A Liturgy For Those Who Are Wandering

We all know someone in this season of life who is wandering away from the faith, or roaming within it, distracted by other loves, struggling with circumstances, encumbered by baggage, or well you know, just too busy to bother with God anymore.  But this is not the time for us to abandon ship. We need not stand by the ship's railings helpless without a life preserver to throw out to them. We can care for them as best as we are able. And we can pray for them all we can, even when we feel like we cannot breathe.  

Praying something far deeper than, "O God, be with them."  

The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.  James 5. 16  

Praying that every verse of Scripture they've ever read or memorized will come to mind.  From every worship service ever attended, even boring sermons they've endured, the indelible hope of Jesus is even now engraved in their souls.  Let every song, lyric and tune they've sung or hummed burst out of the shadowy silence, replaying in a continual loop over and over, the notes, rhythm and words, stirring their emotions, as only music can do, always there just below the surface, never forgotten, no hearing loss here, but an audible presence.

Praying that God stirs up every testimony heard even decades ago of lives transformed by the gospel.  May every missionary slide show still be recalled in vivid color, reminding them of God's faithfulness around the world. Praying that they remember all those times when the Spirit woke them in the middle of the night and sat with them in their desperate situations. May they yet taste the fellowship of every potluck tuna noodle casserole and jello salad in church basements with shiny linoleum floors and stacked folding chairs. Let every spiritual conversation around the table resound, casual words in the car, on a walk, or shopping in Walmart, remembered forever. They may forget our words, but let them hear the voice of the Almighty.

Praying they are continually surrounded by every prayer earnestly prayed for them, a parent, sibling, friend or grandparent faithfully on their knees pushing back the darkness.  That every Scripture verse claimed for them holds them firmly in the power of God's Word, their names inscribed in the margins with indelible ink.  May we ourselves never underestimate the power of God's Word which is neither bound nor forgettable. 

Praying they are incredibly aware of the love and words of Sunday School teachers who loved them, youth leaders who guided them, nursery workers faithfully rocking, church friends coming alongside, cabin mates at camp sharing stories, even strangers generous with kind words.  Let even a glimpse of a spectacular sunset stir up awe in their hearts for the Creator. May their thoughts be permanently glued with the stickiness of God's Word and their hearts covered by the thickness of His steadfast love.

 

And then, over the always-present struggles, hearts broken by flawed people, even injuries inflicted by those who should have known better, the festering of deep wounds, the bleeding out for decades, may God pour His grace and forgiveness over transgressions and heal their spirits without a limp, scar or recurring sorrow.  Redemption doesn't act like nothing ever happened but creates something new, not a band-aid stretched over it, but a resurrection all the way through.    

We can pray continually that these things, and even more, rising and emerging out of the hard soil and barren ground, coming up, embracing, and drawing them back to Him.

Praying until these things are no longer a memory but an insatiable yearning for God. 

Pray like anything is possible.  And know that God exceeds any predetermined thing we can ask for. He calls us all to Himself.   

God has left a witness in their hearts, ingrained deeply, calling to them, renewed every morning and resounding in the darkness of night, cutting through the noise with His still small voice. We cannot fix, rewind or restore.  But God has the power and compassion to rescue, resurrect the dead, and redeem the past, present and future.

We realize His glory there.

O God, You don't have to become real to them.  Because You already are. Let them find You ever before them. May Your invisible chariots surround them. May Your tangible love be irresistible. Bind them to You. Tie them to Your mast. Heal, shield, glue and renew the broken parts. Breathe into them. Sing choruses over them. And bring them back Home again. 

Help them to remember how much they are loved by You.  Help us to remember too. For we too -- all of us-- are red-handed rebels in need of Jesus.

"Fear not, for I have redeemed you.

I have called you by name.  You are Mine...

Because you are precious in My eyes,

and honored,

and I love you."

              Isaiah 43. 1, 4 

Rewrite their story, Almighty One. 

In Ways We Cannot See

More than 35 years ago, a deeply grieving young man sitting on an airplane began scratching out some words to describe the deep ache in his heart, the hope to which he was clinging, and contemplating what God had to say about his tragic personal loss.

Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old.  Behold, I am doing a new thing;  now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. Isaiah 43. 18 

Several years later, someone happened to read what musician Don Moen had jotted down.  In 1990, a song emerged from it, and God poured His Spirit through it.  A month ago, I heard that song for the first time since I was a young mom.  The truth in that song, the hope that it displays, almost slayed me. His lyrics had stuck with me all those years:   God will make a way where there seems to be no way. He works in ways we cannot see. He will make a way for me.  

Composing that song, Moen made God’s faithfulness to be known, not realizing what God would do with it. He just did what God laid before him to do that day.  And that song gave hope decades later to someone he didn’t even know.  And that was me.  God changes hearts.  And He starts with our own.

No one may ever notice what we are doing today.  Or be touched by it.  But God redeems every bit. He knows it all matters.  It matters a lot. Because in God's economy, there is no division between great and small. God has divinely appointed us for this place and time, and for this work that He has placed before us. 

I cannot know if either what I write or do today will last a few minutes, end up deleted, unread, forgotten or ignored.  Or maybe, just maybe, help someone to know Him more.  But I can trust God even in this situation that He is continually working, not just in this day but for eternity.

Sometimes being faithful is sitting in front of a blank laptop screen all morning. 

For the past couple of weeks, I have wrestled with some writing that I started a while ago.  I added some more to it and deleted large portions that didn’t fit.  And by lunchtime, the piece looked like a teenager’s bedroom with little passages scattered all over like discarded clothes.  But then I went for a run through the woods. All the trees waved their hallelujahs above me, and gradually I had more words than I knew what to do with.  Sometimes, we just need to give time and wiggle room to our work, allowing God to sing over us with His Almighty voice, and bringing His glue to it. Even in ways we cannot see.

We ask You, dear Father, that our tiny efforts -- be it composing a song, making a meal, or simply saying a kind word to a child -- will empower someone to make it through the day, or navigate a shadowy passage, or finally walk out of the darkness into Your light, strengthened with a strength that is not their own.  Because You bring something beautiful to our work that we cannot imagine in really hard places where there seems to be no way.  Sing over us, dear Father, a victory song.  Even when we cannot see or hear it yet, we can know that You are with us all the way through and spread Your goodness over it in ways we never realize. But we know that in whatever it may be, You, O God, bring Your glory to it.

So also good works are conspicuous and even those that are not cannot remain hidden.  1 Timothy 5. 25

The fruit of faithfulness has no expiration date.  And it becomes evident in the most unexpected ways.  May God resound through what He has placed before us today. Not just faithful to our work, but faithful to Him. And let God run with it.

Just Start

 A seasoned author recently admitted that sometimes he doesn’t know what he is going to write about until he actually just starts writing.  “And eventually, patterns emerge that I hadn’t even seen before,” he points out. 

In any creative endeavor, as we write, compose, paint or sculpt, we begin to see something different not just someday in a final product, but in the process now.

In the same way, sometimes we don’t know how to pray about a certain situation, but when we just start praying, God changes not just what we see but how we pray.

We are often so narrowly-focused and near-sighted that we “calculate too closely either the limits of the possible or the sneakiness of grace,” says Ted Loder in Guerillas of Grace:  Prayers for the Battle.

In our all-too-finite petitions, we miss His glory in the grander narrative, in how it is really playing out, and how God is unfolding an intricate sacred design, visible only from the other side of eternity. 

It is not a matter of enlarging our field of vision, but trusting God by praying differently.  His response to our prayers extends far beyond an “answer,” and is certainly never confined to a singular outcome of our own creation.

Bible teacher and theologian Nancy Guthrie challenges us to consider what we are praying for in her essay Praying Past Our Preferred Outcomes, published by The Gospel Coalition.  “Scripture provides us with a vocabulary for expanding our prayers for hurting people far beyond our predetermined positive outcomes,” she writes. “Instead of praying only for relief, we begin to pray that the glory of God’s character would be on display in our lives and the lives of those for whom we are praying.”  

When we don’t even know what to ask or how to pray, God whispers to us, “Just start praying.”  And as we pray and seek Him, God opens our hearts, thoughts, and prayers to a universe of which we are not even aware. 

Now to Him who is able
to do far more abundantly
than all that we ask or imagine
          --[or pray]--
according to the power at work
                         within us,
to Him be glory…..
                       Ephesians 3. 20-21

The Whole Enchilada

"It's not what I want," my granddaughter said about the colorful rug her mom purchased for her new room. 

Her family had just moved into a different house the day before. Nothing but nothing felt familiar. She hadn't known any place else as home.  And this strange room certainly didn't feel like it at all, even with a new rug.  Even if it was pretty with pink and blue and various shades of green.

"I don't like it at all."

The rest of the room was a collection of half-opened corrugated cartons, a partially-assembled bed leaning against the wall, the precious stuff of her life looking like a jig saw puzzle that exploded.  

"What if you wait until your other stuff comes out of the boxes, like your bedspread and lamp? Think of the whole meal."

"Not gonna matter. Not gonna change my mind."

But later that night, her mom texted me, "She loves it."  Even the curtains left by the previous owner somehow coordinated.  Just took a little while for the other pieces to blend together.

So many things land in our lives that, well, like a strange new rug, we don't exactly like.  The biggest question is what we do with it.  Immediate rejection?  Or trust God for His sovereignty? And give God the elbow room to bring it all together.  Not as an unfamiliar piece to trip over, but something profound that God uses in our lives or for the well-being of others.  

"Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you react to it," once remarked pastor and author Chuck Swindoll. 

And to riff on Karen Swallow Prior's new book You Have A Calling:  God's calling on our lives may not be what we are good at, passionate about, or even like doing.  But it may be just part of the whole enchilada of God's purposes in our lives. What appears as a pitiful little piece often becomes what is vital, life-changing, and eternal.

I almost didn't accept my first job in journalism.  It was, as in the words of my granddaughter, not what I expected or wanted, writing about new products for a residential construction magazine for homebuilders.  I daydreamed of jobs in publishing in New York.  But God kept me where I was, writing about heat pumps, housing developments, and eventually publishing a book about solar energy.

I didn't care for that entry-level position.  But the things I learned about writing still impact me now, decades later.   I saw it as a job.  God intended it as a training ground.  The connections still emerge.

The strange and ill-fitting is not just a wrinkle to ignore or a problem to get over, but perhaps to embrace a new opportunity or direction or attitude.

 As a child, at every pothole or dead end, my mom recited, "If you have a lemon, make a lemonade." That's what kept her going in the many hard places in her life and greatly impacted the course of her life as a musician.  Trust Me in this.

How many times in life are we presented with that proverbial rug that we think we could do without?  An unexpected job change,  the mean teacher nobody likes, a move to a place we never would have chosen? What was God thinking?  Well, a whole lot more than us.

And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. Colossians 1. 17 

And then....well, surprise, God works it out anyway.  He continues to reveal to us how they fit together in His overall story for us.  Some of the stuff we despised takes on a different hue in the rear view mirror.  We may not like it, but God still uses it powerfully anyway-- in our lives or a hundred other people around us.  How in the world does this odd-ball situation connect to anything else?  We may catch a glimpse of His purposes, but we just haven't grasped it yet as part of a complete meal or in God's eternal bigger picture.

This one ill-fitting or unpleasant piece, no thank you, I'll pass. God does not expect us to just grudgingly put up with it, but follow Him into it and watch how little disparate parts fit perfectly as into a Lego masterpiece, one tiny plastic brick upon another.

When making personal choices, the Iroquois culture mindfully considered how current decisions impact not only their own lives but to the seventh generation to come.  In Biblical terms, how we walk with God radically changes one generation to the next.  That ill-suited situation we encounter --or rug-- may become a family heirloom, an epic story, or perhaps a physical reminder of God's provision and faithfulness.  

We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the LORD and His might, and the wonders that He has done....to teach their children, that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God.  Psalm 78. 4-6 

God does not promise that we will ever like particular situations, or understand why, but He calls us to be faithful in it.  Nothing random here.  What we encounter and how we pivot is never just about us but resounds for generations.

What we experience is not just a singular random event, or a matter of whether we like or don't like it, but part of the whole.  What is God putting together?  Not what this situation is doing to us, but what God is forming in us through this.  The furniture in our hearts may have to be moved around for Christlikeness to fit.

"I don't like it. I don't want to be here," we cry to God.  "But I want you to," He replies. "I need you to." We just can't see how it fits in. That doesn't mean it won't. Far below the surface of our whining, God's got a lot more profound stuff up His sleeve.  We're gonna need it someday. Remember, the whole picture.   

All things hold together. Even the hard stuff fulfills a purpose, deepens our breathing, confirms a direction, or keeps us faithful right where we are.  "I don't want it. I don't like it," is not the point of the equation, but watching to see God's masterpiece emerging from the mess.  The book of Habakkuk in the Old Testament starts with For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told.  Habakkuk 1. 5

That verse does not promise glory, fame, and a house with a pool.  It is not our letting God into this, but letting God invite us in.  It is not that God will fulfill, but that He is already fulfilling in ways we may not ever expect.  God is a lot deeper than that.  He knows what He is doing. Imagine that.

And we just don't see it coming.  The rug actually fits perfectly. 

Habakkuk concludes two chapters later not with everything to our liking, not something less, but with resounding hope, on which we can stake our lives.

Though the fig tree should not blossom, 

nor fruit be on the vines,

the produce of the olive fail

and the fields yield no food,

the flock be cut off from the fold

and there be no herd in the stalls,

yet I will rejoice in the LORD;

I will take joy in the God of my salvation.

GOD, the Lord is my strength;

He makes my feet like the deer's;

He makes me tread on my high places.

                 Habakkuk 3. 17-19 

 

 

While You Weren't Sleeping

I tossed and turned and could not sleep.  I did not have peace about an ongoing situation.  And I realized God didn't want me to.  He wanted me to pray about it.  Not to sleep peacefully, but to pray in the night, to resist and rebel against the darkness.  Not to wake up and worry, but wake up and pray.

These interruptions in our sleep may be creating an opportunity to secure our undivided devotion to the Lord.  "I've been trying to get your attention," God may be whispering to us.

Throughout scripture and from the beginning of time, God has been waking up people in the middle of the night, not randomly but for His profound purposes.  On that night, the king could not sleep. Esther 6.1 God used that little nudge literally to save the nation of Israel.  And centuries later, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt..." Matthew 2. 13  Another nudge in the night, get up now, even when Joseph did not realize the urgency, nor the looming disaster if he hesitated until morning.

God wanted them to feel uneasy. And do something about it. 

Our first reaction is typically begging God to help us to turn over and go back to sleep.  And yet, an awakened mind and body make us more aware of God.  It is when the LORD once again carries us through.  We cannot survive without sleep.  We cannot thrive without prayer.

God says, "Why do you think I woke you up?"  Not to get a drink of water, change position, or even suffer the aftereffects of too much coffee.  But there are things struggling to the surface to think about, things to pray through, to cover people in desperate places we may not even realize, and embrace those we do know who are struggling with despair.

We can't pretend that this broken world or situation doesn't exist.  But we are inattentive and sometimes so insensitive in the busyness of our days.  But at night, God gets our attention, not to worry or ignore or think problems will go away on their own. Anxiety means trying to handle it on my own. Worry deflates our tires. Fear locks all the doors and shuts off the power.

What if we pray about this?  What if we don't?  More than we can ever imagine.

We cry out, O God, do something.  And He whispers, That's why I put you there. We can stir up a typhoon of worrying. But have we even considered praying about it?  The more uneasy we are, the more we can worry.....or pray. And the more we pray, the more God aligns our hearts with His.  We see Him differently.  We see the difficulty differently. We are more able to see how to go forth and what we can do.  

In his book Outlive, physician Peter Attia discusses the importance of grip strength --what we hold, what we can carry, what we can do.  "Almost all actions begin with the grip...it is our interface with the world.  If our grip is weak, then everything else is compromised."

That is a physical truth bolted to the spiritual, because almost all our actions and reactions are based on what we hold onto.  Or if our hands are gripped in prayer. 

The other night, sleepless, I carefully walked down the hallway in the deep shadows like a person visually impaired.  I knew where the doorways were, the rug ended, the turn into the kitchen, avoiding the desk.  And I asked God in the darkness "Who should I be praying for right now in this moment?" "What are You forming in me through this?" "What should I pray?"  "How should I pray?'  And the Lord's Prayer scrolled through my mind. I began saying it out loud in my own words.  No one could hear me but God Himself -- and Alexa didn't care.

Conversations with God in the middle of the night take on a deeper intimacy.  And often those wee small hours are the only time that God can get our attention.  

If our circumstances appeared smooth and sleek, with everything running on auto-pilot, would we even pray about it at all?  Or recognize our need for Him? Or acknowledge His glory and hand in this?   Ascribe to the LORD the glory due His name. Psalm 29. 2

A sincere struggle may be right in the center of His Will. Something is not right.  God wants us to recognize that the imbalance is from Him. And guides us to do something about it.

When we are uneasy, there is a reason for it. But we can keep praying. 

May we realize that sometimes sleep is not the main event in the night.  But really eternal things are.

As for sleep, Lord, well, make it enough. 

 

I bless the LORD who gives me counsel.

In the night also my heart instructs me.

I keep the LORD always before me.

Because He is at my right hand,

     I shall not be moved.

                 Psalm 16. 7-8