Some questions only require surface level answers. Others cut straight to your heart, requiring you to do some soul-searching in order to come up with a solid answer.
We are all used to being in conversations. In conversations it is natural to receive information, and also to give it. There is nothing new about that. Over the past year, however, there have been a few questions that I found much better than others.
Let me briefly explain. These questions have stuck with me, and bounced around in my mind over and over. I wasn’t able to give these questions easy answers. More importantly, I didn’t want to give them easy answers. It’s as if the more these questions rattled around within me, the more I learned from them.
I hope that as I share them with you, they will do just as much “damage” to you as they have done to me.
Here they are:
1. Tell me about your prayer life. Recently, I was interviewed to possibly be an elder at my church. Among a first round of questions with me and my wife, they threw this one my way. I realize it isn’t necessarily a question, but it still required an answer.
Maybe the reason this question was so impressive to me was that it totally stripped me of the opportunity to “brag” about my spirituality. I couldn’t tell them how often I am in scripture, or how I teach my kids scripture. It didn’t allow me the opportunity to share how I love my wife, or how I seek to lead our family.
What it did leave me with was the opportunity to talk about my relationship with Christ. Am I seeking Him? Am I listening? Am I honest with Him? Such a good question to ponder.
2. How is your emotional intimacy with your wife? My good friend and retired pastor, Bob Livesay, threw this one at me one night while we were sitting in rocking chairs on my front porch. I guess, “how is your marriage?” would have been way too easy. This one cut to the core.
I’ve thought about this one often, considering if me and my wife’s friendship is growing. It’s made me want to change the way I might measure the health of our marriage. God desires us to fully enjoy a deep, intimate relationship. It seems that too often we just settle for not arguing that much. Not good. I want more than that. This question has reminded me this is something we have to fight for.
3. Why did Jesus come to this earth? The Gospel is much more than a few short verses I might have memorized back in high school. So when my 5 year old asked me this, it required that I really think about this great news, and how even children can understand it.
Most of us can’t communicate the gospel. We might try by fumbling around through cliche’ lines we remember from Sunday School as a child. But when a child asks, those simplistic answers just don’t seem to make sense anymore.
I’ve written a post about this before, but for you parents with young kids, I highly recommend The Jesus Storybook Bible. Wow, it does such a great job of taking such a grand story and delivering it in bite-sized pieces.
These questions have made me really think. For that, I’m grateful to the people that asked them.
Have you been asked any questions that you found tough to answer?
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I’ve always thought, “Why do we drive on parkways and park on driveways?” was a good question, but I think these have that beat!
I have been struck in the last couple of months by the inadequacy of my prayer life. I’ve heard stories of great men who are in their workplace an hour before everyone else, prostrate before the Lord offering their lives as praise to Him and asking for guidance and strength from Him. I have great aspirations to be like that, but when this question is put to me, it makes me own up to my current reality.
One more note: I just finished our first time through the Jesus Storybook Bible with my son Nate and am starting round two of many to come (thanks Drew and Lindsey Lewis for that gift!). It really paints a clear picture of how the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the center of the whole Bible and of our lives today.
Thanks, Kevin, for the encouraging and “damaging” questions!
Glad to know you have that Storybook Bible. So good!
We’ve all heard those stories about men of old, Joe. It’s now time for you to be that man. Don’t worry about the length of time praying. I’d be more concerned with the attitude of your heart.
You’re a good man. Let’s continue to ask God to search our hearts and draw them to him.
Great post today, Kevin. Three thoughts/responses:
1. The Book of Common Prayer has changed my prayer life – forcing me to pray very specifically about a variety of stuff I wouldn’t think of otherwise.
2. Nothing promotes emotional intimacy like heartache shared, and noting hinders it like heartache hoarded.
3. Human sin fractured the image of God humanity carries. Jesus came to remind us what that image looked like, and to offer forgiveness that can restore the image for individual humans today.
Please let me amend response #2:
“heartache lovingly shared.” Sometimes we share heartache in a way that hinders intimacy.
Yes, Stan. Great thoughts. I appreciate your Gospel summation. Well said.
The tough questions I am facing now comes from my 7 year. Old daughter Samantha. Her best friends huntur 8, and madalina 7 both have Fanconis Anemia a terminal illness. They have been friends since the age of 2 but it is now hitting Sam that they are sick. The other day she asked me why would God let children be that sick or even die! Then she went on to say that was mean and they were just kids. I stumbled around for a great answer and still have not come up with a way to answer this the right way.
Josie, don’t feel the need to try to explain away pain, death and suffering. It is real.
It is ok to tell a child you just don’t understand. There has been many times already when I’ve told my kids this. I always want to bring them back to the fact that I know God is good, that he loves his children, and that we can trust him.
I appreciate the post Kevin. It is a good reminder to me of the power of questions. I tend to make statements first and ask questions more as an afterthought at times. How do you do with that?
Here are a few of my answers/thoughts:
A couple books that have been encouraging/challenging on prayer for me are Praying Life by Paul Miller and Valley of Vision (a collection of Puritan prayers). My prayer life ties in with a question posed in our community group last night, “What is something good going on in your life right now”? At Sojourn (our church) we are good at confession, digging to the root of sin and being raw, but we often forget to stop and praise the Lord for the good He is (and has been) doing. My prayer life has looked like that lately, lots of pleading with the Lord (a good thing), but lacking in thankfulness.
Lindsey and I have been trying to talk through that very question of intimacy lately. It is a good thing to recognize and move toward, but still will require a continual effort and intentionality.
I like Stan’s gospel summation. In an effort to come up with another way of saying it, you could word it sort of like this: We are all created to be worshippers. In the garden Adam and Eve chose to worship something other than God (themselves), and because of that we have all had misplaced worship ever since, be it of money, praise (whatever we are making our new god, or idol). Jesus came to provide us with a way to worship rightly (the one true God) again, through his death and resurrection. Also, preparing us for an eternity of worship.
Any feedback on that gospel summation? It is semi-influenced by Mars Hill (the WA version).