Bryan Richardson – Page 47 – The Everyday Prayer

Pillar

Re: Verse reading–Exodus 12:1-14, 24-27, 13:8-9 (day three)

“This observance will be for you like a sign on your hand and a reminder on your forehead…” You can lead a people out of 430 years of forced servitude, but they forget in the morning. You can stumble through words of wisdom you didn’t know you had in you to guide a foolish child, but you won’t remember that saving grace next week. God knows that we’re prone to such lapses in our thinking and in our living. “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,” says one of the most honest hymns ever written. When we forget God’s provision, we get in trouble. God says to remind one another: Set up a pillar, make a feast, commemorate a day so you will not forget. How are you marking God’s saving activity in your life?

Identity

Re: Verse reading–Exodus 5:1-2; 6:1-8; 7:1-5, 14-18; 8:1-3, 16, 20-21; 9:1-4, 8-9, 13-18, 25-26; 10:3-11, 21-22, 28-29; 11:1-5 (day three)

“I am the LORD.” This little phrase of self-identification frames much of what God says to Moses at the outset of the confrontation with Pharaoh. The question of identity was an important one to Pharaoh. When Moses demanded freedom, Pharaoh wanted to know the identity of the one behind the demand. Pharaoh placed no credence in the name of the LORD, but God’s repetition of his identity to Moses was more about shaping a people called by his name than introducing himself to Pharaoh. Israel’s Egyptian masters resisted the LORD’s identity, and they would die by that name. The LORD made short work of that. The longer question was this: Would the children of Israel live by that name? And so the question comes to us.

Action

Re: Verse reading–Exodus 3:1-14; 4:1-15 (day three)

“I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.” If the universe had a beginning, something other than the universe must necessarily exist in order to have made that beginning possible. And that “something other” must necessarily have the ability to decide to initiate the universe. That ability is called will, which means the “something other” is a personal being. If you’ll believe it, the Bible reveals the personal being is God. There is nothing that inherently prevents the spiritual realm from continuing to interact with the physical realm. God interacts with the world. Regularly. Moses saw it, paid attention, acted, led a people out of slavery, and built a nation from which came Jesus Christ. God acts in history now. The Bible tells you specifically how this goes. So read. Heed. Act accordingly.

Big

Re: Verse reading—Exodus 1:8-2:10 (day three)
“The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do.”

The saving of the lives of babies in the midst of a campaign of genocide was dangerous work in the face of the absolute power of the Pharaoh. But these women came to the task with courage and not a little savvy. Did they make it up as they went? They might have felt like it at times. Here’s what we can know: Given the existence of two powers—God and Pharaoh—one of the powers had to give, and the midwives understood that it wouldn’t be God. With that large thought firmly in mind, they proceeded to work out what that would mean for how they lived from day to day. We would do well to think as big.

You

Re: Verse reading–John 21:1-25 (day three)

“Lord, what about him?” We’ll often pursue anything except the hard work of self-leadership. Self-leadership understood in light of our apprenticeship to Jesus is the act of ruthless moral inventory, confession of sin, and training in righteousness. In Psalm 139, we see the proper progression of thought towards self-leadership: “I hate those who hate you, Lord…I count them my enemies.” And then, “Search me, God…know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me…” [Emphasis added] This is a move from external observation to internal yielding. Peter moves in the exact opposite direction. After discussing the need to surrender his spirit to Jesus’s lordship, Peter moves to the far less painful topic of other people. Jesus rebukes him, as he will all of us: You. Follow. Me.

Knowledge

Re: Verse reading–John 20:10-31 (day three)

“These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God.” The truth claim that John presents is not one that is testable with litmus paper. We don’t have a test tube for ascertaining the existence of liberty or love or patience—or the existence of historical events like the Civil War or the resurrection of Jesus—and yet we can know the reality of these ideas and occurrences through trustworthy witnesses who have established their credibility in the community of men and women. John says to us: “I saw these things. Hear me out. Listen to what I learned about the person of Jesus—his character, mind, and mission.” Get to know Jesus through these witnesses. By their record you can come to faith. And then you can come to knowledge.

Testimony

Re: Verse reading—John 19:28-42 (day three)
“The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true.” The testimony of the church is that the Bible is the written word of God, infallible and trustworthy. But the Bible didn’t just drop in from heaven. Rather, “men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” That is to say, it came to us through the eyes, ears, and minds of human beings. It’s for human beings because it’s by human beings. It’s what they heard. It’s what they saw. It’s what they knew. It’s the truth. The glory of the sovereign, triune God’s creative, redemptive work of unspeakable grace got written in a way that human beings can read it and understand it and find salvation through it. The Bible: the mysteries of heaven revealed through a voice we recognize as one of our own. Trust it.

Capable

Re: Verse reading—John 15:1-17 (day three)
“I chose you.” Every action that a person carries out takes place in a world in which God has already acted. Before anyone else loved the world, God loved the world, John tells us (both in his gospel and later on in his first letter), and so when we attempt to love someone, we do not do so alone and unaided, for then it would be impossible for us to love. Rather, we do so as a person who has received love from God, and therefore we can love another person. In the same way, before anyone else believed the human race capable of making something good out of the good universe God placed us in, Jesus believed it. Only with his soul-saving power will that happen, but it will happen. He was the first to declare it so.

Responding

Re: Verse reading–John 14:1-14 (day three)
“…Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” vs 3

Moses made that request before Philip did. God replied to Moses that no one would be able to endure the sight of God’s face; he would see all of God he needed to see by beholding God at a distance, with his face turned away. Jesus replied to Philip that he would see all of God he needed to see by beholding the God the Son. We will not see God on our terms, but on his. But the view that God allows on his terms is enough to build our entire lives on. The question, then, is not, “How much of God have you seen?” but, “How are you responding to however much of himself God has revealed to you?”

Live

Re: Verse reading–John 13:1-17; 31-38 (day three)

“He…began to wash his disciples’ feet.” Jesus saw an opening to love them, and he took it. It is possible that we’ve thought of Jesus as the author of object lessons, and that we have become dulled to recognizing love when we see it. Jesus did not do this in order to teach his disciples a lesson, though it did accomplish that. He did not do this in order to put them in a state of awe that the Lord would be so gracious as to stoop to such a lowly function, though it did strike them with wonder. Jesus did this because he loved them. Love is the way God lives. Therefore, love is the only way to live the eternal kind of life. At some point, we must stop theorizing and start living. Jesus will teach us to live.