Waiting for the Glory

They were greenhouse bargains, and past their prime. When my husband brought home three sickly chrysanthemum plants late last fall, I doubted anything would come of them. Re-planting them in a barrel by our door, I was surprised they were still alive by spring. But all summer, all I saw was a growing mound of leaves. A friend counseled, “Give them time.” A few weeks ago, they burst into glorious color.

Give it time. That counsel also applies as I pray for people who aren’t living for Christ. Some are pre-Christians. Others claim to be Christians, but their behavior negates the label. They’re living for pleasures now, not for God. In learning to pray for them, I’ve taken comfort and clues from the six prayers of the apostle Paul recorded in scripture. His prayer in 2 Thessalonians especially seemed to articulate the concerns I have for my struggling friends.

Paul was writing believers who had fallen into despair, thinking the world would end soon. Many were living in idleness, not even working. Paul wanted them stirred out of lethargy with a fresh vision of what God wanted them to do. Christ still hasn’t come, but He could, any day. I want to be ready, and I want those I care about to be ready, too! In studying Paul’s prayer, I realized it could be broken into seven parts for praying through the week.

SUNDAY:  “We constantly pray for you”--Pray for their constant awareness of God’s care, that He loves them more than they can know and that He hears others’ prayers on their behalf.

            MONDAY: “That our God may count you worthy of his calling”--Pray for a fresh vision of God’s high calling on their lives.

            TUESDAY: “And that by his power he may fulfill every good purpose of yours”—Pray that they may sense a compulsion toward godly living, empowered by the Holy Spirit.

            WEDNESDAY: “And every act prompted by your faith.” Intercede that their creed for life be based on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

            THURSDAY: “So that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you”—Pray that they will copy the example of Jesus, so others will be shown the glory of God through their character.

            FRIDAY: “And you in him”--Ask for conviction of places in their lives (like habits or fears) that they have resisted turning over fully to Christ.

            SATURDAY: “According to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ”—Pray for fresh confidence that God is at work in their difficult circumstances and supplying grace for each day.

Consider either tucking this prayer outline into your Bible or copying it into a prayer notebook for a guide in praying for others. And if you’re the one going through difficult times, speak this passage back to God as your own prayer. Even doing so is, as verse 11 says, “an act prompted by your faith,” and God hears.

 

Possible explosion!

The dynamite, found at this property, was probably acquired
decades ago to blast out tree stumps in clearing an adjacent orchard

On a recent boiling summer afternoon, our adrenalin kicked into high gear when two police officers appeared at our door. “We’re advising you to vacate your house as soon as possible,” they told me and my husband.  “We are trying to stabilize 260 sticks of dynamite in a nearby home, and homes on this street are at risk if it goes off.”

As we drove off with our wallets and a cell phone, I thought of others around the country in storm or fire zones who had mere minutes to leave their homes and all the material tokens these hold. Thankfully, two hours later, the problem was resolved and the dynamite safely destroyed.

But the incident made me think of other things at risk to blast and destroy, especially those in the human heart. Poppy Smith’s book I’m Too Young to be This Old Bethany, 1997) addresses the explosive power of buried pain. Its symptoms, she said, include hostility, an envious or critical spirit, depression (feeling drained), anger at God (“Why did He allow this?”), and feelings of guilt, shame or worthlessness.We must choose Paul’s example, she said: “Forgetting what is behind and straining forward to what is ahead” (Phil. 3:12-14). 

 

I just read an advance copy of Jerry Jenkins' newest novel, I, Saul, which offers a fictional take on the final days of the apostle in a Rome dungeon. Though an imaginary reconstruction of the end of Paul’s life, it helped me visualize Paul’s degraded surroundings as a Roman prisoner. Yet Paul kept his God-ward perspective in negative circumstances. Even his letter cited above, penned during imprisonment, brims with praise to God.

Our tendency is to gripe, and gripe some more.  But Poppy Smith urged readers to do the opposite: rejecting blame, bitterness, anger and the victim mentality, which imprison us emotionally and spiritually. Life, she reminds us, is 10% what happens to us, and 90% of how we react to it. Some of the “hard stuff” involved in the healing of hurts, according to Smith:

*Forgiving the person who caused us pain (surrendering our right to “get even”).

*Discerning between real and false guilt.

*Getting to know God better. Smith cited Isaac Watts’ 1721 hymn, “Am I a Soldier of the Cross,” whose second verse begins: “Must I be carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease, while others fought to win the prize and sailed through bloody seas?” The authentic Christian life isn’t a matter of “trusting Christ” for salvation and then withdrawing from life’s challenges. It’s walking through the tough stuff with the power of God’s Spirit and the fortressing truths of scripture.

This morning I walked by that house (now dynamite-free), a for-sale sign perched in the weeds. I’d been inside it a couple weeks earlier for an estate sale. I didn’t buy anything, but was struck by the deteriorated condition of the house and how much the previous owners had hoarded. Whoever buys that home has a huge cleanup and remodeling job ahead. I thought of people who come to the end of themselves and offers God a tattered heart. God does better than “fix.”  He makes new—and this also a quote from Paul, years earlier: “If anyone is in Christ, He is a new creation” (1 Cor. 5:17).

Paul would know. He was transformed from a dynamo of destruction, who persecuted and killed Christians, to a dynamo of earnest love for His Savior. That’s the power of God!