Prayerfulness

Changing the Christian Blogosphere (and the World) Forever

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I've been blogging for more than four years now. What has changed in the last year is that I'm spending more time reading what others are writing rather than solely concentrating on my own words.

There are incredibly bright men and women, people of intense faith and devotion, blogging. We are His handsAt one time I considered myself intelligent, but some of the folks blogging today are on some plane of intellect that makes me feel like I'm five and back on the Uncle Al show.

I don't think a time in history has ever existed when so many people have so much opportunity to influence others via the written word. Just seeing the names of other familiar bloggers in the comment section of yet another blogger's site is enough to tell me that collected wisdom is getting around.

But I'm also seeing another trend, one that others are just now acknowledging. Our brains are routinely getting filled with knowledge, but if other bloggers are like me, putting all that we know into practice is suffering. We're accumulating facts, but are we increasingly unable to take what we know and translate that into being the Body of Christ to the world?

My head is full, but my hand is too often empty.

This is what it says in 2nd Peter 1:5-8 (ESV):

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Knowledge comes at the beginning of the process, but love is the final goal. How are we expressing that love to a broken world?

We may know the differences between Moltmann and Barth, Knox and Zwingli, but do we know the names of our neighbors? Have they ever been in our homes? Have we broken bread with them? Have we asked them what we can pray for? Have we been the first ones at their doorstep with food when there is a sickness—or for no other reason than that we care about them?

I understand that it's hard in the fractured society we live in to reach out to strangers. Loving those we do not know well is exceedingly difficult. But do we even love our brethren in Christ? When was the last time we visited the shut-ins from our own churches? Do we invite new members to our homes for a meal? Are we actively seeking out visitors? Do we keep in touch with the people who were essential to our coming to faith and our growth afterwards? Are we showing the brotherly kindness that leads to love?

Years ago, I believed that knowing was everything. Yet now that my head is filled with more Christian knowledge than it seems I can ever fully comprehend, I'm no longer satisfied with adding more. Unless I'm putting all that knowledge into practical service to the lost and to my brothers and sisters in Christ, have I not become that useless resounding gong that Paul warned of?

Words matter, but actions matter just as much.

That is why I'm proposing something so radical that it may not only change the Christian blogosphere, it may very well change the world: Let's stop the words for a week and instead substitute action. Let's put all that we know into practice.

I'm calling all Christian bloggers to step away from their computers from November 20-26. Rather than add one more word of theology, one more complaint about the way things are versus how they should be, let's take all that we have learned in our blog travels and use it to further the Kingdom by putting it all into action. Let's take our blogging time and dedicate it instead to making a personal difference in our neighborhoods, churches, and the world.

In the midst of that week, what can we do that we've never done before? Work at a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving Day? Visit an elderly mentor whom we've lost contact with? Talk to someone in our neighborhood we've never spoken to?

And if you're the kind of person who's mastered all that, what else can you do that you've never attempted before for the Lord? Perhaps you can call a missions organization and have them send you a list of missionaries from your local area. You could begin praying for those folks or even send them money, books, or a card saying you're lifting them up before the throne. Maybe you could offer to watch the pastor's kids so that he and his wife could have a night alone. Or you could rake the leaves of the neighbor you've been trying to witness to for years with words, but never with actions.

Blogging can become our comfort zone if we let it. But that isn't the Lord's desire of us. Can we do this, folks? Can we turn off the computers and take a week to reach out with the truth and love of Christ in a way that changes others and changes us along the way? In a week when we Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, can we give thanks back to the Lord for all He's done for us by making this happen?

November 20-26: Blog-out for the Kingdom.

Folks, what can we do that week to change the world for Jesus?

Grieving Answers to Prayer

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Then [Job's] wife said to him, "Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die." But he said to her, "You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?" In all this Job did not sin with his lips.
—Job 2:9-10 ESV

I came back from the men's retreat I was on this weekend, but I did not return as I had hoped. Instead, I came back home weeping on the inside.
Grief
This is not the fault of the good men I grew closer to this weekend, but it has everything to do with the knowledge that even in the midst of good company, people truly do grieve alone. And I'd be lying if I claimed I was not grieving.

How long I've been grieving is a more difficult assessment. Or even what I'm grieving. Grief doesn't always announce itself or its intentions, we just know it's there, brooding. However, having the opportunity to get away and think a little may have jarred loose a few answers to both questions of "How long?" and "What?"

I'm grieving answers to prayer.

I'll say right away that you won't find a doctrine on this anywhere in the Scriptures. If you're the kind of person who detests what you might perceive as extrabiblical conjecture, then reading on will only anger you, so better stop right here and skip to another post. For anyone else, all I ask of you is to listen with the Spirit.

Anyone would think another a fool for grieving those answers to prayer that led to sustained blessings, and he'd be right. What's hard is dealing with answers to prayer that resulted in a firm No. Harder still is the answer that led to blessings that were later taken away before they bore fruit.

The accident that renders the promising athlete a quadriplegic. The new husband who loses his bride to an aneurysm only a month after their wedding. The career dream that was reached, only to be snatched away. The ministry that failed. The stillborn child.

We grieve them, don't we? Olympic glory. A love built for the future. The dream we put our sweat into all these years. The heeded call of God put into action. The child of hope. Once they seemed so beautiful in our thoughts and prayers, but what now? There is only grief.

It's popular in many Christian circles to counsel people that it's perfectly fine to get mad at God. But what of Job's response? He called such advice foolish and did not sin with his lips by giving in to such hellish temptation. Grief, though, was permitted, and so he grieved in the sackcloth of his acquired poverty and the ashes of his dreams.

Job's question is a penetrating one: Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil? As for me, I believe Job is right, but I must also believe that grief is allowed when the prayers of the righteous result in something other than their intentions.

I was once told the story of a teen who was one of those extraordinary few who God revealed the purposes of her life. He gave her an enormous burden for the African people, so much so that her whole heart was given to missions at a young age. Upon graduating from high school, she worked hard to raise support and was richly blessed by the many people who loved her and caught her vision. When she was selected to join a team going to the African interior, the joy was palpable. She boarded the plane, set foot in Africa, and promptly died from a fever within days.

As far as anyone knows, she never got to share the message of Christ with anyone there. Thousands had prayed for her, hoped for her, and supported her. But what of all those prayers?

I used to think there was always a lesson in happenings like this, but I'm not certain I do any longer. Some things just are and perhaps all we can do is grieve those answers to prayer that we do not understand. I know people who have driven their faith into the ground looking for a lesson from some horrid injustice that pierced them, but what if there is no lesson other than the way of suffering? What if grief is its own lesson?

Some things make no sense. I know that I reflexively must understand why something is the way it is. None of us says, "Thy will be done!" easily, particularly when that will seemed to lead to ruin. Why did that bright girl with a heart as big as the world start and end her journey the same week? My only response is grief for a prayer answered in a way I cannot comprehend.

We in our household appear to be receiving an extra portion of these questions whose only answer is grief. The way of the cross? I would like to think so. Maybe this is the ultimate meaning and source for that manner of grief, but like a fog it rolls in and obscure everything else before burning off in a shimmering morning that paints diamonds on the grass.

Let us accept good and endure evil. And may our faces be turned to the Son.

The Pestilence That Stalks in Darkness

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He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the LORD, “My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.” For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler. You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday. A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you. You will only look with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked. Because you have made the LORD your dwelling place— the Most High, who is my refuge— no evil shall be allowed to befall you, no plague come near your tent. For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone. You will tread on the lion and the adder; the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot. “Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him; I will protect him, because he knows my name. When he calls to me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation.”
—Psalms 91:1-16 ESV

With “bird flu” now in Romania and Turkey, knocking on the gates of Europe, the HN51 virus is poised to mutate into Tamiflu chemical compositionsomething far worse than the bird-to-human disease that it now is.

We should be praying, folks. This flu kills half the people it infects.

Should HN51 and its variant, HN52, turn into a human-to-human transmitted disease, a world of hurt could be coming our way. It’s fully resistant to two of the anti-virals that previously mitigated the disease slightly (amantadine and rimantadine) and is showing increasing resistance to oseltamivir, more commonly known as Tamiflu.

It surprises me that more Christians are not discussing this global threat. If we believe in the power of God through prayer, do we believe that God can halt this disease before any more people die, and especially before it makes a leap from bird-to-human to human-to-human transmission, as so many influenza strains typically do?

Why the silence? I believe that a lot of Christians don’t believe that God will protect us from disease if we abide in Him. Even if we did not believe that at some point, we better believe and be praying to that effect now.

Father God, we pray in the name of Jesus that you would show us mercy. By your great strength and supremacy over all that is, mitigate the effects of this influenza so that it does not result in a pandemic. We pray that you would not only halt its spread, but render it harmless to us as it mutates over generations. We lift Europe and Asia now to you, Lord, that you would watch over the people there and keep them safe in your arms. Your people are petitioning you now that You spare us this threat and the grief it would cause. Be our shield and our defender, Father. May all who put their trust in You be spared from the pestilence that comes in the darkness, now and in days to come. For your glory Lord, we pray these things. Amen.