Month: September 2024

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Why Pray Before Meals?

I was eating in a local restaurant. I observed a young couple as they occupied a booth across the room. When their food arrived, they held hands, bowed their heads, closed their eyes, and prayed before they ate.

Why did they do this?  A cynic might say that it was just an expression of Bible-belt cultural religiosity. Someone else might accuse them of putting on a show of piety, like the legalistic Pharisees of Jesus’s day who made long public prayers for the sake of appearance.

I’d like to think they prayed because they were sincerely grateful to God. I hope it was because they believed it was important to express thanks to our Creator for his good gifts. Whatever their motivations, I offer three reasons to grace our eating and drinking with thanksgiving.

The example of Jesus

On more than one occasion our Lord blessed food before he ate with others. When he miraculously fed the five thousand, and later the four thousand, he looked up toward heaven and prayed a prayer of thanksgiving (Matthew 14:19, 15:36). When he ate the Passover meal in the upper room, he “took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples” (Matthew 26:26).

Jesus shared a meal with two of his followers after his resurrection. They did not recognize who he was until “he took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and began to give it to them” (Luke 24:30). If the Son of God thought it was necessary to give thanks before eating, should we do less?

A habit of gratitude

The New Testament exalts thankfulness, “always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 5:20). When the apostle Paul said that as a liberated Christian, he was free to eat all kinds of foods, he was careful to add, “with thankfulness” (1 Corinthians 10:30, 1 Timothy 4:3). So we find him aboard a ship giving thanks to God for food in the presence of unbelieving prisoners, soldiers, and seamen, “in front of them all” (Acts 27:35).

In his instructions about foods and Christian liberty, Paul said, “He who eats meat, eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God” (Romans 14:6). In the same letter to the Romans he warned against ingratitude as a symptom of ungodliness (Romans 1:21). The Christian way of life is to cultivate a lifelong habit of gratitude, for all of life’s blessings, including nourishing food (1 Corinthians 10:31).

Consecrated by prayer

Another reason to pray for God’s blessing on our meals is because God created food  and “everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected, if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer” (1 Timothy 4:5). “Consecrated” means set apart or dedicated for a good purpose.

The good purpose of God’s gift of food is to satisfy our hunger and to promote our health. Objectively, the food is consecrated by the word of God which declares his creation as “good” (Genesis 1). Subjectively, the food is consecrated by prayer as we acknowledge where these gifts come from and we say “thank you!” The foods which sustain us are transformed into life-giving energy as they are consecrated for our use by our gracious Creator.

Here are three good reasons to give thanks to God for our food before we eat it. Jesus did it. The Bible tells us to do it. Prayer dedicates the food for our benefit. It is the right thing to do.

Recently, I enjoyed a round of golf with friends. Three of us went to the clubhouse for lunch. When we got our food, one of my companions said matter-of-factly, “Let me bless this.” Then he prayed simply, expressing thanks to God for the food, and for a beautiful day on the golf course.

Why did he do that? I believe it was because he knows where the blessing of food comes from, and he wanted to express appreciation on behalf of all of us. “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).

Pastor Randy Faulkner

 

 

 

 

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On a Pilgrimage

When I hiked on the Appalachian Trail, I met fellow hikers who thought of themselves as pilgrims on a spiritual journey. For some it was a form of escape from a difficult past, or a therapeutic retreat, or a way to reconnect with nature. For many, the experience was almost mystical.

I myself found it easy to express myself in praise to God when I was on the Trail. The immensity and beauty of His creation prompted worship, involving mind, body, and spirit. The wilderness was a giant cathedral.

Pilgrimage is common to many world religions. Millions of Hindus make pilgrimages to wash in the waters of the Ganges River. Muslims endeavor to make the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca at least once. Lourdes, France, attracts over five million visitors a year who make the pilgrimage to pray for healing. The Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City is a destination for millions of Catholic pilgrims.

The ancient Hebrew people were given three annual festivals to commemorate God’s deliverance and preservation. Entire families made pilgrimages to Jerusalem for the celebrations of Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles.

Embedded in the psalms we find a series of songs written especially for these pilgrims. They are the “Songs of Ascents,” Psalms 120-134. They imply pilgrimage, progress, climbing higher toward a destination. If you study these psalms together you sense a gradation, an ascending scale of truth, with important themes building on each other.

It has been said that there is in these psalms a movement away from the world and all that is alien to God’s will (Psalm 120), to the mountains of Judah (Psalm 121), and to Jerusalem itself, and to the Temple (Psalm 122); then from the Temple to God himself (Psalm 123), then to fellowship with the people of God (Psalms 124ff.).

Sometimes on a long hike on the Appalachian Trail it felt less like a pilgrimage than a slog, a march, just putting one foot in front of the other. Sometimes our lives are like that too. Not always exhilarating; sometimes just exhausting. Maybe some of the Jewish pilgrims who made their way to Jerusalem for the three festivals got tired along the way, too.

Maybe some of them wondered if it was worthwhile to keep going. Maybe that’s why they were taught to sing those psalms as they made the journey. Maybe singing the Psalms of Ascents helped them remember why the pilgrimage was important.

The New Testament pictures the Christian life as a pilgrimage. Believers are told to follow in the steps of Christ and walk to please God. That is because we are headed somewhere. There is a destination at the end of the journey and He is there to welcome us.

Keep going, pilgrim!

Pastor Randy Faulkner

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None but the Honest and Wise

When our second president, John Adams, first occupied the White House, he offered a prayer that has become famous. “I pray heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house, and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men rule under this roof.”

President Franklin D. Roosevelt thought so highly of the prayer that he had it carved into the wooden mantelpiece in the State Dining Room, according to historian David McCullough. When President Harry S. Truman supervised the renovation of the White House, he insisted that the inscription remain. When John F. Kennedy was president, he had the prayer carved into the mantelpiece in marble.

None but the honest. What does that mean? The dictionary definition advises us to think of persons who are free from fraud or deception, truthful, sincere, and innocent. Adams’s prayer is that his successors as president of this great country of ours would be worthy of our trust, truth-tellers, people of good character. We should expect nothing less.

None but the wise. Wisdom is sound judgment, deep understanding, and discernment. John Adams knew that “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding” (Proverbs 9:10).

President Adams was the first to occupy the presidential mansion, He moved in on January 1, 1800. McCullough wrote, “The house itself was still quite unfinished. Fires had to be kept burning in all the fireplaces to help dry the wet plaster. Only a few rooms were ready. . . . Though the president’s furniture had arrived, shipped from Philadelphia, it looked lost in these enormous rooms. The only picture hanging was Gilbert Stuart’s full-length portrait of George Washington.”

It was in these circumstances that President Adams prayed, dedicating the White House and all future presidents, to God. He prayed for the blessing of heaven and that none but the honest and wise would occupy the White House.

This election year is an urgent call for us to pray, as we vote, that the next occupant of the White House will be honest and wise.

Pastor Randy Faulkner

 

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Born Again Through Baptism?

Many church people believe that baptism is necessary for salvation. They speak of baptismal regeneration. Baptism is the obedience without which faith is invalid. Some biblical texts seem to support this view. On closer examination, however, the claim is not supported by scripture.

The concept of baptismal regeneration contradicts the principle of salvation by grace alone. Rather, Christian baptism in water is an act of public testimony that one has been united with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection. It is a witness to one’s faith in Christ. Every instance of baptism recorded in the New Testament, except for the baptism of our Lord, is of people who had first believed the gospel and were testifying to that belief. They were saved by faith in Christ, not by their baptism.

For example, the apostle Paul reminded the Corinthian believers of how he had brought them to Christ: “I have become your (spiritual) father through the gospel” (1 Corinthians 4:15). If their new birth meant baptism, this must mean that he had baptized them.

But at the outset of the letter, he declared that he had not baptized them. “I am thankful that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius” (1 Corinthians 1:14). Surely Paul would not have written this if baptism were essential for salvation.

The Lord Jesus never emphasized baptism in his teachings about the kingdom of heaven. Indeed, the thief on the cross was not, and could not have been, baptized. Yet Jesus assured the penitent man, “Today you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43).

This is not to imply that baptism is unimportant. It is a vital first step of obedient discipleship. Dr. Jere Phillips has written, “Christian baptism is the immersion of the believer in water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is an act of obedience symbolizing the believer’s faith in a crucified, buried, and risen Savior, the believer’s death to sin, the burial of the old life, and the resurrection to walk in newness of life in Christ Jesus.”

Pastor Randy Faulkner