Staying present IN the awkward moment – true story

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Have you ever been to one of those eatery birthday parties? The ones where they offer free beverages and eats, there’s live music, etc. I went to one recently. It was great. I arrived there with a sense of expectancy.

I didn’t know who I would meet there, but I knew I would meet someone significant. Yet, I wasn’t really consciously aware of this.

The place was packed. I found an unused seat (there were two actually), asked those nearby if it was taken, and a man said he would move so I could sit there. Suddenly I heard the Spirit of God press me in and tell me I wasn’t there to rest and reflect, but to be curious, to pray, to ask Him ‘who?’ and to be prepared to enter in — into their life if they would only let me in.

Then a woman diagonally across, about ten years older than me, began to speak to me about a magazine only the homeless sell — they buy it for half the selling price to help them live. She had had a successful morning. There were plenty of words and a lot of sharing, but she wasn’t who God had for me. Besides, she spoke faintly and my poor sense of hearing in noisy places couldn’t make sense of what she was saying. Dullness.

I sat there and ate, sipping coffee. For about five minutes.

Then I sensed God leading me to engage the younger man immediately across from me. He was unusually quiet for this party room atmosphere. He seemed reserved, even sad. I asked him, ‘What’s your story?’ He began to open up, telling me about his work, his family, his injured leg. There was something special about this young man, but not special as the world sees it. As we chatted, I shared my life with him as he asked me questions; the more I opened up, the more I sensed a mix of curiosity and discomfort rise up within him. I was tempted to back off, but no way oh Lord!

About the third or fourth question in I said, ‘Do you have faith?’ It was almost as if he was expecting the question. ‘I read,’ he said. ‘What?’ was my thought, but I shut up. I left it a few seconds. Then he said it… ‘I’m not religious, but I read the Bible; I love it.’

‘What’s your favourite part of the Bible,’ I asked. ‘I started in the New Testament, but have you ever read the Proverbs?’ ‘It’s like each saying changes in meaning from one day to another — different messages of wisdom.’ A brief pause of seconds ensued. I sensed his practical passion and it excited me, but the Spirit said, ‘Be patient, don’t overpower the moment with you!’

As I obeyed, staying in the awkward moment, I watched him thinking, and I watched him develop with the conversation. I was trying to pace the interaction for him, to allow the moment’s curiosity to blossom in him, to let him experience genuine inquiry.

Finally, after what was probably only fifteen seconds, I asked him, ‘What proverb are you thinking on right now?’ and he shared two — exegeting them both, passion rising. Then his response was swift, ‘What about you? Do you like Proverbs?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, and the Spirit gave me to say Proverbs 27:19 and 4:23.

We established that I was there to meet people and to help them. I offered him my number, which he wrote down. Then, having asked him several questions about his goals and dreams and joys, I asked him, ‘Are you troubled?’

Another long, awkward pause — God doing business within him.

Part of his visual response was pain, another part was denial, another part protection — he’d only known me little over thirty minutes — was I safe? ‘I’ve got many little problems, nothing worth sharing…’ ‘Every problem you have is important to God,’ I responded. Another long pause.

Soon afterward he decided to leave. And I began chatting with the older woman, giving her the attention she was craving.

Within four hours I received a text message from the young man outlining his key sadness, asking if I would be prepared to help. Prayer answered. Lord God, help me serve him well.

I write this and share it for one reason… God is living and active, everywhere, and there are people everywhere who need God’s ministry. I write not for kudos, but for God’s will to be done in connecting us with His people for His Kingdom’s sake, for there is so much pain in the world. God showed me the power of pacing the conversation, and the value of staying present in the awkward moment, to allow the young man the precious time to think, to trust, to ponder what he wanted to say.

Praying in the Spirit of Abeyance

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The word abeyance may seem confusing, but it’s just a prayer prayed in the waiting, in the unknown time before the prayer is answered, for we who pray by faith believe God will answer our prayers.

We all have deeply desired prayers we hope will come true, some appropriate, while others are clearly profoundly held wishes not based in the true hope of actually bringing God glory.

My godliest prayers are the ones I’ve waited on for years; I keep praying them in the spirit of abeyance — I continue to wait and hope and dream what life might be like when certain relationships are reconciled. These prayers are not for stuff nor goals nor other acquisitions, but they’re prayers that hold the hope that separation and distance between friends and myself may diminish. God has had me pray these prayers, as I said, for years now. And the waiting continues.

All we can add to our prayers, in matching
God’s faithfulness with our own, is to keep praying them.

I keep praying them because I’m hopeful for change, for an opportunity to do my bit to bring it about, and for these other hearts to wish for genuine reconciliation. That doesn’t mean things have to be the way they were, because we’ve all moved on. But it does mean we can acknowledge the hurts we’ve carried, take responsibility for our contribution, and put the hurt behind us, and not just pretend we’ve done it, or worse, not go there.

If you pray in the spirit of abeyance, and your prayer is for what God wants, you might be praying for a way to serve God, or for a relationship to start or blossom or improve; each of which brings the Lord glory.

Praying in the spirit of abeyance is a pray of faith, knowing that your prayer may go unanswered for a very long time, an entire lifetime in some cases. It’s a prayer that’s satisfied to receive according to God’s timing, accepting it may never come about.

Praying in the spirit of abeyance is praying
faithfully, in a way that refuses to give up.

Praying in the spirit of abeyance leaves the timing of the answer of the prayer to God but believes fully that the prayer will be answered. It’s the godliest of prayers, for it believes God answers prayers, but leaves the timing up to Him.

Prayer that goes unanswered for a long time or isn’t answered is one of our biggest discouragements. It causes some to abandon what faith they had. It’s important to not give up and keep praying, accepting God’s answer and timing.

The ultimate faith is about praying prayers that may not be answered, whilst believes they can be, in God’s timing.

It’s a brave prayer that holds onto a hope that may never materialise, believing sincerely all along that it will. God loves these kinds of prayers.

What prayers have you been tempted to stop praying?

What prayers have you given up on that you feel led to reinstate?

What God cannot do without our help

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“I’ve already got more truth than I know how to obey. I don’t just want to ‘know’. I want to change. And I don’t want to change on a so-called spiritual level; at a ‘public’ level. I want to change in the inner chambers of my heart.”

— Paul Washer

There are so many people I know, myself included, who already know plenty of life-changing truth, but do not apply it. If it wasn’t for God I’d be frustrated enough by now to give up, especially as it pertains to myself — so often a hearer and not a doer of His Word.

Washer tells us what we all know, but don’t think often or highly enough of — the thing that sets our doing apart from our hearing is the worship of God, which is the only weapon that works in war… the spiritual war that every devoted follower of Jesus faces every moment of their lives.

But what on earth is worship? It is more than love-me-some-Jesus songs! In fact, it isn’t that at all. It can be a dangerous consumer style worship. It consumes but does not cost. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but if that’s all ‘worship’ is, we live a stale and thin spirituality that does nothing to fortify our faith.

Worship is summed up in the quote at top;
to implore God to change us… me
in the deepest recesses of the heart.

When was the last time we praised God in the wiping of a baby’s bottom, or in shovelling snow, in waking early, in working in extreme heat or cold? In going without? In deep marital conflict that seems irresolvable. Do we see the glory of God in these things? That’s our problem. That’s the key indicator of what needs to change. We don’t choose to change the order of things in our minds. We refuse to see the sanctity in and of these moments, for that paradigm is God’s will and agenda.

In this day, we are so given to hearing and pondering and agreeing… without doing a thing about it. God can give us His Word, in dozens of translations, with commentaries and sermons and podcasts and eloquent quotes, but we’re the ones who need to apply its wisdom. Without doing that we can receive no power.

If only we esteemed God enough to take Him seriously enough to do His will by doing His Word.

If only we saw in ourselves the esteem God has for us. He made us with the capacity and the will to overcome, to work, to conquer, to strive to change and want to build God’s eternal kingdom.

But the first and last step of such a life is the doing life, not simply the hearing life. It is the life of taking God so seriously that we will not rest until we discipline ourselves in godliness.

Jesus finished His sermon on the mount by saying in Matthew 7:24-27 (NRSV):

²⁴ “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. ²⁵ The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. ²⁶ And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. ²⁷ The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell — and great was its fall!”

It’s time we got up off our knees and walked forward into a life of loving God and people with real and formative action.

Everything we do ought to be done for the glory of God. Think and feel that way, and we have no problem doing what God wills us to do. And the prayer of Matthew 6:33 becomes a reality.

God interactions from random distractions

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I met Sylvia (which is possibly not her real name) who is in her sixties on Roe Highway, Leeming, today. Stranded. With car but lost. 30 kilometres off course. An hour late for her appointment. Panic stricken, due to a family dispute, it took a minute or so to help her slow down enough to understand her predicament. I was on the way to Rockingham to visit my parents, with my son in the car. The Lord urged me to stop. In her state, I wondered if she were genuine or not. But she was just panicked and afraid, so very vulnerable close to trucks on this busy highway, in some ways utterly unaware of the hazards around her.

At one point in her panic she mentioned money and I thought about what cash I had on me; no, she wanted to give me money. Anything for help. Sensing God was in this, I said I wasn’t interested in money. She didn’t know what to do with that. ‘Why?!’ ‘I’m Christian and I want to help...’ – ‘Oh’ she said, ‘God, please don’t judge me for the times I’ve laughed about people who say “amen” all the time...’ 😊

Then she said, ‘We were meant to meet like this, weren’t we?’ Sensing a ‘Wow, Lord’ moment I said, ‘Yes, I think you’re right.’

To which she said, with genuine intent, ‘Are you to become my partner?’ (She had already mentioned how lonely she was since her husband had died years earlier and all her children were now married.) To which I said, ‘No, I’m married, but it could be God that brought us together.’

‘I want to give you money,’ she said. No, I wasn’t there for the money.

We established she needed to be in Morley. So, I said, ‘Follow me.’ And she did. We had spent ten minutes on the side of the road, and my five-year-old had been so patient just waiting in his car seat.

So panicked and upset, she drove erratically, but we eventually got to Galleria safely.

Just before we arrived at the shopping centre, at lights, she stopped, got out of her car, I wound down my window, and just like that, she thrust $10 into my hand... ‘It’s for your fuel,’ she said, darting back to her car. (I had been praying we would get the chance for another chat, so I could share the gospel with her, so I was a little disappointed.)

I kept driving and she followed me, motioning that she did in fact want to talk more. Thank You, Lord!

So I stopped, got out, and between the two cars, out of sight of my son (who again waited so patiently), we chatted... she said, ‘A peace has come over me.’ I said, ‘If you want love, go and meet God’s people – they will love you.’ ‘How do I do that,’ she said... I talked about it, and she allowed me to pray for her. I gave her a hug and then I left her near enough to her home to find her way back.

I didn’t get to share the gospel but I’m glad I was there to help someone like my mother who is easily lost on the roads. And after all that my son, on learning we were too far away to visit his Gran and Pa (my mother and father) now, sobbed, and said, ‘Dad, please can we go, I’ll be patient...’ We were 66 minutes away according to the GPS. We’d been on the road nearly double that time already. And he didn’t whinge once, and we even had dialogue about how God speaks to us and that God is present everywhere all the time, and, as he said, ‘even in space!’ He also mentioned that while I was out of the car that second time he did start getting a little frustrated but told himself to settle down and be patient. ‘It worked, Dad,’ he said. It doesn’t always, but I’m glad it worked this time.

We arrived for our visit at 11.15am, quite content with our morning.

Alone but not alone

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“Even though at times I felt like an orphan, You, Lord, took me in and cared for me.” My paraphrase of Psalm 27:10 proves something that is only proven in our hearts when we’ve been a spiritual orphan.

Such a thought ought to never pretend a literal reality — being an orphan is possibly the least fortunate, most vulnerable reality. Yet, there are those, like the psalmist, for whom relationships with parents are estranged to that degree of total loss. Actually, it describes crippling, polarising loss.

There is a broader fulcrum of focus: there are times in certain situations where we feel like orphans.

And yet that spiritual malaise is exactly the kind of situation we find God — when we’re completely alone, abandoned by the very one(s) our world pivots around. Not that this sort of meeting of God is anything to rave about! Anything but. Yet, there comes a time when we will sing about it from the rooftops. Only after a genuine and elongated season of lament that seemed so punishing we at times scarcely thought we could hold on let alone survive.

Trust this:

God is good:

If we can say it by trust,

God is good,

even when life’s unjust.

Clinging to the fact of faith that says, ‘God is good, all the time; all the time, God is good’ our Lord shows us He is good, and trustworthy and powerful, and waiting to restore us. He gives us hope and a vision we can hold onto; a vision that defies everything we otherwise see. And in the meantime, God is deepening our awareness of and dependence on Himself.

We, who cannot hold onto anything else, learn that God is so good that He is good enough even in this season of our being alone. So good that He shows up, ultimately, His Presence in our presence. That is precisely the point; it takes barren aloneness to comprehend how real God’s Presence can be.

Perhaps the living God can only be best encountered when we have nothing left. A deeper spiritual journey begins there. Alone, yet far from alone. Alone enough to reach out and up, ‘Lord, help me!’ Then His still, small voice is sensed.

Small prayers that loom large for God

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We undervalue prayer so much that during our season of losing our son, we so commonly heard, ‘I’m so sorry, all I can do is pray.’ We would say, ‘that’s the best thing you could do.’

And we believe that by faith. So many believe it. We don’t know how or why prayer works, we just know it’s the way God works and cares for us.

But our prayers feel and appear to us as small. They might feel banal and unimportant, as if God might not think much of them, as if God disregards them, which says more about our doubting faith than it says about the mighty sovereignty of God.

Sure, not all prayers are answered as we would like. Most aren’t. But those prayers we pray that end in Jesus’ words, ‘Not my will, Lord, but Yours be done’, are always answered in the affirmative.

Surely God knows our hearts and loves us so greatly that He grieves that He cannot and won’t give us everything we want. He grieves most that we would want our plan over His. He opts instead to give us the very best — every loving impetus for growth in knowing we cannot coerce Him, and what growth it is when we accept what we cannot change, yet have the courage to change what we can.

Our small prayers matter to God no matter their infrequency. We can be confident that He who does hear them will set in place plans to give us what we need, even if those plans don’t always include what we want.

Even in our small prayers, God is working in the background of our lives for the future, in ways larger than we presently see, for our vision is so limited.

Small prayers, those ones we occasionally think go unnoticed and unheard, do loom large before our Creator God. He cares so much that He’s working on even bigger things that we truly need, not that He disregards what we want, because He knows our heart and exactly how we wish to be satisfied and content. He also understands how sin taints our vision and understanding, and He opts to give us something infinitely better — a relationship with His Son! — which is healing for this life and the next.

The Cost of Discipleship Prayer

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Dear Covenant Lord

Gracious alone, You are my Rock, from the foundation of the earth through the foundation of life to the foundation of my life. You are my life.

Yet in following You, Lord Jesus, to the seriousness of Your Word, I am convicted of heart about how much it will cost. Will I have the wherewithal to build my allegiance? God alone, You know.

You know I will need a strong and big and pliable heart, a disciplined mind, a fervent soul. And yet Your grace reminds me that the work of Your cross is done, that there is no more to do. For such a fact I owe You my life. Still, You raise me as You, Yourself, are risen.

What else will I need, Lord? What else will be required as I prepare to make my way to You? Teach me again as I ponder what it has cost thus far.

Surely, I’ll need godly support; people who will keep me to short account and encourage me, who will speak truth with me. Surely I’ll need virtue in abundance, especially humility, as pride so often wrests my journey with You away from me.

I will need to focus on being with You at all times. I’ve so often learned how hard it is to be a ‘professional’ Christian. That it can be a free form of discipleship that refuses to believe, let alone pay for, the costliness of such an endeavour. I know, because I have partaken. Lord, help me simply follow You. To simply follow You is harder than being a 9-5, half-day-Sunday Christian. Help me transcend the difficulties of the minister I know too well of.

Jesus, help me not be a half-finished tower, a relic of the promise of means without end. Help me measure what I promise You now so as to overestimate the cost, which must be too fanciful a prayer, and too ludicrous, to pray. Help me when I’m so immature as to get the wrecking ball out to destroy what You have already built.

Help me, in fear and in trembling, come before You now, knowing I will come up short. Prepare my heart even in that sense so I know then what to give up and when and how to do it. Not now, as that is too much to ask, but then.

Give me grace to do what I cannot do in my own strength, but only in Yours.

And forgive me for the way I now still so frequently underestimate the cost.

In my Saviour’s name I pray, AMEN.

This prayer is devoted to Luke 14:28: Jesus said, likening the call to follow Him to that of building a tower… “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?”

From Pain to God’s Presence Through Pain

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There are many ways with which God challenges our hearts, but could this way be poignant for us all? 

The truth is, because we’re all sinners, we all fail to adequately and appropriately follow Jesus like He or we would like. Secondly, we fail to experience Jesus as He or we would like. These, I believe, are connected. (This article is no comment on the grace that saves us all from an eternal destiny without Christ, thank God!)

We can follow and experience Jesus better. When we follow Jesus well we experience His Presence better. And central to both connected concepts is pain.

Spiritual pleasure is felt when we feel our pain materially. What I mean is the comfort we crave, which in many ways is desire out of control, morphing materially into sin, is the temptation to avoid pain that God may well invite us to enter. Here’s the idea:

God’s promised Presence is prepared for those
who are prepared to enter and even embrace their pain.

None of us like the idea of experiencing God at a deeper level through our pain. We always hope that God would just love us more and bless us with His favour simply for being nice people.

But God doesn’t work that way. God is the Lord of truth. He desires that we be truthful about the areas of our lives where we know we cannot measure up, not to rub our noses in them, but to consecrate us because of our faults. In other words, the more we admit our sin, the more we’re aware, and act, the more we experience peace with God.

God wants us to enter His courts with humility enough to reconcile our sin. When we do, He invites us into deeper intimacy, not unlike the transaction that occurs for David in Psalm 51. We need to be Psalm 51 Christians, able to endure the pain that propels us into the healthy fruit of repentance.

In truth, we need to be people of truth before a God of truth. Then we will be free.

We avoid pain through the comforts of this world,

but if we avoid comfort that can never satisfy,

and enter the truth of the pain about ourselves we do not like,

God will meet us there by His Presence

and He will give us true comfort.

Two gospel purposes in every one life

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The conviction of the Holy Spirit was indelible. It went like this: two opposing ‘gospels’, but that which complement one another. Let’s say one is preached by Paul Washer or David Platt. The other is preached by Joel Osteen or Rob Bell.

One gospel for me. Another gospel for others. The hard gospel — the way of Paul Washer and David Platt — is for me, and for you, along our personal discipleship journeys. The softer gospel — the way of Joel Osteen and Rob Bell — and this is not meant as any judgment or innate criticism against their work — is for us in our approach with others. We hold ourselves to hard standards that compel us to be humble. And we do not hold generic others to account at all; they are offered our kindness and compassion. And in holding ourselves to high, hard standards, with the love of God coursing through us, we experience His kind and compassionate Presence, and that encourages us — we do not look for praise, understanding or appreciation from others.

The only exception is for guiding people along discipleship journeys — then we will need both approaches, but always moderated by grace.

Then we will need hard approaches for challenging and soft approaches for encouraging those in our charge.

I guess my point is this: our lives tend to be characterised by us being easier on ourselves and harder on others. We minimise our errors and flaws, whilst getting upset with others about theirs. Yet, Jesus called us to the practice of getting the log out of our own eye. He called us be hard on ourselves and easy on others. Yes, Jesus requires that we be especially kind and compassionate about others’ errors and flaws.

Life goes better when we go harder on ourselves and go easier on others. It’s called humility. It’s also how we vouchsafe success, command respect, and show leadership.

The best relationships feature people able to own their stuff who also have the capacity to overlook offense.

No fear of missing out, just pure joy, when IN Christ

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Gazing through a shopping mall at all the shoppers — individuals, families, elderly, children — and I can’t help noticing something striking. These are people of all varieties. Some seem so happy. Others, I can tell, are not enjoying their present moment.

Then I realise something through my smile; the kind of smile you wear in a philosophical moment, when God is revealing something profound:

We love because He first loved us…
— 1 John 4:19

God catches us. Not the other way around. What I mean is, we think we accept Christ, but really God brings us to a place where we can no longer refuse Him. If not, we don’t know Him.

And when we arrive at that time, when our premise for life and eternity is challenged, and we move on from our previous concept of reality, He shows us something.

We’re detached from the bonds of being hemmed-in to the wiles and moods of this life.

Suddenly there is a choice. We quickly see that a fork in the road appears right before us. To respond as we always have, and either have our misery sustained or respond in a different way. A new way. A possible way. The simple way of choice for life at the easy rejection of the way of death.

We have this choice because God first gave it to us. We don’t just think it up. He put it into our heart.

Living the life caught by the Spirit of God is easier than any other life. It appears to externals as the hardest thing, because of all the so-called self-denial in living for God. But such self-denial is only ever the product of a choice — it’s a fruit — of what comes as instinctive from the initial decision sustained through simply moving forward, without question for compromise, in the Spirit. Christians are generally never happier than when they ‘miss out’, and why? Because, they’ve made the better choice.

Choosing to obey Christ by going with the biblical leading of the Holy Spirit brings peace, no matter the cost that others see we’re bearing. Sure, we’re giving up what we would like, but that isn’t all there is. There’s much more to be considered.

It is easier to choose the disposition of joy for the moment
than it is to choose surliness. Joy is a blessing to maintain.

The choice we make to succumb to moodiness costs us and others so much. And what a curse it is to sustain! We are about as happy as we decide to be. And if we struggle to believe that, try thinking about the smallest things you truly appreciate. Soon we work out how incredibly blessed we really are.

When we are grateful, what happens? We cannot worry when gratitude spikes. We are patient and considerate, meaning we have peace. Humility rises as we think more of others. It puts paid to our anger. We cannot be frustrated when we are grateful. See how the supposed hard Christian life is easier.

When Christ embodies us through the Holy Spirit, He
causes us to seek peace, which wells up to hope, to the overflow of joy.

We are here for you

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It wouldn’t be an unusual scenario in any of our lives to have a loved one or dear friend who needs to know, ‘we are here for you.’

Such a need to hear it only just shades the necessity to say it. Those who say with compassion what others need to hear are Godsends. And those who hear what God has to say to them through a caring friend are blessed to journey forward in a hope that can only be learned. (I say that hope really does need to be learned; the need of hope exists, yet it’s only when we experience hope that we realise it really does exist as the resplendence of a truth we now possess.)

There are people in our midst right now who are need, and we may or may not be aware of it. We may or may not have the capacity to help them. We may or may not know what to say, but be encouraged, we can always listen without needing to know the answer.

God seems to send each of us into the fore,
of the person we know, unsteady and struggling,
right to their door.

Whenever we walk out of our door expecting to encounter somebody who needs to hear ‘we are here for you’ we can expect to be shown such a person who needs to hear it. We walk out of our door to be invited into theirs. It doesn’t always happen, but when we expect it to happen we’re ready for such a necessary encounter.

You send the message, a most desperate plea,
just don’t dilute the message, so we begin to doubt what we see.

We’re certainly aware of those who would send the message ‘I cannot do this anymore’… some say it too much, never truly meaning it as some who would never say it and yet take their lives. All are implored not to cry wolf. Yet equally we’re all implored never to imagine a person is.

We are here for you is a message for at least three people:

1.      The person deep in their need, enshrined in the need of support. They simply must be met in their moment of need or something dire could occur. It’s anyone!

2.      The person who has the wherewithal to help. With the capacity and the reach to help, it’s our privilege to simply extend our hand of help. Yes, it’s us!

3.      The person we know and care about that will receive help and we won’t even know about it. It causes us to be thankfully grateful for the grace extant in the moment that we have no inkling of. It’s someone we care about, and someone we don’t even know — who cares!

Imagine God training us to see the potential neediness in every person we encounter, looking for it, and able to meet it. Suddenly, we see the person as someone not to be judged, nor envied or condemned or even pitied, but as a person, like us all, with frailties. We meet them with a love we wish our loved ones, or even ourselves, could receive in such a need.