Tag: prayer

Before the Throne — Chapter Seven — The hands of the crucified king

This is talk number seven from a series preached at City South Presbyterian Church in 2024. Unfortunately the recording failed so there’s no podcast or video version of this one.

We have looked at some pretty abstract images in this series as we have thought about picturing the throne room of heaven as we pray — from the bright light of the sun, to fruitful garden paradises, to mountain tops, to temples, to raw fiery power, to that fiery power being where we go for justice rather than taking things into our own hands, and the picture of the slain Lamb ruling alongside this power.

And look, I do not know if any of these have been enlightening for you; if you have been able to imagine entering heaven using these pictures we find in the Bible.

But this has been our goal: to have the eyes of our hearts enlightened (Ephesians 1:18), as we learn to live as those God has raised with Jesus, seating us with him in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 2:6), as we ponder what it looks like to dwell in that reality so we live as those reflecting heaven on earth in this overlap as God’s heaven-on-earth people.

This week I am hoping—maybe—the image we will imagine from the throne room is something more tangible, less metaphorical even, and grounded in the story of Jesus. Mark begins and ends his story with reality tearing moments that demonstrate that the barrier between heaven and earth is thin; and that in Jesus we are seeing what God is like, and what life on earth representing heaven looks like.

Mark’s story is set up so that we understand it as good news about Jesus the Messiah—the anointed king—the Son of God (Mark 1:1). Now, that title “Son of God” has lots of significance. If you remember Doug’s sermon on Psalm 2, he made the point that this is about a human ruler raised to the throne at God’s right hand ruling over God’s people. If you were a Roman citizen it is language that the Caesars used, building on this idea that Caesar ascended into the heavens and became a god. That will be significant because of what the centurion says at the end of Mark’s Gospel. But whether you think it is emphasising Jesus’ humanity — like with Psalm 2 — or divinity — like with the strange bit of Genesis where sons of God come down from heaven and create the Nephilim — it is pretty clear Mark wants us to see Jesus as a human who bridges heaven and earth; who breaks the barrier between them.

Mark brackets his story of Jesus with these two reality-tearing moments in what’s called an ‘inclusio’. There is an interesting similarity being drawn out here: the heavens are torn open so that God can enter the story in the form of his Spirit at the baptism of Jesus, and the curtain that represented the barrier between heaven and earth — between holy space and the most holy space of God’s throne room — is torn open from top to bottom (Mark 1:10, 15:38).

This shows Jesus to be the promised Messiah who will baptise with the Holy Spirit (Mark 1:8), creating more human bridges between heaven and earth. This is what Mark’s Gospel sets us up to see as John the Baptist describes the king who is coming.

The scene at Jesus’ baptism marks the dawning of this new reality; it anticipates the curtain tearing as the heavens do tear open, and God’s Spirit descends to hover not just over the waters like in the beginning of the story, but to descend on Jesus to mark him out as a heaven-on-earth human (Mark 1:10).

Then the voice reinforces this message—this is God’s Son, whom he loves, in whom he is pleased (Mark 1:11); a model human. It is a combined fulfilment of Psalm 2 and of the promise in Isaiah of a servant who would lead people home to God (Psalm 2:7, Isaiah 42:1).

Here is the thing—this reality-tearing moment where heaven and earth are overlapping does not just happen here. Reality is altered from this moment. This is the start of God acting to create a people who are at home with him; people living before his throne; a kingdom. This is what Jesus announces his mission is all about: “The time has come.” He is now bringing the kingdom of God (Mark 1:14–15), the overlap between heaven and earth for those who repent and believe the good news of God. This change of reality is what it means for the kingdom of God to come near. And the Gospel story is a demonstration of this reality; a look at what heaven-on-earth life looks like as we see it embodied in God’s Son, the Messiah.

Which is a point we may not see in a bunch of the miraculous stories Mark records. But it is very clear in the transfiguration, where Jesus and his friends are about to go up the mountain and Jesus says, “Some of you—literally the people standing with him—some of you will see the kingdom of God coming with power” (Mark 9:1).

After a six-day wait — echoing the six days Moses waits to go up the mountain into the presence of God (Exodus 24:16) — some of them head up a mountain (Mark 9:2), a heaven-on-earth place, close to the skies, for a taste of the barrier between heaven and earth being gone.

What they see at the top is Jesus transfigured (Mark 9:2).

Now, when you hear the word transfiguration you might be thinking about Harry Potter and the idea of turning something into something else. But what we are seeing here is not Jesus being turned into something else — except maybe his clothes — it is Jesus being revealed as something else; as he really is; as the glory of God meeting humans on a mountaintop. To draw our attention to this, we meet these two Old Testament characters — Moses and Elijah — on the mountain as well (Mark 9:3–4).

There is conjecture about why these two appear, but it seems not so much that they represent the Law and the Prophets, but that they are two who also came into contact with the presence of God on mountaintops (Exodus 24:18, 1 Kings 19:11). Here they are meeting the glorious Son of God face to face. A scene from both their encounters — and one from the baptism of Jesus — repeat: a cloud of glory appears on the mountain and envelops them, and a voice says, “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him” (Mark 9:7).

This is the heaven-on-earth human. Mark wants us to see that heaven-on-earth life is not just the baptism; it is the whole life of Jesus—all the way until he is no longer on earth.

So Mark reports this little bit of Jesus’ trial, where he is asked, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?” (Mark 14:61). And Jesus says, “I am” — a phrase rich with Old Testament meaning. From this point in the story onwards, people will see him not just as the Son of God, but as Daniel’s Son of Man, the ascended human ruler who will join God ruling in his heavenly throne room forever. They will see this: Jesus seated in the throne room at God’s right hand, and coming into that throne room on the clouds of heaven (Mark 14:62).

And in what feels like moments after Jesus paints this picture of glory — a reality he says is where this is all heading — the Messiah is crowned with thorns and then enthroned on a cross, with a sign above his head: “King of the Jews” (Mark 15:26).

The crowd is hurling insults at him — this heaven-on-earth human; a walking temple; a representation of the throne room of heaven — as though the building in Jerusalem stands vindicated, its holy place intact as this happens:

“So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, come down from the cross and save yourself!” (Mark 15:29–30).

“Let him come down”… Prove it. Those being executed with him also mock him (Mark 15:32). Right after this mockery there is another heavenly sign: the light stops—the light that is an emanation of God’s glory; God’s light reflected by the sun—goes out at the very time it should be at its brightest. For three hours this period of heaven-on-earth humanity expressed in Jesus is about to close, at least for a while (Mark 15:33).

Then, as the darkness ends, Jesus breathes his last (Mark 15:37). By staying on the cross, God’s Son demonstrates Spirit-filled heavenly life — the nature of the one on the throne. The Messiah shows us what God’s love for us looks like in the face of cosmic darkness, and he shows us that light triumphs. He has come to destroy the barrier between heaven and earth; to make the change brought about in his birth, expressed in his baptism and transfiguration, a permanent shift in the cosmic order. As the one who will give God’s Spirit — his breath — to all people who find life in him, he gives up his breath.

The curtain of the temple tears from top to bottom (Mark 15:38). The story of this heaven-on-earth life —at least as Mark tells it — is bracketed together, and everything that has been done so that God’s heavenly life can spill out of the holy of holies and into people throughout the world has happened. This is not just about us being able to come into God’s presence in that place in the heart of his temple, to live before his throne. It is about God’s presence coming to dwell in us as his Son launches the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven for all who turn to him and believe and receive this gift.

At this point the Roman centurion, who has been schooled for life on the idea that the ascended Caesar is the god-king who brings heaven on earth through his sword and power, sees something in the crucified, bloodied, beaten, crowned man in front of him that convinces him: “Surely this man was the Son of God” (Mark 15:39).

This is the king. This is heaven on earth.

I do not know if you are in the habit of reading the Gospel as a picture of heaven on earth, where Jesus is a kind of walking expression of God’s heavenly rule — his throne room. But there are clues in John’s Gospel too.

When John talks about the Word who is with God and is God becoming flesh — this is a heaven-meets-earth reality. When he says the Word made his dwelling among us, this is the word tabernacle — a mobile throne room reality. And when he says we have seen God’s glory when we see Jesus (John 1:14), this makes the connection clear.

John records the same promise that Jesus will baptise with the Holy Spirit at his baptism (John 1:33). But the heaven-opening stuff does not stop there. He also has this strange picture of angelic beings — like the cherubim and seraphim we have met in the last couple of weeks—ascending and descending (John 1:51), flying around Jesus, as a way of opening our eyes to the parallels between his life and the heavenly throne.

Then Jesus talks about his body as a temple (John 2:14, 21), and about living waters flowing from him to give life to the world. John explains he is talking about the Spirit (John 7:38–39). This is imagery we have seen in the temple as a heaven-on-earth picture of God’s throne room that reappears in Revelation as a source of divine life.

John uses all this to build to the idea that Jesus is the way into life with the Father, and even that when we have seen Jesus we know him and have seen him (John 14:6–7). When one of his disciples is confused, Jesus simply says: “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father” (John 14:9).

So as we imagine coming before the Father — before his throne — there is no better picture of the God we are approaching in prayer, who is approaching us in love to answer our prayers as he creates heaven-on-earth people, his kingdom, than Jesus himself.

We have talked a bit about meditation or contemplation from this book Meditation and Communion with God. I do not know if you have found this helpful — I really have. The idea is to take propositional truths from the text of the Bible — things we believe to be true — and pair them with images we get from narratives or poetry.

So if we were to take the proposition that we have been raised and seated with Jesus and can set our hearts on things above, where Jesus is at the right hand of God (Colossians 3:1), it makes sense to find ways to picture Jesus in this position as we believe this truth. This is a visual we are given multiple times as we contemplate the things above.

The writer of Hebrews tells us the Son is the radiance of God’s glory (Hebrews 1:3). If we want to picture that bright light glowing out into the world — Jesus is part of that picture. More than that, Jesus is the exact representation of God’s being. If we want to picture the God who is ineffable, beyond our categories or descriptions, Jesus is the bridge — the image. Now that he has made purification for sins, opening the way to be before God’s throne without his power consuming us, he is seated at the right hand of the Father. The heaven-on-earth human is now the human-in-heaven ruler. The Son of God is the Son of Man.

Hebrews keeps telling us to fix our eyes upon Jesus (Hebrews 12:2). But what does it look like to do this? One way is to look at stories about Jesus — the things he does as a heaven-on-earth human — and know that this same heaven-on-earth human is now ruling in heaven.

Not only is he there advocating for us as we pray, he is the perfect representation of the God we pray to — of his character and desire. Through him we approach the heavenly Father, united with the Son he loves, in whom he is well pleased, and through the Spirit dwelling in us — so that we are members of his kingdom, his family.

So let us run quickly through some scenes in Mark’s Gospel. I want to encourage you to pick a few, and as you pray, picture God being like Jesus in this picture, and Jesus being like Jesus as he advocates for you. There is a real intimacy and tenderness in many of the ways Jesus shows us what heaven on earth looks like between those heavens-tearing moments in Mark’s Gospel. Notice the posture of Jesus in these stories — how much they involve loving, tender touch. Touch that does not harm but raises up, even as it demonstrates the raw, creative, evil-destroying power of the throne of God.

In Mark chapter 1, Peter’s mother-in-law is in bed with a fever. When Jesus hears about this he is at her bedside immediately. He takes her hand — presumably gently, like one would take the hand of an elderly woman who is unwell — and he helps her up. He does not pull her violently, he helps her. And she is healed (Mark 1:30–31).

A little later a man with leprosy begs to be made clean — to no longer be horribly afflicted or socially isolated, untouchable. Jesus reaches out his hand. He is indignant, not at the audacity of this untouchable man asking for help, but at the disease itself. He reaches out his hand and touches him, willing to overcome the barrier — healing, cleansing, restoring him to life in community (Mark 1:40–41).

This is the Jesus who advocates for us as we approach the throne room of God, praying to be healed and restored — from sin and alienation from God, and from sickness and alienation from others. Jesus, with hand outstretched, is the image of the God on the throne.

Or there is the paralysed man lowered through the roof, where Jesus, at the sight of the faith of him and his friends, forgives his sins — before healing him with a word (Mark 2:5).

Or the Jesus who is powerful over the wind and the waves — the chaos terrifying his beloved friends—who stills the storm with a word (Mark 4:39).

Or the Jesus meeting the grieving mother and father of a child who has died — who takes her by the hand and speaks, telling her to get up. And she does. This is the Jesus in heaven who comforts us in our terror and grief, who speaks for us, and who offers resurrection hope to us in the face of death and the ferocious power of a hostile world (Mark 5:40–41).

Or the Jesus who uses his hands to break bread and then hand it out to feed multitudes (Mark 6:41), who teaches us to pray “Give us today our daily bread.” This is the Jesus who is raised and seated with God, who sends bread.

The Jesus who, as he walks the earth, is touched and held by so many who are healed as heaven meets earth (Mark 6:56).

The Jesus who places his hands on the deaf man who cannot speak, his fingers in his ears and on his tongue, and heals him (Mark 7:32–33).

The Jesus who touches a blind man and restores his sight (Mark 8:25).

The Jesus who, in the face of an evil power — a demon seeking to destroy a child, throwing him in fire or water — takes the boy by the hand and lifts him to his feet. The opposite of the evil power, who throws him down. Jesus takes him by the hand, lifts him up, delivers him (Mark 9:27).

And then a little later, he gives a picture of life in the kingdom of God — heaven meeting earth — when he takes children the disciples try to keep away into his arms and says: “Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” Prayer is like this — coming to the one who embraces us in his arms like children, offering nothing but prepared to receive everything (Mark 10:15–16).

And then, in that moment where reality shifts forever — in the lead up to the curtain tearing — Jesus is crucified (Mark 15:24). His arms are spread wide open on the cross, nails driven through those hands. The hands that now stretch out to us, as in all these stories, are scarred by nails. The slain Lamb is on the throne.

As we set our hearts on things above, as we imagine not just Jesus, but through him the nature and character of the God who rules — he rules with hands outstretched and arms open to receive us. To receive you.

Can you picture this?

What would happen if you prayed with this picture in your head?

That is a profound picture — a revolutionary picture — for us. To have the God who created the universe, who flung the stars into space, open his hands to receive us as we pray. How could we not pray?

The life of Jesus, as Mark tells it, is good news. It is a revolutionary moment where we see what heaven on earth looks like; what a walking throne room looks like; what the one enthroned looks like. It is an invitation through the torn curtain to have access to the throne. But it is also, through the torn curtain and the gift of the Spirit, a picture that frees us to offer the same posture to the world that he has to us: arms outstretched in love, offering embrace, and the chance to experience the kingdom of God through us.

September 23, 2025 Add Comment

Before the Throne — Chapter Two — Paradise Found

This was part two of a sermon series preached at City South Presbyterian Church in 2024. You can listen to this on our podcast, or watch the video.

This is one of my favourite places on earth. Paradise. A house on a hill in Inverell.

It was my grandparents’ home. It was safe. It was secure. It was where I experienced — and probably learned — generosity and hospitality… And I have snapped a picture of the back corner of the garden on Google Street View. This was my pa’s veggie garden. Pa loved to garden.

Next to the veggie garden was a fruit tree — a persimmon tree. You might never have tried persimmons — I bought some this week and they are not ripe yet… they get this “jelly texture” and for me they are a taste of generous hospitality; a taste of heaven.

We are thinking about heaven — about tasting it, seeing it, imagining ourselves before the throne of God because — as we saw last week — those of us who have found life in Jesus are raised and seated with him in the heavenly realm (Ephesians 2:6). This is our reality now — and in this chapter we are imagining heaven as a fruitful garden; a garden where we experience abundance and hospitality and are home. This is an image that opens and closes the Bible that can shape our prayers, and contemplation of heaven, and how we live now in the overlap between heaven and earth — as people who dwell in both.

This is not just an image from the start and end of the story of the Bible; it is there at the climactic moment of the story.

John emphasises that Jesus is crucified and buried in a garden (John 19:41), and when he is raised as the start of a new creation, his friend Mary thinks he is the gardener (John 20:15).

In Luke there is a reference to a heavenly garden we might miss — here, on the cross, with the rebel being crucified next to him who turns to him and asks to be remembered in his kingdom (Luke 23:42), Jesus says “truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).

When we hear the word paradise we might be imagining a beach, or a silent room with a couch and no interruptions… But Jesus says “Today, you will be with me in the garden.”

Paradise is a Greek word we have turned into an English word but it literally means garden — and Jesus says “today this is your reality” to the bloke next to him…

While we think of heaven as a future “after death” reality, and might take comfort in this promise of paradise for us too — from this moment of Jesus’ gift of his life to us — his people are also with him where he is; and he says he is in paradise. A garden.

This language pops up a couple of times in the New Testament to describe our physical future; often in moments where the curtains are being pulled back and someone is staring into heaven — so the book of Revelation — which we will spend some time in this series — John has this vision of heaven driving his message to the church for how we live in this world; and in one of the letters at the start he says the victorious one, the one who finds life with Jesus by his Spirit — we are given the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise — the garden of God (Revelation 2:7). John will come back to this at the end of his vision where the new heaven and new earth come together; as heavenly life descends to unite with a renewed creation (Revelation 21:1) — and in the bit we read, John describes a heavenly garden throne room — there is a river of the water of life flowing out of the throne of God in this garden city where there is this tree of life spanning the river bearing fruit for his people every month (Revelation 22:1-2).

This is the paradise Jesus says the rebel on the cross will join him in — this is heaven — a vision of heaven that is meant to shape our imagination now as we live as people raised and seated with Jesus reading these descriptions in the Scriptures God has given his church to navigate life on earth. These pictures matter not just because they are our future reality; but they are our spiritual reality now —
and I threw this verse from Paul’s second letter to Corinth up last week where I suggested he is talking about himself in the third person — and just notice how he describes the vision of heaven that drives this particular bloke — it is paradise; a garden (2 Corinthians 12:3-4). A new Eden.

The throne room of God when it becomes heaven on earth is Eden-like. This is because Eden is one of those heaven-on-earth places in the story of the Bible like the temple, where God dwells with his people.
So let us look at this bit of the Bible we read together — and just notice a couple of things we might not have looked at in the past… and we are going to skip ahead a little into Genesis 3 and read some of that back into our imagining of life in the garden.

In the start of the story of the Bible we meet God as creator — a sort of artist who generates a system geared towards life — he is satisfied and calls it good. What we see of God in his actions in chapter two is that God is a gardener (Genesis 2:8). He gets his hands in the dirt to bring out life. He makes trees — and they are not just trees to play a part in an ecosystem — stopping soil eroding, and pumping out oxygen to sustain life — they are beautiful; they are pleasing to the eye — this teaches us something about God — there is a delight and desire to be delighted in going on here as God creates — and they produce fruit “are “good for food.” Then there is the tree of life; we get hung up on the other tree, rightly — because of what happens in the next chapter — but these two trees are probably also pleasing to the eye, and, if God had said so, good for food (Genesis 2:9). Just notice there is a river here too, like in Revelation (Genesis 2:10).

God, the gardener, puts the man he has made in the garden — paradise — to work it and take care of it — to garden like he does — to cultivate this heaven-on-earth place — to be his priestly, image-bearing creative, artistic, generous, hospitable, fruitful people shaped by life with him (Genesis 2:15)…

The next thing we learn about God as we contemplate him in this heaven-on-earth space — he is generous. Hospitable. He has made this beauty to be shared and enjoyed.

The man is free to eat — God has planted these good and beautiful things for him to enjoy — to eat from any tree — including the tree of life — which he will say later is about living forever in this hospitable place in relationship with God (Genesis 2:16-17). Any tree but one — and it is easy, in our imaginings to imagine God in heaven as stingy — as holding back from us when we pray; when we come to him with our desires and they are not met — and this is what the serpent will play on when he pulls humans to death — but this picture is a picture of God the gardener as the giver of life and beauty — the creator of this garden paradise where life is to be enjoyed within its boundaries, as God, our creator, gives us not just what we need, but things to enjoy and delight in. And to enjoy and delight in with him, in paradise — walking with him as he delights in his creations; the beauty of the paradise he crafted with care; crafted to be enjoyed as the gardener God — we see him coming to walk with the humans in chapter 3 in the cool of the day (Genesis 3:8).Now they have already made the decision that will see them exiled from this heaven-on-earth space; losing paradise — they have chosen earth alone, not heaven-on-earth — which is reflected in the curse right — dust to dust — the earth is their present and future (Genesis 3:19). But here is God coming to find them when they are hiding from him — walking in the garden in the “cool of the day” — it is literally “in the breeze” and it uses the Hebrew word “ruah” which is also the word for the Spirit. There is a lot we could unpack there; but I wonder if just for a moment you might imagine hanging out in a garden, or a forest, surrounded by trees — fruit trees, or maybe just the trees on the walking track you love — walking in the breeze with God the gardener as he delights in pointing out every clever or beautiful detail in every tree; in its markings, the shape of its branches and leaves — the colours — the particular texture or taste of the fruit — just delighting and exploring and feeling the wind; the Spirit; wrapping around you as you feel comfort beside him. That is what gets lost for the humans in the story at this moment. They could have been walking with him; they should have been walking with him — but they are hiding. Then they are evicted; cut off from the tree of life; separated from heaven-on-earth space; a barrier between them of a fiery heavenly creature that will be represented by the curtain in the temple — this is paradise lost (Genesis 3:24).

The search for paradise is part of the story of the Old Testament — the deep desire to be home; to find life in the garden, with the gardener — God’s people live craving access to something like the garden — looking for this life in all the wrong places; feeding off idols that lead to death rather than life — this is how Isaiah describes what leads Israel out of their garden city — Jerusalem, the jewel in the Eden-like land flowing with milk and honey — full of flowers and fruit trees for the bees, and grassy pasture for the cattle — where they have the temple as a picture of life close to God again. They lose this, Isaiah says, because they have imagined walking with gods — divine beings amongst the sacred oaks in different gardens (Isaiah 1:29). Isaiah pictures exile as being cut off from this sort of life; becoming like a garden without water; losing paradise again (Isaiah 1:30) — and later in Isaiah God promises restoration to paradise; that God’s people will experience heavenly life again; barren deserts becoming like Eden — the garden of the Lord — paradise (Isaiah 51:3).

A few hundred years before Jesus — pretty much smack bang in history between Isaiah and Jesus’ words on the cross, or John’s words in Revelation — there is another book written called Enoch; it is a book that is not in our Bibles, but it does get quoted by New Testament authors — Enoch pictures heaven as this mountain garden (Enoch 24:3-4):

“And the seventh mountain was in the midst of these, and it excelled them in height, resembling the seat of a throne: and fragrant trees encircled the throne.”

He is maybe borrowing an image from Ezekiel here which pictures Eden as on a mountain (Ezekiel 28:13-14). Anyway the writer of Enoch is imagining a time when exile ends; when paradise is found — and there is God’s throne in a garden, and there is a fragrant fruit tree there.

“And amongst them was a tree such as I had never yet smelt, neither was any amongst them nor were others like it: it had a fragrance beyond all fragrance, and its leaves and blooms and wood wither not for ever: and its fruit is beautiful.”

— Enoch 24:4-5

Beautiful — you can almost imagine the smell wafting through this room; it never dies — like the fruit in Eden its fruit is beautiful — this is Enoch imagining heaven — God’s throne room, with the tree of life right there; God’s throne room in a garden — and he is told “yeah, that mountain that looks like a throne it is where God — the Lord of Glory — will sit when he comes to visit the earth with goodness; when he restores people to paradise, and when that happens, the tree of life — in the heart of this paradise, will be food for God’s people, planted in the heaven-on-earth space of God’s temple.

“This high mountain which thou has seen, whose summit is like the throne of God, is His throne, where the Holy Great One, the Lord of Glory, the Eternal King, will sit, when He shall come down to visit the earth with goodness. And as for this fragrant tree no mortal is permitted to touch it till the great judgement… It shall then be given to the righteous and holy. Its fruit shall be for food to the elect: it shall be transplanted to the holy place, to the temple of the Lord, the Eternal King.”

— Enoch 25:4-5

Before Jesus turns up on the scene God’s people imagine heaven as a garden; the garden of Eden restored — because of the imagery from the story of the Bible, and from the architecture of the temple, and from the promises of the prophets. They are outside of paradise looking in. Longing. Waiting.
You can see how John’s vision in Revelation might fulfil this hope… And how Jesus’ words on the cross change the story from paradise lost to paradise found. Today — he says to the rebel on the cross — and maybe to all of us — today humans have access to paradise again.

Today, as God’s king turns up to end the exile, to invite us out of false worship and fake heavens and into life with God — Eden is restored; paradise is open — and we are invited to find paradise again
as those raised and seated with Jesus; living with the gardener king anticipating a time where the earth will be made new as we live now as heaven-on-earth people with the Spirit of God not just blowing around us as we walk with him, but dwelling in us.

I am not sure this is the God I encounter enough in my prayers, I am not sure I have prayed enough as though I am entering this garden and delighting and enjoying not just the garden, but time with the gardener — this is home; my time as a kid running around the veggie garden on George Street in Inverell, eating fruit from the persimmon tree, is a sort of picture of this I can relate to in my experiences — maybe you have got your own version of that, or maybe it is something we can cultivate together as ways we can learn to dwell in the garden of heaven and have it shape life on earth.

That house in Inverell would not feel like home for me anymore — the garden does not look like it is there any more in the photo, but the gardener definitely is not — he has gone home to paradise. And he — with my gran — was what made that place home for me really; what made the garden wondrous and the persimmons special.

And this is part of the challenge as we imagine heaven, really — to be imagining it not just as a place; not just as a garden with trees — or just a throne room — the throne is not empty. The gardener is home and we are invited to frolic with him in the garden in the cool of the day; to shoot the breeze; to wander around in the Spirit — to be there with our king, Jesus, who laid his life down on a cross to invite us into his kingdom to feast on the fruit of this heavenly garden, and the creation he made for us to enjoy and cultivate in anticipation of him making all things new so that in it. Even as we enjoy fruit and wandering through gardens and forests — we are in his presence, discovering his goodness; experiencing heaven on earth in this overlap… Closing our eyes in prayer and opening ourselves to this heavenly reality changes how we see earth, and our calling here as God’s children.

So I want to invite you to contemplate this heavenly garden; to picture it in your mind’s eye — and I know for some of us this act of imagination is tricky; we do not all picture things in our mind’s eye — which is where some tangible experiences — getting out in a garden or forest and meditating on the beauty of trees and flowers — biting into a piece of fruit — might be a helpful exercise — and this evocative language in the Bible is maybe a helpful prompt too — conjuring something up for us as we read.

This sort of contemplation or meditation maybe is not part of the Christianity you have grown up with —
it is certainly foreign for me — and as part of opening the eyes of my heart this way I have read this book Meditation and Communion with God. It is not a cheap book, and there is plenty of tricky stuff in it as he makes the case that Reformed Evangelical folks like us who love the text of the Bible should grapple more with what it says about how our union with Jesus means we have been raised and seated with Christ in the heavenly realms — this is part of what the Bible says — and how the Bible describes behaviours and images — it is not just words on a page — that shape our lives and even our imaginations.

As he talks about what contemplation and meditation looks like he says that studies on how our brains work; how we learn and are transformed — which is often how we think we change, right — information leading to transformation — he says actually even at the brain level science is showing we have separate channels in our brain for processing visual information and stuff we hear — especially words —
and we learn better and understand better when pictures are added to words.

“Human beings have separate channels for processing visual and auditory information… Learning comprehension and retention is improved when pictures are added to words…”

— John Jefferson Davis, Meditation and Communion With God

He reckons meditation on Scripture can work best by linking words and images — especially pairing texts with propositions — texts that make truth claims — with texts that evoke images or tell stories of stuff we can picture:

“In our meditation on Scripture, we intentionally try to combine words and concepts with concrete images and narratives… A propositional text is paired with one or more pictorial or narrative texts that share a common theme.”

— John Jefferson Davis

So, we might take the proposition that we are raised and seated with Christ in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 2:6) — or the story of Jesus telling the rebel that he will be with him in a garden because of his desire to be part of Jesus’ kingdom of heaven (Luke 23:34). We might pair this idea of heaven being a garden with descriptions of a heavenly garden like we find in Revelation (Revelation 22). Where there is a vision of God’s throne room that kind of lines up with the prophets and Enoch — water flowing from the throne — and Jesus, the lamb is there too — and on each side of the river the tree of life is there — in a way that is hard to picture — it is on both sides of the river — maybe arching over it — bearing fruit that is to bring life; and healing…

I wonder if we imagine this image and pair it with the paradise garden of Eden, and all its beautiful fruit trees pleasing to the eye — and we place ourselves in this sort of garden with God’s throne in the middle — a place where we hang out with the gardener, and delight, with him, in his hospitality and abundance and artistry — the way he takes delight in each good thing he made in part because he made it to be enjoyed — and if we imagine prayer as walking with God, the gardener, in the breeze — in the Spirit — in the cool of this garden — I wonder if you realise you have access to this paradise any time you pray — no matter the circumstances going on in your life around you — that this is real and available; that we can close our eyes to the mundane; to our hunger and longing — to our temptation to find life in the hustle and bustle of other garden cities — or when life feels like a wasteland; we can be tempted in those moments to feel like we are exiled from God, but through Jesus that is not the case — we are in the garden again; we just have to go there in our imaginations.

Now — this might just feel like escapist fantasy stuff of little value when you are suffering — but it is also kind of the Bible’s answer to dealing with very real persecution. Revelation was a vision John sent to a church facing incredible persecution under a violent, beastly regime where Christians were occasionally set on fire in garden parties, or fed to wild animals for the amusement of the king — and this vision of heaven was a comfort in those moments — and the garden of Eden and the promise of the prophets was a comfort for God’s people living in Babylon. It translated into the real world too; it was not just part of holding on to Jesus — but these sorts of heavenly visions in their imaginations; a reminder that God is with us even when we feel like we are in the wilderness or suffering. Escapist fantasy is actually necessary if we want things to change — too — how else do we get a different pattern to what the world offers us in its sacred groves with its false gods — like prisoners, sometimes need to imagine our escape in order to get free.

How can we live as heaven-on-earth people with no images of heaven to shape what we pursue on earth? What we cultivate?

This is not just escapism. These descriptions in the Bible are not just escapist fantasy to comfort folks with some picture of the future — this sort of imagination of heaven is us envisaging what the Bible says is the future of this world — heaven and earth coming together — so that we live as citizens of heaven now. Imagining heaven as a garden was part of Israelites in exile planting gardens and building homes in Babylon — imagining paradise helps us create homes of beauty and hospitality that reflect the life of God — places of refuge or sanctuary… George Street Inverells where people experience fruit and hospitality and embrace.

It is as we enter heaven in our imaginations — using the imagery God supplies in his word, to spend time with him, that we are shaped to do the good works he has prepared for us (Ephesians 2:10), it teaches us how to be human, just as time in Eden, in the garden, was where the first humans in the story were meant to learn to cultivate and keep heaven-on-earth space, so they could be fruitful and multiply and spread God’s presence on earth. As we spend time with the gardener, tasting the goodness of heavenly life, it shapes us for fruitful life in his world.

September 16, 2025 Add Comment

Before the Throne — Chapter One — Gazing at the Son

This was part one of a sermon series preached at City South Presbyterian Church in 2024. You can listen to this on our podcast, or watch the video.

I do not know if you are the sort of person who follows news stories about strange phenomenon in the heavens — notable movements of planets, and stars, and the sun.

It turns out there are some heavenly events where if you want to look at them you need special glasses like this:

There was a total solar eclipse visible across a particular band of the U.S. in April 2024, and, well, when people looked at this heavenly light — or the darkness of the eclipse without special glasses — let us just say Google searches for “My eyes hurt” spiked specifically along the path of the eclipse as people looked to the heavens.

This event was not just big for sun watchers — there is a strand of Christian theology that teaches there will be a rapture as Jesus returns; where faithful Christians waiting for his return will be swept up in the skies into heaven — some of you might read the New Testament this way.

Rapture watchers in the U.S. were particularly excited that the town of Rapture, Indiana was in the direct path of the eclipse.

There is a little bit of a problem I think we hit when we want every prophecy to directly apply to the modern western world — and our brothers and sisters in the U.S. are sometimes particularly guilty of thinking these prophecies are going to be triggered events in their nation.

Anyway — this rapture idea is the idea that heaven is this skywards reality where, for God’s future to unfold, we need to be sucked up into heaven, and in some versions there forever in disembodied form — our souls living in this alternate universe forever in the future. If you wanted to map this out — and these are stills from a Bible Project video that is well worth a look — you would, in ‘rapture’ thinking treat heaven and earth as separate spheres, where we are presently living on earth but heaven is our future.

If that is your view then life on earth is about getting rapture ready, or ready for heaven — both for you, and for people you love. How we view heavenly phenomenon and where we are in the scheme of things actually shapes how we live now — and how we interpret events going on around us, even in the skies.

This series is an attempt to orient us; to help us think about where we are — how heaven and earth work, and how that shapes our life as people who believe the Gospel of Jesus.

If you have been around for a bit you will have seen this picture before — it is an attempt to show how ancient people — readers of the Old and New Testaments — would have pictured reality — where earth is a present reality for us creatures — while heaven is a present reality for the spiritual realm; God and other heavenly beings — sky beings.

And we can think of ourselves living earthly lives, cut off from any sort of heavenly reality…or denying it exists…

Or be, as the saying goes “so caught up in heavenly realities we are of no use on earth.”

The sweet spot — the spot that is our challenge as followers of Jesus who are dwelling places of God’s Holy Spirit — is to live in this overlapping reality — because this is where we are.

We are going to spend some time thinking about what this means — to live here — how we do it, and especially how to imagine heaven — from what we are given in the Bible — in ways that shape the way we live on earth. We are people who now live before the throne of God in heaven. We have access to heaven now — as a present reality, not a future one — and this is especially true as we pray — communing with God — and as we worship him. The time we spend “before the throne” will shape how we live.

In his opening to Ephesians, Paul says God, the Father of our Lord Jesus, has blessed us — he is talking about those who have found life in the story of the Gospel — it is possible in the first instance that the “us” he is describing is specifically Jewish Christians (Ephesians 1:3), but he will come back to apply all this to Gentiles as well in verse 13 — saying we are also included in Christ through the Gospel (Ephesians 1:13). God has blessed those of us who have had the Gospel change how we see reality; giving us the map. He says Jesus has blessed us — that is in the present tense — in the heavenly realms — this is not a future thing — with every blessing in Jesus (Ephesians 1:3).

His summary of the Gospel is this picture of God bringing all things in heaven and on earth under Christ — there is a hint here that heaven and earth are realities that will continue forever under God’s plan, but be united (Ephesians 1:8–10). Those of us who have believed that Jesus is the fulfilment and ruler of all things receive the Holy Spirit — becoming heaven-on-earth people — united to Jesus (Ephesians 1:13–14).

Paul opens his letter praying for his readers — that their eyes — or rather the eyes of their hearts — and by extension ours — might be opened to this reality behind the Gospel. Enlightened (Ephesians 1:18). Now, I reckon there is a story behind this idea of enlightening — Paul’s story. The story of when Paul met Jesus and had a vision of heavenly reality.

Paul’s back story in Acts actually begins with this bloke named Stephen. Stephen was one of the blokes appointed by the apostles to wait on tables and serve people so they could be freed to preach — and, well, he does not quite get the memo, because he preaches too. Stephen is seized and brought to the leaders of the Sanhedrin — the temple authorities. Stephen gives a sermon unpacking God’s good news story — the Gospel of Jesus. And it makes the watching crowd so furious they decide to kill him (Acts 7:54). And as the mob descends Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit — remember Paul’s words in Ephesians — looks to heaven — and this is not just the sky, he is looking into the throne room of heaven — heaven opened up — where he sees the glory of God — that is this Old Testament idea of an overpoweringly bright light — and Jesus, standing at the right hand of God — as the Son of Man from Daniel; the Son of God — the human and divine king. He sees this, and he tells them he is seeing it (Acts 7:55–56). At this the crowd starts stoning him to death, and Luke tells us this happens under the watchful eye of this Sanhedrin young gun named Saul — that is Paul (Acts 7:57–58).

As he dies Stephen keeps his gaze on the heavenly throne room and he speaks to the king he sees there — “Lord Jesus receive my Spirit” — and he echoes the words of Jesus on the cross when he said “Father forgive them” — and he dies (Acts 7:59–60). And Saul approves of his killing (Acts 8:1). In fact, Saul will go on to get papers from the Sanhedrin allowing him to kill anybody like Stephen he finds; he is going to destroy the church — going house to house (Acts 8:3).

And you might know the story — on the road to Damascus he is overwhelmed by a bright light from heaven (Acts 9:3–4). He is not wearing his special glasses — so his eyes hurt; he goes blind. He hears a voice, from heaven, saying “Saul, why are you persecuting me?” — and it is the voice of Jesus (Acts 9:5) — the Son of Man Stephen saw in the throne room speaking to him — and I reckon Paul is having the same sort of vision Stephen did.

But when he opens his eyes back to earthly realities after this heavenly encounter, he cannot see; the old Saul has been eclipsed (Acts 9:8). And a new man emerges as his eyes are opened; as a bloke named Ananias is sent by Jesus to restore his sight as he receives the Spirit (Acts 9:17). His eyes are opened as this happens (Acts 9:18), but I reckon the eyes of his heart have been opened by this heavenly encounter and his receiving God’s Spirit too — and he marks this by being baptised. From here on in Paul lives his life as someone who sees heaven and earth differently; shaped by his vision on the road of the risen and ascended Jesus.

I think Paul is reflecting on this experience when he writes some weird stuff in 2 Corinthians boasting about this “guy he knows” who was caught up into heaven — in paradise — where he saw inexpressible things (2 Corinthians 12:2–4). And his prayer for people reading Ephesians is that we might be swept up in this same life-altering vision of reality (Ephesians 1:18); that just as his encounter with heavenly light changed the way he sees everything, he wants this experience for everyone; that the eyes of our hearts might be enlightened (Acts 9:3; Ephesians 1:18); that we might see this heavenly reality so we know the hope we have been called to — the power of God at work in us (Ephesians 1:18–19) — not just to pull us to heaven when we die or in a rapture. God’s power is the power that raised Jesus from the dead — resurrecting power — and it is ascending power — it raised and seated him in the heavenly realms above all these other powers. It is the power God is ultimately going to use to reconcile all things — heaven and earth — through Jesus (Ephesians 1:19–21).

And this power is applied to us already, because again, this bit is present tense — as Paul talks about our lives now — where we are now. God has already raised us up with Christ and already seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus — that reality Stephen saw, so that he could see heaven opened and speak to Jesus as he was stoned to death, is our reality. This is where we are, in some sense, even while we are on the earth in our bodies (Ephesians 2:6).

This is a sort of mind-bending thing — Paul will write about it in other places, like in Colossians — this being our present reality. Since God has raised us with Christ — who is seated in the heavenly realms at God’s right hand, his human king in the heavenly throne room — this is where our hearts should be set (Colossians 3:1). And then our minds should be set — not on earthly things, but on heaven (Colossians 3:2–3). There is some sort of experiential thing we are meant to have because this is where we are… because it is where Jesus is. And this is what we are grappling with in this series.

Now. This is a challenge — right? We all know that bodily we are located physically in the very space we occupy as we read these words (or watch or listen), trying to get your head around this idea. I am not claiming this is simple, but the Bible is claiming it is true — and we are probing into what it means to live as though this is true — to know where we are on the map. In Colossians Paul sees this transition in how we think about where we are as part of how we are remade for life on earth.

Being transformed so that the image we bear is renewed and reflects the life and nature of its creator; the one enthroned in heaven as we see him revealed by his Son (Colossians 3:9–10).

So we live in this sweet spot.

Somehow, as our hearts and minds are opened up — as we see this heavenly reality — it is going to transform the way we live on earth. And there are — it seems — ways we can orient ourselves and locate ourselves in this overlapping reality so that it changes how we live — or die — like it does for Stephen and for Paul, and has for so many followers of Jesus since.

Part of this is about access — we are not excluded from God’s presence any more. If we conceive of heaven as a throne room where God rules — and we will spend some time looking at how the Bible pictures this sort of throne room — we are not kept out by guardian creatures with flaming swords. We are no longer far away from God, exiled from him.

Through his death and resurrection and ascension, and by giving us his Spirit, Jesus has brought us near — we are united to him; where he is, we are.

And we now have access to the Father through his Spirit who dwells in us (Ephesians 2:13, 18). We are situated there whether we are thinking about it or not, but I think one of the ways we should understand accessing the throne room is that we do this every time we pray; as we shut our eyes to earth we are opening them to heaven. But this is not just meant to pull us out of earth — rapturing us. Heaven is not our future reality; living in this space in the present also changes how we see life on earth. In the ancient imagination both images of gods and temples were heaven-meets-earth people and places.

Paul says as we are joined to each other and to Jesus by the Spirit we are a holy temple; a heaven-on-earth community built together as a dwelling place of God — by his Spirit — on earth — who are also united by his Spirit in heaven. So we approach God together as a sort of human temple — or priests — as we worship God; as we pray and recognise where we are together in our gathering and praising God (Ephesians 2:21–22). And I reckon the way we encounter God as those raised and seated with him is part of how God creates us in Christ Jesus. This word “handiwork” — it is the sort of word used of a craftsman. We are fashioned by God in Jesus to do good works on earth God has prepared in advance for us to do; we are his image-bearers crafted by him to bring heaven to earth as we embrace this new reality (Ephesians 2:10).

Paul’s prayer is that we — not so much with our earthly eyes — but with our hearts — as our hearts meet God’s Spirit — we might see this truth: that we are located in the heavenly throne room; seated with Jesus — that we have access to God — proximity to him — as beloved children of the Father who can approach him not just to ask him for things, but to come to know him (Ephesians 1:18; 2:6, 18).

There is a little hint of the Lord’s Prayer in the mix here I reckon — as Jesus teaches his disciples that we can approach God as our Father in heaven — that is a location — asking that his name be made holy; that his kingdom might come — his rule be reflected as his will is done on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:9–10). We only get a sense of what “in heaven” looks like as people in this kingdom if we spend time with our hearts and minds set on things above. We can only operate in this middle space in our bodies — as God’s handiwork and temple — bringing heaven to earth if we are captured by this vision of Jesus on his throne with his Father and that glorious light; like Stephen or like Paul.

And look — the pun is way overdone so I am sorry — but Paul is inviting us to be people who stare at the overwhelming brightness of the heavenly body of the Son, and the glory of his Father — not with special glasses, but by his Spirit. I am sorry… truly.

We do not need a rapture to take us into heaven — we are already there, and perhaps all we need is to see; to close our eyes in prayer and open our imaginations to see ourselves located before the throne; to have Stephen’s vision or Paul’s encounter with the resurrected Jesus occupy the eyes of our hearts.

One of the things I am hoping we might do in this series is think about how we engage our imaginations as we pray and praise God — as we come into the throne room. I am convinced that there are words on the pages of the Bible that are poetic — they convey images — and that these images might help us set our hearts and minds on things above; they might help us close our eyes to earth and open them to heaven and be useful metaphors or images that we can talk about, and picture — and perhaps even meditate on or contemplate as we encounter created images — art, or natural phenomenon — that help us set our eyes upon heaven. We will look at one a week — though they will overlap — and this week it is this idea of God being light — bright, overwhelming, blinding light — light that would make our eyes hurt if they had not been adjusted or enlightened so we can gaze upon it. There is a really rich thread of this metaphor you will find all through the Bible — from Moses through to Paul — and in descriptions of heaven — whether that is with Stephen, or in Revelation, or in the Old Testament prophets.

Like in Ezekiel, who describes Yahweh on his heavenly throne as almost impossible to look upon because of the radiance or gleam of his glory — gleaming, fiery, bright glory (Ezekiel 1:27). I wonder if as you pray you ever picture God as you speak to him, or his throne room. Part of this series was prompted by me realising that for a long time I kind of imagined God as just a bigger cosmic version of my dad. Now, you could psychologise that for me; I reckon it is a sign both that my dad did not do a terrible job of being a father — and there are lots of ways I know the image of God as a Father is confronting and challenging for people where that has not been your experience, and ways that image could be super unhelpful. And I kind of pushed into my thinking here because I reckon we have a tendency to fashion God in our own image in our imagination, not to look so much to the pictures we get in the Bible — and I was wondering what it would look like to pray imagining the God Ezekiel pictures on the throne he pictures in a way that crashes through our false imaginings… Or at least to see prayer as opening the eyes of my heart; setting it on things above. Imagining heaven the way the Bible invites us to.

And so I wonder what it would look like to pray, taking some of the images from these passages to fuel your imaginatoin; if as we close our eyes and reflect on this image for a bit — we might see this sort of picture in your heart differently as we approach God and locate ourselves in heaven; seeing not just the shining, radiant bright God, but his Son next to him. A Son of Light — light from light as we say in the Creed — or, as John’s Gospel puts it — Jesus is the light who shines in the darkness (John 1:4–5). He also describes God as light in one of his letters (1 John 1:5).

Both John and Paul use this language of coming into the light and being children of the light to describe having access to God again (Ephesians 5:8), and giving him access to us as we invite him to dwell in us by his Spirit. As we see God as this glorious, purifying, life-giving light who destroys darkness — the powers of sin, and death, and the ruler of the kingdom of the air — Satan — through Jesus. As we see God the way Stephen and Paul see him. As we come into his light we let this light expose us and kill those bits subject to earthly or other spiritual powers so we are illuminated; shining like Jesus does — shaped as children of the light (Ephesians 5:13).

I am going to invite you to use your imagination a you pray; to see yourself stepping into this light; being exposed; exposing yourself to God in ways that bring these things Jesus has destroyed to him to have them destroyed, so that we, his people, might become a light to the world. Pray Paul’s prayer that the eyes of your heart might be enlightened; that we might be those who gaze at the bright light of heaven; eyes opened to heavenly realities by the lens of the Spirit — that we might see him — without fancy glasses.

I want to suggest a bit of an exercise for you this week too — and I want you to be careful not to burn your eyes. I want you to make some time this week to head outside, on a sunny day — and just glance up at the sun and get a sense of its brightness. It is not as bright as the God who is light; it is an analogy of God’s brightness. Glance at the sun and then pray imagining yourself drawn into this light.

I hope that as we are able to see; to imagine; to position ourselves with Jesus in the heavenly realm it might help us see earthly life with a different perspective — whether we are facing suffering — even persecution — like Stephen, or tempted to hide in the darkness and wallow in sin; being caught up in the things of this world — the light might expose those as deadly and hollow and destructive. It might help us see heaven as this ultimate reality — a present and a future — so we devote ourselves to seeing God’s kingdom come on earth as in heaven — catching the vision that saw Paul turn from destroying God’s church to praying we be enlightened and swept up into God’s heaven-on-earth plan as those who have the power of God working in us.

You might not want to be part of this sort of weirdness — I totally get it. This is uncharted territory for most of us. But if you are someone who has been raised and seated in the heavenly realms — I want to invite you out of the comfort zone of your seat, and into this heavenly location, to experiment with praying imagining yourself entering the gloriously bright throne room of heaven as the Bible describes it.

September 15, 2025 Add Comment

How to pray (a guide for those trying prayer for the first time during this pandemic)

We live in anxious times. Rightly so. There’s a pandemic sweeping the globe. I heard this morning that over a billion people are currently in some sort of lockdown. And things are likely to get worse, at least here in Australia, before they get better.

Plenty of the countries on the global outbreak map are countries that are increasingly post-religious (please note, I’m not at all suggesting strong correlation or any causation here). But it struck me that in the secular western world, in anxious times, lots of people might feel this profoundly human urge — one that has given comfort to millions of people in human history — to pray. We might feel the urge to pray — prayer might even work — God might even be there and listening to our prayers. Prayer might calm our anxious hearts, it might help us to ‘be still’ and know that God is not distant, but present, in these times of crisis (that’s a whole other topic, but one way to put this idea to the test is to pray). We, in the secular west, might feel an urge to pray, a sort of haunting notion that it might do something for us, or that we might want to speak to a house that feels empty hoping that there’s something bigger than us present who we can ‘cast our cares’ onto; expressing our hopes, our dreams, our sorrows, our fears, and our anxieties. This is the condition that philosopher Charles Taylor says we modern westies live in — the Secular Age — an age haunted by the loss not just of God, but of the religious practices that help us make sense of our lives. If Taylor is right, we might feel the urge to pray, but have no idea how to do it. If that’s you, then this post is for you. A quick primer on how to pray — how to search, to probe, the haunted sense you might have to turn to something bigger than you, and not the government, in this moment we find ourselves in.

Christians have always believed that prayer is just speaking to God; an act of faith that God is there, God wants to hear us and have a relationship with us, and that God is directly accessible — you don’t need a priest, or a professional, or someone more holy than you to convey your prayers to God (though, when you struggle with how, or what, to pray, Christians believe that Jesus himself — and the Holy Spirit — give us strength to pray, and work in some sort of mysterious way to bring our prayers before God the father; but figuring out how the Trinity works as we pray is also beyond the scope of this post). Because we believe God is transcendent not just some weird bloke in the sky with a beard, but the being who gives us being — the foundation of the universe, the one, ‘in whom we live and breathe and have our being’ (as the Bible says) — and because we believe prayer is enabled by God’s Spirit at work in our beings — Christians don’t even believe you have to speak out loud to pray. But it sometimes helps to feel like you’re actually talking to somebody, and if you’re in company and praying together, then praying out loud is a great idea. It also helps, I find, to pray out loud so that you remember that prayer is fundamentally relational. And let’s face it, if we’re talking about 6 months in lockdown, talking to an empty room is probably the least of our worries.

Christians believe that prayer can be an act of love, you can say the sort of things to God you might say to a friend or loved one, you can thank God for good things (the whole ‘gratitude’ movement is just the secular age version of prayer — where we express gratitude to an empty universe for the fortune we enjoy, prayers of thanks let you direct that gratitude somewhere and lets you enjoy the benefits that the gratitude movement has harnessed). Giving thanks in crap, pandemic, times for good things around us will help us keep some sort of perspective, and sanity, and keep us looking out for good things so that we don’t fall into despair.

Christians also believe that prayer can be an expression of dependence — that we can ‘petition’ God to act, in ways we might petition the government. We can ask God for things, confident that he is a good God who gives — whose expressions of generosity include the goodness and beauty of nature, the cleverness and ingenuity of people, and ultimately, his invitation to be in a relationship with him because of, and through, Jesus. You might know that famous verse, John 3:16, God shows his love for the world by sending Jesus — who dies — ‘that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life’ — that’s not just eternal life in lockdown, but with God, in relationship with this loving being who is the foundation of the universe — who wants to hear from us.

Christians also believe prayer can be an expression of sorrow or repentance — an acknowledgement that we fail at things, that we don’t always want a relationship with God, that we live in ways that are destructive to ourselves and our neighbours (the pattern Jesus came to reverse both with his example, and the new life he gives us that includes taking up his call to ‘love the Lord your God with all your heart,’ and to ‘love your neighbour as you love yourself’ — we stuff up all three of those loves (for God, neighbour, and self), all the time — and while that could lead to a breakdown of each type of loving relationship (relationship with God, with people, and the sort of self-care we neglect through guilt and shame), we can instead, turn to prayer to help us put those relationships right. You can pray that God would intervene in life — yours, the life of those you love, the life of the world. And the Christian God does, even if sometimes his interventions are beyond our comprehension (especially during suffering and crap stuff — there’s a whole book in the Bible, Job, that explores this question).

Basically anyone can try talking to the God who is there, who made the universe, ‘in whom we live and breathe and have our being’ — when Paul says that bit, he’s talking to the people of Athens. They’re basically the opposite of our secular age; instead of pushing God out of the picture and feeling haunted by that loss, they’ve tried to pull every possible god into the picture. They’re haunted in a different direction (and maybe we’ve also replaced God with all sorts of little alternative gods without realising it?). Paul says even though the Athenian divine dance card is full, God still wants a relationship with them. He isn’t far away. All they have to do is seek him and they’ll find him. We seek God by prayer. So maybe you’re feeling alone; isolated; afraid… maybe you’re kind of wishing, or hoping, that there might be a God out there who cares in the midst of this chaos and darkness.

You can try prayer. Maybe you should. You can do it any time too — Paul says in one of his letters that we can ‘pray without ceasing’ — talking to God can be like the chat thread you’re keeping open on your computer screen, or the WhatsApp group you message with random thoughts and questions during the day.

Our best model for prayer is Jesus — there are other good prayers (as in people who pray, not just what to say) in the Bible. There are prayers written out in different books, by different people — the book of Psalms is basically a whole book of prayers that are songs. Daniel, in the book of Daniel, is a good picture of prayer during really rough times… but Jesus is our model for what the good human life looks like, and he prays. Lots. He often prays by withdrawing himself from the hustle and bustle of life — from distractions. To really zero in on his relationship with God. You might like to do that too — though that’s particularly hard if you live in a house with kids (and praying with them will probably help calm their anxieties in this moment too). Jesus famously provides a bit of a guide to prayer in Matthew’s Gospel (that’s Matthew’s story about Jesus’ life and teaching). Jesus teaches the most famous ‘model prayer’ of all — the Lord’s Prayer (a prayer that God’s kingdom would come — one that God answers as Jesus dies, and God’s Spirit gets given to people so that we can follow Jesus as king and have eternal life with him). It models talking to God in a relational way, thanking God for some stuff about God (“our father in heaven, hallowed be your name” just means ‘your name is great and holy — basically ‘you’re really great’). It asks God to act in the world (“your kindgom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”). It asks God to provide (“give us each day our daily bread”) — there’s a good case to be made that this is a prayer for God’s Spirit, the literal translation is ‘the bread of tomorrow today’ and in Luke’s version Jesus says the Father (God) gives us something heaps greater than Bread, his Spirit). It asks God to forgive us for the wrong things we do and sets us towards better relationships with others too (“forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us”), and it asks that we might live and act in certain ways consistent with what we’ve prayed (“lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…”). Our prayers can do all that stuff. Jesus also has some pretty good guidelines for praying in lockdown. Ones we can all follow. We don’t have to babble on using holy secret language, or say the right number of ‘Father Gods’ or ‘hail Marys’ or crack any code to make our prayers work. We don’t have to be super religious types. We can just talk. And God will listen. Why not try it. At the very least it’ll give you something to do during lockdown, at best it’ll help push you towards the God who is there, who made the universe, and who cares for you.

Here’s what Jesus says:

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” — Matthew 6:5-8

You can pray words you come up with yourself, but lots of Christians also find it helpful to pray prayers written by others (like the Psalms, or books of prayers from all sorts of people through history). You could try praying something like this to kick you off.

“God,

I don’t even know if you’re out there but I thought I’d give this prayer thing a go because I don’t know what else to do right now. I’m scared. I’m worried about this virus and what it means for people I love. For my family. For me. For my work. I don’t know if we’ll survive this. We need some sort of help. I ask that you would fix this. Whether that’s through scientists finding treatments and cures, or through some miracle we don’t understand. Fix this. Give us strength. Help us love each other. We don’t do a good job of that at the best of times, I don’t do a good job of that either. I get angry and selfish. I say things that hurt people. I see people as competition for resources. I’m sorry. God, if you’re out there, help me believe that. Help me see the good things you’ve made as good gifts. Thank you for trees, and birds that sing. For people and their brains — for stories that help me get through the day, and science that might help us survive. Thank you for colours, and food that smells good. If you’re there in those good things, help me find you, and so find comfort for my fears.”

Christians often say ‘amen’ at the end of prayers — you don’t have to, it just means ‘I agree’ — it’s a way to pray stuff together. Ultimately prayers work best if you’re actually in a relationship with God, not just casually dating, and the way that happens is through Jesus. Through trusting that Jesus is there, and that his prayer (for God’s kingdom to come) was actually answered. Then you can pray to God as someone who is his child (like Jesus did), and you can know that God is listening like a good father listens to their kids (partly cause that’s how the whole Trinity thing works). That changes the way we pray, but the one above might be a useful starting place if you’re in the more casual stage of a relationship — trying to figure out if God is there or not. Give it a go.

March 24, 2020

PrayerBook

My little sister reviewed The Social Network, and the way Christians use Facebook for her church. It’s a good review. Even if the audio makes her sound a little bit like a robot.

The review closes with some practical ways to use Facebook as Christians. You should listen to them. But this video seems as good as an intro I’m going to get to introduce this idea I’ve been using for a while to the whole world without seeming overly pious. I hear a lot of Christians bagging out Facebook because it “doesn’t promote real relationships” or it has replaced time with real people or because it promotes superficial relationships over deep ones.

I don’t get it. Sure. It can. It can be artificial. But any type of relationship can be artificial. Wrong use doesn’t negate right use. And let me suggest a cool right use. You know how Facebook randomly throws up faces on your profile in the left hand column? Wouldn’t Facebook be a more productive place, spiritually speaking, if every time you logged on to your profile you prayed for those six people. I don’t do it every time I log on – but I try to, and it has been a great way of remembering to pray for people you don’t see that often.

November 8, 2010

Playing while praying

Mikey raises the question1, on Christian Reflections, about whether its ever acceptable for a muso to start providing prayer muzak.

I say no.

I’d love to read your thoughts over there too.

1 Though he calls it something very different -“the post-sermon prayer tinkle” which to me sounds a little like a post sermon bathroom break, analogous to the obligatory pre-sermon bathroom break (if you don’t know about this, don’t ask. I think it’s called “Preacher’s Belly”… or it should be.

August 13, 2010

Atheists try to hack God

When the community of global atheists decided to meet in Melbourne next year they unleashed a horde of Christian hackers who attacked the convention’s website.

To retaliate a Facebook campaign was hatched to try to take God offline. DDoS attacks – Distributed Denial of Service – are a hacking favourite. They’re basically an internet flashmob. A bunch of people, and their computers, hit a server with an overwhelming load of requests and bang. It metaphorically explodes…

The atheists planned a day of prayer in a bid to shut down God.

“This is a call to all non-believers and advocates for freedom of speech to join us in a global co-ordinated minute of prayer with the aim of inundating God (in this context, the Christian god, God, as distinct from the Greek god, Zeus, the Egyptian god, Ra etc etc) with so many useless prayers that it causes his divineness to go offline as as result of our own DDOS (‘Divine’ Denial of Service).”

It would be incredibly funny if all their prayers (bar their intention) were answered in the affirmative.

November 25, 2009

On the Lord’s Prayer

I preached on the Lord’s Prayer today.

Here’s my sermon as a word cloud thanks to wordle…

Here are my points in list form (mostly from Matthew 6)…

  1. Jesus says “this then is how you should pray”… not “this then is what you should pray”… The Lord’s Prayer is not a script for a prayer.
  2. One of the great ironies in Christian culture is that we have taken the Lord’s prayer and done with it exactly what Jesus was telling people not to do. Before teaching people how to pray he teaches them how not to – he warns against babbling like the pagans. The Lord’s Prayer is not a mantra to pray over and over again, but a guideline…
  3. The Lord’s Prayer is short.
  4. Prayer is for Christians – we’re to pray for God as “our father”…
  5. “Hallowed be your name” is primarily a request, not a statement. I got this idea from John Piper. I’d always read that line as a statement about how great God’s name is. ..

    Sanctify can mean make holy or treat as holy. When God sanctifies us, it means that he makes us holy. But when we sanctify God, it means that we treat him as holy.

  6. Prayer shouldn’t be contrary to our actions. We shouldn’t pray for God’s will to be done and not be trying to do it, we shouldn’t pray for forgiveness without forgiving others…
  7. God, as our loving father, wants to provide for our material needs as well as our spiritual needs (which he provides through Jesus). We’re so scared of the prosperity doctrine that we kind of dismiss the idea that God has promised to look after our physical needs. I found Soph’s post on the fountainside pretty helpful on this point.
  8. The idea that our forgiveness depends on us first forgiving others is pretty confronting. It’s in the verses just after the Lord’s Prayer and comes up again in Matthew 18. This is probably a point that is underdone in our evangelical “faith alone” circles… here’s the bit at the end of the Lord’s Prayer.

    14For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

November 1, 2009

The unsingleness post

Right. So the post I wrote on singleness over the weekend has prompted a couple of follow up points (from the discussion in the comments).

Here are two extra ideas. And they’re for the guys (mostly).

There was a comment that attempted to point out that while the point of my post was that you shouldn’t necessarily be stressed or impatient, I personally had made significant life changes in order to pursue a girl.

I’m not suggesting for a minute that guys should not pursue girls. I’m not suggesting you sit on your backside and wait for a girl to fall into your lap (though that quite literally worked for someone I know). It’s like prayer – no reformed Christian that I know prays about something and does nothing – you pray and act accordingly. It’s the same concept.

So, two points.

1. If you’re a guy and you want a specific girl – pursue her (until she either says yes when you ask her out) or makes it clear she’s not interested (though my theory is you get three strikes – because you want to be sure).

2. If you just want a girl in general, then don’t be desperate. Desperation is a turn off. For either gender. In my opinion. You’re better off being patient and content.

This time I can’t claim to have received that advice from my wise old grandfather.

June 16, 2009

Prayer fail

One of the proofs that one of my atheist friends suggests would swing him towards faith is some sort of observable scientific testing of prayer.

The problem with this is that too often they then demand the test meet some “observable” criteria, that they set, like growing an amputee’s limb back…

I think prayer works, my personal experience of prayer suggest that it works, but then I tend to pray within the constraints of rational possibilities (eg not that an amputee will grow a limb back) consistent with instructions on prayer from the Bible.

There is however, another side of the coin. Where people can pray in stupid ways that just lend themselves to atheists pointing and laughing.

Like this 63 year old Indian man who has refused to bathe for 35 years as part of his regular prayer ritual.

I would suggest, that if you’re hanging on to some sort of superstition in order to achieve a particular, and stated aim, that 35 years is too long. Particularly if the aim is to have a male child.

An Indian man who fathered seven daughters has not washed for 35 years in an apparent attempt to ensure his next child is a boy, newspapers report.

Kailash “Kalau” Singh replaces bathing and brushing his teeth with a “fire bath” every evening when he stands on one leg beside a bonfire, smokes marijuana and says prayers to Lord Shiva, according to the Hindustan Times.

May 12, 2009

On a thing and a prayer

A few weeks back I made the suggestion that I was looking for something meaty to post about. But it had to be something that wouldn’t in any way disqualify me from future Presbyterian ministry. Simone suggested I write about prayer in church. I’m sure this was mostly prompted by a comment I made on her blog about a frustration I have about the “quality control” some churches employ when it comes to prayer time.

So here goes.

I think prayer is important in church. That’s obvious. I am in no way diminishing the fact that talking to our heavenly father is an integral part of church life – and must be part of the church service.

Public prayer is an interesting creature. Done well it can be encouraging and uplifting. Done very well it can spur people on to Godly thinking and concern for others – not to mention that faithful prayer is important to the spiritual life of a church community.

Done badly prayer can appear to be nothing more than a press release about the upcoming activities of a church. “We pray for the upcoming dinner socials, we pray for the car wash, etc…”. When prayer points are pulled straight out of the church notices they’re neither informative or insightful – it’s fair enough to pray for the fruit of an evangelistic event, or for an important training event, or in fact to pray for any ministry or event being run by the church in question. But to do it from the notice sheet verbatim is an easy trap for the nervous prayer – and serves nobody.

The other trap I think churches can fall into is forcing (or teaching or instructing) prayers to write down their prayers. Unless you’re a trained reader reading will always sound like reading not like natural speech. It’s unavoidable. Inevitable even. If you’ve got someone reading their prayer it doesn’t matter how well prepared they are – it will sound read. And things that sound read don’t sound like they’re from the heart – and prayer should be (and public prayer should sound) from the heart, not from a script. Especially not from a script that sounds overly honed for the benefit of keeping tight and presentable.

But… I hear you say. “But if people don’t write their prayers down they ramble and umm and ahh and that sounds so ungainly”… well I say “so what”. And if that’s really a problem train people in public speaking rather than get them to write down their prayers. Nobody wants to hear ramble – so train people to pray from points.

When Jesus was teaching his disciples how to pray (ie when he taught them the Lord’s Prayer), and later when he was in the Garden of Gethsemane prior to the crucifixion, there was no mention of putting your thoughts to paper first. He prayed from the heart and with purpose, and subject to God’s will. Those should be the criteria by which we judge church prayers.

I struggle to come to terms with the idea that prayer is like music – and that those serving the body of Christ through prayer should be as prepared as the musician or the preacher. I know where the intention comes from. I too am a pragmatist. But I don’t think there’s anything worse for outsiders than praying to our living God in a stilted, unfeeling manner – a manner I think is encouraged by insisting on scripted prayer.

That is all. Next time I feel the need to write something that will make people angry I’m going to pick on church music. Sacred cows are fun topics.

April 3, 2009