Have you ever received a gift and were super excited about it?
Maybe it was the latest tech gizmo. Perhaps you were cutting-edge in the 1980s. You were right at the forefront of technological advances, and your family knew it. So they splurged. They purchased you a portable telephone for $4000. You received “the brick”, a Motorola 8000x. At 2.5lbs, this was giant innovation in the world of communications. After a 10-hour charge, you were able to talk for 30 minutes from wherever you wished before the phone needed charged again. Receiving this gift, you were excited. You knew that it would revolutionize your life, that it would change your existence. You knew that you would use this cell phone each and every day for years upon years upon years.
Maybe tech isn’t your thing. Perhaps you get excited about clothing. Do you still remember the excitement over receiving your favorite shirt, the one you had been longing after? The shiny, pearl-snap buttons. The big wide collar. The orange, brown, and yellow zig-zag pattern. The polyester. It was great! It was your favorite shirt. You knew that you’d wear this shirt at least once a week for years upon years upon years.
Ok. So maybe tech and fashion weren’t your deal. Maybe you are a kitchen person. You like the things that help you to make or to serve food. For you, it was your first set of Tupperware. The pea-green containers with the clear lids. The cute little sound they make when you “burped” them just right. Yes. That Tupperware was the best gift ever! It would always find a home in your kitchen.
If you are like me, there are many times in life when you have been blessed with some pretty neat gifts. Toys that you were excited about when you were a kid. Clothes that you were excited about as an adult. Technology that you felt would make your life easier. Things for the kitchen that would be beneficial to your way of life. Items that would enhance your hobbies. The list goes on and on and on. For most people within the US, we have had the privilege of receiving a large variety of material things. Things that we have wanted. Things that we have needed. Things that we have felt that we could not live without.
You know what happens to all of these things, right?
They don’t last. The cutting-edge cell phone is quickly replaced with one that is even more cutting-edge. What was once incredible technology quickly becomes out-of-date. Fashion? Forget about it. If you want to be up on the current fashion trends, the market demands that you are constantly changing. What is in is out and in again before you know it. Almost as soon as you buy a shirt it is out of style. Plus, even if you aren’t worried about style, you know things don’t last. Stains, spills, rips, tears. Eventually the nicest pair of jeans will need to be retired. Material things fade. They deteriorate. They perish. They don’t last. Even Tupperware gets cracked or the lids get lost or it gets left at the church pot-luck (which I hope is something that can happen again at some point in the future).
The best material gifts (as well as the worst ones), the ones that we were the most excited to receive just don’t last. They go out of style. They get unused. They break. They get lost…or, in some cases, we just forget about them.
This past Christmas, I purchased a gift for our family that I thought might revolutionize the way that we cook, the way we eat. I purchased a pressure cooking, slow cooking, yogurt making, vegetable steaming, sautéing, baking, roasting, broiling, dehydrating, air fryer. We were excited.
Now, to be clear, the gift of this multi-functional air fryer was given to the family as a whole because I knew that we would all enjoy the food that it would make, but I also knew that the appliance couldn’t be given by itself. Something more needed to be attached to the gift…the promise that I would be using it, especially in terms of the air frying. This was not a gift that either Silas or Christa would enjoy if I had given it with the expectation that they would be cooking me food in the thing. That would not have been received with excitement. No, I gave an air fryer, and I gave the promise that whenever we wanted air-fried food, I would do it. We were excited to see how this new type of cooking would change the way we eat.
I’m betting at this point you have it pretty well figured out where I’m headed with my example. Since purchasing said air fryer, the one that would revolutionize our cooking and eating, very few things have been air fried. Granted, we’ve used other aspects of the appliance (such as using it to pressure cook, call for pizza, fold the laundry, etc., etc.), but air frying? Not so much.
Call it laziness. Call it forgetfulness. Call it whatever you like. The fact remains. I purchased an air fryer. We were excited. Now, just a little over four months later, the excitement has faded, and the air fryer is mostly forgotten. It has been added to the list of gifts that offer little lasting value in the grand scheme of life.
Now, at this point I could go a couple of ways in the devotional. We could continue to talk about materialistic goals and dreams and how they really aren’t that important or meaningful. We could talk about commercialism. We could talk about how to give better gifts, or alternative gift-giving strategies. Or, we could talk about something else. Turn down a little different path. Let’s do that.
Here’s what I am wondering…
How often do we receive a spiritual gift from the Lord that we leave unused or is forgotten? How often does God give us something, even something that we show initial excitement about, and after a while we just kind of put it on a shelf and forget that we had ever been given that gift in the first place? Do we forget about the spiritual blessings that we have received in the same manner that we have the tendency to forget about the physical blessings that have been given to us?
Just this week, I saw a small conversation on prayer with NT Wright (an author and New Testament theologian among other things). In this conversation, he spoke about the gift of prayer and the effectiveness of prayer within his own life, particularly in situations where he did not have a clue about what he was doing. For me, it was a worthwhile couple of minutes, and I was interested to hear what he was saying; however, as he spoke, my mind was directed along a slightly different path.
The gift of prayer.
The GIFT of prayer.
The gift of PRAYER.
This is a gift that I have been given by God. This is something that I have been handed by the Father through the sacrifice of the Son and can exercise in the power of the Spirit. I have been given a GIFT! Bolded. All caps. Emphasized. Of PRAYER! Also bolded. All caps. Emphasized. I have been given the opportunity to converse with God. Me. In a personal and meaningful way. With the expectation that God hears! With the expectation that God speaks! What a remarkable, amazing, incredible gift! This trumps a giant box filled with a cell phone, shirt, Tupperware, air fryer and chocolates!
Unfortunately, as with other gifts in my life, this gift of prayer has seldom been used to its full potential (if it has ever been used to full potential). Much like the aforementioned air fryer, I will at times pull it out to accomplish something or another, but true air frying…not so much. Even though I have gone through phases of excitement concerning prayer (You mean that I get to talk to the Creator of the universe!!!!), there are also occasions where I kind of put prayer on a shelf, where it is neglected to gathering dust. So much potential sitting there wasted.
When E. Stanley Jones (an influential missionary, writer, evangelist) wrote about his life and his “success”, one of the things that he mentioned was prayer. For him, prayer was crucial, prayer was central. Prayer was so important that he would dedicate an hour in the morning as well as an hour in the evening to pray. The rest of his day, the rest of his life depended upon this time spent praying, conversing with God. This gift of God that was given to Jones was not something to be set aside, to be ignored. It was something that was to be embraced, to be enhanced, to be valued and cherished and encouraged. For Jones, prayer was important, and he wanted for it to be important to others in their walk of faith as well. He even said, “If I had only one gift to make to the Christian church, I would offer the gift of prayer.”
The gift of prayer.
Do you use it?
Really?
Or is it just some kind of lip service that you offer before a meal? Has prayer been relegated to the “open in case of emergency” department?
Is prayer a gift that you are still excited about? Have you exercised your gift and spent time using it, going over all of the ways that it works? Has it become a critical portion of your day?
Or is it sitting on a shelf somewhere, gathering dust?
Friend, we’ve been given a great gift. The gift of prayer. What a blessing it is that we have the chance to pray, to communicate with God. Too often, I have allowed this gift to go the way of so many physical blessings, setting it aside, not allowing it to reach its full potential in my life. It is time for this to change, for me to embrace prayer, to be excited once more, and to work on something that has eternal significance…my relationship with God. As I do, I hope that you do the same. I hope that you experience prayer as a gift, and I hope that you seek to use that gift in your lives. In so doing, let’s take some advice from E. Stanley Jones and begin with the example of the disciples.
“Lord, teach us to pray.”
~ Luke 11:1
Lord, teach us to pray!
Start right there, seeking Jesus, asking him to pray.
If you received a kitchen appliance that could do 57 things, you would want to learn how to use it. You’ve received an even better gift, and you have the opportunity to learn how to use the gift from the one who made the gift possible in the first place. Why not ask? Why not start there?
Lord, teach us to pray!
May that be our starting point (and our continuing point) as we engage in this remarkable gift that we have received from God.
~ Pastor Chris
