Prayer

My recent prayer requests have been about prayer itself. I listened to a few sermons on prayer, and it never occurred to me that praying was so difficult. Tim Keller says that it's easier to preach for 30 mins than it is to pray for 30 mins, and it's so true! Our minds get so distracted when we're praying. The mere sound of an IM or text message will tempt us to put our prayers on hold just to see what they say.

But more personally, I found my prayers so repetitive, and pretty much like a groceries list. There was no love or adoration in my prayers. It was pure business. Especially being a fourth year now, so many different things have been occupying my mind: school, future career, family in Korea, living situation for next year, church, small group, and the list goes on.

I realized something though. It is okay for our prayers to be repetitive. It is okay to constantly ask God for things. Christ, in fact, commands us to pray like this--to be persistent, to constantly knock at his door even to the point where we pretty much bother him. Why can we do this? It's because we have a basis for our prayers. Our basis is that God is "Our Father". Notice that when Christ teaches us how to pray, he doesn't say "Our King" although he is, or "Our Creator", although he is. The first two words "Our Father" state our basis for our prayers, that it is only because we are his children that we can come to and pray to him intimately.

Just as children ask their parents for things, we should be praying to God about everything we want or need. And then as Our Father, God will either give us what we ask for, or he will give us what we should have asked for. Our Father will always answer our prayers.

-Simon

Sin Is Everywhere!

Every Sunday night, I've been going over Tim Keller Bible studies with Yoejin and Joe to prepare for small group. So far it's been going really well. I feel like I've been learning so much about sin, gender roles, and Genesis 1-3 in general.

There are two things that blew my mind.

1. I always knew that men and women had different gender roles. I also knew that these respective gender roles do not entail differences in status. Men and women were created to compliment each other. Men are better at certain things than women are, and vice versa, women are better at certain things than men are. I love this one quote by Matthew Henry:

"Not made out of his head to top him, not out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected and near his heart to be beloved."

But what blew my mind was how both men and women together were made in the image of God. It's not "man was made in the image of God and woman was made in the image of God". It's "man and woman were made in the image of God". See the difference? The only time God refers to Himself as "we" or "us" is when he is about to create us as male and female. Since both males and females "reflect" the being of God, it means that God has all the traits associated with human maleness and femaleness. Hence, only as male-female together can we show forth and understand the full range of God's character. The relationship men and women have is a reflection of the relationship within the Godhead itself. God is both unified and diverse.

2. The second thing that blew my mind was the fact that the fall caused sin to touch upon all aspects of creation. In one sense I knew this, but only on surface level. When I thought about sin, I only thought of it as affecting humans directly (fleshly desires, which encompasses a whole mess of crap in the world, spiritually, culturally, etc.). But sin affects every part of creation including psychological disorders, physical illnesses, and even natural disasters. Always in the back of my mind, I knew this. But restudying all of this again kind of opened my eyes again. My answer to "why are there natural disasters that kill innocent people" was always "sin", but I always just said that as a cop out answer. But it's true, and now I know why "sin" is the correct answer.

Tim Keller. Why are you so smart?

-Simon