Your Gethsemane Experience can Lead to a Resurrection

 I just finished re-reading the book of John this morning, and I began picturing the closing chapters describing the Gethsemane experience of Jesus, agonizing in the dark aloneness before His Father, feeling the weight of the sins of the world descending on Him and causing Jesus to feel the separation from His Father. This was followed by the betrayal of a friend, and the abandonment of others who said they would never forsake Him, a one-sided trial, physical abuse and suffering and finally a crucifixion and death.   

And for the disciples, all hope was totally smashed and they spent the darkest, loneliest, most fearful weekend of their lives.  They questioned all that they learned and been through over the past 3 and a half years.  They wondered if it were all for nothing.  They forgot that just hours before, Jesus had told them plainly that He must suffer and die (read John ch 13-17)  And as they grieved, the oppressor of humanity came and peddled despair to add insult to injury.  Nothing had gone the way that they had hoped or planned.  But they had forgotten something.  God wasn’t following their plan. He was fulfilling His!  And His plans always turn out better than ours.

At the tomb, Sunday morning, a dejected Mary arrives to find it empty.  She makes assumptions and then  Runs back to Jerusalem and tells the disciples that Jesus’ body had been taken.  Peter and John run to the tomb and find the grave clothes and wonder what in the world had happened.  And though that dawn had split time in two, it had yet to dawn on them.  They left dejected as Mary finally got back.  

Let’s pick up the story in John 20.  John 20:11    Mary was standing outside the tomb crying, and as she wept, she stooped and looked in. ¹² She saw two white-robed angels, one sitting at the head and the other at the foot of the place where the body of Jesus had been lying. ¹³  “Dear woman, why are you crying?” the angels asked her. 

 “Because they have taken away my Lord,” she replied, “and I don’t know where they have put him.”

14   She turned to leave and saw someone standing there. It was Jesus, but she didn’t recognize him. ¹⁵ “Dear woman, why are you crying?” Jesus asked her. “Who are you looking for?” 

 She thought he was the gardener. “Sir,” she said, “if you have taken him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will go and get him.”

16   “Mary!” Jesus said. 

She turned to him and cried out, “Rabboni!” (which is Hebrew for “Teacher”).

17    “Don’t cling to me,” Jesus said, “for I haven’t yet ascended to the Father. But go find my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

18    Mary Magdalene found the disciples and told them, “I have seen the Lord!” Then she gave them his message.

Later, Jesus Himself appeared among them, and at the risk of sounding cliché, the light finally dawned.  And new hope sprang to life. And they found, in Christ, all they had ever hoped for and more was resurrected within them.

Which leads me to this.  ALL of us will have our Gethsemane experiences.  We will feel separated from God.  We will feel the tempter and oppressor of our souls breathing his ugly, dark breath down our necks as he seeks to peddle despair to our discouraged hearts and snuff out any flicker of hope that may be seeking to rise.  He will have friends betray us, people abandon us, others judge us unfairly and then heap abuse on us in many various forms.

And he will seek to have you, in the midst of your distress,  pursue a course that would have you terminate your existence. And many do, as they often opt for a permanent solution to a temporary problem, and the enemy sweeps them into eternity.  But here is where Jesus’ death and resurrection made it possible for you and I to flip the script.

If you and I can only see it differently, we would see that in our darkest moments, we don’t have to give in to the temptation to end our existence, or our marriage, or whatever the temptation to give up on is, or even to lose hope.  But we can, like Jesus, pray for either the temptation to leave (let this cup pass from me) or for God to give us the strength to bear up under it.  (But not my will, YOUR will, Father) 

In either case, it leads to a death. But not a final one.  It actually becomes a death that leads to resurrection.  Paul called it “the death to self”(Gal 2:19) and even said, “I die every day!” (1 Cor 15:31). And this dying to self allows for a new resurrection.

You lay down all of the abuses, the judgments, the abandonment, the betrayal and look to Christ for restoration.  You choose to give up yourself and your will,  in deference to the Father’s will for your life, recognizing that HIS plan is always better than yours, and HE will remake things for you.

This winter, I have personally gone through what Mother Teresa, when speaking of her experience with God over the course of almost 50 years,  termed her “dark night of the soul”.  I have been beset by trauma’s in my youth perpetrated against me, stupid choices made in trying to work my own way out of difficulties, temptations from things that I thought were long since buried, discouragement in my work, depression and darkness and hopeless feelings and a desire to cash in 40 years of ministry.  And where I found hope was recognizing that I was in my own Gethsemane experience.  It was all dark around me…and the tempter of souls was screaming a thousand lies into my head…and he almost won.  I almost cashed it in and walked away from ministry and from God.   But I continued to hold on to my devotional habit and I forced myself to continue to go into the Word each day…though the rest of my day was often beset with darkness and depression.  

Where I found renewed hope was back in Gethsemane, the cross and the resurrection.  It is a metaphor for so much of what we experience.   We experience the darkness…sometimes the death of dreams or hopes…but God is a God of resurrections.  And He is restoring me daily.  I had to die to a few things in the darkness…with self being the one that I, like Paul, am having to relearn to die to daily.   And in the resurrections is where new hope is found.

Don’t run from your Gethsemane experience.  Stay there and ask God for the strength to endure it and then to rise once again to walk in the newness of life.

Don't Forget Compassion!

Have you noticed that the worst part of this coronavirus thing is the mental game. That's where the most agony lies, because let’s be honest…aside from not being able to find toilet paper on the shelves, for most of us, technically our lives haven’t actually been changed a whole lot.  Sure, our routines are changing daily from what we would “normally” do.  Normally, we wouldn’t be glued to a 24-hour news cycle while wringing our hands in anxious dread and hoping and praying that we don’t get the Covid-19 virus.

Normally, we don’t give a second thought to jumping in the car and heading to a place where hundreds or even thousands of people are gathered; a movie theater, a ball game, or the mall.  Now we have fewer options to choose from, amid the growing cry of social distancing.  And the more isolated we become, the more we are glued to our devices for news and more news—all bad—as we simply “wait it out.”

But in reality…most of us are still healthy.  Still have homes.  Still have family that love us.  Still have jobs.  That hasn’t changed for most of us…yet we are already living as if it had.  We are already acting like animals with a survival of the fittest mentality, making sure that we are the ones with the most stock-piled to last the longest.

Am I saying that we should act as if everything is fine?  No.  We should be cautious and do our due diligence.  But we have to guard the very epicenter of our souls if we are to come through this thing with our humanity intact, as well as our own mental health.

The wisest man who ever lived said this back in the day.  

NIV Prov. 4:23 Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. 

The New Living Translation even says it better.

Prov. 4:23    Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.

Great, Pastor Don…so what exactly does that mean?  It means that, as a human being, your life and actions will always be determined by what you harbor in your heart.

If you allow your heart to grow fearful, and you harbor anxiety and worry as a full-time companion, your ability to be totally human will begin to diminish, and acting towards others with graciousness and love will become extremely difficult.  

In fact, if you allow fear to dwell, you will succumb to a survival of the fittest mentality and you will do things that you currently despise in others.  When selfishness rules the day,  the heart shrivels to a hard callous, as the lives of others grow cheaper in comparison to the big “I”.  Without saying it, our lives broadcast the message, “You are not nearly so important as I, and I will do everything I can to make sure that I survive, even if you don’t!”

If you are a Christian, then recognize that this is the very mindset that Christ calls you away from…not just when times are easy and because you have compassion to spare, but precisely when times get difficult and the rest of the world has swept the shelves bare of everything to give them the best chance of survival.  Recognize that Christ is calling you to demonstrate the difference, not because it’s easy, but because it is hard and in fact, is counter-intuitive to what the world is doing. I believe it was for times like the ones we find ourselves living in that he said, in John 13:35 “Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are My disciples.”

There are some who would call that insane.  There are others who will sit up and take notice of the difference.  Christians through the ages have always waded into the mire to be difference makers.  To rescue others.  To lift up the discouraged.  To be the hands and feet of Jesus to a world that is dying without Him.  Not because it was easy, but because it was a hard thing, yet the right thing, to do.  It is the hard thing…but it is always the thing that makes us more human, more in the image of the God we claimed to be created by.

Again, I’m not saying be stupid. Be cautious, take precautions…but don’t lose your compassion.  Don’t allow fear to shrivel your heart.  Instead recognize that we can live this way because we have a different focus.  A different perspective.  We understand that this world is not all there is.  We know that we are just traveling through and that one day, sooner or later, we will all die here.  It all ends the same here, no matter the cause.  We die.  Car accidents, plane crashes, homicide, suicide, war casualty, heart attack, stroke, cancer or corona virus.  We can’t outrun death forever.  But even as we face death, we recognize that death simply doesn’t have the final word.  It’s only a temporary stop on the way to eternity.  

Our hope is not in this world and in the mess we have here.  Our hope is in a person, Jesus, and He is of another world and because of this fact, we recognize that it is far more important to be eternally safe than it is to be physically safe here.  So instead, we set our sights on a better world.  A better kingdom free of the junk we deal with down here.  

The book of Revelation describes it for us: Rev. 21:1   Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared. And the sea was also gone. ² And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.

Rev. 21:3   I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, “Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them.^a 4 He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.”

Rev. 21:5   And the one sitting on the throne said, “Look, I am making everything new!” And then he said to me, “Write this down, for what I tell you is trustworthy and true.”

That’s what makes a difference in how I can live through the uncertainty of the next few weeks.  I’m not looking to just survive…but to thrive…for eternity.  I write this, not as a young, healthy, not-much-to-worry-about-from-this-virus person, but as one who has been identified as a high-risk, potential casualty should I contract it.  And yes, I’m taking the prescribed precautions, but I will not let a virus rob me of my humanity.  I will seek to reach out, even if it is from my keyboard to your screen.  I will seek to encourage you.  I will continue to pray for you. And I will seek to remind you that this world is not our home.  And I hope you do the same for me.

Heb. 12:1,2    Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. ² We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith.^a Because of the joy^b awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne.

Be Amazed...Again...(For the very first time)

Exhibit B in our journey this week on learning to be amazed once again.

Your name is Jairus. You’ve come a long way to find Jesus. Your only daughter is dying. The doctors have all given up and you’ve taken her home to die. But somehow, you just can’t give up without trying everything. One of your servants has seen Jesus heal and suggests that if you could just find Jesus and have him come, your daughter might not die. You search frantically, from one town to the next. The reports are all the same. “You just missed Him. He was here about 2 days ago and healed most of the people in the town.”

Hope grows stronger, while on the other side of the emotional roller coaster, you become frantic as you realize that you are a few days behind him. You redouble your efforts, trying to reach Him and get Him home before it is too late. Finally, you come racing into a town and discover a large crowd of people gathered around. This must be Jesus. Pushing your way through the crowd, you come face to face with Him. “Master, you must come now!” The urgency is in your voice as you try to get Jesus to follow you back through the crowd. He motions for you to lead and begins to follow. You look back and realize that He has stopped and is asking who touched Him. You turn back to urge Him to hurry when one of your servants rides up to the edge of the crowd on horseback and motions for you.

You can tell by the look on his face that it’s too late. “Don’t trouble the Master any further,” he says, “She’s dead.” Grief wrenches your soul and you slump to the ground. The "if only’s" come. If only you had found Him quicker. If only He had been closer to your home. If only she had held on for a little while longer. If only there were no crowds to slow Him down.”

A hand on your shoulder jars you back to reality. “Don’t worry, just believe.” Jesus helps you to your feet and begins walking towards your town, He and his disciples helping you as you stumble along in a haze of grief. You sleep little that night, and the next day is a blur as you head home. As you come near your house, the mourner’s are there in full force. It really hits home. She’s dead. 

Jesus simply quiets them and says, “Don’t mourn. She’s sleeping.” Laughter meets His statement. How can Jesus mock your pain with such a statement. You enter to find your wife weeping and lying across the bed holding the lifeless form of your daughter. Jesus gently lifts her and you rush to hold her, to hold each other, as Jesus now looks at the little body on the bed.

Gently, yet with authority he says, “Little girl, I say to you arise!” Her eyes flutter open as you heart beats wildly. Your wife screams with joy and leaps toward the bed as your beloved daughter sits up. Suddenly the three of you are laughing, crying, talking, hugging, kissing, and marveling at what just happened. You look again…and He is gone.

Are you amazed yet? Can you just shrug it off with an "I've heard all this before!"? Or is there something, even now, that is begging you to be astounded and astonished at a God who cared so much for you and me that He came and gave us a peek at what God is like. Someone who calls the unloveable. Someone who forgives the hookers... Someone who wants to turn your grief into joy. Look again...for the very first time. And be amazed!

The Deck Chairs of Life...

One of my favorite Peanuts cartoons starts with Lucy sitting in her five-cent psychology booth, where Charlie Brown has stopped for advice about life.

“Life is like a deck chair, Charlie Brown,” she says. “On the cruise ship of life, some people place their deck chair at the rear of the ship so they can see where they have been. Others place their deck chair at the front of the ship so they can see where they are going.” The good “doctor” looks at her puzzled client and asks, “Which way is your deck chair facing, Charlie Brown?”

Without hesitating, Charlie replies glumly, “I can’t even get my deck chair unfolded.”

Mike Yaconelli, in his book Messy Spirituality asked, "Ever felt like that? I know the feeling—especially in the spiritual walk. Everywhere I look on the cruise ship of Christianity, I see a crew of instructors, teachers, experts and gurus eager to explain God’s placement of my deck chair, but I still can’t seem to get it unfolded. No wonder when I check out the titles in a Christian bookstore, I feel like I am the only klutz in the Kingdom of God, a spiritual fool lost in a ship full of brilliant biblical thinkers, an ungodly midget in a world of spiritual giants. When I compare my life with the experts in the church, I feel sloppy and messed up in a world of immaculately dressed saints…and I’m a minister!"

Can you relate? What happens when you feel like you can’t even get your deck chair open? You long for a deeper relationship with God, you seek it, but your spiritual growth chart looks more like a kindergartners scribbles than an upward line towards God.

Or perhaps there was a time when you were going pretty good in your spiritual walk, but something huge happened and it sent you reeling. A death in the family. A divorce. An unplanned pregnancy outside of marriage. An abortion. One moment you were happily walking down the beach enjoying the view, and the next you are rolling over and over in the surf trying to get your feet back under you, a hapless victim of one of Satan’s sneaker waves that suddenly lashed out and knocked you over and then began pulling you out to sea. And you go from worrying about getting your deck chair unfolded to just wishing there were a life raft somewhere. Forget about which way you face the chair.

Do any of you know what I’m talking about here? There are times in our spiritual walk where things don’t seem so spiritual. There are times when our own messy spirituality seems to get in the way of our walk with God, causing us to question whether or not we really even know Him.

Times when you call out, but God seems so silent or distant. Times when you can’t hear the music of your soul, anymore. Times when you wish you could do better in your spiritual walk, yet lured away and enticed by your own evil desires, you end up messing up again and again, and the persistent call of the devil to just give up and be swept out to drown in a sea of despair washes over you and everything within you wants to stop trying to reach the shore and simply go with the pull of the world. It all feels so useless and pointless…and yet, in the midst of all of the pounding surf rolling us over and over, listen carefully, and you will hear a song that breathes hope. It is not a loud, raucous song. Rather it is a simple, yet persistent song of love that is meant to bring the hearer courage and hope.

It is when you feel the most hopeless, and at your weakest that God sings His song of Love to you. Actually, God is always singing His love to you, but it seems we have to be down and out before we really hear it.

But know this…No matter what you are facing, in whatever situation you find yourself, God’s Love Song will reach your need. He sings it in many situations. He does it in all sorts of ways, but the message is always the same. God loves you and wants the best for you, no matter what you’ve done or where you find yourself.  Will you let yourself believe that and rest in it today?

King ME!!!

Ever since Eve bit into the apple and then shared it with Adam, we’ve been a race bound for destruction.  Though they were created with no selfishness, the desire to be like God, which in itself is a noble thing, proved to be their destruction.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to be like God, is there?  I mean, isn’t that our goal as Christians?  To be like Jesus?  So what was the problem?  They not only wanted to be like God.  What they actually wanted was to be God.  That’s really what Satan was offering them in Genesis 3:4.   Let’s go to Genesis chapter 3.  We’ll begin in verse 1.

Gen. 3:1   Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”  2   The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,  3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”  4   “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman.  5 “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Did you see that phrase?  “You will be like God”.  The original language, Hebrew, indicates that Satan is offering them a short-cut.  What he is actually saying to them is:  “Your state of being will instantly become God-like.”  Another unstated implication of that statement would be:  You won’t any longer need God since you will be a god yourself.  And with that, a new thought that had never occurred to Eve, suddenly became the temptation that she could not resist.  “I want to be god.”   And with that bite, Eve feels a rush of energy and a change of being and she begins to run through the garden singing at the top of her lungs, “It’s all about ME!”  Well, maybe not just like that, but her focus, which had only been God-centered, suddenly turned selfish.  She wanted to be God.   And it continues, to this day, to be the one temptation that none of us can resist.  

You’ve said it, oh, maybe not in those exact words, but every one of you has fallen prey to that temptation at some point in your life.  You’ve re-mixed the words maybe, but it’s the same thing.  I want it now!  Hey, that’s MINE!  You leave MY stuff alone!  Or maybe you’ve grown more sophisticated: “C’mon lady, the gas pedal is the one on the right!  Step on it already!  I’m late!”  or  “Oh, look at how much she has in that cart.  If I hurry I can make it into line before she does.”  Or “If he thinks for one minute that I’m gonna put up with that, then he’s got another thing coming.”

What do all of those things focus on? Or perhaps I should say, WHO do all those previous statements focus on?  ME.  You see, I have to admit that in my inner core, I am inherently selfish. I want what I want, and I want it now!  I want to do what I want to do, go where I want to go, be who I want to be, say what I want to say, play where I want to play, and I don’t want any negative consequences.  I want to be like a King.  They can order people around, be coddled, made over and pampered.  People are always at their beck and call and if they decide they don’t like someone, they can have them killed with no consequence.  I like the sounds of that.  King ME! Consequence free.

But is that really the case?  Or is there snag in the theory?  Sin causes separation from the life giving source.  Separation has a natural consequence--death.  If you unplug a computer from the power...it dies...oh, perhaps not right away...if it has a battery.  But eventually.  And if you don't plug it back in, it becomes useless for little more than a paperweight.

Are you unplugged spiritually?  Is your battery running low?  Maybe it's time to swallow the pride and plug back in.

Could you love a God like that?

Author Ken Gire wrote a series of books back in the 90’s that quickly became some of my favorites.  One of them is entitled Incredible Moments with the Savior.  I want to pull a story from that book and see if we can see things a bit differently. 

“Nain is a cozy community carved out of a rocky slope overlooking the valley of Jezreel.  It is springtime, and the valley is a sea of wind-blown grass, frothing with wildflowers; the air, redolent with the blossoms of fruit trees. 

But in the valley of this widow’s heart, it is the dead of winter.

Twice, death has reached its icy fingers into her family and wrenched loved ones from her.  First her husband.  Now her son.  Her only son.

For years she has faced an uncertain future. Now she faces it alone. With no one to hold her hand.  With no one to steady her steps.

No one to comfort her when she cries herself to sleep at night.  No one to wake up to in the morning.  No one to fix breakfast for.  No one to share the holy days, or the common days, or any days at all for that matter.  No one to grow old with.  And no one to look after her in the autumn of life.

No one.

Nothing remains but an empty shell of a house.  A house that years ago gave up waiting for a husband to come home from work.  And now, no longer waits for that husband’s son.

The sagging house is slumped in its own grief, retreating into itself, silent and still.  There are no sounds of animated talk that chronicle the day.  No ripples of laughter.  No late-night conversations.  Only quiet tributaries of grief running from room to room.

Bundled in her heart is a too-short stack of memories.  Not enough to cloak her from the chill of her present loneliness, let alone to keep her warm in her old age.

The open coffin leads the way to the cemetery outside of town.  Trailing in its wake is the weeping mother, relatives, close friends, and other mourners.  Interspersed throughout the procession are the melancholy, dove-like calls of flutes and the plaintive tinkling of cymbals.  A chorus of women chant their laments while men pray and plod along in silent vigil.

But at the same time this crowd is leaving Nain, another crowd is entering.  The one is following a coffin; the other is following Christ.  The one is filled with sorrow and despair; the other, with excitement and hope.

In respect for the dead the crowd following Jesus pulls back, allowing the funeral procession to thread its way through the gate. 

There, life and death stand on two distinct islands.  The bridge between the two is a mother’s grief, arching over a torrent of tears.

When Jesus sees the tears wrung from the mother’s heart, every thought that had preoccupied Him on His journey flees.  The whole of His attention focuses on this shattered woman.

All He knows is her desperation.  All He feels is her pain.  All He sees is her tears.

And those tears are the flame that melts his heart.

Jesus extends his hand to touch the coffin, and the procession lurches to a stop.  He isn’t concerned with protocol or etiquette or even with the fact that touching a coffin would render Him unclean in the eyes of the rabbinic law.  His only concern is for this desperate mother.

“Don’t cry.”

The words are not out of a textbook on pastoral care.  They seep from the cracks of a heart bursting with compassion.  Jesus turns to the woman’s son.

‘Young man, I say to you, get up.’

Two words to the bereaved, eight to the deceased.  But that is enough.  Enough to snatch a son from death’s pilfering hand and return him to the arms of his mother.

The young man sits up and talks!  What he says we are not told.  But surely one of the first words to stumble from his lips is ‘Mother’.

The miracle is an incredible display of the Savior’s power.  But there is something even more incredible about this auspicious meeting at the town gate.

This mother had not asked for a miracle.  She had not thrown herself at the Savior’s feet and begged for the life of her son.  She hadn’t demonstrated great faith.  In fact, she hadn’t demonstrated any faith at all.  As far as we know, she didn’t even know who Jesus was.

That is what is so incredible.

It’s a miracle done without human prompting.  Without thought of lessons to be taught to the disciples.  Without thought of deity to be demonstrated to skeptics.  It is a miracle drawn solely from the well of divine compassion.  So free the water.  So pure the heart from which it is drawn.  So tender the hand that cups it and brings it to this bereaved mother’s lips.”

 (Incredible Moments with the Savior, Ken Gire ©1990, Zondervan,  pp 41-45)

Let me ask you:  Could you love a God like that?  Would you not want to be near One who has already been moved by compassion at your plight?  He has already responded and provided a way for you to be reunited with your loved ones.  Already death has been conquered and only awaits divine Word before it must retreat and give up those it, even now, holds in its icy clutches.  When Jesus, who conquered death, gives the command, there is no power in heaven or hell that can hold back those who will respond to the call of the Conquerer.  I ask you again: Could you love a God like that?

The Return isn’t about the logistics, it’s about the Person.  It isn’t about knowing the facts, as important as they may be, but about knowing the One who, out of love, has already provided for us.  It’s about relationship.

Vending Machine God

Dad holding my son, Donnie to get a drink

"If you let Dad die, God, I’ll quit the ministry,” I muttered to myself as I sped down I-205 towards my parent’s house in Portland, Oregon. Up to this point, my life had been one of pleasant memories, successful youth ministry and happy times with my family. To be sure, we had our moments, but now, suddenly I was faced with one of the most difficult situations of my life.  We had watched as a rather large lump under dad’s right arm had turned into an ugly, oozing, bleeding, ulcerous tumor that was approximately 7-9 inches across. The diagnosis: melanoma, the worst form of skin cancer.  The prognosis: 3 to 6 months.

We prayed. We wept.  We encouraged others to pray with us.   Thousands from all across the country, even across the world, prayed that dad would be healed.  I felt sure that healing was in the bag.  If it had to do with the amount of prayers or the sincerity of prayer, then dad should have been healed.  If it had to do with faith and seeking the Lord, then dad should have been healed. But he wasn’t.  He died.

A few Sundays before dad died, he could not stand up without two or three people helping him out of bed. I had spent the greater portion of the night praying.  I really wanted God to work a miracle.  I had read the stories in the gospels of all the people that Jesus healed. I had read the stories in Acts where Peter (Acts 5:15,16) was walking through crowds and people were clamoring to put their sick in his shadow as they passed and they were healed. I had read stories of
Paul (Acts 19:11,12) walking through crowds who were passing their handkerchiefs and aprons over to Paul so that he might touch them and send them back, and Acts declares that all of them were healed.

Then there were the proclamations of Jesus, “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.”( Matt 21:22) “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” (Matt 7:7) “Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.” (John 15:16)

I had believed. I had asked.  I didn’t doubt that God could do it. I had prayed hard and long that night, yet somehow, was still like the disciples in the Garden. Somewhere along the line, I had fallen asleep.  Now doubt plagued me. Would my sleeping preclude my miracle?  Never mind that I had only averaged only 3-4 hours of sleep for the previous 3 weeks as I sat by the bedside of my dying father. Never mind that I was driving 40 minutes one way to go home at least once during each 24 hour period and see my family, and that usually for only an hour or two. This particular night, I had decided that I would keep a prayer vigil and pray all night. Yet, I found myself waking up on the floor of my study at 4 am loathing the weakness of my humanity. “Lord, I believe!” I cried, “Help my unbelief!”

About 6 o’clock, I felt an impression to go to dad’s and say to him, “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and be healed.” And so now I sped down I-205 wrestling with myself and God. The struggle raged.  Inwardly, I said, “If I go and do this thing, and nothing happens, I’ll be really embarrassed.  How would that look for a pastor?”  On the other hand I thought, “But if I don’t, that could be the very thing that saves him.” I thought of Namaan’s servant saying, “If he had asked you to do a big thing, wouldn’t you have done it?” I wrestled.  I prayed.  And then the thought came, “If you let Dad die, God, I’ll quit the ministry.” The turmoil continued to rage for most of the trip down.  As I turned into dad’s neighborhood, a peace overtook me, and I was resolute that God wanted me to go in and pray and ask Him to raise dad up. I was confident that God would do that.

I entered the room. No one was with dad at the time, so I told him that I felt impressed that we should pray for his healing once again, only this time I felt that God was calling on us to demonstrate our faith in Him by actions.  Dad said, “I think you are right.  I appreciate that about you...always being a man of faith.”

I prayed. Hard.   And then I said, “in the name of Jesus Christ, I say to you, get up and be healed.” Without hesitation, dad holding on to my hand, swung his feet off the bed and began to feebly stand. About halfway up, he gathered strength from somewhere and straightened all the way up.  We both stood there holding on to each other for a magical moment wondering if indeed the healing was happening, and then he said, “Help me lay back down.  God may heal me in stages.”  I helped him back into bed and then he said, “Thanks for your faith.  Thanks for your love that would prompt you to pray for me. And don’t worry.  God will heal me.  Now or then.”

I left the room very bewildered and very embarrassed.  Angry with God for asking me to do that.  Angry with myself for possibly misreading His cues. Angry because it felt as if the devil was just taunting me.  Throwing my faith in my face as totally preposterous.  Was it a lack of faith?  Was I acting on what I believed God wanted me to do? Why would God have me do something that He wasn’t going to answer.

I don’t think dad ever mentioned it again and I wondered if he was embarrassed by it. He didn’t seem to be.  The thing that got me was that his trust was immediate.  He was willing to try whatever means were available because he loved us and he loved life so much.  And he truly believed that God was going to heal him.  So to him, I don’t think he was embarrassed, even though I was.

After much thought, here is what I think the point must be. (Or at least some thoughts that can be drawn from the whole experience.) First, I think that God may have been testing me to see if I would trust Him no matter what. I had thought that if dad died, I would leave the ministry.  What use would it be to serve a God who didn’t answer prayers?  Why minister to the goodness of a God that wasn’t so good?  I think God’s point was, “Hey, no matter what happens, I will still be in control and you don’t h
ave to worry. I will take care of your dad.  And I will take care of you.  So do you believe me or not?”

Second, I would have regretted never trying it if I had kept silent and dad had died. I could truly say that I had tried everything, and could rest knowing that God had another plan.  If I had never experienced that, I could never have forgiven myself, and so I think God gave me the urge to go ahead and try what I had read in the Bible. I think God wanted me to see that sometimes all of the notions that we have, or all of the “magic” words we want to speak do not hold the power. Only God does.   I figured that if those words worked in the Bible, they just might work now, and that if I didn’t try them, they might have been the words to save dad.  But such is not the case.  

God is not moved by our “magic” words. He is moved by our heart.  He isn’t interested in our notions. What He wants is to be loved freely.  With no strings attached. With no “magic” words.  And He risks being misunderstood and spurned rather than perform to my tune. The love He wants me to share with Him is not a love based on manipulation or insecurity. It is a love based on a deep abiding trust.  And the question comes back, “Do I trust Him no matter what?” If I only trust Him when things are going my way, then I have a conditional love. If I only trust Him when He responds to my “magic” words, then I have reduced Him to a vending machine God; put in the right amount, say the “magic” words and out will pop your desired outcome.  That’s not a relationship.   It’s manipulation.

When I say to God...”do this and I will love you” or “don’t do this and I will not love you,” I am basing my relationship on my own immature desire to manipulate Him to get what I want.  God has never worked that way.  Not even when it would have saved Jesus’ life.  Herod wanted Jesus to perform a miracle in exchange for Jesus’ freedom.  He didn’t yield because He wanted our love to be from a genuine response to His love, not from a manipulated response based on what we might get.

And so, I am finding a deeper relationship with God, even though dad died. Even though healing didn’t occur the way I wanted.   Why?   Because I can’t blame God for all of the misery...we chose it.  WE sinned, not God.   But He commended His love towards us in this, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8

Love only wants a genuine response.  So Love stretched out His arms and died.   To show us He loved us.  To show us that though the devil has made death to be a fearful thing, we need not fear it.  To show us that he understands even the worst of what happens to us, and yet has promised us a better day. And because of that promise, I still have something to share in the ministry. And because of that Love, I’ll stay in the ministry until that day. A day when all will be made right.   A day when we will see why things didn’t work out here.  A day for joy instead of tears.   And a day when dad will be raised up.