Can't someone else do it, Lord? I don't want to pray for him. Its more comfortable to my heart for me to stay mad and bitter at him. I guess I'm not ready to let it go.., but everywhere I've been reading and in each conversation I have had, I've come to the same conclusion, I am called to pray.
I feel like Jonah when God called him to go to Nineveh. "No, No, I won't go."
I feel like my 4 year old nephew who says, "I don't want to and you can't make me."
I feel like my 14 year old who rationalizes saying, "but you don't know how they treated me."
I reach out for others to pray for this friend.
But I don't share the responsibility in praying for him.
In my morning devotion, God's Best for you Life, it said: Geography makes no difference for the prayer of faith, nor the psychological distance of any consequence... others with whom we are present can be so distant in their defensiveness that it is difficult to break through their barriers. BUT we can pray and know that God is at work. We can participate with Him in the release of His amazing resources in their lives if we pray. When we pray in faith we can thank God repeatedly that He has heard and be assured that He will answer according to His will and in a way that brings ultimate good for the person we have prayed... The Lord has heard. His power is being released. Our job is to pray in faith; God's job is to intervene. If we do our job, we can trust He will do his."
In another book I am reading, A Praying Life, the author talks about how we often come to God in prayer. He says, Jesus wants us to be without pretense when we come to him in prayer. Instead we often try to be something we aren't. The difficulty of coming as we are is that we are messy. Nothing exposes our selfishness and spiritual powerlessness like prayer. Don't try to get the prayer right: just tell God where you are and what's on your mind. The only way to come to God is by taking off any spiritual mask. The real you has to meet the real God. Jesus didn't come for the righteous. He came for the sinners. All of us qualify. The very things we try to get rid of- our weariness, our distractedness, (our complaining), our messiness-are what get us in the front door.
This person will never be in our home or our lives again but that doesn't mean I shouldn't pray for him. No matter the pain I feel, I should come to God with the mask off and pray for my friend. I know God loves him and desires a restored relationship with him. So today, I will pray for him. I will pray for his safety. I will pray for his heart to be softened so he can see the hope we have in Christ. I pray that this time of struggle, isolation and fear will draw him closer to God's heart. I will pray that God will surround him with people in his life who can point him to the cross. I hope he will see his own sinfulness and turn from it. I pray that the people who are in his path will speak truth- with boldness, with love and with firmness.
Will you join me in praying?
Will you encourage me to continue to pray,
even when I don't want to?
even when I don't see the results of these prayers?
If know anything about God,
He is at work around us and in us.
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