Mad Max - Part 2

One of the things that bothers me about Mad Max is the way that he uses Scripture. As I watched the video, I noticed that he uses a lot of Scripture, and a lot of different versions too. He go so far as to use The Message paraphrase when looking at Joshua 10. The message translates one of the verses to say that "God took orders from a human." Most of the versions say that God heeded or heard Joshua's request, but Lucado wants us to believe that Joshua was in charge? He also uses proof-texts that I do not believe are intended to support his views. He uses Isaiah 30:21, and calls it a "great promise." But when I look at it in context, it appears to be talking more about a great repentance. 

There is a lot of truth in what Max says, and just a little bit of leaven. But doesn't a little bit of leaven affect the whole batch? 

Tim Challies does a review of the 5 most ridiculous books ever to become Christian Best Sellers. In it, he criticizes at least one of them for taking a descriptive passage and making it a prescription on how we ought to pray. It would seem to me that Mad Max has done exactly that as well. As far as I can recall, there is only one prescriptive prayer in the Bible, and that is the Lord's Prayer. In that prayer, the message is that of approaching God with humility. We pray not for our wants, but our needs. We pray for forgiveness, but as we have forgiven others. We pray for God's will to be done, and not our own. Even if accomplishing our ends would glorify God. I believe this is how we approach God confidently, as stated in Hebrews, and it is not about approaching God boldly, seeking answers to our desires.

Jesus perhaps did pray boldly at times, like when He asked God that the cup of suffering pass from Him. We all know how that turned out. He also prayed boldly when He asked God to forgive those who were crucifying Him. Those are the only types of bold prayers that I think we ought to pray, and always with the thought that Jesus ended His request to have the cup of suffering taken from Him with, "nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will."