by LauraLoo
On July 23rd Pastor Joe Nelms prays an uplifting and, at times, amusing pre-race prayer at the NASCAR Nationwide series race in Nashville, TN.
It must make God’s day when Joe comes to talk to Him!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J74y88YuSJ8[/youtube]
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Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
AMEN and amen!
Amen!! I love it when a Christian man thanks God for his “smoking, hot wife” sounds like The Song of Solomon to me. And you know what? Solomon was the wisest man that ever lived. (I know, unfortunately he did not know how to be “satified with the wife of his youth” and his lust for so many women led him away from God). Thanks Pastor Joe, you made my day. When the radical, liberal, pro-aborts say “you Christians are a bunch of repressed, puritanical, prudes who are ashamed of sex”, I LOL because stable, married couples have (1) the best sex, (2) enjoy sex more (3) have more satifying sex and (4) have more frequent sex than singles, divorced, cohabiting or any other category of couple. (Read Why Marriage Matters by Glen Stanton and The Case for Marriage by Maggie Gallagher). Forget that “free love” garbage, God knew what he created and why he created both marriage and sex in the first place, so we can truly “become one flesh”. The real thing will bond a man and woman in the santity of “marriage” physically, anatomically, emotionally, mentally, hormonally, immunologically, psychologically and spiritually and will blow your mind.
I think he forgot to add, “Git R Done.”
Nice, I’m ludicrous, so I’m reminded of Gandalf’s love of the hobbits, and Christ’s incarnation.
Talking to God does not mean one isn’t doing so from the most earthy circumstances, often joyous ones.
The occasion of Christ’s first miracle was not a solemn ritual. It was a party. :-)
Acknowledging God as Lord of all makes for juxtapositions that can seem odd — but only if we’re closet docetists. ;-)
LOL,
Human nature is human nature is human nature.
I thought this ‘prayer’ was sick and blasphemous. One does not address the Lord of all by cracking jokes, and advertising tires and gasoline.
Sorry.
I think God has a terrific sense of humor and enjoyed this prayer!
Clarice: Are you a docetist? Is Christ Lord of ALL, or must we don our Sunday go-to-meetin’ psyches before he wishes to be in our midst?
Is he the Lord of our humor? Our tires? Our gasoline? The minister wasn’t advertising these, he was emphasizing in a charmingly disarming way that everything in God’s world is no less appropriately a part of our prayer life than it is a part of our physical world.
Basically, you’re saying that we’re obliged to avoid conversation with God when humor is afoot, or commercial products are about. The implication is that either we avoid such things so God can be welcome 100% of the time in our lives, or we don’t welcome God in our lives 100% of the time. Which I take as a false dichotomy.
Blasphemy? The blasphemy is to imagine that everyone has to suddenly get all solemn, tell their kids to shut up, and then the preacher has to use “thou” and “thee” in nothing but the most staid locutions while invoking a deity who apparently prefers a grim petitioner to a joyful one. It’s blasphemy because it’s ant-incarnational — in a word, docetist.
God is transcendent in many ways, but he’s immanent in many ways too. The minister understands that, and astonishingly was able to convey that better than most sermons could, to an entire Nascar crowd.
Not blasphemous — awesome. The proper reaction? Humble reflection on whether I do things I think exclude conscious awareness of, and conversation with, God — or whether he is the God of all in my life, all the time, everywhere.
Fiddler on the Roof. Constant conversation with God. No inappropriate time, nor topic. If God is real, he always is, everywhere, and he’s God of everything.
Yes, yes, and YES, Rasqual. God sees right through our “religious” demeanors (as if we’re going to put one over on Him!). If we would genuinely assess them, we’d realize the posturing is done for our benefit, contributes nothing and possibly impedes the function of prayer: communicating with God.
He wants relationship and we can talk with Him wherever, whenever about whatever. Like any relationship in life, it will grow the more conversation you have. To qualify as a conversation, you must give Him a chance to talk: that’s where being still and knowing He is God comes in. Raised with a lot of these sacred cow customs, only when I renewed my mind to this truth of God’s desire for relationship above ritual did I ever hear Him. And He’s got the best sense of humor in the universe.
Oh come on,
The guy is just being a normal man. Get over it folks, Christian or whatever a man is a man and unless he’s gay or blind, a man likes to feast his eyes on a ”hot looking” woman. Its called biology.
BTW, shouldn’t the minister be thanking God for his wife’s inner beauty?
AMEN!! LOVE IT!!
Thank you, Rasqual and Klynn!
He wants relationship and we can talk with Him wherever, whenever about whatever.
Hi Mary,
Why not thank God for both?? :)
klynn73: And the value in doing this publicly is pedagogical. Lotsa “unchurched” folk would find the idea that God is at home at a NASCAR race odd. So hearing a preacher deftly bring them alongside a sound incarnational, immanentist theology — a good thing!
Part of that deft move, Mary, is in thanking God for his hot wife — yes, in just those terms. That’s part of coming alongside people (hormonal dudes, in this case) who might not be quite ready to go deeper. If it raises their eyebrows to hear that it’s OK to thank God for their wives sexual attractiveness, that’s acquainting them with a God who’s bigger than they thought — not smaller than he is.
I don’t think he’s just being a normal man. I think he’s a wise lover of God who understands what he’s doing kind of deeply. In part, I say that because I’ve learned that southern preachers can be some cagey, disarmingly smart dudes. ;-)
Note: “Eye for an eye” is sometimes misunderstood for a similar reason. It’s considered a vindictive, vicious ethic by people who don’t understand that it was implemented as a way to regulate out-of-control disproportionate revenge. It posed that justice is proportionate, and that anything more than “eye for an eye” was not justice. Likewise, being thankful for a smoking hot wife isn’t a sign that the praying person is shallow. In the public context, it’s a sign that he’s aware that his hearers are on the other side of the problem — they’re not even conscious that God might be a proper object of gratitude for their own wives’…er…assets.
Something like that.
I am not a docetist, Rasqual. Your argument that, because I found this ‘prayer’ blasphemous and inappropriate, I must not “welcome God into my life 100% of the time,” is a straw man.
Christians are directed to pray without ceasing, but our task is to turn our whole lives into prayer. It does NOT mean to just give God any old thing and expect it to suffice, like Cain’s sacrifice.
This ‘prayer’ was not a prayer, it was a cheap stunt, intended to amuse the audience with a reference to the movie Talladega Nights. Anaxios!
Clarice: That wasn’t my argument. I inferred (claimed you implied) that “either we avoid such things so God can be welcome 100% of the time in our lives, or we don’t welcome God in our lives 100% of the time. Which I take as a false dichotomy. ”
So I didn’t say you’re not welcoming him 100% of the time. The alternative is that you avoid such things so he is welcome full-time. Which seems to be what you’re either saying or implying. Is God welcome during what you consider to be blasphemy?
How do you know the prayer was a “cheap stunt, intended to amuse the audience?” That’s a remarkably gratuitous judgment and, without warrant for the claim, you’re engaging in false witness.
How do you know his intentions, Clarice? Is your intuition so good that you’d risk slandering a brother?
He’s done at least two previous NASCAR invocations. Have you seen them?
Happy 17th Anniversary to my husband!
Thank you God that he is an amazing provider, an awesome daddy, a faithful man and is totally smokin hot!!!
Amen.
Hi Carla,
Congragulations. Hey, who says we women don’t like feasting our eyes either!
Thank you, Mary!
I shall feast my eyes on the banquet of one.
It’s easy to be intimate when you’re eating and sleeping together. Hooray for a man that compliments his wife in public! This prayer was irreverent but I think the Lord has a sense of humor. And yes, his first miracle was to keep the party going. I also like quiet prayer, but this one made my day. Amen!
How do you know the prayer was a “cheap stunt, intended to amuse the audience?” That’s a remarkably gratuitous judgment and, without warrant for the claim, you’re engaging in false witness.
How do you know his intentions, Clarice? Is your intuition so good that you’d risk slandering a brother?
I know his intentions the same way anyone’s intentions are ever known: drawing the conclusion based on the available evidence.
We have this preacher given the opportunity to pray before starting the race. Does he take the opportunity to reverence and petition God on behalf of everyone, like at least praying for the safety of the drivers, the pit crews, and the spectators? No. What he said was phrased as if it were a prayer, but he starts by “thanking” God with advertisements for the products being used in the race. He could have just thanked God for the natural resources that were used in the tires and gasoline, but instead he had to drop the brand names for everybody to hear. The rest of it is just jokes designed to make the audience laugh, including a movie reference. It was completely inappropriate and disrespectful.
As to the question of “relationship” versus “ritual”, just because ritual can be used in a pharisaical or empty fashion does not mean ritual is bad for use in prayer. Ritual helps us focus on the presence of God with us instead of coming up with yet another way to end a sentence. Is it so terrible to use a “ritual” prayer that comes from the Bible or a holy person, when the alternative is lifting something from a Will Farrell movie?
Anyway, Jesus gives us specific instructions on how to pray in Matthew 6:9-13/Luke 11:2-4. It amazes me that in two thousand years, people have gone from “For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever” to “Boogity boogity boogity”!
Happy anniversary Carla! LL :D
Happy Anniversary Carla and hubby. Enjoy your “smoking hot husband” as God the creator of marriage would want you to.
This was not an appropriate “prayer”in my view , but God will decide if it was in His!