[Vision2020] Sports

[Austin Storm]

Imprecatory prayers seem to be a hot-button thingy deal. There are many
wonderful evangelical Christians who pray that God will convert unbelievers,
and I wonder if it would give them pause if they thought about what it
meant, 'zactly. First, there's some Calvintastic assumptions working...
assuming God does the saving. But when God saves someone it's a pretty messy
business: new friends, new thoughts and behaviors, the works! The Bible
describes it as a death and resurrection, dying to sin and living for
Christ, and death can be messy. But it's the way God works, and we pray for
it for people by name.

Anywho, I wanted to give you some quotations:

"Imprecation is not the biblical equivalent of casting a spell, or running
pins through a voodoo doll. It is a prayer to the infinite personal God, who
sees and knows all things, down to the motive of every last heart. All true
prayer commits everything to Him, and where is the danger in that? We may
ask God to pay back to our adversaries seven-fold (Ps. 79:12). How is this
consistent with forgiveness to seventy times seven (Matt. 18:21-22)? If God
visits our enemies with conviction of sin, seven-fold, then He will destroy
our enemies by transforming them into friends. If this ticks us off, like it
did Jonah, then we have an attitude problem (Jon. 4:9), not knowing what
spirit we are of (Luke 9:55). But if we rejoice in this kind of triumph,
then we are fitted to say *amen *to the other kind."
Pastor Wilson, at Sunday worship

This one's from Flannery O'Connor, the subject of the next C/A magazine. You
can get her complete works at my bookstore! Free local delivery, so you
could make me come to your house if you wanta:

Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories, (Faber, 1990), "The Peeler", pp.72,
74:

The blind man reached out again and his hands suddenly covered Haze's face.
For a second Haze didn't move or make any sound. Then he knocked the hands
off. "Quit it," he said in a faint voice. "You don't know nothing about me."

"You got a secret need," the blind man said. "Them that know Jesus once
can't escape Him in the end."

"I ain't never known Him," Haze said.

"You got a least knowledge," the blind man said. "That's enough. You know
His name and you're marked. If Jesus has marked you there ain't nothing you
can do about it. Them that have knowledge can't swap it for ignorance."

...

"Fornication," the blind man said.

"That ain't nothing but a word," Haze said. "If I was in Sin I was in it
before I ever committed any. Ain't no change come in me." He was trying to
pry the fingers off from round his arm but the blind man kept wrapping them
tighter. "I don't believe in Sin," he said. "Take your hand off me."

"You do," the blind man said, "you're marked."

"I ain't marked," Haze said, "I'm free."

"You're marked free," the blind man said. "Jesus loves you and you can't
escape his mark ..."


-- 
Austin Storm
Sky Cow Books
P.O. Box 9128 Moscow, Idaho 83843
208.596.5752 work | 678.550.5503 fax
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