Just As An Eagle

Morning Everyone,

It’s a rainy Thursday here. Thunder is rolling past and shaking the windows of my office from time to time. The hard rain that came last night and is expected to get even harder later on in the day, can’t help but remind me of the flood that devastated Nashville just a little less than a year ago. I still drive by empty houses that will never be rebuilt. Lives changed forever with just 14 inches of water over two days.

My wife and I are finally getting back on financial track after she was out of a job for 5 months. I am reminded over and over again that things can change in the blink of an eye. I have a grandson who is just starting to get his first tooth, another one who has three, a third who has all of his teeth and will graduate from high school this year and a father who hasn’t had any of his teeth since I can remember. One of my daughters had a bone marrow biopsy done this week and part of me is scared to death.

Life is going on all around me and if I stop and think about all that is going on it is – overwhelming to say the least. What an awesome God we serve who has planned this glorious mess and is so in control that he has every hair on our heads numbered and knows when a sparrow falls dead to the ground.

In the midst of the activity of life I am aware that there has been a shift toward the positive in my life. It seems as if something good, something different is happening at Immanuel. I’m not making it up in my head either. I’m hearing it from the mouths of the congregation. Plus, I wasn’t there last week and they didn’t replace me so that’s a good sign.

There seems to be forward momentum building all around my life that I can’t quite explain; much the way I couldn’t really explain the previous 50 years of one step forward 20 steps backward momentum that has filled my life so far. Something’s happening and you don’t know what it is. Do you Mr. Jones?

The answer would be: that is correct. I don’t. But I have learned enough from life to catch the wave and ride it wherever it takes me.

What I am loving about all that is going on is watching the body of Christ grow. Yeah we’ve got a few new people in the last few weeks but it’s the growth of the one’s that have been there longer than I have that encourages me the most. People are anticipating God moving in their midst. They are looking forward to God actually doing something. I am too. That is scarily exciting.

I see the change in my own life in that I am being drawn, pulled toward prayer like never before in my 50 years of existence. Since last month there is not a day that goes by that I don’t feel the need to walk and pray. I’m not a kneeler when it comes to praying. I’m a mover. If I sit still for very long I will be snoring in the presence of God. So I pace when I pray. I scare the animals in my house to death walking back and forth from one room to the other. They used to try to follow me but now they’ve learned to just get out of my way.

As crazy as it sounds, I’ve started to listen to music less so that I can pray more. That is God at work.

Last night at Immanuel we started reading EM Bounds’ The Weapon of Prayer. It was written sometime in the late 19th century and in reading the first chapter and hearing him lament over the condition of the church in his day I can understand more clearly the sorry condition of the church in our day. But the truth is the same in both eras: if the church will not pray God will not work. Big buildings, large congregation and lots of activity are not a sign that God is at work. What will the lives of the people that are going there be like in 50 years? That’s where the rubber hits the road. Short term success may actually be long term devastation.

EM Bounds make an excellent point when he reminds us that the Apostles delegated the necessary activities of the church to others so that they could devote themselves to prayer and the word. I think of all the activities that I am involved in, facilities managing during the day, pastoring before and after that plus Sundays, working to get a publishing company up and running and all that that entails and well, is it any wonder that the most important thing that I could be doing I am be drawn to? I don’t think so. All of the activity that I do is in vain if God doesn’t show up.

If My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land. Perhaps, in the midst of the chaos that is the year 2011 the land is starting to be healed a bit on the Tennessee/Kentucky boarder. Maybe, just maybe, God is keeping his word.

More often than not these days I find my self uttering groans too deep for words because I don’t have the words. I don’t know how to say the right things because I don’t have any idea what God wants to do. I don’t know what God actually doing something in the church and world looks like because for too long it has been men doing the work of the church, and of the holy spirit, and even of Jesus. We have replaced the trinity with people power or perhaps a better word would be democracy. But the church is supposed to be a monarchy. Jesus sits on the throne ruling and reigning.

I want nothing more that to actually get a glimpse of that reign being manifested on earth in my life time. I long to see the supposedly big bad nations come tumbling down because God gives the word. Maria Muldaur sings a song called Just as an eagle. Some of the words are as follows:

So often when men are blessed with prosperity the goodness and mercy of God they no longer see. They seem to say within my soul take thine ease. They turn away from God to just as they please.

But as an eagle stirs her nest so that her young ones would have no rest God in his own mysterious ways stirs up his people to watch, fight and pray.

We have been slumbering for to long. It is time to pick up the weapon of prayer so that God will destroy his enemies and bring peace to the earth. The King will sit on the throne ruling and reigning until every knee bows and every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Master of everyone.

Long live the King,

Brad