend time with God” walking daily in the knowledge that our real-time God exists as such, and in speaking with him throughout the day is the same relationally, conversationally, and just as effective as spending all day, every day in quiet time with God.

If you don’t box God in, you won’t be boxed in yourself.

Much love.
http://www.themarinfoundation.org/

I believe that I can communicate directly with my Heavenly Father. We have conversations. Crazy or not, I know what is true and I know the Lord of the universe loves to be in close relationship with his children who are made in his image. I’m not special … this communication is not just an Andy thing, it’s an all people thing. We’re all God’s children and because of that fact I know with everything I am that God’s intent to be in deep, transparent relationship with us can play itself out clearly through dialoged, direct communication with us through our (the) Holy Spirit. I’ll save the dispensation-and-speaking-in-tongues-post for another time, but why I said what I did was because a few nights ago I had one of those moments of clearly defined communication with God.

I have started to practice a new form of ‘prayer.’ My new form consists of me stopping all of the asking. Sometimes, especially recently, all I felt I did was ask, ask, ask for things, blessings, healings, etc. It got boring. It got repetitive. And I just don’t feel like God wants me to sit and ask. I felt so disconnected from my Creator; I hated it. I hated to pray because prayer shouldn’t be about repetitive askings. So I ditched it.

Instead, I want to be a doer instead of an asker. I want to be a meditater and not a repeater. I want to talk to the Lord of All, Jehovah, face to face; word for word. I want to tell God everything that frightens me, wigs me out or overwhelms me – and then I want to know in comfort that the Creator of everything hears me. I know that sounds like a lot of ‘wants’ but really, they’re less ‘wants’ and more yearnings. My spirit yearns for these things like it has never yearned before.

With all of this newly realized angst in my soul, what I have realized is that I have been trying to fit my prayer life/quite time/whatever you want to call it into a timeline. I’ll read the Bible for a while, pray for a while, and then start my day. And all of that has to fit into an hour timeframe. What kind of ridiculous rational is that? Do I seriously think El Shaddai will work on my timeline for making him talk to me? I did – until I realized the error in my humanly inept logic.

A man that I greatly admire and look up to, and someone I’ve never met, is Dr. David Cho. He is the founding pastor of the world’s largest church (about 800,000 members – it’s in South Korea). I heard him speak live one time, and it was the most powerful message I had EVER heard. It changed my life. I can talk about that later. But why I’m saying this is because Dr. Cho came through for me again. In an article I was reading, Dr. Cho was talking about his prayer life and the article read:

“Yet he [Dr. Cho] sets aside substantial time each day with the Lord for prayer. Once when the president of South Korea called, Cho’s secretary replied, “Mister president, you will have to wait your turn. He is taking with the Lord of the universe. Cho says his secret of success is “I hear and obey.””

Wow. When I read that I got it. Dr. Cho doesn’t put the Lord on his timetable; he puts himself on the Lord’s timetable. Dr. Cho “talks to the Lord of the universe.” I can talk to the Lord of the universe. You can talk to the Lord of the universe. I realized that in order to do that I have to wait on God!

Therefore my new prayer life consists of me waiting on God. I read the Bible until I feel it’s time for me to start communicating with God, and then I’ll stop reading and start talking. I’ll share, talk, have a conversation, pour my heart/insecurities out, pray the Lord’s prayer, repeat and meditate on one verse/passage of Scripture … and then I’ll wait on God.

And I won’t move until I hear from Him and we can have a conversation – or, not a conversation as my Father has mostly just been talking to me lately.

Let me tell you though; he doesn’t start talking right away. I’ve waited still, silently, for many hours before I hear one word. I’ve decided (and isn’t ‘decided’ such a stupid word when talking about this stuff – it’s not mine to decide), but anyway, I’ve decided that I’m not moving until the Creator talks to his created.

And what a blessing these past few weeks have been. I feel closer to God than ever before, not because I’m a better human being but because I have finally learned to prioritize the Almighty over everything else in my life – including asking for things while “praying.”

Here is the word the Lord told me the other night and it is about how to lead God’s people:

All of the great leaders in the Bible that God used for glorious things surrounding God’s people (Moses, Samson, David, etc.) had one thing in common:

They all knew how to humble themselves before God – sins and all.

None of them were perfect. Each of them sinned great sins by directly going against God and his commands (Moses and the rock, Samson as a Nazarite, David and Bathsheba), and yet all of them are biblically recognized as greatly honored in God’s eyes. Why? How can they all commit such violent sins against God Himself and still be looked upon by our Father as great? The answer … because they all knew how to fully, totally and utterly humble all of their being before God. Only God can know intent and motivation. And although at times we as fallible humans have the wrong intent or motivation, God recognizes his chosen by their spirit, not their mistake. And because of that I can learn from my forefathers Moses, Samson and David – biblical and righteous leadership begins and ends with the humbled heart as a believer, doer and graciously thankful follower of the Way. And that is the only way to lead.

Much love.
www.themarinfoundation.org