Categories
Uncategorized

What Did You Expect?

“For when you did awesome things that we did not expect, you came down, and the mountains trembled before you.” — Isaiah 64:3 NIV

My good friend, Mark, asked me a few weeks ago, “Has God ever answered a prayer in the way you thought he would?” I was glad he asked, and a bit relieved, for I had been mulling over the same thing in my own spiritual journey — that while God has faithfully answered my prayers, He has perhaps never done so exactly in the way I had anticipated, dreamed or, most laughably, suggested. “No,” I chuckled, “I cannot recall a time when He did.”

And you know what? I’m glad. For my ways are limited, short-sighted, and self-centered. But God’s ways? He speaks for Himself: “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”1 While we see matters through our own eyes and petition God accordingly, He understands them in infinite context and responds in ultimate wisdom. For instance, when Martha and Mary sent word to Jesus that their brother was sick,2 Jesus could have healed Lazarus remotely with merely a word, which was perhaps what the sisters were expecting. Instead, Jesus set out to their house two days later, after Lazarus had died. Said Martha upon Jesus’ arrival, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”3 Her expectation was that Jesus would heal Lazarus, but Jesus’ plan was to raise the man from the dead. Why? Because Jesus saw the matter through the lenses of eternal purpose: “This sickness . . . is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it,”4 He said. Indeed, this historic event has resounded to billions throughout two millennia hence. Moreover, it incited the unwitting priests of Jesus’ day to put Him to death, a death that would result in resurrection, both His and ours.

Solomon teaches us, “Just as you do not know the path of the wind, and how bones are formed in the womb of the pregnant woman, so you do not know the activity of God who makes everything.”5 When we expect God to answer our prayers a certain way, we can miss His higher, better response entirely and perhaps lose faith in His faithfulness. Instead, we do well to trust He will respond more gloriously than we will know on this side of eternity. So as we petition God in faith, let’s also trust His wisdom in response. Most likely, He will do “awesome things that we did not expect.”6

“Praise be to God, who has not rejected my prayer or withheld his love from me!”7 Have Your way, Lord. I trust You. Amen.

1 Isaiah 55:9 ESV
2 John 11:3
3 John 11:21 NIV
4 John 11:4 NIV
5 Ecclesiastes 11:5 NASB
6 Isaiah 64:3 NIV
7 Psalm 66:20 NIV

Categories
Uncategorized

The Gift of Listening

From the Oscar-winning film, “Pulp Fiction”1 . . . 
Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman): In conversation, do you listen, or wait to talk?
Vincent Vega (John Travolta): I have to admit that I wait to talk, but I’m trying harder to listen.

My first Kairos Prison Ministry Weekend was in the Spring of 2009. Like all first-timers, I was nervous in the weeks leading up to the event, but by day two, Friday afternoon, I had become so excited and engaged that I was no longer thinking of the men in terms of inmate or outside volunteer. The atmosphere seemed as familiar and comfortable to me as any other gathering of friends, and by Saturday afternoon, I was amazed at the openness and joy in the room. I’d seen spiritual transformation before, but nothing like this. I thought to myself: “‘Listen, listen; love, love’ (the Kairos slogan) really works.”

Truly listening is truly loving. In his letter to early believers, the apostle James exhorted them, “Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.”2 How can we begin to love our neighbors as ourselves if we don’t take time to understand them? Moreover, the psalmist celebrates the liberty we experience when God lends His ear to us. “I love the Lord, because he has heard my voice and my pleas for mercy. Because he inclined his ear to me, therefore I will call on him as long as I live.”3 The 20th Century German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer said it this way: “God’s love for us is shown by the fact that God not only gives us God’s word, but also lends us God’s ear. We do God’s work for our brothers and sisters when we learn to listen to them. So often Christians, especially preachers, think that their only service is always to ‘offer’ something when they are together with other people. They forget that listenting can be a greateer service than speaking.”4

For most of us, selfless listening — effective listening — is sacrificial. We prefer to express ourselves, and when we do let others speak, perhaps we are, like the “Pulp Fiction” hitman, merely “waiting to talk.” But when, instead, we “try harder to listen,” our silence speaks with unmatched clarity. It says: “You matter. I care. Look up! There’s hope.”

Listening: it may be the greatest ministry to which God calls you today.

Father, You listen to my every prayer, even to the unarticulated cries of my soul. Grace me to listen selflessly to others, that they too would know the freedom, hope, and joy of being heard. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

1 Tarantino, Q. (1994). Pulp Fiction. Miramax.
2 James 1:19 ESV
3 Psalm 116:1-2 ESV
4 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (London: SCM, 1972), 75. https://au.thegospelcoalition.org/article/loving-people-by-listening/

Categories
Uncategorized

Called to Forbear

Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. — Colossians 3:13 NIV

One of hardest things about Christianity is the whole “love one another” business. We endorse the noble notion, certainly — who wouldn’t? — but like so many lofty ideals, it is easier to affirm the concept than to assert it in the octagon cage match of life. And perhaps its most difficult application is with our fellow believers, for it is to each other that we make ourselves most vulnerable, and it is of each other that our expectations are highest. Then it is to believers that Paul writes, “Bear with each other . . .”1

What we need most to understand is that each of us in Christ is a work in progress. We all have “our thing” with which we struggle: it may manifest outwardly, like physical addictions or salty language; likely it roils even more so inwardly in the form of judgmentalism, grudges, pride, or the kind of fear that sends us scurrying back to the familiar rathole of “me first.” So, Jesus redirects all of mankind: “Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?”2 Don’t we have enough unfinished work inside ourselves than to kibitz about others’ shortcomings? And haven’t they enough troubles without us piling on? But I think even more to the point is this: When we see our own flaws and their far-flung dimensions in our life — and when we exasperate ourselves over our repeated failures — might we then view our brothers and sisters as fellow strugglers battling against temptations just as we are? We all are undergoing transformation into the image of Christ.3

So we are called to forbear, to extend the fruit of the Spirit — patience and self-control, in particular — to others as God conforms us to the image of his Son.4 Then may judging give way to understanding, accusation yield to intercession, gossip succumb to encouragement, and grievance bow to forgiveness. This is God’s higher way for us. May we walk in it.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.”5 — Jesus

Father, we are lured to the ways that separate us from each other, but Your Spirit draws us to unity in Christ. Grace us to hear Your voice and choose Your path of forbearance and encouragement, that the body of Christ would flourish as one. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

1 Colossians 3:13 NIV
2 Matthew 7:3 NASB (cf Luke 6:41)
3 2 Corinthians 3:18
4 Romans 8:29
5 Matthew 5:7 ESV