Dale Cresap's blog

Are all of your prayers spoken? You can pray silently in your thoughts and I will hear them just as well, but speaking your prayers aloud may help you to remain engaged. Are there other alternatives? The Bible refers to groaning too deep to be uttered. Have you ever experienced this? Paul saw things in heaven that he said were not lawful to utter, or perhaps they were inexpressible. Is the essence of your being the sum of your thoughts, or is there a place of pure presence that transcends even that? Are you prepared to be silent in my presence to find out? I will meet you there. 

Do you have an end-time scenario? A timeline? Both of them are wrong. I promised to return and I will. Are you familiar with the disastrous history of predicting this event? This alone should make believers wary of trying again. Have you seen anything that causes more division between believers than differences over end-time scenarios? If your view of the end times isn’t making you a better person today then you can throw it out because it isn’t helping you. You should know better.

Have you ever been hurt? This is a universal human experience. Are you constantly feeling hurt? You know people whose emotional pain is constant, from an endless series of offenses. Woe unto the world because of offenses, and by those from whom the offenses come. But offenses require two parties, a giver and a receiver. Is it as bad to eagerly receive offenses as it is to give them? So if you are constantly being hurt, is it because of others, or because of you? Can you reduce the level of offenses in the world by reducing your own sensitivity to emotional pain?

Do you live a life of gratitude? What is the basis for this? Do you have an overwhelming sense that you are getting better than what you deserve? This involves a sense of reasonable expectations and an awareness of the blessings you are a recipient of. Gratitude is the opposite of entitlement and privilege. If you have unreasonable expectations and only an awareness of them, how will you be grateful for what you have? Do you understand how many blessings you have by default?

Who is the easiest person for you to deceive? You are. Can you be too wrapped up in your own life to see it clearly? Is it possible not to be? The Bible passages about communion teach you to examine yourself when you partake of this sacrament. You can see that this is appropriate, but how do you carry it out? How do you put enough distance between your acting self and your observing self to get an objective evaluation? I promised that my sons (and daughters) would be led by the Spirit. Can you submit to a spiritual observation from beyond yourself to get accurate results?

Do you study to show yourself approved? Do you study the Bible in the same way you study other books, or the subjects you were taught in school? Can you acquire insights from the Bible the same way you do in class? This is possible, but you get uninspired results, and you can tell the difference between messages based on academic inquiry and messages from God. The prophets of old said that the word of the Lord came to them. Has this ever happened to you? Does this seem like a passive rather than active means of inquiry?

Can failure ever be a success? Have you ever built your own redemption project by your own initiative end effort? You may know better than to call it this, but if it fits this functional description and you depend on it then you have done so. How did that work out for you? This cannot be a success. When it fails it is time to admit that you can’t engineer your own redemption project. What then? If this causes you to realize that your own resources are not sufficient and to look outside of yourself and come to me for your redemption then your failure will have become a success.

Do you believe in redemption? Do you practice it? Do you think it was an event that I did once and for all on the cross? There is a sense in which that is true, but in another sense you can take part in it. Do you want to? Consider John the Baptist who proclaimed prepare ye the way of the Lord. Consider those who do and teach my commandments. Consider those who are kind to the least of these, and give a drink of cold water as a disciple. Consider those who lay down their lives for their friends. Anything you do to proclaim or demonstrate the Kingdom of God is a redemptive act.

Do you get to choose your own faith? There are a multitude of options and in a secular culture that has a strong bias for freedom and personal choice it should be easy to find something you like. But what would be the criteria for selection? With no limitations could you end up with something that you just made up? Is your faith something that you choose, or that chooses you? If it is entirely your project, then who is God? Where is the striving for self-transcendence if it is all of your own making?

I said that except your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees you would not enter the Kingdom of God. Do you know enough about the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees to know how shocking this statement was? By their own standards they excelled and they applied spiritual principles to every aspect of life as an expression of total commitment. Many of their practices have direct equivalents among Christians today. So it was a strong statement for me to say that you had to do better than that. Does this imply a different standard for righteousness?