Friends: Try this personal prayer routine that covers several bases helping to get us home to the Lord. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #1015

April 28, 2026

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Ten Petitions

By Bob Walters

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” – Philippians 4:6

Every Christian has, or should be encouraged to have, a personal prayer ministry intent upon consistent and growing relationship with God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

We are mistaken if we think ministry is always outward, helping others find, build, and maintain their faith and understanding of God’s plan of forgiveness, salvation, eternal life, and – not to be ignored – divine relationship in the here and now. Remember that Jesus, in his prayer in John 17 on his way to Gethsemane, prays for himself first before praying for his disciples and the faithful who would come later.

It isn’t selfish. It’s like when they tell you on airplanes that in an emergency, put your own oxygen mask on first, then help your kids and others. If you’re incapacitated, you can’t help others.  A prayed-up Christian is like that: able. It’s a skip-the-line pass.

Praying with (1) praise and (2) thanks are general rules one and two.  And while we might pray for rest or favor, Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath and our rest resides in constant loving relationship with Him. Favor is being in the Father’s will; that is enough.

A live, Godly, Christ-like, Spirit-filled prayer can take many shapes but is activated by what’s happening in one’s heart as well as one’s mind. Formula, rote, or creedal prayer is frowned on in Bible church circles, but not everything that is frowned upon is wrong in God’s eyes or man’s faithful heart. Sincerity is the ultimate catalyst.

That said, I have ten general petitions I pray God to fill me with. I don’t always know what they look like, but they help direct my conversation and focus on what to listen for in God’s reply. I remember them in related pairs, saying, “Fill me with …”

- Truth and Love: Jesus is truth (John 14:6), and God is love (1 John 4:8). These are the first two checks on our spiritual fluid levels. God exists; that is the truth. Jesus’s appearance and sacrifice prove God loves us. His resurrection proves it is all real. Fill me with that trust, Lord, and with the Spirit’s help let me never forget it. 

- Grace and Peace: Appearing in all of Paul’s letters, Jesus is our peace and Jesus’s person is God’s grace. It’s not just an idle or routine greeting in a letter; this is the apostle describing Jesus and citing characteristics that govern Christlikeness.

- Strength and Courage: Rather than just “heal my sickness” or “defeat my enemies,” give me strength to persevere in pain and courage in the face of fear.

- Discernment and Mercy: Help me identify God’s truth and, in a prophetic sense, recognize God’s word, will, and judgment: to not be tricked into sin by man or Satan. This isn’t begging for mercy, but for the discernment to know when God’s judgment requires mercy … or not. Mercy is a component of judgment, not its opposite.

- Wisdom and Compassion: The word “wisdom” appears 219 times in my NIV, 169 times in the Old Testament and 50 times in the New. James says God gives wisdom generously (1:5), and that God’s wisdom is “pure, peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.” (3:17). That’s what I want. God sending Jesus is a function of God’s glory, and Christ on the cross is God’s compassion for our cursed predicament of sin. We can live this life in the Holy Spirit.

Jesus says He will be with us always (Matthew 28:20), and Paul tells us to “Pray continually” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). Here’s how: Live life as a prayer in every situation.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) grew up a liturgical Episcopalian and upon arriving in a Bible-based church was initially shocked at spontaneous prayer. He’s over it now.

Friends: Folks look at the Holy Trinity as something that needs to be split and defined rather than understood as a relationship and holy mystery.  Let’s hold it together. Have a great week, and all the best for 2025. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #947

January 7, 2025

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Splitting Image

By Bob Walters

“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being.” – Hebrews 1:3

Pam and I are fortunate to have several savvy, sincere, and biblically literate Christian friends and teachers across the various cohorts of the life we lead together.

Feel free to drop an “Amen” if you can say the same thing.

Our New Year’s Eve gathering with some of our so-inclined church pals last week was a party, not vespers, but as invariably happens – amid family updates and chatting about life in general – a faith and scriptural issue popped up that sparked a lively post-dinner doctrinal conversation among a few of us still sitting at the table.

A lady we have known for years who is active in Bible studies, women’s ministry, and local missions lamented how many Bible studiers she encounters who refuse the aspect of the Trinity that names Jesus as God. Yes, I know … basic stuff.  And any of us who have been around “newer” Christians are well-acquainted with the question.

She noted, “They want to know, ‘If Jesus is God, where was God while Jesus was on the earth?’ What do you say?” I have a reputation in our Sunday school class of talking too much, so I took a shot at an answer because I can’t help it. To wit …

The Trinity as One – Father, Son, Spirit – is among my favorite teaching topics. The Trinity, of course, is a mystery of mathematics, physics, and personhood, how three beings can be one and one being can be three.  To me it is easily explained that if indeed “God is Love” (1 John 4:8), and if we can agree that “love” requires relationship, then it proceeds logically that God must be a relationship. Voila! God is one…and three.

And if indeed humans were and are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image’”) – for all the ways that notion can be considered – it further proceeds that we are created in that love of God’s relationship.

Why three?  This is what works for me. Three is the smallest number of a community (George Bebawi), God himself is a society (G.K. Chesterton), and we, even as fallen sinners, are restored to God’s divine community through our faith in Jesus and acceptance of His gift of salvation. But the math? Yes, 1+1+1=3. But 1x1x1=1. I am content to “multiply” my blessings and figure God “adds up” love however He likes.

To me the issue we were discussing at the table comes down to those who stubbornly demand human definitions of holy things that need to be known in faith.  It is, to me, reasonable to take God at His word.  We can ask of Him all the questions we can conjure, but everything about Jesus is designed to demand our faith, not proof.

I’m afraid the best evidence for Jesus and God’s laws, even beyond scripture, is written on our hearts, ala Hebrews 8:10, Romans 2:15, Psalms 40:8, 2 Corinthians 3:3. And I couldn’t help but think of George’s observation that Western Christianity tends to focus on “Father and Son,” often ignoring the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.

We can’t argue faith and the Holy Spirit into anybody. One can witness and lead by example, but the Spirit does the heavy lifting of changing hearts and minds to accept God’s truth and the reality of an eternal realm humans are not yet equipped to fully understand. We glimpse eternity, in faith, all the time … yet it is still outside of time.

So, mysteries abound, but our faith must cohere into oneness with God, oneness with other believers, and not split the divine relationship in which we were created.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) enjoys the mysteries God presents. Praise Jesus.

God gives us a mind so we can find and glorify Him.  It’s why we go to school. See the column below, and remember Solomon ... Blessings, Bob

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Labels: 1 John 4:8, 1 Kings 3:9-12, ask of me anything, economics, Genesis 1-2, image of God, John 14:13, Mission Christian Academy, school, Solomon, Trinity

Spirituality Column #857

April 18, 2023

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Creative License, Part 1

By Bob Walters

“Behold, I have given you a wise and discerning mind.” God to Solomon, 1 Kings 3:12

Today, I’m burying the lede (newspaper talk for “main idea”); so hang with me.

Solomon is famous for asking God for wisdom, though depending on which translation of the Bible one reads, Solomon asks God (1 Kings 3:9) either to “give your servant an understanding mind” (ESV) or an “understanding heart (KJV, NIV, etc.).

What the obedient and young King Solomon wanted, and what God understood and provided, was the wisdom and means Solomon knew he needed to govern God’s people in a way glorifying to God and beneficial to them; he loved God and others.  It is wise to understand that “mind” and “heart” – synonymous – are God’s unique gifts to humanity.  Developing them in service and love to God and others is our holy calling.

Consider Genesis 1 and 2, where God gives this gift of “a discerning mind/heart” to Adam and Eve as they – and we – are created in God’s image. Interestingly it is phrased thusly in Genesis 1:26, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.  And let them have dominion over [all other animals].”  Let’s take a few notes.

Note 1: “us, our, and our” – God’s plural self-reference appears three times in the first sentence.  This denotes God exists as a relationship, which we now know as “Father, Son, Spirit.”  That is why Jesus’s apostle John can repeatedly write, “God is love,” (1 John 4:8).  God is a divine, eternal relationship – the Trinity – and love must be shared to be love. God is generous; our image both reflects and is God’s love, made to freely join that relationship.  We call that relationship the Kingdom of God,

Note 2: “And let them” – again in the plural, tells us “they,” i.e., God, intended “persons,” not just Adam.  “Male and female he made them,” says Genesis 1:27.

Note 3: “In His own image he created him,” also Genesis 1:27. Maybe this phrase is singular because God makes us one at a time?  Just a guess.  But we humans are unique in God’s Creation as the image of God, imago dei.  We can think and we can be creative. God made us that way; creativity separates us from beasts.

Moving on, Jesus at the Last Supper declares to the Disciples, “ask me for anything in my name and I will do it” (John 14:13). Most folks reflexively ask to be (or their loved ones to be) rich, smart, good looking, happy, healthy, comfortable, or safe.

I had occasion this past week to use John 14:13 to encourage a group of bright Christian students as to their studies: remember Solomon, and ask for wisdom.

Here is where the digging stops and the buried treasure, er, lede, is revealed.

My life is changing.  The student setting was a high school economics class I began teaching last week at Mission Christian Academy in Fishers.  In August, that will be my full-time “unretired” function, teaching high history, government, and economics. After 11 years, I’m retiring May 23 as a Hamilton Southeastern Schools bus driver.

For now, I’m also at MCA, teaching Economics and 7^th grade U.S. History, two mid-day classes that fit comfortably between my AM and PM bus routes.  I felt a real call from above about this decision, and now realize the joyous freedom of education that is unbridled from denying the reality of God and the authority of the Bible. More next week.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) joins his also-unretired wife Pam – a career English teacher at Lawrence Central H.S. – who teaches high school English at MCA.

 I am thankful to be forgiven in Christ, but I’m not sure what forgiveness feels like.  Plus, I know there is something more.  See the column below.  Bob

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Spirituality Column #847

February 7, 2023

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Forgive the Feeling

By Bob Walters

“…forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you …” – Jesus, Mark 11:25

We have a lively, mature Sunday school class full of prudent, Bible-savvy, loving, life-long believers and church leaders.  And then there is me.

I’m a late-to-the-faith guy who talks too much, but 21-years in (baptized at age 47 in 2001) I have pretty much merged into the life-affirming surety and joy in Christ these folks – and many others I’ve met – have known most of their lives.  Theirs is a weekly fellowship and witness I have been taught, and encouraged by, for more than 20 years.

A few weeks back I said something I believe fully but that obviously shocked the class; at least, it shocked Sandy.  I don’t remember what we were discussing but I made the sincere point that I can’t really “feel” forgiveness, even though I know I am forgiven.

Sandy – that’s her real name – is a caring, Bible-bearing servant of God who almost immediately, lovingly, responded (approximately), “You can’t feel forgiveness?  I think that makes me very sad.”  And I knew exactly what she meant – it was care, not criticism – but I could also sense the room’s general agreement with her and didn’t want to pull the discussion off in another direction … which I have been known to do. 

But it is true.  I think of my life given over to Jesus – I’m still a fallen sinner – and I can’t for the life of me figure out what forgiveness is supposed to feel like.  Further, I’ve come to believe that forgiveness, great as it is, is not the main point of our life in Christ.

God’s glory and our place in it, I am convinced, is the point of our life in Christ.

Jesus came to fight a very unusual war: to show us God is worth it, and we are worth it.  That was His mission.  Jesus’s emphasis more critically was our knowing that He is the Son of God, part of which is our knowing that only God can forgive, and our knowing we need forgiveness.  But salvation is a faith test, not a forgiveness test.

What I can feel, and what makes me rejoice, is the truth I know through the Holy Spirit: that the life, teaching, sacrifice, and resurrection of Jesus Christ tells humans we are created to be part of God’s glory. That’s what Jesus came to tell us, and to rectify.

It’s our faith in Jesus, not our having been forgiven, that truly opens the gate into the Kingdom of God.  No, we can’t enter the Kingdom as sinners because of God’s righteousness, and the sacrifice of perfect Jesus covers our sins; it’s His righteousness through which we enter the Kingdom.  I think our goal is entering the Kingdom, not “me being forgiven” so I can feel better about my life.  Life’s not about me; that’s not love.

What I am is thankful, grateful, humble, and utterly awed by the rescue mission Jesus undertook to bring believers back into relationship with God; I feel that love.

I don’t feel the forgiveness; I feel the relationship.  Because of Christ I don’t have to strain and fuzzily look through a glass darkly at a distant, mysterious hope.  In the living truth of Jesus, I live within the reality of God’s purpose: glory.  That truth is clear.

God created us in His own image – “God is love” (1 John 4:8) – to be part of His eternal glory, not so He could come forgive us at some later date by killing His son. 

Our greatest joy in this life, then, should model the life of Jesus by sharing with others God’s love and mercy for us … by forgiving them in obedience to God.

I may not know what God’s forgiveness feels like, but I surely feel the peace of knowing Heaven awaits, God is real, Jesus can be trusted, and the Holy Spirit abides.

Forgiveness, like love, is a divine joy when it is about others.  

Thank you, Jesus, and that’s all I have to say about that.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) loves Sandy and the entire E91 Logos ABF class.

 Spirituality Column #800

March 15, 2022

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

This is War

By Bob Walters

“The Lord is my strength and song, and He has become my salvation; this is my God and I will praise Him; my father’s God, and I will extol Him.  The Lord is a warrior; the Lord is His name.” – Exodus 15:2-3

“I saw heaven standing open and before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True.  With justice he judges and wages war. … He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God.” – Revelation 19:11,13

It is critical to remember that we do not serve a God who is soft on injustice or who shies away from a fight.  Righteousness is who He is and what He does.

His nature is love (1 John 4:8) and His mercies endure forever (Psalm 118), but He is not the God of “Can’t we all just get along?”  He knows better.  Sadly, so do we.

The church, in our compassion, wants to help fix the people who are broken wherever in the world a battle rages.  Our hearts cry out for the injured and oppressed; we rail against man’s cruelties and pray for deliverance of the innocents swallowed up in the fight.  The tragedy is real, our cry to God understandable, our rage justified.

But God’s church must be more than a fretful and compassionate aid station.  Are we rightly called to be a hospital for the world?  Sure.  We offer physical help and spiritual encouragement; we pray for people to know Jesus and be nice to one another.

Yet in this current season of phenomenal turmoil at home and abroad – in our neighborhoods, schools, towns, and nation, as well as global political disorder and the headlining firestorm in Ukraine – the church cannot forget that God calls us to be warriors who speak forcefully in His will against the evil of satan wherever we find it.

It is not just a battle for territory in Eastern Europe (where have we heard that before?), but it is a holy war for domestic cultural and social sanity here at home – an entirely differentiated front in the battle for the minds, lives, and souls of our children.

This is not the time to think Christians are called to be sheep or nursemaids.

Jesus encountered satan (Matthew 4:1-11) with the power of God’s words: “It is written!”  Jesus knew – and went silent – when God’s holy will called him to be a sacrifice as He was led to the violent Cross … and was then resurrected in glory.

But in Revelation 19, Christ fights: “With justice he judges and wages war.”

As God saved Israel out of Egypt near the beginning, and Christ defeats satan in the End, our Christian attitude of this moment must be that God is the Lord and that we are both the tools of His power in all the Earth and participants in His love and glory.

The works of our faith are stronger than we know; our praying in the authority of God as we acknowledge evil’s battle will pull down satan’s strong holds (2 Corinthians 10:4) and attack spiritual wickedness (Ephesians 6:12).  Jesus is Faithful and True.

God’s words are our sword; we must speak them boldly.  The fight is raging.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes that satan is one tough out, and that “please” isn’t going to dissuade satan or his operatives.  Walters also thanks Dutch Sheets for the timely scripture (some shared above) and thoughts of his March 10 “Give Him 15.”  May we all take to heart the power of God’s Word not only as a calming palliative in a crisis, but as a sword warriors must unsheathe confidently in the fight.

Spirituality Column #480
January 26, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

By Bob Walters

“You’ve taken your first step into a larger world.” – Obi-Wan Kenobi to Luke Skywalker in the original 1977 Star Wars movie, “Episode IV: A New Hope.”

Newly-discovered and budding Jedi Knight Luke has just “used the Force” in his first “light saber” lesson when Jedi master and mentor Obi-Wan offers this world-enlarging encouragement.

Finally free of his remote, nothing-happening-here home planet, good-guy Luke is on a star ship speeding off to galactic adventure, personal discovery and legendary fame fighting the evil empire controlled by The Dark Side of the Force.  If you know the Star Wars movies, you know how that all goes.  And with the seventh movie just out, it’s still going.  Luke indeed finds a far larger world.

There’s no real need to over-think all the good vs. evil, salvation vs. destruction, love vs. hate imagery, symbols and metaphors in these movies.  Mostly Star Wars is fun; it’s about outer space and fighting the bad guys; about cool space ships, exotic worlds, mysterious powers and imaginative weaponry that still does basically the same, familiar things contemporary weapons do: shoot things and blow stuff up.

We can clearly perceive our plainly-human hopes, fears, failings and aspirations amid the movies’ glitzy alien characters, technical fantasy and stark morality.  There is family, fellowship and trust among Luke and his Good Side of the Force; there is slavery, power and treachery rampant in the Dark Side of the Force.

Ours is a modern world of ceaseless information and endless entertainment.  We note a global, generational human predilection – given the worldly influences in any age – that mankind tends to worship the wrong things.  We worship what we think will spare us anguish, make us comfortable, give us status, make life easier and generally gratify our physical hungers, spiritual thirsts and psychological appetites.  We think life is complete, but our satisfactions are superficial.

What we truly need is something that “The Force” in the Star Wars movies never offers, describes or claims to be: Love.  It is often said, and I believe it, that love is the most powerful force in the universe.  How ironic then that the one thing love cannot be, actually, is forced.  Love is about giving, not forcing.  Love is a tie that binds, certainly, but it can’t be coerced.  Love is the most complete – and forceful – of mysteries.

The Bible tells us “God is love” (1 John 4:8) and God “so loved the world that he gave his only son Jesus …” (John 3:16).  God’s love, you see, is the true force of good.

Want a larger world?   Jesus Christ is proof of how big God really is.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) suggests baptism to step into a truly larger world.