In this historic moment, we live caught in a worldview that no longer works and a new one that seems too bizarre to contemplate.
Margaret J. Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World

A worldview is an assumption about how the world really works, a conceptual framework. Everyone has a worldview, but for most people it is unconscious. We communicate our personal view to others through cultural norms: our schools, the mass media, the church, and now with social networking through the Internet. Our personal worldview answers the big questions we have such as:

• Who Am I?
• Why Am I Here?
• How did I get here?
• What is right and what is wrong?
• Where did the world come from?

Typical worldviews include Christianity, Marxism, New-age, Postmodern, Islam, and Humanism. In reality, today many people tend to create their own worldview by borrowing a bit from various worldviews for whatever works for them. That doesn’t mean, however, that the worldview is valid – that is, reality.

There are two requirements, however, for any worldview:

1. It must be consistent with “what is”.
2. It must be consistent within itself.

The Postmodern worldview, for example, says there are no absolutes. You decide, personally, what is right or wrong for yourself. That statement, in itself, is an absolute for the postmodernist. They have just contradicted themselves. They say they have no absolutes, yet they have just given you an absolute. The worldview not consistent within itself. The New-Age and Humanistic worldviews profess a cosmic evolution. Unfortunately, that violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics. You can’t have matter or energy from nothing unless something is acting from outside the system. Neither of these worldviews is consistent with “what is”.

Here are some of the parameters of the Christian Worldview professed by this web site and this author

Politics: Limited Constitutional Republic
Economics: Stewardship of private property
Ethics: Moral absolutes
Law: Divine/Natural
History: Linear, purposeful
Theology: God is Holy, eternal three persons, Creator, judge, Redeemer through Christ Jesus
Anthropology: Created / Dualism (The perpetual conflict of good and evil) / Fallen
Philosophy: Supernaturalism
Sociology: High view of individual (created in image of God), limited authority of state
Binding action: Unconditional love

This Christian worldview is consistent within itself and with “what is”. It is the greatest romance story ever told, and we have the Bible to help us understand it. The story is not something that happened long ago, but describes and active God that is creating in the world today, redeeming the world to Himself.

“See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.”
Colossians 2:8 NIV

The concept of worldview is really fairly recent in history. The concept is birthed form the German word Weltanschauung, which means wide word view or world perception of a people, family, or person. It encompasses philosophy, sociology, anthropology, science, economics – every area you could think of – of the person, family, or peoples. We normally think of a person as having a personal worldview; but worldviews can be held by a person, or held at a community level. The Nazis, for example, had a worldview that (from their perspective) allowed them to operate in the name of a higher ideal. Today these acts are commonly perceived as acts of aggression based on twisted facts that violate basic human rights. Today we see the same distorted view in a group of Moslems acting within a similar type of distorted worldview.

The idea that a religious belief system should be a part of a worldview is a even more recent concept in history. A leading Christian thought leader, James W, Sire, defines a world view as:

“..a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true, or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic construction of reality, and that provides the foundation on which we live and move and have our being.”(1)

Sire also suggests:

“…we should all think in terms of worldviews, that is, with a consciousness not only of our own way of thought but also that of other people, so that we can first understand and then genuinely communicate with others in our pluralistic society.”(1)

Some of the best material for developing a worldview is available at http://www.worldview.org. They do a lot of ministry and various youth camps during the summer for helping young people develop a personal world view. Great Stuff!

1. Sire, James W.., The Universe Next Door: A Basic World View Catalog

“…just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”
Matt. 20:28 NKJV

“… If anyone desires to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all.”
Mark 9:35 NKJV

“But Jesus called them to Himself and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave — just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”
Matt 20:25-28 NKJV

“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between the two, the leader must become a servant and a debtor. That sums up the progress of an artful leader.”
Max DePree

What is Servant Leadership?

Robert Greenleaf is recognized as the father of the modern concept of servant leadership. Greenleaf (1977) described servant leadership in this manner:

“It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead…The difference manifest itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is: do those served grow as persons, do they grow while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?”

This concept has been advanced by several authors such as Steven Covey, Max DePree, Margaret Wheatley, Ken Blanchard, and others.

There is a strong difference between a servant leader and a service leader. If a person’s primary job, for example, is to watch out for the best interest of those he is serving and to find ways to make his department more efficient and accountable to the people he is serving, this isn’t necessarily a servant leader.

The real test of servant leaderships has been defined this way by Greenleaf:

“do those served grow as persons; do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society; will they benefit, or, at least, will they not be further deprived?”
Robert Greenleaf

 

The History of Servant Leadership

Although much of our traditional concepts of servant leadership are based on the teachings and life of Christ, the basic concepts date back much further than this.

In approximately 600 B.C., the Chinese sage Lao Tzu wrote The Tao Te Ching, a strategic treatise on servant leadership:

“The greatest leader forgets himself
And attends to the development of others.
Good leaders support excellent workers.
Great leaders support the bottom ten percent.
Great leaders know that
The diamond in the rough
Is always found “in the rough.”
(Quote from The Way of Leading People: Unlocking Your Integral Leadership with the Tao Te Ching.)

Chanakya or Kautilya, the famous strategic thinker from ancient India, wrote about servant leadership in his 4th century B.C. book Arthashastra:

“the king [leader] shall consider as good, not what pleases himself but what pleases his subjects [followers]”
“the king [leader] is a paid servant and enjoys the resources of the state together with the people”.

In the Bible, the Old Testament uses the Hebrew word nagiyd to refer to a person under authority who fulfills the wishes of that authority. In Exodus 33:11 the word is used to refer to his servant Joshua. Moses was a servant leader. In II Kings 4:12, this word is used to refer to Elisha’s servant.

In the New Testament, the Greek word diakonia is used, and this word literally means serving at tables. It was Christ that told his followers:

And He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “If anyone desires to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all.”
Mark 9:35-36 NKJV

The Greek word diakonia is used in this passage for servant. We get our modern word “deacon” translated from this. Later the word was used to refer to the followers of Christ in relationship to the Lord (Colossians 1:7) and sometimes to refer to the followers of Christ in relation to one another (Colossians 1:23,25) (Some translations translate the Greek word as “ministers”; but it is the same Greek word.)

Greenleaf and others have advanced the definition for today as:

Servant-leadership emphasizes the leader’s role as steward of the resources (human, financial and otherwise) provided by the organization. It encourages leaders to serve others while staying focused on achieving results in line with the organization’s values and integrity.

The Church, as the Body of Christ, has the business of liberating the captives, recovering the sight of the blind, enabling the lame to walk, bringing the good news to the poor, and (yes) raising the dead.
(Paraphrase of a quote of Donald McGavran)

When we look at the issue of vision and leadership, this implies community. We can only discover who we are and why we are here in relationships—relationship to God, and in relationships with others. Being created in the image of God means that, like God, we hunger for relationships. We cannot experience healing unless we are in relationships.

The visions that God gives us are so radical and transformational that, if we try them alone, the Enemy will certainly destroy us. No question about it. Christ came to establish His authority on earth and to restore the relationship of you to Himself. The Church, as the very Body of Christ, exists as the authority for the visions God gives us.

What is the Church?

The word used in the early Bible for the “church” was ekklesia. It was generally used at the time to refer to a political or any other type of assembly. The first mention of the ekklesia (as church) in the Bible is often considered to be in Matthew 16:18. At this point Jesus is traveling in the vicinity of Caesarea Philippi, a center of godless worship at the time. Jesus turned to His disciples and asked them who other people were saying who He was. When Christ responds to Peter’s statement that Christ was and is the Son of the Living God, Christ responds saying it was on this statement that he would build his Church. The word used by Christ for “Church” was ekkesia and is the Greek word for “called out”.

In reality, the Church begins in the Old Testament as Abraham is called out as chosen:

Now the LORD had said to Abram:

“Get out of your country,
From your family
And from your father’s house,
To a land that I will show you.
I will make you a great nation;
I will bless you
And make your name great;
And you shall be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
And I will curse him who curses you;
And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

So Abram departed as the LORD had spoken to him, and Lot went with him.
Gen 1:1-12:4 NKJV

In the New Testament, Peter refers back to this as the New Testament church is birthed in Acts 7:2-5. The Church today is called to act in authority (rhema) as the called out, ekklesia, or chosen people. The very Body of Christ.

The Church Today

In many locations around the world, this Church exists today in its true form. Some church leaders call this form a Missional Church – but many of these abhor labels beyond simply “The Church”. This implies it has a mission, is sent, and is intentional in terms of what Christ told it to do and that is expressed in the Great Commission. Here are some of the characteristics:

• First, it is incarnational. As the body of Christ, it is the embodiment of the authority, power, love, peace, and grace of the risen Lord.
• It is a sent Church, going to the people. It is sent into the world; but it is not of the world. As I write this there is a sign near the front of my own church building that plays off a famous quote at the end of an Elvis Presley concert:
  The church has left the building.
  I love this quote. I like the worship experience at another church near me where the pastor says, at the end of the worship experience, “The service starts now”.
• It is a servant Church, with the members serving each other first and then the world.
• There is no real distinction of laity and clergy. Each member is a servant leader in terms of their gifts and receiving in terms of the gifts of others.
• There is a deep, deep passion to see the Kingdom of God in the here and now.
• The community is more like an organism than organization.
• It is not a model, but a movement.

Here are some specifics of this Church:

Note: Some of this article is from the book Beyond Illusion: Leading from Reality by Carl Townsend, © 2009 by Carl Townsend

© 2009 by Carl Townsend

Soon after the completion of Disney World in Orlando someone said, “Isn’t it too bad Walt Disney didn’t live to see this!” Mike Vance, creative director of Disney Studios replied. “He did see it—that’s why it’s here.”

Or think of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and the beautiful “Ode to Joy” in it, written by a deaf Beethoven. But he did hear it. That’s why we have it.

The leader has to put down a bold vision that strikes and draws passion in the very heart of those being led.

The power of transcendent vision is greater than the power of the scripting deep inside the human personality and it subordinates it [the scripting], submerges it, until the whole personality is reorganized in the accomplishment of that vision.
Stephen Covey, First Things First

To quote Tom Sine, one of the reasons our personal faith has so little authority in changing the world about us is that we have never really fully connected with God’s transcendent vision.

If you want to build a ship,
don’t summon people to buy wood, prepare tools,
distribute jobs and organize the work;
teach people the yearning for the wide, boundless ocean.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

In other words, lead from Place.

The Story of Nehemiah

Look at the story of Nehemiah. Nehemiah was an underemployed guy working for a heathen king, Artaxerxes I, in heathan land (Shushan, or modern Shush in what is now southwest Iran). (About like some people I know today.) The year was 444 BC. These friends of Nehemiah were reporting to him about the early waves of Jews returning to the area of Jerusalem. These friends had been spiritually mapping the Jerusalem area and came to give Nehemiah a report. It wasn’t good. The people there in Jerusalem had no vision, no passion, no security. Nothing. The city walls were in shambles, the gates were burned with fire, rubbish and ruins all about, and the Jews who had returned were in disgrace. (Much like America today.)

At this point both Nehemiah and his friends held the same information. Nehemiah’s response to the information, however, is quite different from that of his friends. His heart is with his people. He is broken with compassion, he weeps. He can’t eat, can’t sleep for four months. There was a burden, a concern. He is consumed by his burden.

The story of Nehemiah is one of the most fascinating in the Bible. Leading from vision and servant leadership, he led the nation back to Place in 52 days. The strategy detailed in that book of the Bible might be called Leadership 101. It’s not taught in our schools today – no wonder we don’t have leaders and no wonder the schools are failing.

Leading from Vision

Nothing changes until you upset what is, until you show people that where they are, the status quo, isn’t working. People build a comfort zone, an illusion, so they don’t have to change. They distort facts, lie, and ignore the facts—anything but change from where they are. The leader must upset the equilibrium; that is, create (and what appears to be) chaos. The new leader speaks and acts into the existing order, upsetting what is and creating chaos. This forces the “system” to reorder to a higher ordered system. This doesn’t make sense from our older leadership models; yet there is a new and higher order that emerges from the disorder. The leader is not doing this just for the sake of creating chaos. Rather, the leader is drawing the followers to a new Place. People still trapped in the illusion see what the leader is doing as noise. There is a paradigm blindness on the part of those lost to the leader’s vision.

When the Good News of the Gospel is alive in any person, whatever their kind of work may be, they become an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressive creature. He or she becomes interesting to other people. They disturb, upset, enlighten, and open ways for better understanding.

In the new paradigm, once the vision is put down (and continues to be put down), the leader then focuses energy not so much in planning, putting down programs, building structures, and evaluating; but rather the leader focuses on building relationships (networks, linkages, dynamic connectedness), and releases. There is no control. The result appears to the leader (and even the followers) as non-deterministic; but it really does have a pattern. Trying to control will distort the pattern.

Look what Nehemiah did. Families were given personal visions of building the wall near their house. The leader moves the vision down and involves followers in the shaping of the vision as they see it and their role in it. If you are building the wall near your house, of course you want that part of the wall as strong as possible. You are going to network with neighbors and others (building relationships) to find out how to do that. Community begins to happen.

Compare this concept with what Jesus did. The Church, when it was birthed, moved through the culture and upset everything; but we know almost nothing of the early church organizational structure and programs. And buildings? They met in homes.

The leader has to be a very secure person to lead from the new reality. What happens is very threatening not only to those he or she is trying to lead, but to the leader as well. What if they don’t follow? What if God doesn’t act? The leader has to believe that he or she is on God’s vision and then trust in faith that God will make it happen. The leader sees things others don’t see. Hears things others don’t hear.

Margaret Wheatley, in her classic book Leadership and the New Science, shows how the old concept of leadership no longer works. Just as quantum physics gives us a non-deterministic world at the micro level, the larger world is also non-deterministic from a secular perspective. The leader has to lead from a different perspective. In fact, the leader has to create what seems to be chaos. He or she has to upset the equilibrium. Change doesn’t take place unless the leader can show that the present structure and status quo is not working. This upsets those who follow, and then change can be initiated. The change will not take place until the people are desperate enough.

Jesus was a leader, but what He did was definitely upsetting to those around Him—even to the disciples and religious leaders. He upset the equilibrium. Look at His teachings:
• Losing is Finding
• Weakness is Strength
• Last is First
• Giving is Receiving
• Serving is Ruling
• Dying is Living
• Least is Greatest
• Poor is Rich
• Lose Your Life and You Will Find It
Definitely seems contradictory to “what is” or the status quo. Yet this is the only leadership model that will work today.

What about in your life? How do you lead? Does your church teach you how to lead from vision as a servant?

America has embraced a single Constitution for over 200 years. This is very unusual for any country in the world. Unfortunately, however, our political leaders today are really violating basic principles that are an inherent part of that Constitution. The result has been a massive recession and related issues that threaten to destroy the nation if it is not corrected.

Take some time to personally read the Constitution. It is an incredible document. Most of the phrases in the American Constitution and our Declaration of Independence (such as “unalienable rights”) did not come from the men that wrote the Constitution, but from the pastors of around 1760. The pastors included John Wise, Jonathan Mayhew (“no taxation without representation.”), and George Whitefield. The pastors wrote and published their sermons at that time, and these sermons are still available on the Internet or are published and available on Amazon. The sermons, in turn, were from the Bible. The concepts of John Locke (an earlier philosopher) were also very influential in the development of the Constitution.

Once the American Constitution was finished, these early leaders (some 250) helped the states put together their constitutions. These state constitutions were relatively short. I have gleanings from those constitutions (they are on the Internet). Almost all required the elected officials of the states to be “orthodox Christians” or they used some phrase like that. It wasn’t so much forcing politicians to be Christians, but rather for the politicians to be able to use the Bible as a moral and ethical reference standard. A pastor could not be an elected official, as then he would be paid by both the state and the church, and that would be wrong. Schools had to teach the Bible, and in one case where a Frenchman came over and started a school based on his own thing, the legal case went all the way to the Supreme Court and the Court ruled the school had to teach the Bible.

Of course, we are 180 degrees from that today and those original documents are suppressed in our public schools and no longer a part of American history courses in the schools. For example, those founders required an economic system based on “just weights”, as the Bible required of the Jews. We now have a virtual money system, with the paper dollar no longer representing any just weight. The bonds floated by the government recently make every dollar you have worth less. That is inflation, and is not morally just. The University of Houston is researching the quotes in the Constitution and how many came from what pastors.

Now shift your thoughts for a moment. A major paradigm shift is breaking across our planet in our lifetimes. From my perspective, this is only the third since the birth of Christ. The first was the shattering of the Jewish wineskins at the birth of the Church (The Body of Christ) as the Gospel moved beyond the Jewish view of a political kingdom. The second was the Protestant Reformation. The shift there was enabled not so much by the Gutenberg Press, but rather by the fact that the Bible was translated by Luther into the German language and they could read it for themselves. The Germans could now read that Salvation was by faith instead depending upon the priests to interpret the path to Salvation in terms of their interests using a Latin Bible the people could not read. This affected the political systems, art, music, architecture, and other aspects of the culture at that time. The Reformation began years before Luther with Wycliffe.

Today the paradigm shifts again. In America, those brilliant concepts shaped by our founders from the pastors (and thus from the Bible) have been twisted much like the priests did at the time of Luther. The economic system now uses virtual money manipulated by Wall Street – an immoral concept banned in the Constitution. There is now a discussion of using the Sharia (Muslim) law in our courts. Judges base decisions on previous decisions in courts, not on the Bible. Gays and lesbians are honored. There is very little political accountability or justice. Those original documents of the founders are no longer used in our schools to teach American history.

The Constitution gave the Federal government no control over the public schools. Some of the states (Texas is leading the way) are rising up and demanding control over their textbooks and teaching. The original documents showing what was really the intention of those founders are beginning to be read in our schools and our churches can teach these truths (mine does) through all twelve grades.

Just as the Protestant Reformation started with Luther’s German translation that anyone could read. (The Gutenberg Press was only a tool). In the same way, the availability of those early American documents on the Internet could well start another Awakening here. It’s call the Tea Party movement now, but it will be interesting to see what happens next. Some of that early history stuff is already beginning to creep into the school textbooks. If it’s not in a teacher’s textbook, the teacher can point the student to the Internet sites, such as the wikis for the early pastors. It’s the edge of another major paradigm shift. Also popular are people such as David Barton, who has researched much of this and authored books and DVDs on his results (http://www.wallbuilders.org).

Here’s a good dialog question for comments here: How can we restore the Constitutional mandate?

Tip: It’s good to read what contemporary writers (such a Dave Barton) say about the beliefs of those founders; but to get real answers you must dig and read the original documents by these people. For example, don’t just read the wiki about John Locke on the Internet. Read the wiki on Locke’s Two Treatises of Government. Then go to Project Gutenberg on the Internet and download the book or order it from Amazon ($12).

We are working with God to determine the future. Certain things will happen in history if we pray rightly.
Richard Foster

Prayer is the great mystery. If God is all powerful, why did He let my wife die? Why weren’t my prayers answered? Why have I lost some of my best friends and mentors to cancer and other horrible diseases?

Here is a God who can do anything. He is all-powerful and now has ultimate authority on earth. He can speak the word and the universe is created. He can raise Lazarus from the dead. Why does God need our help? Why, in fact, did He even need to create me? Or you? Of what use are our prayers to a self-sufficient God? And if God really loves us, why do some prayers seem to go unanswered? Or if the unanswered prayer is an illusion, what is the reality of prayer?

In Ezekiel 22:30-31 we find an amazing verse:

“So I sought for a man among them who would make a wall, and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found no one. Therefore I have poured out My indignation on them; I have consumed them with the fire of My wrath; and I have recompensed their deeds on their own heads,” says the Lord GOD.

In this verse we see that an all-powerful self-sufficient God is saying He will destroy a nation and execute judgment unless one man stands in the gap between the nation and God and prays, petitioning for the saving of the land. God wants to save the nation but will execute the judgment unless one intercessor stands and prays for the land. God leaves Himself totally dependent on the prayers of one man.

Here is another example of one man saving a nation:

Fed up, God decided to get rid of them—
and except for Moses, his chosen, he would have.
But Moses stood in the gap and deflected God’s anger,
prevented it from destroying them utterly.
Psalms 106:23 THE MESSAGE

Why did an omnipotent God set up a system that depends on us?

God’s problem is not that God is unable to do certain things. God’s problem is that God loves. Love complicates the life of God as it complicates every life.
John Douglas Hall

What is Prayer?

You would think that for most folks prayer is defined like this:

Prayer is asking God to give us the resources we need to play our roles for the day.

We smile at this definition and often deny that’s how we pray, but isn’t that more often the reality as we define it? We are so sure that our agenda is God’s agenda that we pause in our schedule for a quick break and ask Him for what we need to get over the next hurdle in our agenda. Then we wonder why our prayers seem to fall on deaf ears.

This is really a poor definition, and the reason is in understanding the key word in this definition: roles.

Dr. Paul Tournier had great success in healing people where other doctors had failed. When others asked him what he was doing different, he explained that healing was a whole-person experience. You could not separate the person into physical, emotional, and spiritual parts. The word for salvation in the New Testament, soteria, refers to total healing.

Tournier said that we spend much of our lives playing roles. The person playing the roles is wearing a mask. Tournier called this the personage. Sometimes when going to the doctor the doctor will ask me questions such as “How is your job going?” or “How’s your love life?” He knows that my physical condition is directly connected with the answers to those questions. Unfortunately, however, he is still asking from within the personage and roles, such as web developer (on the job question) or lover on the second question. Most doctors don’t go to the deeper level.

The real person underneath those roles and free of the roles and masks Tournier called the person. Tournier began the healing process inviting the patient to coffee or tea by the fireside. Then he would draw the patient out of the roles they were playing, seeing them as a unique person before God—free of any roles, masks, and games.

For many this risk of moving outside of the personage was too much to take. Tournier helped initiate this, he said, by being open and free of roles and masks himself. He would take the risk first and share from outside his roles. Of course, at the moment you choose to step outside of your own roles you are vulnerable. That’s why you had the roles in the first place. Yet for the healing, you have to take the risk.

If you are the counselor and trying to initiate healing, you must remember that if you wish to succeed as Tournier did you must step outside of your counselor role. The healing won’t take place until you are both outside of any roles. If you are in a small group at your church and sharing, don’t expect real healing until someone leads and speaks from the person and outside of any roles. If you are a lover trying to win your beloved, you both must step outside of roles to see each other’s heart. It is not so much an issue of going through a series of steps (taking a role yourself). That’s personage. It’s rather a surrendering of the heart to Jesus to discover Place.

The same is true in our relationship with God. For prayer to be real, we must free ourselves of the mask and roles before God. We must choose to be on His agenda—not our agenda. Once you step outside of your roles in relating to God, however, there is the risk and vulnerability. Can we dare to do this?
When we are praying from within our roles, we can’t expect God to answer. To see God’s answer we must step outside of the personage and pray from our heart, our burden. We saw in the last chapter how Nehemiah did it.
Here is a second definition of prayer that is often used:

Prayer is communication with God.

This involves both speaking and listening. If you are communicating with your spouse and you interrupt when he/she starts to speak, the communication rapidly fails because you aren’t listening to your spouse. Prayer also, like communicating with your spouse, involves action. What are you specifically called to do in response to what your spouse says? What are you specifically called by God to do in response to God? How does this relate to what your spouse is saying?

We must no longer see prayer as preparation for action. Prayer must be understood as action itself, a way of responding, a potent spiritual weapon to be used in spiritual warfare against the most powerful forces in the world. Prayer is not undertaken instead of other actions, but as a foundation for all the rest of the actions we take.
Jim Wallis

We see Samuel as an example of how to listen and respond to God. At the beginning of Samuel’s life, we are told there is no vision in the land.

Now the boy Samuel ministered to the LORD before Eli. And the word of the LORD was rare in those days; there was no widespread revelation.
1 Samuel 3:1

Samuel, though, was able to hear the prophetic words that the Lord spoke to him and act on his calling. The Hebrew word for LORD here is Yahweh, referring to a personal God. By the end of the chapter Samuel is a man, and now there is vision and prophecy in the land.

So Samuel grew, and the LORD was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba knew that Samuel had been established as a prophet of the LORD. Then the LORD appeared again in Shiloh. For the LORD revealed Himself to Samuel in Shiloh by the word of the LORD.
1 Samuel 3:19-21

Notice this passage also identifies Shiloh as Place. It was a place where Samuel could hear, where the vision was birthed. Samuel listened, God spoke, and Samuel acted.

Prayer involves listening, as we can expect no answered prayer unless we know God’s agenda, and the only way we can discern that is by listening to Him. Without that, you can only expect unanswered prayer.

Some people think Christian prayer is an illusion. They don’t hear God speak and there is no listening, so there is really no prayer. Maybe they should find out why they can’t hear God as a clue to their illusion of unanswered prayer.

Let me take you now to what is my favorite definition of prayer.

Prayer is an intimate lover’s conversation with God, the lover’s Creator.

Men Praying

Prayer is, as John Eldredge says, an integral part of a Sacred Romance that is richer and deeper than any words can describe. In this Romance with my Lover (God), we have special places, special songs, special stories, and secret names He has for me that cannot be expressed to anyone else. Ah, there you go. In this type of prayer you are stepping outside of your personage and crying (ezer) from your heart. What might surprise you is that if you have trouble letting go of those roles in your prayer, you will find (as I mentioned earlier) that God steps out of that personage image you have of Him and reveals himself to you as Person. In the Old Testament translations, as I mentioned, you will often see the word LORD used for the Hebrew Yahweh when this happens. See Exodus 32:31-33:23 for an example of this type of praying between Moses and God.
©Copyright 2009, Carl Townsend. Beyond Illusion: Leading from Reality