It was in the late 70’s; a
handful of men, including myself, were boldly preaching on the street corners in
downtown Chattanooga. You can get arrested now for doing what we did way back
then; preaching on the sidewalks is considered offensive and bad for the
businesses. It was a time when the deciduous trees had been laid bare to the
bough, looking more like a carcass after the feeding frenzy of piranhas. This particular
winter looked to have teeth with its blustery mood. It was a frigid sunny day with
unlimited visibility. We were young prophets of God that day (forthtelling, not
foretelling). Armed with a Bible nestled in our gloved hands, we were
witnessing our hearts out to any and all occasional onlookers and passersby.
“He who has ears to hear, let
him hear!” We pleaded. It appeared that nobody seemed to truly listen or sought
to understand that morning. There was a frozen indifference in the air,
literally and metaphorically. Occasionally, the curious were snagged by the
novelty of the situation; they briefly stopped and then simply walked away without
so much as even a thumb up or down. We all spoke of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment while the coldness was thriving and having its way with us in the
shadows of the tall buildings blocking out the warming rays of the sun. Nonetheless, we were undeterred and brazenly bold to say the least (1 Cor 1:27). Our words, however, seemed to have fallen on deaf ears or did it (Isa 55:11)?
As the sun moved closer to its
zenith, I had longed reached icicle status. In the hopes of thawing out my
joints, I began preaching at another corner exposed to the sun. Eventually, a
sharply dressed man in a suit and tie, wearing an expensive trench coat and hat,
approached me from behind. With a big and friendly southern style, I said, “Good
morning! How may I help you?” He told me that he had been standing over there,
pointing to the front of the store, watching and listening to me for the last
fifteen minutes as I witnessed for God. And before he could say another word,
tears began coursing down his cheek unashamedly. He looked to be in his late
fifties.
Trembling, he told me as the windows of his
soul began to rain down, “My wife passed away a few months ago.” As he said that
he was slowly pulling out a pocket-sized Bible from the right pocket of his
trench coat. After the Word of God cleared his coat, he informed me, “I am
going blind.” He opened up his Bible and said, “I cannot even read the Word of
God anymore! Please pray for me!”
I consider myself a manly man, a
“suck it up and move on” kind of guy, putting muscularity to Christianity through
the power of the Holy Spirit, but I just
about lost it at that point; my heart was melting while my body was in a deep
freeze mode. God intervened, and we bowed our heads to pray right there on the
sidewalk. He never told me his name; looking back, it wasn’t important. He was in
need and that was all that mattered, forgetting the formalities and getting right
down to business. I felt honored that he reached out to me to pray for him
though I was nothing more than a sinner saved by the grace of God. Maybe the
death of his wife and his progressive blindness was anchoring his soul to ground zero, unable to get beyond the devastation; I was reading between the lines.
We let far less serious things
keep us grounded to where our feelings have convinced us that prayer and
thankfulness are useless; what’s the point? Have you ever thought to yourself, “Why pray to God and thank Him for allowing this awful thing to happen in the
first place?” This is a spiritually dangerous place to be because it will consume
us like cancer if we listen to our sinful nature, the world, or the adversary
that causes us to turn a deaf ear to God’s Word and to those who want to help
us. Goodness, this is such an isolated place to be. The Lord knew his heart,
and He sent this man to me to help him get off the ground. Listen to my pep
rally for a moment. You are never down until you quit getting up! Never quit! Never
give up on God! Losers never win and winners never quit. Regardless of what we
decide, God will never quit on us (Rom 8:38, 39).
I wasn’t any more spiritual because
I was boldly sharing the Gospel in public. It was God’s will for me and my
buddies to be out there in the frosty. Honestly, I would rather have been in
front of a warm hearth with a good book on that day than standing on a salted
sidewalk with people looking at you as if you were crazy! Regardless, I was
glad I was there. It was a crazy good moment but crazy, too! I can’t
speak for my brothers that frigid morning, but I still think that I was there
because of that man God was going to bring into my life whose heart was broken,
and one day I would relay this story to others.
Isn’t the distance from being broken
to being healed or vice versa simply a breath away? None of us are immune from
bad things happening to us. From out of the cold came the warmth of the love of
God into this man’s life on a sidewalk in downtown Chattanooga of all places
and out in the open for God and country to see! That day, beloved, this man got
off the ground; I tell you! He grabbed my hands and thanked me sincerely. As he
walked away, we forth-tellers finally called it a day. I never saw that man
again on the streets of downtown Chattanooga. I can only hope that crossing
paths helped give wings to his prayers and reversed a dark path by transforming
sadness and brokenness in his life into thanksgiving. This was the prayer.
I know that verses like this are
easy to quote, 1 Thess 5:17-18, “Pray without ceasing, in everything give
thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you,” especially when
you are hearing it while in some dark valley. But should we consider these two
commands unreasonable on the part of the Holy Spirit through Paul? No, no more
than we should think Rom 8:28 is irrational – “All things work together for
good.” Paul is saying pray without ceasing and in everything give thanks! This
is God’s will for us! All things work together for good…. I don’t get it, but
we need to grab hold of it! Blessings are always found in obedience to
God’s will. There is no misunderstanding of the commands from the Holy Spirit
through Paul. The circumstances were irrelevant in the terse imperatives! Lack
of prayer and thankfulness are evidence we are heading south on God. Seriously
consider a U-turn immediately in such a case.
Looking back, I was empathetic toward
this brother’s tough situation, but his feelings were overriding God’s
imperatives, God’s will for his life. The world doesn’t obey God’s will; they
are going to do just the very opposite. This tells me that there is healing to
be found in obeying the will of God, a way of dealing with the bad that enters
our lives, to turn something negative into a positive for the glory of God.
Only the power of God can make that happen if we let Him.
We have no right to think we are
immune to terrible things. Both the lost and the saved are experiencing the
fallout from the Fall. We expect the world’s response to be negative but not from a
believer who has the hope of eternal life! Do you think the devil wants for us
to pray without ceasing and giving thanks for everything when we find ourselves in
the shadows of the bad? Praying and praising God is the lifestyle of a
victorious Christian!
Think of the passage in Rom 8:28,
for instance. Paul is not saying all things are good, but what he is saying is that
“all things (good or bad) work together for good to those who love God, to
those who are the called according to His purpose.” Unfortunately but
understandably, we rarely see the good in situations gone sour; however, we
know good will come from it eventually because (1) God said it would, and (2)
the sovereignty of God can make it happen.
When we pray and thank God in
spite of the circumstances, we are acknowledging that He is in control; the
lines of communication are remaining open on our part; we are grateful to
God, and we are moving forward in trust, knowing good is going to come from it. We are not thanking Him for the pain of our groans but for the purpose behind our groans (1 Thess 5:18; Rom 8:28). Imagine if God was not all-powerful,
all-knowing, and all-wise, and you had to deal with the bad on your own like when
you were without Christ and without hope in the world?
Verses like 1 Thes 5:17-18 and
Rom 8:28 are really for a mature faith. Recall Job’s words after his
horrific ordeal,
“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15a).
I believe that the depths of that verse will never be plumbed! If our situation ever gets to the point where our limbs are allowed to be exposed to the relentless northern winds
of “pain, anxiety, distress, and disaster,” may we choose to listen and understand the words of men found and
tried in the crucible, Job and Paul, and respond,
“Though he slay me, yet will I continue to pray
and give thanks to God in and for everything, trusting and moving forward for His
glory because God is going to make something good out of it.”
We can do no less as “the called according to His purpose.” Nobody is
saying this is easy; nobody is pretending this is easy, but we cannot do the
right thing and obey tough commands without help from on High (Jn 15:5).
Sucking it up and moving forward in our own strength is not going to cut it!
Given all of our foibles, failures, faults,
follies, futilities, and frailties, it is the wishful thinking of foolish
people to think otherwise.
Abiding in the will of
God is a way of working through the bad to see the good of another day. How we
respond to the circumstances of life is and will always be a matter of choosing
to become bitter by it or to be made better through it during the winters of discontent.
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