When I tell people about having peace with God, what do I mean?
Do I experience it daily? Do I wrestle with my standing before God or my salvation often enough to speak as if I know it?
Or is it simply the fact that I’m at peace with the way I think and the way I feel? That finally ‘something’ is satisfied and while at the time I didn’t know what it was exactly; post rebirth, I did?
When Lewis writes of the death of his beloved Joy in A Grief Observed, it seems frank and conclusive.
I don’t doubt that it brings him great sorrow and pain, but what hope have I when it becomes the matter of an unsaved person?
All these years I’ve been wanting that very one thing, and all these years I’ve occasionally brought it before the Lord in prayer, but where did I go wrong down the track? My heart aches, my eyes are clouded with tears of grieving, I tremble. Had He not heard all this time?
Yes, I do believe in the absolute goodness, holiness and graciousness of the Sovereign Creator.
Yes, I do believe in the Son, the perfect sacrifice without blemish whose blood was spilt at the cross so I too could cry ‘Abba’.
Yes, I do believe in the Spirit, who lives within and helps me to cry to ‘Abba.’
But for around five years, have I wanted to share my joy with my grandfather.
Five years of sitting anxiously, asking impatiently and doubting myself and God too.
Over the five years I’ve known God, He’s revealed His goodness to me over and over again. I’ve witnessed His Sovereign power at work, and I’ve been humbled by it. Prayer to me helps me step back in line with God, to not wander off my own, but to stand with God knowing that I would make it nowhere without Him. Prayer helps me direct the focus off myself and back to Him, where glory and praise belongs. Prayer helps me realise that I’m weak, selfish and full of malice whereas God is the opposite.
But what happens when I get uneasy praying, ‘Lord, Your kingdom come…’?
What happens when I think about all the people I want to see saved before Jesus’ return?
What happens if praying that just seems unfair to me?
That all those months praying for loved ones went to waste?
That God seemed to have great things on His agenda but not the things that I’m desperate for?
What happens when God seems to ignore something I so urgently want, something that is good (at least to me)?
Surely God sees my pain? How can He let me bear it any longer?
For all of the above, I don’t have conclusive answers, and I won’t pretend I do.
But one thing I know, and that is the fact that because of Christ, God hears me, and God wants the best for me. What is that that is the best? I don’t exactly know, but I trust that it is what it’ll take for me to become more like His Son, that I may be matured and sanctified.
In God’s Sovereign plans I trust, …or want to learn to trust.
It’s not about praying the right way, or praying long enough, praying consistently enough; rather it’s about my trust in my Abba‘s plans, that they are good, and they will bring glory to Him and Him alone. Though I may ask for good things, things that are gifts from God, I have to remember that they are gifts too, and that they shouldn’t distract me from or detract glory from my Abba. Though it pains me to keep wanting the same things, to feel this burden, to be disappointed and discouraged, I know that I can have hope in my Abba‘s plans.
Be it another couple of months, another couple of years, or not at all…
Let me trust in my Abba alone.
Wednesday night – a talk from Philippians 3 on our response to the classic, ‘Why should God let you into heaven?’ A talk on how we have confidence not in ourselves, our experiences, our heritage nor in our own achievements, but instead in the redeeming and atoning blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God.
And yet the next day did I talk to two twins who went to a Christian high school, where they were taught Bible stories, were asked to pray, were asked to give talks and were asked to participate in chapel. Upon hearing their story, I was delighted – I couldn’t believe that such a school existed, that they were able to have such an exposure to the gospel.
I pray that through these next few years, I would be able to humble myself before them, to show them that we don’t love our enemies because it’s just a good thing to do, but it’s because that’s what Jesus did for us, bringing sinners into God’s family.
Lord, thank you for having made this such a coincidental and timely experience. Help me to testify to Your grace and the mercy You offer at the Cross. Help me behave in a godly way that honours you, so that they may find no fault in me because of the work of Your Holy Spirit. Lord help my actions and words be filled with love and gentleness, not out of arrogance or superiority. Lord, help me to be a humble and joyful worker for Your glory – and that alone.
Lord I know that I am tempted in everything – my thoughts stray, my words and actions become self-conceited and only attend to the desires of my wicked heart. Would You change me, would you also give me more opportunities to talk about you to the twins, that their hearts may be changed and that I may be encouraged by Your work in them. Lord, I pray that You will keep these things on their mind, so that they may realise that Jesus is The Way, The Truth and The Life.
In knowing your Sovereign power and grace I pray,
Amen.
I wonder how fears work – what really feeds them?
I’ve been bothered and upset about one particular thing for a while now and it just seems like a dead end, where the last resort seems to be climbing over a staggeringly tall hedge.
Do I want to help them? Do I want to get them out? How am I meant to rescue someone when I face an intimidating wall built by no one other than myself? How am I meant to see with clarity when my vision is blurred by my tears of anxiety? I know I can’t be selfish, that it’s not helpful to anyone for me to sit there and weep, refusing to imagine things beyond the hedge. I know that if I don’t even dare to face it, there would be no other way in getting over it. And if I don’t get over it – well then, I’ll simply be living my life bearing a greater burden.
What is this fear doing to me? Exaggerating my current one yet masking the more terrifying consequence to come?
But then again, I know one far greater, a victor above these pitiful fears of mine, whom I trust will safely guide me, and hold me tight through it all.
Following our 2010 debate in Billings, Montana, I asked Christopher Hitchens why he didn’t try to savage me on stage the way he had so many others. His reply was immediate and emphatic: “Because you believe it.”
Without fail, our former church-attending students expressed similar feelings for those Christians who unashamedly embraced biblical teaching. Michael, a political science major at Dartmouth, told us that he is drawn to Christians like that, adding: “I really can’t consider a Christian a good, moral person if he isn’t trying to convert me.”
As surprising as it may seem, this sentiment is not as unusual as you might think. It finds resonance in the well-publicized comments of Penn Jillette, the atheist illusionist and comedian: “I don’t respect people who don’t proselytize. I don’t respect that at all. If you believe that there’s a heaven and hell and people could be going to hell or not getting eternal life or whatever, and you think that it’s not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward…. How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that?”
Comments like these should cause every Christian to examine his conscience to see if he truly believes that Jesus is, as he claimed, “the way, the truth, and the life.”
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