Dr. Randy Faulkner Oklahoma City
Randy Faulkner Guest Speaker on the SWPM Podcast March 18th, 2019 is presented in two parts. Originally aired on March 18th, and March 25th, 2019 on the SWPM Podcast on YouTube. Randy shares his Ideology and views on pastoral retirement and continuing ministry for the future. Enjoy!
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Lehman Strauss wrote that God always answers the prayers of his people. His answers are not always the ones we seek. Sometimes there is a delayed answer. Our timing is not always the same as the Lord’s. Sometimes his answer is in the form of an outright denial. After all, “we do not know what we ought to pray for” (Romans 8:26). There are many examples of this in the Bible.
Sometimes the answer God gives is different than what we ask for. When Paul prayed for healing from a physical affliction the Lord answered his prayer by increasing his supply of all-sufficient grace. But he did not take away Paul’s affliction.
When our Lord Jesus entered the great crisis in the Garden of Gethsemane just before his crucifixion, he prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken away from me. Yet not as I will but as you will” (Matthew 26:39). It seems that Jesus was asking if there could be any other way to accomplish the redemptive purpose of God than by his suffering. Could it possibly be otherwise?
God answered, but not in the affirmative. What do we learn from this?
Jesus knew God heard his prayer. In John 11:42 Jesus prayed, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me.”
Jesus knew that God loved him. In John 5:20 Jesus said, “The Father loves the Son and shows him all he does.”
Jesus knew God would always do the right thing. He will always act in accordance with his good purpose. That is why our Lord concluded his prayer with “Yet not what I will but as you will.”
Jesus knew that God’s purpose involved his sacrificial death and resurrection. He repeatedly told his disciples that that would happen in Jerusalem at Passover. Now the time had come for him to “taste death for everyone.” This is further expressed in Hebrews 2:10 where it says that God “should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered.” In his dying, our Lord’s human experience was completed or perfected.
Jesus’ agonized plea, “may this cup be taken from me” was answered with a denial. But his prayer of absolute submission to God was answered with “yes!” Jesus had to reconcile his natural horror of death with the knowledge of God’s purpose for him.
Of the profound lessons on prayer we learn from Jesus’ Gethsemane experience, none is greater than this. We, like our Lord, must learn to submit our desires and wishes to his higher purpose. We must always pray as Jesus prayed, “Not what I will, but as you will.”
“Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him. ‘Abba, Father,’ he said, ‘everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will'” (Mark 14:35-36).
These words of Jesus reveal the range of his feeling as a human. He is experiencing fierce temptation, urgent dependency, and dread, as other humans experience them.
At the same time, we have a hint of his deity. As the Lamb of God, he is about to bear the penalty for the sins of the world. It has been pointed out that his reference to the cup recalls his words from earlier in the evening: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you” (Luke 22:20).
As his death draws nearer, he looks into that cup. The prospect of crucifixion must have brought anguish and horror to the Savior’s mind. To be sure, the dread of physical suffering is an understandable human response.
But for the divine Son of God, that cup represented the even costlier sacrifice he was to offer. Donald English wrote, “Only he knew the full implications of his words at the last supper about his body and blood — in the context of Passover and Covenant.”
He would later cry out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). That cry would be because he would bear the bitterness of the wages of sin, the sin of the world. Is it any wonder that the sinless Son of God should recoil from the moral corruption and depravity which would be laid on him at Calvary?
“God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us” (2 Corinthians 5:21). This gospel witness by Paul helps explain Gethsemane.
So now, in the garden, the divine-human Jesus seeks comfort from God as “Abba.” That is an intensely personal term of endearment. It is a title the church today is permitted to use to address our Father in heaven. In Christ, and by the Holy Spirit, we who believe may express that same sense of belonging to the family of God as “by him, we cry ‘Abba, Father'” (Romans 8:15).
We are able to do this because of Gethsemane, and Calvary.
“Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, ‘Sit here while I go over there and pray.’ He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him and he began to be sorrowful and troubled” (Matthew 26:36-37).
During this season, Christians all over the world meditate on our Lord’s suffering, death, and resurrection. It is customary to spend the weeks before Holy Week in contemplation and surrender of ourselves to the will of God. As I try to do that I am thinking about Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. It was there that he cried out to God in terrible anguish, revolted by the horrors that were about to come upon him.
Prayer partners
It is noteworthy that he desired the companionship of his friends. So as he withdrew to pray, he invited Peter, James and John to stay alert and join him. This shows us the humanity of Jesus. He needed the encouragement of their prayerful presence. “Stay here and keep watch with me,” he said in Matthew 26:38. “With me!” What is implied by those words repeated twice in Matthew’s account?
As we pray, we often think of the promise of Christ’s presence with us. But our coming to the Lord in prayer is also a response to his kind invitation to fellowship with him. “God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:9). Does it surprise you to be reminded that Jesus desires to have fellowship with you? Is this not an incentive to be more faithful in meeting with him in prayer?
Two or three
When we face circumstances that seem intolerable, it is good to have the prayer support of friends. Jesus asked his friends to stay close and stay awake. Unfortunately, sleep overtook them. He told them earlier that “where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them” (Matthew 18:20). But now in his time of need, those two or three were spiritually and emotionally absent.
Jesus is inviting us to spend time with him. Think about those two words today: “With me.”
Pastor Randy Faulkner
Jesus made it a regular practice to meet with his heavenly Father in prayer. He got up early to pray in the mornings. Sometimes he prayed all night, alone with God, out in the open air, away from the crowds. He craved the delicious solitude of the Galilean countryside.
At other times he joined with his neighbors in communal prayer. The gospel of Luke tells us that it was our Lord’s habit to attend services in his local synagogue (Luke 4:16). If the Son of God found it necessary to meet for worship with ordinary folks, certainly we who claim to follow him should do the same thing every week!
Jesus also prayed with his disciples. They had chosen a place where they would go to withdraw for quiet fellowship and rest. This redoubt, or retreat, was an olive grove called Gethsemane. John 18:2 describes it as a garden where Jesus frequently went with his disciples. It was across the Kidron ravine on the side of the Mount of Olives. It was, for them, a special place.
Luke says Jesus went there on the night of his betrayal “as usual” (Luke 22:39). I find it striking and important that as he was facing the bitterest anguish of his life, Jesus retreated with his disciples to the familiar garden where he had often met with them. There he prayed in a state of intense emotional strain.
Come to Gethsemane. Hear the Savior pray as he nears the time of his cruel death as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Observe his sorrow. Feel his lonely desolation of soul. Learn to pray as he prayed to the Father: “May your will be done” (Matthew 26:42).
Just as our Master Jesus prayed in solitude, and in the communal fellowship of the local assembly, so we imitate him. As Jesus had specific times and places for prayer, so should we have. As Jesus prayed for God’s will to be done as he faced torture and crucifixion, so we too learn to surrender ourselves to God, in gratitude for his sacrifice for us.
“Go to dark Gethsemane, you who feel the tempter’s power;
Your Redeemer’s conflict see; watch with him one bitter hour;
Turn not from his griefs away; learn of Jesus Christ to pray”.
These words by 19th century hymn-writer James Montgomery are on my mind as I read in the gospels about what happened in the garden of Gethsemane. I invite you to join me in meditating on our Lord’s anguished prayer in Gethsemane during the coming weeks leading up to the remembrance of his death and resurrection.
If we wish to offer ourselves to God during this season, it may be helpful to observe the Lord’s example as he “offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission” (Hebrews 5:7).
He went to the familiar place where he and his disciples had often gone for a retreat. It was a grove of ancient olive trees located on the lower slopes of the Mount of Olives east of Jerusalem. The name Gethsemane means “oil press” and it was probably a place for squeezing oil from the olives that were harvested there. The gospels tell us he knelt down (Luke) and then he prostrated himself with his face to the earth (Matthew) as poured out his soul in prayer.
In the preceding hours, he had been praying for his disciples (John 17). Now, in the garden, facing imminent death, Jesus prayed for himself. He knew what was coming. He had already surrendered himself to fulfill the purpose for which he came into the world. But his soul was troubled.
“Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!” (John 12:27-28)
Here we see the human Jesus as he faced the sorrows of death. We see his agony over the terrible prospect of bearing the sin of the world. We see the exhaustion of his grief and his desperate loneliness in the crisis.
We are invited during this Lenten season to offer ourselves up to God in surrender and prayer, as Jesus did. This may be something like what Paul the apostle had in mind when he wanted to know Christ in “participation in his sufferings” (Philippians 3:10).
You may be entering your own private Gethsemane experience: a disappointing turn of events; a surprising bit of bad news; confusing circumstances. It has been said that the crisis prepares us to pray. “Turn not from his griefs away; learn of Jesus Christ to pray.”
One thing that sets Christian believers apart from their unbelieving neighbors is an eternal perspective. Believers often talk about about prayers they have prayed. They love to tell stories about how God has helped them in living life.
The Eternal
Right-thinking Christians try to relate everything to their relationship with, their dependency on and their accountability to God. He is real to them.
This way of thinking assumes that God is a loving Father who is interested in our political opinions, our family lives, our use of money, our daily work, our service to others in this world, and a host of other concerns. Proverbs 3:6 says, “in all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight.”
A prayer I found in The Valley of Vision expressed this well. “Teach me the art of attending to things temporal with a mind intent on things eternal.”
The Earthly
Colossians chapter 3 illustrates this. Paul’s teaching there encompasses such themes as marriage and child-rearing, corporate worship. social justice, ethics and morality, and daily work. Practical realities of life on earth. The Christian attitude toward all these earthly priorities is to infuse them with an eternal perspective.
Thus, the discussion about life on earth begins with this preamble: “Set your hearts on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:1-3).
The earthly and the eternal. How well we integrate them may determine how real God is to us as we live our every day lives.
I knew a man who built and raced sports cars as a hobby. I asked him one day if he’d let me drive one of his custom-built cars. “Is your insurance paid up?” he asked in reply. He told me about his fondness for racing. It is exhilarating. The adrenaline rush, the excitement of pushing a machine to its limits of speed and control and the ultimate thrill of victory kept him coming back for more. Success required practice. Practice produced skill and peak awareness, he told me.
The New Testament compares the Christian life to a race. “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize” (1 Corinthians 9:24). The apostle Paul is telling us that following Jesus requires intensity and focus, just like entering and running a race.
Unfortunately, some people seem to be on cruise control in their spiritual lives. Cruise control is convenient. It enables a driver to match the flow of traffic with less personal effort and concentration. I have found there is less fatigue on a long road trip.
Cruise control Christians are content to match their level of spiritual commitment to the standards of those around them. In his book The Disciplines of Grace, Jerry Bridges pointed out that these are the folks who are content to go with the flow. They try not to lag too far behind, but neither do they try to forge ahead for the Lord. They are mired in the heavy traffic of spiritual mediocrity.
God is calling them to a higher standard of spiritual living.
I don’t want to be a cruise control Christian. I want to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18). To do that I will need to keep my foot on the accelerator and my eye on the track. My goal should be victory. This is possible if I am intentional about growing spiritually.
I have certain spiritual practices (otherwise called “disciplines”) that are a necessary part of my life as a Christian. They are essential for my growth and victory in the Christian life. These spiritual priorities are good habits that have been built into my daily and weekly routine. I pursue them not because I am a pastor, but because they are necessary for my growth as a Christian man and as a disciple of Jesus.
If you have discovered some helpful practices that keep you on the right track spiritually, I invite you to share them with me by using the contact form below. Perhaps your ideas and example can influence other readers to stay in the race and keep moving forward for Jesus Christ.
Maybe I will get to drive a sports car in a road rally someday. But more than that I want to approach the Christian life the way my friend approached winning a race, putting everything into the effort, not on cruise control.
Black History Month was created for people like me who need to be educated about the cultural experience of my fellow citizens who are black. I understand February was chosen because it is the birth month of the great emancipator Abraham Lincoln, and the famous abolitionist Fredrick Douglass.
It should be obvious that learning about black history is useful. It introduces young people to the persons of influence who led in the struggle for civil rights for African Americans. It reminds the nation of events in our history we never want to see repeated. It helps folks who were born to white privilege to understand the points of view of those who have not been so privileged.
Benjamin Watson wrote, “The solution to the problem of race in America will be found only by ordinary people… looking inside themselves, being honest about the assumptions and biases that have formed, and beginning to change what’s in their hearts.” In that spirit, I want my life and ministry to contribute to racial understanding and reconciliation.
Some time ago Connie and I attended a seminar at the Oklahoma History Center near the State Capitol. It featured the stories of Oklahoma’s historically black towns founded by and for the “freedmen,” ex-slaves of the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole tribes. We heard about the racial tensions that accompanied the allotment of land to these ex-slaves after the civil war, tensions that carried over into the twentieth century and Oklahoma statehood.
In fact, according to an article in the current (Jan./Feb.) issue of Oklahoma Today, published by the Historical Society, the very first piece of legislation passed by the newly-formed Oklahoma Senate was a law requiring the racial segregation of public transportation and schools. The legislature also passed, in 1916, a clause denying black people the right to vote.
The article describes the “legalized discrimination in housing, employment, transportation, education, and voting restrictions” endured by Americans of African descent in Oklahoma. It briefly tells about the massacre of black citizens when angry white mobs set fire to the Greenwood District of Tulsa in 1921. Over three hundred black people were killed and 10,000 were made homeless.
Can we who are white understand and appreciate the deep spiritual and psychic scars inflicted on subsequent generations by mob violence, systemic racism, and abuse of police power? I, for one, have a lot to learn.
The article tells how Oklahoma teacher and civil rights activist Clara Luper organized students to peacefully protest racial segregation in Oklahoma City in the 1950s. this was before the national civil rights movement of the 60s. She was a pioneer of the movement.
It relates the story of Ida Lois Sipuel Fisher, the first black female graduate, in 1952, of the Oklahoma University College of Law. This was even before the famous Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Supreme Court case that led to the end of racial segregation of schools in 1954. Ida Lois Sipuel Fisher is remembered proudly for her determined opposition to racial bigotry and exclusion in higher education.
As a white boy growing up in the segregated South, I knew about white supremacy and racial prejudice from the other side. In my youth I did not have the wisdom, the courage or the vocabulary to challenge the systemic racism that was our southern way of life in the 1950s. I am grateful that God has forgiven me for the stupid and sinful attitudes of my boyhood. I am grateful for the grace that has been extended to me by African American brothers in Christ. As I grow older, I want to continue to learn about their cultural history and their determination to overcome injustice.
Clara Luper is reported to have said, “My biggest job now is making white people understand that black history is white history. We cannot separate the two.” This agrees with the apostle Paul who preached that God created all races of people and “he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth” (Acts 17:26).
