Get me my Holy Food Stamps

Now that God is occasionally succeeding in getting an lesson to penetrate the thick bones of my head, I feel like I should try to give Christians practical tips once in a while. I really disapprove of hollow sermons in which preachers use worthless slogans to get us all excited, without telling us what to do in order to please God and get his power working in our lives. There are a lot of simple things Christians can do to get the power flowing, and we don’t hear enough about them. Instead, preachers will say dumb things like, “Tell the person next to you, ‘The rest of your life is the BEST of your life,'” or, “I never met a negative person who did a positive thing.” Is that junk really supposed to be helpful? I don’t recall Elijah or Moses pumping out stale platitudes to save the Hebrews. Maybe they needed to go to a seminar in a hotel ballroom and get some real training.

Here’s something useful. Jesus told us to avoid vain repetition in our communications with God, but he never said to avoid repetition per se. In fact, the Psalms often speak favorably about “meditation,” which means repeating the word to yourself and considering it. Jesus told us to knock over and over until our prayers were answered. Sometimes repetition is very powerful.

Since I started praying in tongues a lot, I’ve had the spiritual gift of faith. This is not normal faith. With normal faith, you try REAL HARD to believe, and sometimes you succeed, and sometimes you don’t. With the gift of faith, the Holy Spirit shoots his own faith through you like water through a firehose. You can physically feel it. It’s like being caught in a tsunami. You feel like you’re going to be washed away if you don’t hang on.

There are things you can do to facilitate this experience. Obviously, you have to pray in tongues regularly. Without that, I have no answers for you. But that’s not all you need to do.

First, I’ve found that it’s good to pause after you ask for something and wait for the faith tsunami to show up. God wants to do things for us. Our own faith is nice for what it is, but to God, it’s a mud pie. It’s a crayon drawing for the front of his refrigerator. He wants us to use his faith, which is much better. So if you ask for something, then tell God you’re waiting for his faith, and hold on, very often the flood will follow in a few seconds.

Second, thank him repeatedly. Ask for something, wait for faith, and then thank God over and over for answering your prayer. You will find that it’s like holding up the roof of a tunnel so the faith can pass through. It really works. I can only guess at the reason. Faith is something that moves from God to us and back to God, and thanking him keeps the channel open. You can thank him a hundred times without stopping, if it works for you. It’s repetition, but it’s the farthest thing from vain.

Obviously, there is more to prayer than this. You shouldn’t get the idea that it’s all about asking for things. You need to spend time examining yourself and admitting your flaws to God with complete candor. You need to praise him. But if you want to get things done by supernatural means, thanking him will be a huge help.

And God does want us to ask for things. He is not busy. He does not resent it. He does not want you to get off your butt and fix things all by yourself, no matter what ill-informed preachers who used to be football coaches may tell you. He told Jesus to sit at his right hand while he made his enemies his footstool. He told the disciples to give no thought to financial concerns. God is generous, and he can’t be what he is unless he gives, all the time. How is God supposed to be generous without giving? He tells us to give, all through the Bible. Would he do that if he weren’t giving every second of every day? Is God a hypocrite? Does he heap heavy burdens on us, while he himself won’t touch them with his finger?

When you ask for help, you are admitting you’re a welfare case. We’re all receiving things we don’t deserve, just like the people who wait for government checks every week. We do a little of the work ourselves, but God wants to do most of it. If we could succeed without him, we would have reason to be proud, and we would have little reason to praise or acknowledge him. So he wants to help, even with little things.

You may think you’re capable of handling small jobs without help, but you’re not. I once broke my foot trying to walk across the garage. Don’t mistake God’s patience and grace for your own strength. You can’t even be sure you’ll get your next breath without help. Admit it.

Give this stuff a try and see what happens. It works for me.