Sometimes I wonder if God doesn’t answer our petitions right away because he is waiting for us to ask a better question. What if our expectations limit what He wants to do? What if we listened to how Jesus prays for us?
Now to the God who can do so many awe-inspiring things,
“For many of us perseverance is not a spiritual quality that we aspire to. We seem rather to think that faith is evidenced by quick results. We get faith for something and start believing with the force of a steam train, but if we don’t see the results we want, and quickly, we lose heart.
I think it may be more accurate to say we lose faith quickly because we have already lost heart. Losing faith is merely a symptom. Much like chest pain is a sign of a heart attack, so lack of perseverance is a sign our heart has been damaged.”
-Bishop Todd Atkinson, from While He Lay Dying
I’m back in ranch country babysitting my grandchildren while their parents are away. They are hard-working folk, these cowboys. For over a hundred years they have been saddling up, no matter what the weather. Some of the more grizzled ones look like they have been in the saddle for a hundred years, but they are strong people.
I cleaned the fresh snow off the car, scraped the ice off the windshield, and drove the grandkids to school in the dark and cold this morning. None of us were thrilled about the rituals of a January morning. This is the longest month of the year for me. It’s a one foot in front of the other kind of time.
While I’m here I’m teaching my amazing twelve-year old granddaughter to sew. I’ve been doing it for so long I’ve forgotten how many steps there are to learning how to put the pieces of fabric together, but she catches on very quickly. She is also excited about learning math and science and is teaching herself sign language as well. She has an amazing ability to synchronize information gleaned from one area and connect it to another. It’s starting to come together for her. I love watching the way her mind works. But without the dailiness of school and reading and fact gathering she wouldn’t have the information she needs – and craves – to put the pieces together. Her brother is a keen observer of people and makes the same kind of connections, but in relationships. He already shows a growing ability to live with compassion and consideration.
And so we all saddle up and go through the routines of a winter morning, because perseverance in the dark and in the cold leads to breakthrough and connection to greater truths.
There are times when we are in crisis and facing overwhelming odds, as a community did when contending for the life of Bruce Merz, when the lessons the Lord has taught through perseverance start to come together. Who knew one of the lessons involved would be perseverance itself? Bishop Atkinson understood that like Daniel prevailing in prayer for 21 days, the breakthrough would not be quickly won.
Amazingly after 21 days of round-the-clock prayer there was breakthrough. We started to make connections – the kind of connections that change our lives forever.
The story is told in While He Lay Dying. The website, including photos and videos, is here.
It’s inspiring reading on a cold January day and may give you some of the information you need to gather for your own breakthrough.
His Daddy asked each of the children to tell him three things they liked about Mommy so he could write it in her birthday card. I like this habit they are developing in the children. On birthdays now, even for the adults, we go around the table and everyone expresses something they see in the person of honour – a character quality, an improvement or a promising bit of potential. One of the observations our four-year old grandson wanted his Dad to write down as a message to Mommy was, “I like your prayerness.”
I love it. Prayerness. Prayer is not just something you do; prayer is a state of being.
Why did I choose one of my photos of fire today? Lately, with all the extreme cold of winter, some people are experiencing furnace problems. The pilot light (flame) has gone out. The furnace won’t work. Some of our friends depend on wood heat. If they sleep too long without stoking the wood stove the fire goes out and the whole thing has to be re-kindled and built up again.
Prayerness, a constant state of being in connection with God, the source of all light and power, essentially keeps the fire burning. It keeps our hearts from growing cold. That’s why we are told to pray for those people who are a source of annoyance (or worry) in our lives – because you can’t maintain the warmth of caring without prayer. We become cold-hearted, detached. Without prayer we rely on our own resources, which have a shelf-life. With prayerness we don’t have to go looking for Jesus when we have a question or a crisis. We’re already connected.
Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.
I pray for you constantly, asking God, the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to give you spiritual wisdom and insight so that you might grow in your knowledge of God.
I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to those he called—his holy people who are his rich and glorious inheritance.
I also pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God’s power for us who believe him.
This is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the place of honor at God’s right hand in the heavenly realms. (Ephesians 1:16-20 NLT)
In God’s economy nothing of value is actually lost. Theory is all well and good, but until our personal stories work something of Christ’s character into to us, we don’t know Him. Not really. He never asks for anything of us – even our lives – without plans to give us something greater in return.
“You notice that the Apostles got their revelation for the Church in practical situations. They never met around a table to have a Round-Table Conference, to draw up a scheme of doctrine and practice for the churches. They went out into the business and came right up against the desperate situation, and in the situation which pressed them, oft-times to desperation, they had to get before God and get revelation. The New Testament is the most practical book, because it was born out of pressing situations. The Lord gave light for a situation. The revelation of Christ, we might say, in emergencies is the way to keep Christ alive, and the only way in which Christ really does live to His own.”
— T. Austin Sparks
Those gathered around our son-in-love’s hospital bed while he was in a coma and expected to die, admitted they had no idea how to pray. As they cried out in desperation, the Lord answered. It started with one man who wanted to reconcile with his brother. Then another, and another until many people who were woken in the night to pray for him and were reminded they needed to go to a brother or sister and be reconciled before they could pray with authority. As they did, the miracles started happening, one tiny rise in blood pressure at a time. The Lord was asking for a united unoffended body of believers to come together to pray in faith.
They dug deep and found Holy Spirit had already planted the seeds of faith and love in their hearts long before they needed it. He was there all the time, in their story with them.
God’s first language is not English, nor is it Greek or Aramaic or even Hebrew. His first language is Himself and glory is however He chooses to express Himself.
He speaks in the vast expanse of space, he speaks in the tiniest particles of earth. He speaks in light and sound. He speaks in pictures. He speaks through flesh and blood. He once spoke to me through a prairie chicken.
I was driving home on a dull November day when I felt the urge to pull off at a provincial campground. I felt like the Lord was saying, “Stop at Lundbreck Falls. There’s something I want to show you.” I hadn’t stopped there in years, and I totally doubted the urge but I thought I might get a good photo there. I could use a good stretch. So I stopped. The light was all wrong and the waterfall was in deep shadow. I walked around and wondered what that was about, because I was trying to listen to the Lord.
Truth is I barely shut up enough to listen. You see a few days earlier someone who told me they were a prophet said I was going into a “winter season.” I’d been in a winter season for years, thank you very much. I was just waking up the reality of the love of God in my life, starting to feel close, and was learning Holy Spirit wants to communicate with all his children. I complained loud and long that I didn’t want to go into another winter season.
So there I was on a dark November day walking in an empty campground, nearly back at the car, complaining about the approach of winter, when a grouse suddenly appeared on the road ahead of me. There were no other birds about. He marched right up to me, turned his back and splayed his tail feathers in a grand TA DAA movement. Then he puffed his throat and did an entire spring mating display just for me. I wanted to grab my camera from the car, but I was afraid he would leave, so I watched until he marched toward the shrubbery. Only then did I only grab it. I was flattered and thanked him, but explained he wasn’t really my type, then drove home, pondering.
Later while praying in the woods I came around the corner to see a crocus blooming on the trail. A spring flower. Not unheard of, but highly unusual. I asked, “Are you saying something, Lord?”
“Spring. Between you and me, it’s spring.” I love his sense of humour and that he can speak through a prairie chicken and a fuzzy purple flower. And that whole year it was spring between me and Jesus (and I learned to test the words of prophets). It was like falling in love for the first time. He was showing off with his kindness.
He also speaks in English, Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew, Chinese and Ktunaxa. The Bible is indeed “a more sure word” even if it doesn’t contain every word. If you are not familiar with it, you won’t recognize his voice in other ways, and he doesn’t contradict the written word. It’s a familiar voice. He also often speaks (or sings) to me through music of all genres.
As I have been thinking about the days leading up to the story told in While He Lay Dying, I know He gave us some very clear heads-ups that he was in this event. The most obvious to me came through music. My friend, Valerie, introduced me to Taizé music only a few days before we left for our granddaughter’s birthday in Lethbridge Alberta. I had checked out a few of these songs on YouTube. I like songs with a ground bass that allow for improvisation over top (like Pachelbel’s Canon) so these simple tunes interested me. Later in the week one of them started playing in my head repeatedly. That’s not unusual for me. I have music in my head all the time. But this one wouldn’t stop. It was driving me nuts! It played in my sleep. It played over top of other music when I tried to listen to something else. On the drive to Alberta it was so loud and insistent in my head I had a hard time carrying on a conversation with my husband. It played all night before Bruce went to the hospital, and all through the next day until we received word on Sunday morning that he had crashed and was on life support. Then it stopped.
I cried, “Oh God! What are we supposed to do?”
That’s when a friend phoned and said, “You know, I think we are supposed to stay with him around the clock. I think we need to watch and pray.” Their pastor told my daughter, “We are going to stay and pray with him 24/7.”
Then I understood the reason for the song. A watch can be a military defense, or a close observation. This time it was both. The Lord had been telling me all week we needed to stand and contend for his life through prayer, but also to watch. Watch what God could do with the most horrendous circumstances. Watch. Because this was going to be good.
And it was. Very, very good. My daughter and son-in-love tell the story in While He Lay Dying.
“Dear God, Speak gently in my silence. When the loud outer noises of my surroundings and the loud inner noises of my fears keep pulling me away from you, help me to trust that you are still there even when I am unable to hear you. . . . Let that loving voice be my guide.”
Today is All Saints Day and Reformation Day and I’m thinking about those who have gone before (not that there aren’t some pretty magnificent saints living among us now). When I think about it, the saints I most admire did not live pretty, tidy lives. Many of them had major struggles -fightings within, and fears without, as the song “Just As I Am” says. I think it is this very trait of willingness to contend with personal weaknesses and to contend with reality of a fallen world in the light of vision of the Kingdom of God that impresses me. What can I call it? Perhaps a satisfaction with the Saviour, but a holy discontent with status quo?
Sir Francis Drake understood this when he wrote:
Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.
Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.
We ask You to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.
I went down to the river one evening this week. It was so peaceful. We can never take peace for granted.
After yesterday’s events in Canada, when a gunman shot a young reserve soldier on ceremonial duty at the War memorial in Ottawa and then entered the very halls of the parliament building with his weapon, I am even more aware of the need to pray.
There is more than one way to stand on guard. We need to pray for all those in positions of leadership, and for those who put their lives on the line to protect us.
Those who are called to pray and bring the needs of this country to the throne of God also do guard duty.
God keep our land glorious and free –and peaceful.
Charis: Subject to Change 