100 Days

Earlier this morning I attended a special convocation of Point University faculty, staff, and students – live in West Point, via podcast in East Point, Savannah, Peachtree City, and Birmingham – where President Dean Collins invited the Point community to join together in 100 days of prayer and submission. 

Thanks to the generous hospitality of West Point Presbyterian Church, we were able to fill up their auditorium with Point faculty, staff, and students as the details of this 100 days of prayer and submission were explained.  Our hopes are that this invitation will be accepted and acted on by friends of Point everywhere. 

The reason for the 100 in 100 Days of Prayer and Submission is that Sunday, March23, marked 100 days until the end of Point’s fiscal year on June 30. Obviously we want to continue praying and submitting after the 100 days are over, but thought that a clear focus on such important spiritual disciplines couldn’t help but make us – individually and corporately – more effective witnesses to the gospel which can transform our individual lives and the whole world around us.

President Collins reminded us that God is in the habit of using ordinary people – like we are - to do amazing things. We often say at Point that the issue for us is not so much “who you are when you come to Point” but “what are you willing to become while here.” That seems to be the point of the conversation that Jesus had with sanctimonious Simon and the sinful woman in Luke 7:36ff. Simon was proud of who he was; the sinful woman interested in what she could become. The question for each of us for the next 100 days ultimately boils down to “What am I humble enough to let God do in and through me?” The challenge for many of us is that so often we let our own pride become the barrier to God’s work in our lives. So we are going to talk a lot over the next 100 days about prayer, but also submission.

All of that reminds me of many things Jesus said and taught, but perhaps none more directly than what He said in Mark 10:45 (Matthew 20:28 also). “For even the Son of Man did not come to be waited on at the table, but to wait on tables, and give His life a payment price for many.” Could anyone possibly write a sentence that reflects less pride than this one? This is the divine Son of God who is simply describing how He lived while among us – not as one to be treated with royalty, but as one who would humble Himself to do whatever needed doing – waiting on tables.

Often the challenge to submission is pride born out of status. The marketing world tends to define us based on our zip code’s  per capita income. People all around us make judgments about us – and we do the same to others – based on what kind of car we drive, what our level of education is, the clothes we wear, the titles we have,  ultimately becoming a “right v. wrong side of the tracks kind of issue.” Surely because I have the title “vice president” associated with what I do, submission should look different for me than for the person who has “janitor” as the term to describe what they do.

That’s an odd thing to think if I am following one who “though He existed in the very form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking on the form of a bond servant because He was made in the form of a human – and as a human, He humbled Himself and became obedient, to the point of death, even on a cross.” 

We live in a world where function determines value – and find ourselves wrapped up in the pride of our function, assuming that makes us more valuable. But in kingdom economics, function has nothing to do with value – our value is rooted in the fact that we are, when all is said and done, “children of God – where there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free.” 

I welcome the challenge of 100 Days of Prayer and Submission. Looking at a key biblical text each week over the next 100 days will be good discipline. Praying in a way that helps me better see who I am and how God can work through me more effectively is a gift from God Himself. 

I thank God daily for the “function” I have as a part of Point University. I get the privilege of being a vice president of a Christian institution of higher education with about 1450 students. But the flip side of that same coin is that about 99.9+% of the world’s population don’t even know that Point University exists. That, however, doesn’t make what I do unimportant – but it probably does speak to how foolish it would be for me to exchange kingdom economics for worldly economics and become prideful rather than humbly submissive.

It’s an invitation, so no one is being forced to “pray and submit” over these next 100 days. But quite frankly, it seems to me to be an invitation I would be foolish to ignore.