THE BATTLE CRY (Part II of Thoughts on Prayer)

How would you respond if someone came to you and said that the reason they did not pray is that it doesn’t make a difference anyway?  Have you ever felt this way about prayer?  I once felt that way; as a new believer, I wondered why other people could be so excited about prayer.  I marveled how they could pray and share how God answered their prayers whereas when I prayed it seemed He did not.  For the longest time, I just said cursory prayers.  I said just enough to sound good and get by but there was no real desire or meaning behind what I prayed.  Why?  I really did not think God would do anything about what I prayed for.  Why should I put any faith behind my prayers I could not see results?  I was praying at the same level as my knowledge of God and Who He was.  I started to change as I grew older in the Lord.

The more I read my Bible the more I gained understanding about God.  Did I believe He could do what I requested?  One of the first things that caught my attention was Matthew 19:26.  I learned that no matter how impossible something seemed God could do it.  Wow!  After grasping this I started praying in earnest, just waiting for Him to come through in response to my requests.  Did He always answer just as I expected Him to?  I am so glad He did not, for in His wisdom there were many things I prayed for that I just did not need.  For quite some time I had my eyes on a 1975 black 911 Porsche with red pinstripes.  Needless to say one never appeared in my driveway.  But as I grew in my relationship with the Lord there came a time when I was without a car and people would give me rides to and from church, doctor appointments, even work.  I asked the Lord for a car so I could in-turn pay those deeds forward to other people in need of transportation and I was given, free of charge, a Lincoln Town Car that had been well taken care of which in turn gave me a number of years of luxurious driving.  In His wisdom, He knew I needed a car and He gave me the best.

When I wanted to go to mission school I had no savings in the bank and it was going to cost me $1,500 tuition plus airfare for the outreach portion of the school.  I asked God to provide what I needed and I sent in my application.  I was accepted and yet I still had no savings and no source of income except work (which just covered my bills at the time).  One month before I was scheduled to go I received $2,200 from an unexpected source.  This was enough to cover my tuition, airfare, and leave me at least $20 spending money.

Many of you know how sick I became two years ago.  I was in end-stage heart failure.  My cardiologist had basically given up on me.  Yet, I felt God wanted me here on this earth for a while longer.  I started asking Him for a new heart.  Long story short, I moved to Montana, received some unique medical care, and now I feel better than I have in years.

I have many more stories of God doing the impossible in friends’ lives and my own but I think you are getting the picture.  Prayer is no longer boring and something I have to do, but rather an adventure and something I enjoy doing.  It is talking with God, and He ALWAYS answers!

So, let us not forget, that which is impossible with us (mankind) is possible with God (Matthew 19:26).

“I WILL TRUST YOU”

Trust by definition is a firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something.

Trust is a simple word, but it is mankind that makes it complicated.  Our trust in things and people is dependent upon our life experiences.  When I go to sit down on a chair I trust it will hold me up; it will not collapse or fall over.  I trust it will hold me up because it (and the many other chairs I sat on in my lifetime) has held me up before.  So, trust can be built up and strengthened by previous experience.

If a policeman in uniform stops to help me change my flat tire on the highway I trust him.  I trust him because I have been taught from the time I was very little that policemen are good and I can always turn to them for help.  That is my life experience with policemen.  I have friends that are African American and their experiences with policemen are different.  They share stories of being pulled over because they were driving expensive cars or they are told they look like criminals.  So, trust can be torn down by the actions of others.

When it comes to our view of God, do we trust Him?  I have been thinking about this question a lot lately because of a young couple who mourn the loss of their little girl.  They asked their church, churches in their community, and believers all over the world to pray for her physical resurrection.  It did not happen and a memorial service has finally been scheduled.  Many Christians really trusted God and prayed for her resurrection, I being one of them.  So how does this incident color our trust in God?

Do I trust God?  I actually found the answer to this question very firmly in January of 1988 while I was doing mission work in Jamaica.  Our mission team went to a local hospital near St. Ann’s Bay to do a puppet show and pray for the children in their children’s ward.  When we walked onto the ward I was stunned.  The ward was one room about 40 by 50 feet and filled wall to wall with beds and cribs.  There were two to three children to a crib.  Many of them were crying.  We set up our puppet stage (basically two of us would hold up a blanket on either end and three of us would get behind it and do our puppet show) and when we started the music and the puppets came up the whole room became instantly quiet.  We finished the show and went from bed to bed/crib to crib praying for the children.  There was one large crib with one side down and a girl, about 10 or 12, lying in it barely breathing.  She was going through what the medical profession calls Cheyne–Stokes.  This kind of breathing often happens when someone is dying.  My heart was filled with compassion as I recognized her symptoms and I prayed for her healing fully believing God would heal her.  She died later that day.

I was devastated and angry with God for not healing her, especially after I fully believed He would.  My trust in Him was eroded.  Later that day, as we were working on scraping and repainting the inside of the Brethren Church in St. Ann’s Bay I got off by myself and cried.

Letting the tears fall freely I asked,  “Father God, didn’t You say You were the God of miracles?  Where’s the wisdom of letting that little one die?  Are you really real or is the Bible just full of made-up words?”  I cried out these and many more accusations against Him.

When I finally cried so much that I felt exhausted and spent I became quiet enough to hear His response, “If I fail you, will you still trust Me?”  We have been taught in Sunday school and church that God will never fail us so my automatic response was, “You never fail us.”  God quietly repeated to me, “If I fail you, will you still trust Me?”  He then had my attention.  I thought, “Would I, would I really trust Him if He failed me?  Would I trust Him if he let me get deathly sick, like that little girl?  Would I?”   I thought about my life as a Christian.  I thought about how I had trusted Him through thick and thin from when I accepted Him as my Savior in 1973 and then up to that point in 1988.  I asked myself that day, “Would I trust Him”?  Then I told Him, “Yes, Lord, I will trust You”.  I sensed a great yielding in my spirit as I did this.  That day established a rock-solid trust of God in me that has been the foundation for how I respond to everything since.

When I was fired from my job I was frustrated, but I still trusted Him.  When a Christian girlfriend died I grieved, but I still trusted Him.  When I became very ill and my heart was failing, I still trusted Him.  When I had to move away from all my friends and church family I became homesick, but I still trusted Him.  Now, when I need to live in assisted living and am dependent on others for transportation and other needs, I still trust Him.  I look at all these negative milestones in my life and I have grown through them BECAUSE I TRUSTED HIM.  I made a CHOICE to trust Him no matter what I went through:  happy, sad, or failure.  Like the Twila Paris song says, “I will trust You, Lord when I don’t know why; I will trust You, Lord, till’ the day I die; I will trust You, Lord when I’m blind with pain; You were God before and You’ll never change; I will trust You, I will trust You, I will trust You, Lord…”

"Do I Trust You?" recorded by Twila Paris

My encouragement to you today is to CHOOSE to trust Him no matter what happens.  He has great things in store for you!

(Next Week continues the series, “The Battlecry”)