WE DON'T KNOW WHAT WE OUGHT TO PRAY FOR

I just read those words this past week as I was working on an upcoming message…“We don’t know what we ought to pray for.” (Romans 8:26 NIV)…and, I thought, “Oh, how true!” Sometimes it is the very answers to our prayers that cause many of the difficulties in our life. We pray for love of others, and God sends suffering people our way who are difficult to love, and say things that get on our nerves just to remind us that “love is patient, love is kind…it is not rude…it is not easily angered…it ALWAYS protects, always trusts… always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”

We pray for patience, and it seems that the first people who cross our paths are difficult and demanding, and test us to the limits…because we know that “suffering produces perseverance.” (Romans 5:3). We pray to be unselfish, and God responds by giving us opportunities to sacrifice by placing other people’s need first. We pray for strength and humility, and “a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from getting proud.” (2 Corinthians 12:7) is promptly dispatched to make sure we are “not puffed up”.

We pray for a Christlike life that exhibit’s the humility of Jesus, and we are soon asked to perform some lowly task, or we are unjustly accused and given no opportunity to explain. We pray for gentleness and quickly face a storm of temptation to react with harshness and irritability. We pray for a quietness, and suddenly it seems that we have only one nerve left…and someone is STANDING RIGHT ON IT!…all so we can learn that when He sends His peace, no one can disturb it.

We pray as the Apostles did, to “increase our faith” (Luke 17:5), and it seems that promptly our money seems to take wings and fly away; someone close becomes critically ill; the car won’t start, and if it did you couldn’t go anywhere till you changed the tire; or, some other new trial comes upon us requiring more faith than we have ever before experienced.

We pray to be like Jesus, and God’s answer is “I have tested you in the furnace of affliction.” (Isaiah 48:10) “Will your courage endure or your hands be strong?” (Ezekiel 22:14) Or, as Jesus said in Matthew 20:22... “Can you drink the cup?”

It appears that the way to peace and victory is to accept every circumstance and every trial as being straight from the hand of our loving Father, knowing He is looking down from glory on those circumstances as being lovingly and divinely appointed to grow us into what He created us to be…in His likeness.

I read a poem written by Annie Johnson Flint that I would like to share with you. I believe it is called “Better Than My Best”.

I prayed for strength, and then I lost awhile
All sense of nearness, human and divine;
The love I leaned on failed and pierced my heart,
The hands I clung to loosed themselves from mine;
But while I swayed, weak, trembling, and alone,
The everlasting arms upheld my own.

I prayed for light; the sun went down in clouds,
The moon was darkened by a misty doubt,
The stars of heaven were dimmed by earthly fears,
And all my little candle flames burned out;
That while I sat in shadow, wrapped in night,
The face of Christ made all the darkness bright.

I prayed for peace, and dreamed of restful ease,
A slumber free from pain, a hushed repose;
Above my head the skies were black with storm,
And fiercer grew the onslaught of my foes;
But while the battle raged, and wild winds blew,
I heard His voice and perfect peace I knew.

I thank You, Lord, You were too wise to heed
My feeble prayers, and answer as I sought,
Since these rich gifts Your bounty has bestowed
Have brought me more than all I asked or thought;
Giver of good, so answer each request
With Your own giving, better than my best.

A MEMORIAL DAY PRAYER FOR OUR HEROES AND THEIR FAMILIES

Lord, this morning I turn my thoughts toward the women and men who have served our nation in times of war and times of peace. I stand before You, God, grateful for the dedication of the heros who have lived and died, suffered, and cried, and stood with pride on ship, battlefield and parade ground. I honor those who gave their lives for peace with courage that others families may be free, so children could grow strong and safe as they would ever be. In giving your life and safety for the sake of peace, you and your families may have suffered loss, your body may still show its wounds from taking up the battle. I pray the remembrance of your personal sacrifice for peace have time to fade away.

So, I take time to pray this morning, Father, that these women and men experience Your healing and comforting presence for the wounds they have known and still know today,… for the losses they have endured and always will endure. I also ask that Your healing and comforting presence be experienced by their families, their children, and their loved ones who have suffered beyond measure along with them, and who have had to endured the anxious loneliness living without them.

I especially ask that Your presence be experienced by the heros of tomorrow,… those who are bravely serving in harms way today. Please, gracious God, guide them to safety, guide them to justice and righteousness in even the toughest of conditions. Bring them home to their husbands, their wives, and their children. Comfort those moms and dads and those who love these patriots, and teach us how we might help them with their troubles. Show to us how to be Your compassionate presence to them as they experience anxiousness, anguish, and the loneliness and pain that comes with the knowns and unknowns of war.

Finally, God, for all of us, for all who are in the service, for America, for the world, we pray for peace. Lead the leaders of the world to the day when “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; [to a day when] nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war any more.” (Isaiah 2:4).Grant us Lord, that we would strive more strongly for freedom from causes that sent some away to fight that we may freely live. With gratefulness we thank you, veterans for all you gave and give. We long for Your peace, for Your shalom. In Christ’s name we pray, Amen.

PASTOR'S LETTER TO HIS WIFE

Dear Connie,

I was sitting here at my desk working, and began to think of you and how precious you are to me and my ministry. I believe that very few understand the pressure of being a pastor’s wife. Higher expectations are often placed on you more than anyone else in the church. Your life is more public than you likely would have ever chosen it to be. You receive more scrutiny than others. I know there are times of loneliness because you often have to share me with others as I attend my meetings and other functions that take me away from home. You are expected to endure when my hours are long; you shoulder my pressures; you feel my disappointments; and, you suffer my defeats, probably as profoundly and as deeply as I do. And yet, you shoulder your role. Your beautiful smile speaks more powerfully to people than all of the words that pour from my mouth.

I’m learning from you how to be a better pastor, and hopefully how to be a better husband. You challenge me to be a man more like Jesus. I know that being a pastor’s wife was the farthest thing from your mind when we started our life journey together almost 39 years ago. But, I have no doubt God made you to be a pastor’s wife. Now…why He chose to bless me with you,… I do not know. But, God gave you this desire for me that is without explanation. Your love for me is a picture of God’s grace in my life.

Remembering some of the lessons I learned in my earlier years in the jewelry industry, I can say you handle the pressure of being a pastor’s wife with the skill of a master watchmaker. You have a sense of understanding the delicateness of all the relationships in the church, understanding how each gear turns another, and how each part affects another. I know I don’t always show the greatest mercy in my conversation, but you help me learn how to have more tact when I speak.

God’s grace just seems to shine through you as you manage the scrutiny of being a pastor’s wife. Though I cannot share with you every private matter in the church, I count on you to be my outlet for stress. It is only God’s grace in your life that explains how you can diffuse my ministry stress, understanding when I need a word of encouragement, or simply a time of quiet. You are the one who listens to my dreams for the church and helps me to look into the future and see those dreams become a reality. You gracefully love others the way Christ loved. I’m learning about God’s grace more and more through you.

I am thankful for the way you live out the higher expectations placed upon you…not because of what others may think or expect,…but because you live them out for Jesus. You’re a godly, (though sometimes slightly stubborn) woman. And, I love you, Connie. You make me want to boldly live the Apostle Paul’s words in Ephesians 5:25, when he wrote… “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her.” I am blessed to have you on this journey with me.

Love, John

NAVIGATING THROUGH THE WILDERNESS

Have you spent periods of time, some short, some long, or maybe in between, when it seemed as if you were traveling though the dark nights of your soul. Maybe even a time where your identity and self worth seem to come under direct assault. At the risk of vulnerability, I must confess to finding myself wandering through that wilderness recently. Those moments were marked by depression and maybe even an underlying anger toward the Lord for even allowing me to go through such emotional torment. What is going on, God? Why is this happening to me? This doesn’t make any sense! But, the wilderness time just continued, dragging me through anger and then to apathy. Soon I was knocking on the door of sadness until I could no longer move. My frustration became so intense that I didn’t know how to navigate out of the darkness…I couldn’t even pray. Have you ever been to the point where you can’t even utter a word…you don’t know what to pray?

I am thankful God blessed me with a loving caring wife who knows me better than I know myself and is not afraid to reach out for help when she sees I am struggling in the wilderness. She quickly called on a great friend with whom the Lord has blessed me, who quietly came alongside me, and with a simple phone call, he gently helped guide me back on track again. The burden became clearer and not so distorted, the frustration (though still present) became a target for action, and I was able to refocus my energy. And now, I’m beginning to feel like maybe I can identify a some of the truths revealed to me over the course of that painful crawl through the wilderness.

Somewhere in the midst of all my crying, and frustration, and yelling at the Lord, I began to realize that He’s not really impressed nor even swayed by my fit throwing. It seems that as so often the case, most of my overly dramatic cries for help were actually my attempt to get the Lord to do what I thought He should do. And, of course, that demand would not be complete if it didn’t include the desire that I wanted Him to do them in the time frame that I thought He should. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it is that God really does have “all the time in the world” to accomplish His plans and purposes. So, for us to require the Lord to respond to our “more important than anything” requests, or even to fulfill His promises in our time frame…well, it just doesn’t work out that way. When I surrendered to His Lordship, part of what that meant was that would be trusting not only that He’ll get it done, but that it will happen when He’s ready for it to and not a moment sooner,… no matter how much I complain, or whine, or “beseech” Him (I love that word…I need to use it more) to do otherwise.

Another thing I learned about navigating through the wilderness was staying focused on the right things. Paul encouraged the early church saying…“Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable … if anything is excellent or praiseworthy…think about such things.” (Philippians 4:8) One of the enemy’s oldest tactics is to rob us of our enjoyment of life by simply reminding us of what’s not right. If he can get us to spend our days dwelling on what’s not right about ourselves, or our situation, or that person who makes our skin crawl,… then he has succeeded in getting our minds out of focus on those things that are… “true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable … excellent or praiseworthy.” Magnifying the negatives and minimizing the positives of our realities, whether past or present, will inevitably suck the joy out of us and leave us depressed.

This principle is particularly true when applied to our relationship with the Lord. If our prayers are focused on what He hasn’t done for me lately, rather than what He has,… then we’ll slowly be convinced that He surely can’t love me the way I once thought He did. That deception can literally can ruin your faith, and, spoil your life. Thanks to a lot of time in prayer and inner searching, I have developed a stronger inner resolve to focus on the goodness of God, and what He has done, and is still doing in me and for me.

You know, if we’re going to spend eternity in the WITH-GOD life…we must first take ownership that we are saved, redeemed, justified, adopted, deeply loved, and accepted just as we are. We serve a GOOD GOD who wants nothing more than to bless us just because we are His children. He is indeed true, noble, right, lovely, admirable, excellent and worthy of our praise! If we choose to believe anything other than that,… regardless of how miserable our situation may seem in the moment,… then we are walking in the foolishness and deception of the enemy of our soul. We cannot allow our flesh and our struggle with our own human weakness to twist and distort our heavenly perspective.

I think the discipline of focusing begins with a decision to simply “think about” the “right” things. And, we will stay rightly focused as we learn to “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:5)

Lord Jesus, help us to get this one right. We know You are good. We know You love us. Forgive us for our impatience. You want to bless us and surround our lives with your mercy and favor. You have provided for us, you have protected us, you brought us out of the darkness and into the light and we give you our praise. We worship you because you are worthy! Thank you Jesus, we love you. Help us to stay rightly focused today. Amen.

RELATIONSHIP THAT CAUSES THE EARTH TO SWOON!

I still remember my wedding day, when my beautiful bride, now of nearly 39 years, came through the door of the church on her dad’s arm…I nearly swooned from the beautiful sight I beheld. Connie and I had gone through much to arrive at that day. There were hurts, and heartaches along the way, but forgiveness and genuine love for each other carried us through to a relationship of belonging, and acceptance, and love. My love for my bride has not weakened in the years that followed. When we would begin to build up walls and barriers to protect our hearts from hurt, we found that wouldn’t work long. We did much better when we were open and vulnerable to each other. So, no matter what came our way…we stayed with each other, and helped each other…doing life together.

The church needs that same powerful commitment to relationship. God wants to have a relationship with Himself and His creation that would cause the world to swoon. People walk through the doors of our churches for a lot of different reasons, but ultimately they stay for only one reason…they have cracked the near impregnable wall of cliques and clusters, and have been able to establish relationships with others. When we have been joined and fitted together rightly in relationship, we will put up with all kinds of our church craziness. But, without relationship, or having the sense that no one really gives a rip about us, or that we won’t be accepted for who we really are, we will bail at the first sign of trouble. Don’t you think it’s time that we Christians come to terms with our incredible need for belonging and acceptance?

Ultimately it is all about our relationship with our Heavenly Father. It is true that we must be in constant pursuit of a deeper revelation of God’s unconditional love and acceptance of us as His children. But, this seem to me to be where we’re missing something. We are also to be our Father‘s expression of love to each other. Think about it…what better way is it that we receive God’s love for us than through another’s loving touch, or kind and caring words, or selfless actions?

Jesus clearly understood this principle. During his ministry on this earth he was a living and breathing testimony of how we’re to conduct ourselves as a follower of Christ. Did Jesus ever wall off his heart from others so he could avoid further injury than which he was already receiving from the religious leaders? Did Jesus make it a point to avoid any meaningful relationships in order to avoid rejection? No, he kept putting himself out there….serving the needs of others, healing the sick and lame, and ministering compassion with all who came to Him through up close and personal contact. Indeed, Jesus would often get away to escape the constant drain of ministry so He could spend some uninterrupted time with his father. Yet, once recharged and strengthened, he just kept coming back for more, even to the point of enduring torture, humiliation, and death as His final demonstration of love for others.

I cannot help but believe that our Lord is saddened by the relational superficiality that so many believers are currently experiencing in their local church. When it comes right down to it, what or who is to blame for this relational breakdown is probably a mute point…but, for pastors like myself, and other church leaders, it is our responsibility to do something about it. And, it always seems to come down to this…more often than not, it starts with us. Church leadership seems to provide plenty of opportunities for relational strife and personal heartbreak. Way to many pastors, myself included, have had to fight off the natural tendency of becoming overly protective of our heart in order to survive… and the walls go up. But, erecting impenetrable walls of protection around our hearts can lead to an even greater problem than the outside assault…it well eventually result in love starvation, and an overwhelming sadness or anger toward others…and maybe even towards God…after all, it was He who called us into this.

It seems as if the church need some emotional restoration effort for its people. Christianity simply must be lived from the heart. If we ever hope to accomplish anything of eternal value, our passions and our emotions must be fully engaged and alive both vertically and horizontally…toward God and toward people. If we find ourselves going about our Christianity like we’re killin’ snakes…trying to do all the right things,… running from one ministry to another,… while our primary motivation is our sense of obligation or duty, we likely won’t last very long. And, if in the middle of all that business in the Lord’s work, we get our emotions stepped on and choose to remain offended, or refuse to seek healing for those wounded emotions,… we are a sitting duck for our enemy who knows that if he can get us to close off our heart…he’s got us. It only takes a little un-forgiveness and soon he has succeeded in knocking us out of the race.

1 Peter 2:4-5 tells us that Jesus was the original “…living Stone rejected by men”, and that “…you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house.” If you feel rejected, you have to understand that you’re not the only one in that boat. You’re in pretty good company. Rejection seems to be like a right of passage for us to achieve true spiritual authority. And, somehow or other, through the process of having our heart repeatedly wounded and healed… it becomes stronger, and maybe even a little softer at the same time. I am finding that in the times when I am unwilling to be vulnerable with the Lord or with others…I am soon headed to the altar for confession…because it is a sign that I have lost my trust in my Father’s sovereignty and loving care and watchfulness over me.

The local church is that spiritual house built with living stones. And, just like the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed…with many of its stones burnt and scarred by the ravages of battle… in order for you and I to function properly, or even to survive for that matter, we cannot be rebuilt by leaving our burnt and scarred hearts laying in the rubble…we must be connected to one another…not just organizationally, but at the heart level. The local church must regain its place of being a refuge for those in need of emotional restoration… it must return to being a place where the building of meaningful relationships is a top priority…instead of building personal agendas, structures, and programs.

As individuals, we must pursue a deeper revelation of our Father’s unconditional love and acceptance for us so that we can receive that kind of genuine love and give to others. It is only when we lay ourselves before the Lord and allow ourselves to become vulnerable to His touch that we can find the kind of intimacy that we all secretly long for. It seems as if our poor treatment of one another, our uncompassionate heart toward those who reach out to us in great need, and even our faulty perceptions of how we might feel the Lord has treated us, we can find ourselves prone to relational superficiality. But friends, we simply must resist this tendency. Our spiritual life really depends on it. Our ability to function as an integral member of the body depends on it. The fulfillment of our spiritual destiny depends on it. We need a renewed focus on the value and importance of maintaining a deep, heartfelt relationship…not only with our Lord, but with our fellow man.

"Jesus we really need some help here. Lord, I know we all want to serve You with an open heart. Please heal our emotional wounds. Tear down the walls we have built to protect our hearts. Heal your church Lord. Heal the bride so fully that her beauty will cause the heavens and the earth to just swoon! Give us Your great love for others, and strengthen our trust in You that we may do as You have taught us…to Love God…and love others. Amen."