The Fermenting Life of Prayer

Written by Jesse Furey

Recently, my wife Jenny has added “sourdough bread-maker” to her ever expanding list of vocational superlatives. She is not alone. If anything good comes out of this COVID19 lockdown, it might be in the home bread-making industry. Sourdough is a thing now. People even name their starters—a fermenting lump of soggy dough. And why not name it? It is alive, after all. Ours sits on the counter in an old peanut-butter jar from the 1980’s, loosely covered, bubbling and shifting. A hidden life, fermenting in the dark of our cool kitchen. 

Lately I’ve been wondering if the hidden prayers of a small, unassuming remnant of Christian brothers and sisters might work like that sourdough starter. Over the course of church history, renewal and revival has most often been sparked not by the big and famous, but the small and unseen. Remnants—what Martin Luther called “little churches within the church” committed to praying--or fermenting and bubbling--in the hiddenness of living rooms and haystacks and church basements. 

Of course, this hiddenness and smallness is not only a feature of renewal in church history, is it? We can look to Jesus himself to see the fermenting power of the few who are committed to one another and to prayer, as my friend Gerry McDermott has noted: 

“We see the same pattern in Jesus’ ministry. Why didn’t he spend much time with crowds? Why didn’t he go after them when they wandered after getting fed, or when they turned away in repulsion because of his hard sayings? Instead he spent the vast majority of his time with the remnant, the twelve. He went deep with them, and trusted that their inter life, which he cultivated for three years, would radiate. Their lives would attract others.”

Their lives did radiate and attract others. They fermented in the hiddenness of life with Jesus and communal prayer. Why couldn’t it be the same with us, now? Sure, “meeting” online is...less than ideal. But God often moves in the less than ideal times. What better time to show his power and glory than now? What’s more, our neighbors are thinking more about ultimate questions of life and death and meaning now than ever. 

We can’t plan revivals, and renewal is God’s work. But we can commit to pray together in small groups—for Gospel renewal in our land. For churches to be planted and revitalized, and to live together as friends in the Kingdom of God. For families to be healed and communities to flourish. We can “stand before [God] in the gap on behalf of the land” (Eze 22:30). Who knows what might come of this kind of fermenting, hidden prayer in small groups? Who knows what kind of life might bubble and grow in the darkness of this pandemic? 

Asking New Questions: What is God Up To?

Written by Jonathan Bowell

Some people hate when a song gets stuck in their head. I rather enjoy it. I’ll sing it over and over again, trying my layman’s best for a harmony until my throat aches or my wife yells at me to leave her alone. What good are killer harmonies unless someone else hears them? Sticky songs become a sort of soundtrack for my day, as if I was a character in a movie.

I feel the same way about Bible verses. Sometimes a verse will get stuck in my head, or perhaps my heart, and give shape to everything else I think about. It happened recently with Psalm 111, which says in verses 2-4:

“Great are the works of the Lord,
    studied by all who delight in them.
Full of splendor and majesty is his work,
    And his righteousness endures forever.
He has caused his wondrous works to be remembered;
    The Lord is gracious and merciful.”

The Psalmist states that those who delight in God study his works. That is, when they read the Bible they don’t ask first and foremost, “What does this passage contribute to my broader theological framework?” or, “What does this passage tell me about how I am supposed to live?”  Rather, they ask, “What is God up to?”  And not only is that a helpful question to ask when reading scripture, but also when reading our lives. 

Paul Tripp says, “Human beings do not live based on the facts but based on their interpretation of the facts. You don’t actually respond to what’s going on around you, you respond to the sense you have made of what is going on around you – always carrying around an interpretative grid to make sense of your life.” What if our interpretative grid for this season of coronavirus and quarantine was the simple question asked with hopeful curiosity: “What is God up to?” Not because we think we can understand every detail of God’s plan or because we want to explain away our pain, but because God is working his grace into our lives and he wants us to sense it and sync up with it. That is what Psalm 111 is all about. This sort of “interpretative grid” allows us to look at churned up soil and, instead of seeing a destroyed earth, see the perfect conditions for growth beneath the surface. 

Allow me to apply this to our church plant. Just a few months ago, our church plant was beginning to gain momentum. We had just launched our third community group, welcomed in our second wave of new members, and were two weeks away from moving our Sunday gathering into a local elementary school when the chaos broke loose. It has taken time, but we have begun to ask, with hopeful curiosity, “What is God up to?” As a result, our vision is coming into focus on the three ways He is cultivating growth in our church.  

1.  A renewed focus on prayer. Through both an increase in needs and an increase in time, God is cultivating a spirit of prayer in our body. We may have less face-to-face conversations with our brothers and sisters and the people we are seeking to reach, but we can now have more face-to-face conversation with God on their behalf. He is making us into a truly praying church--something that, if it depended on my leadership, would not have happened otherwise.  

2.  A renewed appreciation for our friendships. It is easy in a church planting context to grow tired of the same old people you see every week and become burdened by all the work that goes into hosting a Sunday gathering.  But this season of physical distance is reminding us of the great blessing of being together, and our excitement is growing to create stronger rhythms of "life together". In fact, God is already strengthening our bonds through more prayer for one another and our weekly connection via social media. 

3.  A renewed commitment to micro-mission.  By "micro-mission" I mean those small acts of love for the people closest to us. Dreaming about how to bring Gospel transformation to the city is good, but it's important we remember it always starts "close to home.” As our centers of gravity have shifted, our people are intentionally reaching out to, serving, and building stronger relationships with neighbors, close friends, and their immediate family members. God is giving us opportunities to move towards those we normally take for granted. My intent in sharing these examples with you is not to promote cheap positive thinking. The pain is real and if we move too quickly past it we will miss the God who is at work in the midst of it. But there is more going on than meets the eye at first glance. God is up to something beneath the surface. “Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them.” May the lyrics of Psalm 111 be to you an interpretative magnifying glass through which you investigate your suffering for signs of grace. May they be a louder and stickier soundtrack than your doubts and fears. 

The Beautiful in the Dirt

Written by Holly Paulette

[Note from the author: This piece was written in September 2018, shortly after Hurricane Florence hit the East Coast. We thought the sentiments were relevant for this time in history, too.]

My sister and brother-in-law live near the beach. It’s idyllic—walks on the beach before work, dinners on the water, early morning surfing, and weekends on the ocean. My sister has always dreamed of this life, and her husband was created for the water. Life at the beach is a calm life, and I yearn for a rhythmic peace that looks like their days. 

But then a hurricane hits. 

That picturesque scene is unimaginable in the wake of this storm. As I’m writing this from the comfort of our mountains, my sister just texted me, “Part of Oak Island pier is gone.” Water once tame is flexing its power as it swirls and rushes and floods and, quite simply, demolishes. It was already there, though. That power. That strength. Dormant beneath the façade of calm and beauty, the ocean is strength personified. If God wants it to roar, it roars. A hurricane wakes up that power. 

The thing about a hurricane is that it follows no pattern. The damage isn’t done to a specific group or targeted area. 

Natural disasters strip us of the assumed predictability of newsworthy, widespread tragedy. We’re becoming used to distant reports of wartime destruction and bombs that wipe out neighborhoods and beyond. But the annihilation that a natural tragedy such as a hurricane has the power to commit isn’t targeted. It just simply destroys everything in its path.

In the unpredictability of a natural disaster, God is sovereign and in control. I think that we struggle so deeply with understanding the “why” of this weather because we want to maintain control. We want to be able to forecast our futures and predict our demise. We want to sit in our westernized ease and expect no harm. A natural disaster is a wake up call to God’s power, His strength, and His glory.

I’m not sure there’s a better picture of our smallness than the effect of a hurricane. 

So what do we do? I don’t know about you, but I am a doer. I can’t not. I want to fix. I want to be part of change. But for us fixers, we’re tiny compared to this mess. 

So we pray. Cynicism doubts its power, but oh I know it works. I’ve been the recipient of what feels like thousands of prayers recently, and I’m convinced He hears and He acts. It’s who He is.

In Shannan Martin’s book, Falling Free, she points us to the cross:

“What I’m beginning to see, though, is that God doesn’t fix my weakness by making me strong. He becomes my strength in my perpetual weakness. He takes over. Constantly. He swoops in, ruffles my hair, and says not to worry, then charges to the top of the mountain I’m facing—the king of every hill I’ve ever stood upon with shaking knees. I am weak, and he is strong. He’s all the strength I need, and my weakness doesn’t have to flee in order for His presence to reign.

“God is enchanted by my frailty. It’s why I need him. It’s why he showed up and never stops.”

One of my very favorite children’s books, Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Peña, has my charge following this storm. The main character, CJ, gets off the bus with his grandmother in a rougher part of town.

“How come it’s always so dirty over here?”

She smiled and pointed to the sky.

“Sometimes when you’re surrounded by dirt, CJ, you’re a better witness for what’s beautiful.”

Let us follow his grandmother’s instruction and see the beautiful in the dirt. Watch for the helpers, as Mr. Rogers once said. 

And pray. Pray expecting God to show up, because He never stops. Because His glory is the beautiful in the dirt. We’ll see it soon—I’m sure of it.