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Dear Friends,
When God called the name of the disciple Ananias in a dream, he was ready. “Here I am, Lord,” he replied.
“The Lord said to him, ‘Get up and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man named Saul. At the moment he is praying, and he has seen in vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so he may regain his sight.’”
Ananias knew of Saul’s violent and evil persecution of Christian believers in Jerusalem. He was reluctant to go, but the Lord was insistent. Ananias obeyed (Acts 9:10-18). Thus, began the ministry of Saul of Tarsus also known as the Apostle Paul.
Prayer was what God used to convince Ananias that Saul’s experience with God was genuine and he was safe for Ananias to approach. People pray when they are serious about God. People who are serious about God are generally safe with each other.
I am blessed to work with a whole community of persons that pray. Few of those persons are ordained ministers. Most are health care professionals, accountants, executives, and attorneys.
There was a time not long ago when prayer was a kind of Protestant “last rite” at our institution. When plans and initiatives succeeded, someone took the credit. When they failed, the last thing tried was prayer in the hope that God would pull us out of whatever we had gotten ourselves into without him. Of course, most meetings began with prayer, but much of that was habitual and perfunctory.
This is too harsh because it’s a big place with thousands of employees and there are many faithful followers of Christ. But institutions are human, and human eyes can drift from Christ to each other with the best of intentions. It is easy to drift from following Christ to idolizing service for Christ.
We say, “We are serving Christ – that’s what we are supposed to be doing!” Ah, but are we still waiting attentively for his instructions and the impulse of his love?
Henri Nouwen wrote, “Nothing conflicts with the love of Christ like service to Christ.” The late Dallas Willard explained what Nouwen meant—
What, then, is the general pattern? Intense devotion to God by the individual or group brings substantial outward success. Outward success brings a sense of accomplishment and a sense of responsibility for what has been achieved – and for further achievement. For onlookers the outward success is the whole thing. The sense of accomplishment and responsibility reorients vision away from God to what we are doing and what we are to do – usually to the applause and support of sympathetic people. The mission increasingly becomes the vision. It becomes what we are focused upon. The mission and ministry is what we spend our thoughts, feelings and strength upon. Goals occupy the place of the vision of God in pursuit of the inward life, and we find ourselves caught up in a visionless pursuit of various goals. Grinding it out.
This is the point at which service to Christ replaces love for Christ. The inward reality of love for God, and absorption in what He is doing, is no longer the center of the life, and may even become despised, or at least is disregarded. “No time for that” becomes the governing attitude, no matter what we may say. The fire of God in the human soul will always look foolish to those who like its effects, but do not know where those effects come from. . .
Vision of God and of oneself in God inspires a combination of humility and great aspiration for God. This combination leads to remarkable efforts in dependence upon God. Great effects are achieved because God acts with efforts made in dependence upon him and for his sake. The effects take on a life of their own. Surrounding people see nothing but the effects, which indeedare very remarkable and worthy of support. Sometimes the human support may also be of God. But the effects of all this have to be carefully watched, to prevent them from corrupting the heart away from an appropriate vision of God and the humble of valor flowing therefrom.
(The Great Omission [New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006], pp. 95, 97, emphasis in the original).
I realized we had reached the point at which service for Christ replaced love for Christ about twelve years ago when two of us were asked to lead worship at a corporate leadership retreat. My co-leader and I prayerfully picked songs and choruses to lead our colleagues to praise and worship Christ in a Spirit-filled connection to his mind and heart.
The first morning’s worship blessed and inspired many judging from their participation and comments. At the conclusion of the first day’s activities, my co-leader told me that the new CEO wanted us to change the worship for the following morning.
“How so?” I asked.
“The CEO wants more up tempo songs with a stronger beat to get them excited and pumped for our new operational initiatives.”
The Holy Spirit gave my guts a twist. “This is worship of our holy God that we are talking about! We are leading people to bring all of themselves and their cares to his throne of grace. To manipulate praise of the Lord for the support of corporate programming is taking his name in vain in violation of the Third Commandment. I want no part of that!”
“I know,” my co-leader said, “but what can we do?”
“We prayed about these songs and the order of worship,” I said. “This is what the Lord led us to prepare. We pray and ask the Lord tonight if he wants us to change the worship. If we receive no clear instruction or sign to do so, we stick with what we’ve prepared. I really don’t think the senior lawyer and a nurse leader are going to be fired because we followed the Holy Spirit’s leading in group worship.”
We worshiped as planned and a spirit of peace and love for God prevailed in the session.
It was a sign of things to come, however. Psychological motivational talks replaced many of the devotional and prayer sessions that typically characterize our Christian corporate culture. At times, the pursuit of our mission was downplayed, even denigrated, in favor of strategic priorities placed on an increased profit margin and market share.
Questioning proposed business alliances on the basis of mission and values was met with hostility. “We have to have a margin, before we can have a mission,” was a phrase often repeated in response. “Those who want to have a mission better find a way to pay for it!” was emphatically stated.
It occurred to me that what we had was a contest between the rich fool of Jesus’ parable and the poor widow of Zarapheth who fed the prophet Elijah in a time of severe famine out of the last flour and oil she had to feed herself and her son (Luke 12:13-21; 1 Kings 17:8-16).
The rich fool was a big producer of wealth. He built larger barns to store his production and provide him with a luxurious lifestyle. With his reserves he believed he had no need for anyone or anything else. God called him a fool and told him that he was going to die that night and his stored reserves could not stop his demise. They were going to be inherited by someone else.
The widow fed a starving Elijah on faith and found there was enough food to feed him, her son and herself. She used up everything she had in faith that God would provide more. This happened day by day until she began to have surpluses of flour and oil that she could sell to others to help support her little family.
The widow represented faithfulness to God and his calling. The rich fool represented the “big is better,” and “grow or die” philosophies that had led us to revere consultant power point presentations over the Word of God.
There is never a fight to be had in these situations. To fight would be to employ the tactics of self-righteousness and being “holier than thou” does nothing but annoy and trivialize the issues.
For God to be our focus, God must be our means. The believers’ answer in times of secularization and compromise is to seek God. A parade of witnesses including Enoch, Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, John the Baptist, Jesus and the Apostles testify to this truth. God’s rule is established by God, not by those who do what they think God would do if he was present.
People with faith look to God to write and to fulfill his own agenda. Despite aggravations and irritations, they stay faithful with hearts open and ready for his will. They wait for God to make his move.
Hebrews 11:6 says, “Without faith it is impossible to please God, for whoever would approach him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who actively seek him.” This is a succinct description of a faithful relationship between a believer and the living God. There are only two kinds of people in spiritual terms – those who believe God is a living reality and those who do not and the difference is expressed in prayer.
Those of us in our organization who believed that God should be in charge and his will sought in all things found each other in the course of our work. In a short time, God brought others into leadership who put God first. It seems there are always 7,000 who have not bowed their knees to Baal (1 Kings 19:18). In answer to our prayers, new leaders committed and consecrated to God were put in place.
Effective prayer is honest. One can “spin” politics, business plans and products, but trying to spin God is futile. The Apostle Paul said, “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow If you sow to the flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit (Gal 6:7).
So prayer has become our first initiative, rather than our last rite. Wanting what God wants has become our collective desire, rather than merely asking God to “rubber stamp” our plans and efforts with blessing after we have already completed them.
The flow of honest prayer through a heart cleanses it of resentments. The motivations and behaviors of self-serving ambitions, angry dysfunctions, manipulations, hypocrisy, greed and favoritism are revealed as repulsive and shed as unnecessary when the connection between a praying fellowship and its living God is secure and vital.
As counsel, I have often been the investigator or mediator of the internal frictions and conflicts. It is a blessed relief to see those fade and become rare, as the ministry of intercessory prayer places us in each others’ shoes before our righteous and compassionate God.
Knowing that our hearts are tuned and open to the same God makes our interactions safe and reliable. We are learning the lesson Ananias learned about Saul. Prayer leads to peace and security.
Our challenges financially and operationally are overwhelming. But the Lord has brought this last overtly Christian academic health sciences center in the world, safe thus far. We welcome the challenges and struggles for they keep us close to the Source of our life and strength.
I have lived and served a long time and have longed to see this revival of faith within the fellowship of my colleague-believers. To experience it is a blessing of love and well-being that I cherish. We pray, and the Lord keeps us safe in the place he has given us and called us to serve.
“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Ps 34:8)
Under the mercy of Christ,
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Kent Hansen is a Christian attorney, author and speaker. He practices corporate law and is the managing attorney of the firm of Clayson, Mann, Yaeger & Hansen in Corona, California. Kent also serves as the general counsel of Loma Linda University and Medical Center in Loma Linda, California.