prayer

I was silently broken-hearted when I went to get a sandwich at the campus deli. “Life is just a damned vail of tears!” I told the Lord. I ordered my sandwich at the counter, let the words of my own heart sink in, and by the time I left with the sandwich, I remembered a scripture: “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.” (2 Cor. 4:7)

How very odd. The God of the universe in our hearts surrounded by our fallen flesh! I remembered a lesson from another time: God is no less God in us for all our infirmities and frailness. Why does He allow disaster in our lives when we know Him already and have turned from evil that His life and goodness may take root in our hearts?

I used to imagine that one day I would have a heart so pure as to make evil obsolete as the means of my transformation. I never thought about evil touching those I care for, though. All about me are those who still need to come to the end of themselves and it kills my soul to watch. “Why this death?” I asked Him.

I called a friend this evening. We both know several people who should be at the end of their ropes but apparently are not. They have created miserable circumstances for themselves and it is difficult not to fear for their safety. My friend asked me, “Why?” I told him I had considered it and realized that some people need destruction — that it is actually the mercy of God in many cases. It is the only way some people will ever call out to God — when they realize that they aren’t powerful enough to ignore the principles of the universe. Consequences, though, are like a double-edged sword. Not only does it cut through the heart of the rebellious ones — it cuts through the heart of the faithful ones who still trust in their own abilities — abilities to fix things, to convince others to “fly right”, and to demand from God the change needed. We, also, come to the end of ourselves and cry out for deliverance.

Prayer takes many forms in my life. Sometimes I pray on beads — because I need them? No. But it’s like in the movies where a woman goes into labor and the doctor or midwife tells someone, “Boil water!” It keeps them out of the way while the drama unfolds. Other times, I don’t care about beads, candles, or anything. I just need to talk to God. Then there are those times that leave me weeping convulsively on the floor. I doubt that any of these methods is better or worse than another. Those are more for us than for God who looks at the heart. But, as humans, we have to do something with ourselves.

I drove home in the evening dusk. I asked Him, “God, how can I really know you? I need to hear you. What does it take to be open to hear Your voice?” I thought about how Jesus experienced the full onslaught of fallen judgment against His divinity. He has already walked this way. Now the spirit of Christ has been released and made available to those who choose Him. Divinity is still walking around in human skin. He knows what it is to be single and lonely, what it is to be married and miserable. He understands the way of a parent with a child and a child with a parent; He knows what it is to be master and slave. He still subjects Himself to the elements of the world until the entirety of the cosmos is subsumed in His kingdom at last. Just as He overcame the world the first time, He still overcomes it today — in our lives.

I remember the quiet moments I used to have with my mother. When I was a little girl we used to sing together. I listened to her talk about the things she valued and believed in — about what was good and just and noble. It affected my outlook profoundly. Even when she said nothing, it didn’t matter. I knew what she thought and what she felt. All it took was a look from her and I knew what she thought about something.

God is like that. That’s what it takes to know Him. Conversations, quiet times, a look, a glance. I spent a lot of my early spiritual life trying to consciously think on Him every spare moment for fear I might lose contact or miss something spiritual. Suddenly today I remembered my mother — a mere human being. It sure wasn’t that hard to know what my mother thought, and I didn’t think on her every minute of the day. Half the time I didn’t think of her at all, but I knew she was there if I needed her. Sometimes she sat me down for a “talking to” and I didn’t want to listen, but I learned to sit still.

It’s the same with God. It doesn’t take staring at Him across the table all day long to know Him. He is fully “family” to those who believe. He is our Father. It only takes a few words here and there and a little conversation each day to know Him. I saw that it’s the same for me when I involve Him in my concerns just like I used to talk to my mother about what I loved, what I hated and what made me sad.

Of course He knows… My mother always did and she was a finite woman. How much more the God of the universe who travels around in our flesh?

Just as important, I see that the “vail of tears” is like an ocean that we travel through, always there no matter how righteous or wicked we are. Sometimes we find elements of beauty in spite of it, but the tears are always there, in our hearts if not our eyes. They may be recently past or shortly up ahead, but they are always waiting. In the end, it doesn’t matter what we feel, for it makes God in us no less God at all. But the one who lets the two-edged sword of anguish cut through the flesh to reveal Christ within is the one who overcomes the world in this lifetime.

I just ran across a great article at “Free the Church” detailing the organic nature of pastors and making a case that the gifts mentioned in Ephesians 4 are temporary in the Body. I never thought about them being temporary before and will have to mull that over. I’ll bet if you think about who the organic pastors in your own life have been, they will mostly have not been the man behind the pulpit, though.

I loved reading about the men who pastored this writer. Most of my organic pastors didn’t walk as long with me, but maybe there were quite a few if I think back on it. I’m going to take a stab at naming a few who pastored me. Here goes.

The Wife of a Former Pastor

The wife of a former pastor in an I/C was my real pastor for a moment in time. Shortly before, she had been at the center of a sex scandal with both a woman and a man, which split the church. The humiliating experience she’d been through, trotted about as a show-pony in a public confession for other people’s revenge, probably made her a better minister to distraught people.

A friend who was privvy to something that happened to me one night suggested I talk with this lady. So she called her up for me, and I ended up meeting this lady in a prayer room. She listened as I poured out my story and handed me tissues. She prayed a simple prayer for me and my respect for her shot way up because of her honesty and sense of compassion. She didn’t try to fix me or give me “12 Steps to a Successful Life”. Later, she was the only one who stood with me as my life crumbled. For that I will always see her as a woman of great dignity.

In contrast, one of my former friends offered herself as a minister to my difficulties on a prior occasion. She ended up telling me I had a rotten attitude and to “Shut up!” The message was, “Spiritual people don’t have problems. And if they do, they certainly don’t express them.” After that, I locked myself away in my heart.

In recounting this I realize some things about my walk now. My former friend probably did me a favor in a roundabout way. She made me start to realize there was no help in the I/C, but I didn’t realize the full import of that until several years later. I only understood that my efforts to know and serve God didn’t pay off as they had for others. What could I deduce except that either God had not blessed me or He didn’t love me as He did others? It took a long time to work that out.

People would be very surprised to hear of it now, as the world has changed and the law and I/Cs are on the side of my issue now. But at the time, they weren’t. It was open season on women. Still, I suppose that I learned not to depend on man-made institutions for justice. I get my justice and self-esteem from a higher source.

A Neighbor, Mary

She was a neighbor who saw me sitting on some steps outside my apartment. My life had already gone to hell in a handbasket and my three-year-old son’s life hung in the balance. She sat with me — OMG, a Roman Catholic and a Mexican-American one (the worst kind!). I found out that she had a living faith even though her non-evangelical lifestyle puzzled me a bit. (Roman Catholics play Bingo and drink beer, you know…) I don’t even remember what she said now. I came to believe in her friendship more than I believed in the “ministries” in the I/C after that incident with the former friend. Mary taught Catechism classes and lent me a book on the Catechism. I decided we weren’t too far apart after all. We became friends in the faith. For that one moment in my dark world, she was an organic pastor who kept me from melting away.

Sister H.

Sister H. was a lady in a Wednesday night home group in a local church I attended. She maintained the group’s prayer list. She listed the dates of the prayers and when they were answered. She told me once that they had never had a prayer that God didn’t answer. I was struck most by her honesty when she realized what my issues were. “We really don’t have an answer for you,” she told me, “but we know the One who does.” She is one of the shining faces of my past who didn’t scold me or try to fix me. I was rejected by would-be “ministers” at one church and later at this one, too. Sister H., however, met me in a hallway at church once and said, “You are awfully young to be going through all this. The Lord has something very special for you.” I will never forget the intensity of her eyes when she said this. She gave me hope and taught me to believe for what I couldn’t see and didn’t understand.

My Uncle

Now here was an intense personality and he walked longer with me than any other. We might have been enemies under other circumstances, he being a bit overbearing. But he helped me search out God’s path on numerous occasions and helped me learn to discern what was back of many things. He took my family in on two occasions and helped me get a better perspective on the world so that I learned to stand up to it. Because of him, I am a tougher woman.

Lastly and maybe most importantly:

My Mother

I don’t think of my mother as a pastor in the same way as people who floated in and out of my life, but I think she was an organic pastor in that she cared for my soul. By the time she died, we were poles apart in some of our personal doctrines, but she always made sure I was aware that what I did and became mattered to God. She set me on a right course when I was young and made sure I knew I had to consciously choose between Life and Death.

My organic pastors seem mostly to have dotted the landscape of my life and disappeared like a mist. I don’t know why. Few of these people walked for any length of time through the real issues of my life. I’m somewhat astounded to think that most of my “pastoring” has come through a word here and a word there. Mostly I have walked through places where everything was against me, so I’m rather surprised thinking back on it all that I’m still standing. I must conclude that there really is only one permanent Shepherd and Bishop of our souls after all. Wonder what other people’s experiences have been?

A missionary went to India many years ago to preach the gospel. For a long time only a handful of people came to hear him and he became quite frustrated. One day a woman with a dreadful, incurable illness came to hear him and he prayed that she would be healed. The next day she showed up again, completely cured, and many people came to hear him preach after that. Someone asked the missionary about his great spiritual gift and where the faith for the woman’s healing came from. He said, “I don’t know because it sure didn’t come from me.”

Many people want to see gifts of power in operation. Some consider the gifts as proofs of God’s existence or His interest in the affairs of our lives. Some want to have these gifts to validate their own faith. Others consider the gifts as credentials that God sends with His true ministers. And still others have ideas about how they would do great exploits — possibly even to the point of taking over human governments. The list could go on, but at any rate gifts are a powerful but impermanent (I Cor. 13:8) manifestation of the presence and power of God. They are a means, but never the end.

It is difficult in our day to know exactly how far reaching were these spiritual gifts in the first century. We know, for starters, that Jesus healed every one who came to Him (Matthew 12:16). As far as we know, He did not heal those who did not ask to be healed either directly themselves or indirectly through an advocate (Luke 8:41; Mat. 8:8; Mark 2:4). Therefore, it is difficult to say whether He would have emptied the hospitals in our towns. Perceiving the human heart as He did, would He have gone out of His way to heal those without faith (Cf. Matthew 13:58)?

For all the miracles He performed, starting from the time He turned water into wine, one would think He could have rescued Himself from the cross (Matthew 27:42). It would seem He would have done so if all He wanted was for the world to believe on Him. God, however, saw fit to release Peter from prison by a miracle (Acts 12:5-7). Paul and Silas also went to prison and were released by another miracle (Acts 16:26). Yet why did God not keep them out of prison in the first place? It might be supposed that God is “off the hook” here when we consider that in Peter’s case this abounded to his confidence and that of the other Apostles that God was truly with them (Acts 12:17). In Paul’s case, it resulted in the salvation of the keeper of the prison and all his household (Acts 16:33).

There is little difficulty with the logic of these three situations given that Jesus’ real task in the first case was to offer Himself as a sacrifice for the world. In the other two cases, we can reasonably argue that the miraculous interventions in the prisons proved that God had a greater purpose than seemed apparent at first — that of strengthening faith and adding to the Church. However, how would anyone have known that greater purpose without seeing the stories through from beginning to end? And what is the “end”?

What could be said for Paul’s later imprisonment and beheading? Why did God not miraculously intervene on his behalf in that instance? Yes, we know the end of Paul’s earthly story — that his two years under house arrest gave him time to write half of the New Testament and to counsel the growing Church. But why the beheading and why did Paul go to Jerusalem after being warned by God through the mouth of the prophet what would happen (Acts 21:11)? And here is the million dollar question: Are we always privy to the “end” of the story? What about when God doesn’t appear to intervene on behalf of His people? Did someone lack faith? Did they lack a spiritual gift? Did God intend a purpose beyond what is apparent? And, lastly, will we even recognize the purpose when we see it?

In the case of the missionary, he claimed no particular gift. In fact, he had no idea where the faith had come from to perform such a work. James tells us:

The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. (Jam 5:16b)

Does it always matter whether faith comes through a specially gifted one or a simple prayer? We do not know everything there is to know about spiritual gifts, why so much talk of miracles often remains speculative and theoretical, or why there seems to be a dearth of the miraculous in everyday life. Notwithstanding, miracles do happen in the earth, though they are seldom seen. But, if truth be told, there is also a dearth of charity, spiritual fruit, faithfulness, holiness — why do some single out the lack of power gifts as if they are the litmus test of God in His people? John considered love for the brethren (1 John 3:14, 24) as the evidence of God in us, as did Jesus (John 13:35). Paul considered charity (love) as the permanent virtue exceeding all special giftings (1 Cor. 13:8) and urged us to consider all else as worthless without it. Taken as a whole, the lack of any or all of these things should cause us to question ourselves.

As to where the difference lies between the working out of a power gift and the end result of “effectual, fervent prayer”, it is difficult to determine sometimes. One could almost say that special giftings = effectual, fervent prayer. The differences are usually perceived as instantaneous in the first case and subtle in the second case. Nevertheless, as we saw in the example of the missionary, that is not always true. Sometimes the results appear very much the same. Perhaps we may consider all power from God as something akin to an electrical current. In the case of spiritual gifts, it is like loose wires sending out sparks so that the presence of electricity is obvious to all. One explosion from an open electrical socket and the presence of electricity can scarcely be doubted by the most hardened skeptic. Effectual, fervent prayer operates more like a cable connected to a plug in an outlet where the current flows silently, effectively, and unnoticed save for the efficiency of its delivery.

Is one kind of power delivery more authentic or more useful than the other? Emphatically, no — but the constancy of the one endures into eternity, whereas the other will dry up when it is not needed (1 Cor. 13:8). The long term purpose of both is the same: To bring us into our assigned purpose with the Creator. In that sense, they have the same effect as anything else God has allowed in our lives. The goal of Christ is that we may become one with Him and His Father (John 14:23, 17:21) — rather than shipwrecking ourselves worrying about the means.