Bothering Jesus
Posted
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
by
Brian Beers
Categories:
Faith;
Church
I have started attending Wednesday night prayer meeting again. I promised my wife that I would. She is tired of taking our children to Wednesday night activities by herself. Over the past year, I have skipped more than I have attended. I have been avoiding prayer meeting because I couldn’t stand that we prayed as though we were afraid to bother Jesus. Nearly one year ago, Diane was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, one of the most aggressive and deadly cancers. As her cancer progressed, our church started praying for her to die comfortably and quickly. This kind of prayer is not advocated in Scripture. Instead, we find audacious prayers and requests.
In Mark, we come to the story about Jairus and his daughter. Mark recounts how Jairus came to Jesus and begged him to come and heal his daughter and that Jesus went with him. Mark interrupts this story with the woman healed by her faith which is demonstrated in the act of touching Jesus’ robes. Then Mark interrupts again with the appearance of men from Jairus’ house who tell him, “You’re daughter is dead. Why bother the teacher any more?” In my experienced opinion, the men from Jairus’ house must have been Baptists for we Baptists still do not want to bother Jesus.
We know the natural progression of cancers. Certain kinds of cancers may be overcome medically. For people with these kinds of cancers, we pray for strength and endurance and a return to health. Other cancers are like Diane’s, aggressive and deadly. For these people the prayer is for a quick and easy death. And for indeterminate cancers, we pray uncertainly. Perhaps we pray that it won’t be a deadly cancer. Maybe we pray that the cancer will agree to go into remission.
Our prayers are decidedly timid. If Jesus walked the earth today we might be the ones who sneak up in a crowd to touch his robes. But since he is not walking the earth today, we suffer much at the hands of doctors, scientific shamans who scare us with dire prognoses. Shamans who have made a religion of medical predictions. Shamans whose world-view does not include deity—or if it does include deity, deity certainly doesn’t work miracles against the natural order.
So we don’t ask for miracles.
Why not?
Do we fear the disappointment?
It is dangerous to hope for something. We make ourselves vulnerable when we admit to wanting something. It is this admission, confessed out loud in prayer, that strips away the safety of plausible deniability. But if I remain silent about a desire, and I don’t get it, I can pretend that it wasn’t really all that important to me. That pretense, a defense mechanism against possible disappointment, is a denial of the goodness of the world as it was created. It is a denial that the world can ever be good. It is acceptance and tacit approval of the corruption of sin and death.
God has filled us with his Spirit. He has given us a divine dissatisfaction with the sinful state of this world. But this dissatisfaction is quenched in our prayers. We pray for the doctors to be skillful, for the person’s body to be strengthened, for them to not lose hope. Ignore the fact that we have lost our hope.
And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.
Matthew 21:22
The Lord is at hand; 6 do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4:5-7
And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.
1 John 5:14-15
Through prayer, we learn God’s will. In one sense this is an immediate discovery that must be made each day, in each situation. We can’t discover what God will always do in each situation. He is a person who can make a decision differently every time he is asked. But we can begin to learn how he is moving us – how we fit into his purposes.
We can learn this, though sometimes I cloud this with my own desires. Sometimes I try to find ways to use God’s plans as an opportunity to gratify my desires. But sometimes I simply misinterpret what God has done.
Have I asked for things in the past that I have not received?
Yes. I have.
Then how did I interpret this disappointment? Did I conclude that God didn’t want to take that action right then, in that situation?
No. I concluded that God simply doesn’t do that anymore. Maybe call it extreme cessationism. I did not consider God to be a person who could make decisions according to the situation. God is absolutely just and impartial so he set up rules by which he makes decisions. He sticks with those rules without exception. This means that any time I find myself in this same situation (don’t question my perception), God will behave exactly the same way.
Sometime we misinterpret the answer we receive. My first quarter of college, I knew I was going back home for Thanksgiving. I had a friend whom I had witnessed to, and whom I wanted to come to know Jesus. I spent the weeks before Thanksgiving pouring my heart out to God. I was literally on my face, pleading with him to move in her heart. When the time came when I got to talk with her, I began in what I intended to be a non-threatening way, “I have been learning all sorts of cool things at school!”
She responded flatly, “I think you should stop pushing your religion off on other people.”
I was dumbfounded. I had poured my heart out to God, and he had left me high and dry. I was bitterly disappointed, and this lie from the enemy took root in my heart. When I returned to college and related this situation to one of my professors, he responded with the right interpretation, “Wow! The Holy Spirit must have been working her over pretty hard!”
If only I had wholeheartedly latched onto that assessment of God’s character – that he did answer my prayer. But I went with my fear, and have lived in desperate fear that God would simply entice me out again to disappoint me when I fully cast myself upon him.
Am I the only one who tries to consider God as an automaton? I replace steadfast character with rote responses. I do not understand his character according to the Bible or by his love for me in the now. I believe that the boundaries for God’s actions are the limits of science.
But this is not right. It is not true.
Now I see my own heart, shriveled and dry because I am afraid to trust God with my heart’s desires. I find myself despising prayer meeting because we all pray the same way – to the same God who only works within the limits of science. And I know with great certainty that if God can only work within the limits of science then I have no hope of him giving life to my heart.
So I had separated myself from the unbelief that prayed for someone to die. But I could not find life alone any more than with others. I confess to harboring the lie in my heart – that God did not keep his promise. Now I am getting on my knees before God asking him to make me alive again because of who he is rather than because of my stunted faith.
I am like the father of the demon possessed boy in Mark 9 (who first sought healing from the disciples):
“I believe; help my unbelief!”
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