I need a miracle every day

Morning Everyone,

I’m trying to get back into my routine but it’s rather hard this time. Do you ever feel pulled from multiple directions at the same time? Life is turning out to be so different than I was led to believe it would be. It’s so much harder and complex than I ever imagined especially the ministry. With each passing day I am reminded over and over just how little power and control I really have.

It wasn’t supposed to be like that. People were supposed to come to Jesus and their lives were supposed to be great. Life in the church was supposed to be hunky dory. But people are complex and they are marred by sin and there is a strain of rebellion that runs deep in all of us that doesn’t want to come out.

I find myself driven to prayer not because I’m a praying man but because there really is no other option. And yet when I pray I often times don’t know what words to use. I find that I am relying more and more on the Spirit’s groans that are too deep for words. Because my words just don’t seem adequate for the immensity of the situation.

What was I thinking 35 years ago when I said I wanted to preach? Honestly? I was thinking it was much like being a rock star in the church. You go into a town preach, the Lord moves, everybody’s happy and you move on. What I didn’t understand was the part after everybody’s happy.

Because the truth is everybody’s happy until the high wears off and life get’s back to the way it was and you find that you haven’t changed all that much. When you go home at night and you find that you’re the same old you and you hope to God that nobody else finds out because you’ve talked the big talk, and faked the big walk and now well you’re stuck. I think U2 sings –you’re stuck in a moment and you can’t get out of it.

Somewhere between the time I rolled out of bed and made my way across town to this computer Eli flittered through my head. Not the Three Dog Night Eli’s coming hide your heart now or as I used to sing in the fifth grade, Eli’s coming hajah hajah (that’s what it sounded like to me) but Samuel's Eli. I was thinking about what he must have thought about his good for nothing sons. I wonder how many sleepless nights he stayed up praying for them to repent but they never did. That’s where the rubber hits the road isn’t it. Are we willing to keep praying even if God’s answer is no?

It is starting to sink in that this rock and roll fantasy that I have of God and how he is supposed to behave really is a fantasy. God does what God wants to do for his glory. None of this is about us, not really. I mean yes we get to be a part, we get to add to the glory of God but as hard as it may be to wrap your head around the truth is creation isn’t man (or woman) centered. It is God centered. More often than not we still believe the sun revolves around the earth. For sure in the church we think that the Son revolves around the bride but such is not the case.

I find myself, more than ever, with a heart bursting for ministry and yet at the same time more frustrated than ever with the lack of depth in ministry, the slowness of change, the lack of change, the stubbornness of hearts (my own included).

Please don’t get me wrong I’m not complaining. I just want so badly to see the promises of God fulfilled in people’s lives. I want so desperately to see salvation worked out to the fullest in broken hearts that the slowness of God’s hand moving seems excruciatingly painful. I realize that this slowness is shown to us everywhere in scripture but the 10 seconds that it takes to read, 'In the six hundredth year of Noah's life' cannot begin to reveal the pain and agony of living 600 years waiting for the judgment of God to come, 120 of it proclaiming that judgment to a rebellious people who laughed at every nail he hammered into the ark. He lived 600 years for a year long event and then he had to live 350 years after his mission was complete being reminded every single day by the lives of his children and himself that the rebellion didn’t get washed away in the flood. It was still there with him in his own flesh and blood.

After the miracle is where the rubber hits the road, isn’t it?

Like the Grateful Dead I think I need a miracle every day but the truth is I really just need to strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, and make straight paths for my feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. I need to pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord. My calling is to see that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled; that there be no immoral or godless person like Esau, who sold his own birthright for a single meal. For you know that even afterwards, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears.

Even as I write these things from Hebrews 12 I realize that I do need a miracle everyday. I need the grace of God to lavish me more now than ever before because I can’t do any of those things alone. I am powerless but God is powerful. I am weak but he is strong. May he help me make it through not just the night but the next fifty years that seem to be an eternitybut in all actuality will be gone before I blink.

May your hands and knees be strengthened and your paths be made straight.

Brad