There are a lot of ideas out there on the internet. Some of them are good and some are bad and some look better than they really are. To make sure that we are building on the right ideas, we need a way to examine all these ideas. We need something to compare them with.

I find that ideas are commonly connected to one of six different viewpoints represented by the following characters:

1. The Classical Hero/ Prince Charming
2. The Superhero
3. The Champion
4. The Reformer
5. The Mystic
6. The Disciple

As part of the Just Keeping It Christian column, I will connect ideas to these viewpoints so that you can choose which ideas you want to build on in your community, and to give you some reasons to defend your choices. I will continue to refer to these characters, but today I want to introduce them by explaining how each one defines what is good.

The classical hero defines good as something that works. If it works it is good. In other words it’s good if:

• it does the job
• it accomplishes the goal
• it achieves success
• it wins the prize
• it gains some ground

The superhero defines good as being empowering. We are talking about being personally empowered. It is good if it:

• makes you special (unique)
• makes you feel good
• touches (inflates) your emotions

The champion defines good as something to be proud of. It is good if: 

• it brings pride to the school/town/country
• it represents the pride of the school/town/country

The reformer defines good as being morally right. It is good if 

• it follows the rules/commandments
• it doesn’t hurt people
• it doesn’t violate someone’s rights
• it is fair
• it is honest
• it is based in scripture
• it builds character

The mystic defines good as something that brings miracles. They define a miracle as something that is unexpected or unusual. So, something is good if:

• it defies expectation
• it is surprising
• it makes you say “ooh”, “ahh”, or “wow”
• it is sensational

The disciple defines good as something that comes from God. If it didn’t come from God, it is not good. It is good if:

• it is commanded by God
• it is ordained of God
• it is received from God
• it is declared to be good by God
• it is created by God

You may have been taught to define good in one or more of these ways. I present all these definitions together so that you can choose the one you most want to pursue. Armed with an understanding of how others define good, you will begin to identify your allies and convert your enemies to unite to do the most good in your hometown. 

Discourses on Mighty Prayer

Wrestling with the Lord in Mighty Prayer

by Shauna Gappmayer- Millcreek, UT

“Somebody should do something,” young Becky said to her suitor in the 1963 movie, McClintock. The couple was witnessing a fist fight when she said it. The young man replied, “You’re absolutely right.” He didn’t win any points with the lady by agreeing with her. She wanted him to do something.

Your hometown has issues. Somebody should do something. Here are seven reasons why maybe it should be you.

The hard truth is that anytime you are in a traffic jam, you are part of the traffic problem. You can’t just demand that everybody else changes the way they do things. You will be subject to the changes in laws and policies you make, too. Since you are going to make the changes the Lord wants you to make in your hometown it will be important for you to be willing to submit to the whole program. The Lord often requires us to sacrifice things we want for the good of others, and in turn it blesses our lives in more ways than one. The good news is that God will help you make any changes that He asks of you. Your current community leaders don’t do that.

Many city planners are not residents of the cities they work in. Do you think that they are going to do what’s best for you? They are working with developers and contractors who are rarely local residents. Some developers are even from foreign countries. They make proposals and decisions that you have to live with, but they don’t. Wouldn’t it be better to have proposals and decisions made by you and your neighbors?   

City planners and engineers are bound by their codes and licenses. In some ways that seems like a good thing. You want them bound by something. But those codes and licensing agencies are not always governed by people who have your best interests at heart. A planner might see the need for changes and be unable to recommend the changes without threat of losing their license. I learned this from Charles Marohn in his book, Confessions of a Recovering Engineer, which I highly recommend, and I don’t get any commission for saying so. Community development is not always best left to the professionals. You can have more impact than they can, because you don’t have a license. You are free to do some good in the world.

Planners and engineers work for the city, not for you. I know that you were taught in school that your government represents you, but that’s not true in this case. They don’t work for the city in the sense that a city is a group of citizens. The city they work for is a corporation that operates outside of that elected government system. The city manager is the CEO of the city corporation. He is the one who hired the planners and engineers. He is their supervisor. They report to him, not you.

Like any other corporation, the city’s goal is to bring in revenue. Unlike private businesses they don’t produce anything or have any services to sell to bring in any revenue. They set regulations and mandatory fees instead. They don’t do this out of duty to the people. They are just following corporate policy. They are just doing their job. 

As a citizen you can work outside of this corporate system, within the elected government system to change laws and the structure of government in your hometown. You can also act out of duty to God and duty to your neighbors. You can work for your city, as in working for the people.

Grandad said, “if you want something done right, do it yourself.” It is the only way to get things done your way. Even the people closest to you, don’t share your exact values on every topic. You are the only you in town.

That means that you get to choose either to be the person who makes things happen or the person that all that stuff just happens to. The person who acts has greater responsibility and greater control over the results. The person who takes action has ownership of the results, and that is something to celebrate. You take action in your hometown, and you own it.

You are the one who cares about right and wrong. It’s a Christian thing. You are the one who will let the Lord direct your decisions. You are the one that wants God’s influence in your community. You are the one who wants God’s kingdom established in your hometown. You are the one God can work with. You are the one for the job.

Pep Talks

Your Most Important Responsibility as a Citizen

by Shauna Gappmayer- Gainesville, FL

I want to help you find time for mighty prayer. We all have such busy lives, and we are surrounded by so many distractions. And our lives are changing so much these days. I feel like it is harder to anticipate what’s coming next. That just means we need prayer more than ever before. Finding time to pray will be a big challenge, but our Savior will help us.  Here are some things we can do.

Pray first thing in the morning. Pray right before you go to bed. Pray at mealtimes. Many Christians have been taught to do this, and it is a great place to start. It teaches us that prayer is important enough to make time for it. It helps us make a habit of praying every day. Doing it routinely, helps us to remember to check in with our Heavenly Father.

Experts say that we need time away from these devices. Etiquette still demands that we not call one another after 9:00 pm unless it is an emergency, so we don’t really need a phone after 9. All those other dings, pings and other notifications won’t need your attention until tomorrow, if they require your attention at all. After 9, a phone is just a toy that diverts our attention from the people in our lives and the other realities in our lives. The earlier you put your phone to bed the more time you will have for your family and the more time you will have for mighty prayer. You might even find time for mighty prayer WITH your family. 

Now, I realize that phones are not the only distractions from prayer in our modern world, but for most people this one little rule could free up whole hours of time every day. I know people who have gone without their devices for days or even weeks as a kind of fasting, and they report amazingly positive results, like more time with important people in their lives, less stress, improved moods, depression lifting, better sleep, and more opportunities to build a relationship with the Lord and to help and serve His children. 

You can put your phone away for a few extra hours every night. God will help you. Let God help you do hard things like this. If your phone ever does ring after 9:00 pm, answer it. It’s an emergency. Otherwise, let it rest. Then come unto Christ and let Him give you rest.

Prayer can be an ongoing conversation with our Heavenly Father. And the conversation is often open-ended on God’s end. He always leaves the lines open for communication with us. He doesn’t always answer right away, so it is important to keep listening. And listening is a big part of mighty prayer. If we are wise, we will listen more than we speak in prayer. 

Because God answers quietly, we can often hear his answers in the little quiet moments between the big noisy tasks of daily life, when we  tune our spiritual ears to hear them. This means that God’s answers don’t only come quietly, they can come quickly, and the quicker we respond to the answers we receive, the quicker we will get at catching them. The quicker we get at catching the answers, the more answers we will get out of the time we have.

So, make it a habit to respond quickly to the answers you receive from God. How long does it take to say “thank you?” Sometimes we cannot respond more than that in the moment, but we need to get back to the conversation at the earliest opportunity. Ask for clarification. Ask for further direction. Act on what you have received, especially when directed to help others. God knows the urgency of the errands He sends us on, and sometimes we don’t. 

“In all thy ways, acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.” That’s a prayerful life! 

Anytime that you might put on the headphones and plug in to your favorite music and audio books is a time you could use to have a conversation with your Father in Heaven. Jogging, commuting and washing dishes are naturally quiet and solitary times. Social media memes have convinced us that quiet and solitary time does not exist, but it does if we allow it to exist without destroying it with whatever is coming through the headphones. 

There are a few things that you might need to know about prayer to use this quiet time wisely.

• You need to know that you don’t have to kneel to pray. You can pray standing, sitting or even moving. You don’t have to drop to your knees in the middle of your commute, your jog or your household chores. Just pray.
• You need to know that you don’t have to close your eyes when you pray. Do NOT CLOSE YOUR EYES when you are driving to and from work. Just  pray. You can talk to the Lord with your eyes wide open! You can close your eyes if you commute by bus or train. You probably should not close your eyes when you are jogging. My husband was blind and he did a pretty good job washing dishes. You can close your eyes if you pray while washing dishes, but you don’t have to.
• You need to know that you don’t have to say your prayers out loud. The Lord can hear your thoughts. The Lord knows the desires of your heart. Direct your thoughts to Him in prayer. God will hear you. Nobody else needs to hear you. You can pray silently on the bus. You can pray silently while you run. You can pray out loud if you want to, especially in your own car or kitchen. Just know that you can pray silently anytime you want to. 

Ponder the things you are praying about. Every time you think about your questions and concerns, every moment you spend considering the options, every minute you spend searching for the answers is part of the process, especially when you invite the Lord to offer his input along the way. Every time you revisit the topics you prayed about, revisit the conversation with the Lord. That is time spent praying.   

I never want to miss a chance to mention this principle of prayer. It is one of my all time favorites. I found it in the bible dictionary. I love my Bible dictionary even more than the online thesaurus! Here’s the golden nugget I found: It says,

“As soon as we learn the true relationship in which we stand toward God (namely, God is our Father and we are his children), then at once prayer becomes natural and instinctive on our part. Many of the so-called difficulties about prayer arise from forgetting this relationship.”

Don’t you love that? It said that God is our Father and as long as we remember that we won’t have so many problems with prayer. 

It has been my experience that the more I know about God, the more I love Him and the more I love Him, the more I want to pray. And this can get to the point that you wouldn’t let anything get in the way of praying. It is so much easier to find time to pray when I am motivated by love of God than by a sense of duty or worse, guilt. 

I used to really struggle to find time to pray. It was hard to set aside other things. It was nearly impossible for me to wake up early for prayer. I knew I should make more time for prayer, but I wasn’t doing it, and I felt like a failure. 

This was the cure: to learn to love God. How did I do that? 

• I kept praying as much as I could. I never gave up.
• I attended church regularly.
• I read about my Savior in the scriptures.
• And I listened to friends and leaders who know the Lord and love Him. The way they love Him was, in a way, contagious.
• I was blessed by the Lord for my efforts. I could see his blessings in my life. 
• I learned that God loves me.

That’s how I learned to love the Lord.

On a scale of one to ten, how much does God value prayer? Compared to all the other things you could do today, how important is prayer time to Him? Where would He put it on your list of priorities? Did you ever think to ask Him?

The Lord will put prayer in your life in exactly the right times and exactly the right amounts. And if you let Him, He will adjust your attitudes and feelings about prayer to be the same as his attitudes and feelings about prayer. When I let him adjust my attitudes and values, I become more Christlike. As I become more Christlike, I find more time to pray.

God has given us one whole day each week for prayer! Oh, how I love the Sabbath Day! I love all that it symbolizes.

• That it is observed on Sunday, the first day of the week, a different Holy day than what was observed under the law of Moses.
• The first day of the new week was the day our Savior rose from the tomb. We celebrate his Resurrection on the Sabbath.
• The first day is also the eighth day if we count from the beginning. Eight symbolizes baptism and the new life, redeemed from sin that our Savior offers to those who are baptized and make covenants with him.
• It represents the new life in His kingdom that He offers us when our life ends on this earth.
• It is the day of the Lord. It is His day. It represents the opportunity He gives us to come to Him and share in all that our Father has given Him.  It is a day of rejoicing.
• It is a day of rest. It is a day to enter into His rest. But did He say, “take your boat out on the lake, today, and I will give you rest?” or “Gather all the extended family at grandma’s house and I will give you rest?” or “plant yourself on your sofa and I will give you rest?” The way I remember it, it was something more like, “Come unto me…and I will give you rest.” (Matt. 11:28) What are we using the Sabbath Day for?

The Lord gave us the Sabbath day to come unto Him. It is the only day that I am free enough from other commitments to have big chunks of time to devote to prayer and my desire to come unto Christ. I wouldn’t want to waste it.

3 Christian Principles We Should Apply to Any Community Issue

Did you know that 80% 0f Americans still believe in God? That’s down from 97% fifty years ago, but that is still a significant number. We have the gospel of Jesus Christ. We have scriptures. And we believe in God. We have access to His power and direction. You would think that we could establish cities that are more similar to the city of Enoch than to Sodom and Gomorrah. If we are going to turn this around, where should we begin? To get us started, here are three Christian principles we can apply to any community issue.

1. Love the Lord thy God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

• This is the first and greatest commandment. Shouldn’t we make this our top priority at all times and in all things and in all places?
• Love God personally and collectively.
• Show that love – keep His commandments.
• Seek His insights.
• Ask Him for direction.
• Submit to His ways.
• Trust Him and accept His answers.
• Don’t put restrictions on Him.
• Don’t restrict access to Him.
• Build on His plan. God’s plan is the plan of happiness.
• Let Him help and bless your community.
• Establish what God wants for you and your neighbors.

2. Love thy neighbor as thyself.

• We have a duty to God to love and serve our neighbors.
• Love others out of love for God.
• Love your neighbors God’s way.
• Let God direct your service.
• Let God work in your heart to enlarge your capacity to love.
• Ask God what He wants for your neighbors.
• Ask God how He wants you to help your neighbors.
• Love and serve without separating into classes of servants and the served.
• Give of yourself – earn what you give.
• Serve your neighbor as equal to you.
• Give your very best to honor God and His children.
• Let God bless your efforts.
• Let your service bring you and your neighbors closer to God.
• Establish what God wants for you and your neighbors.

3. Protect and defend moral agency.

• Defend the right to govern your own actions according to your own beliefs and values.
• Take responsibility for your own actions.
• Defend freedom of religion.
• Defend the right to pray.
• Defend those who do good.
• Defend God’s ways.
• Follow God’s own model- God allows us to believe and follow Him or not believe and defy Him. He still expects obedience.
• Teach and inspire others to live God’s plan. God’s plan is His will for us. He wants good things for us. 
• Invite and encourage, but don’t force people to live God’s plan in your community.
• Allow different levels of understanding, commitment and participation in God’s plan for your community.
• Use your God-given agency to choose to participate fully in His plan for you and your neighbors.
• Defend the right to establish what God wants for you and your neighbors.