Tag: prayer

Waiting Time is Never Wasted Time

“Wait for the Lord’s help.
Be strong and brave,
and wait for the Lord’s help.”

Psalm 27:14

The Bible describes people’s interaction with God. Almost always they end up waiting for God to fulfill His promises to them.  They wait and wait.  Often God takes them right to 11:59, and then shows up in some miraculous way. That is just the way it is.

Waiting is quite beneficial to us.  Like a slow stream, it takes time for things to settle, we are often turbulent, and waiting helps us calm down.  Slowly the stream becomes clear and clean.  When our faith is tested; we develop patience and submission.  And when the blessing comes to us, we will savor it even more.

‘Waiters’ are actually reflectors on the promises of God yet to be.  It’s promised, but not yet.  Hebrews 11 is this very powerful statement of people waiting in faith.  Read this chapter and look at them waiting.  Each one is looking for a promise yet to come.  Some wait well, and others, not so much.

Waiting time will never be wasted time. 

 We should weave that into the fabric of our hearts.  Waiting is not like sitting in a room for your to see the doctor.  When I sit in a waiting room, I browse through old and tattered copies Newsweek and four year old National Geographics.  I study the other people who are also waiting, sometimes like a detective trying to understand the story of their lives up to this point.  I look at my watch a lot.

Waiting on God is not supposed to be like this. When the Word speaks to us of waiting, it has a great deal to say about humility. When we wait well, we start softening.  God’s waiting room is the place where we spend a large percentage of our lives. But it’s an active spot where we put ourselves in the sovereignty of God.  We see ourselves on His timetable, not ours.

“Faith means being sure of the things we hope for and knowing that something is real even if we do not see it.” 

Heb. 11:1

“If the Lord Jehovah makes us wait, let us do so with our whole hearts; for blessed are all they that wait for Him. He is worth waiting for. The waiting itself is beneficial to us: it tries faith, exercises patience, trains submission, and endears the blessing when it comes. The Lord’s people have always been a waiting people.”

 Charles Spurgeon

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Healing the Wound of Rejection — by Jonathan Coe

 

When a child is born into the world, often the first face they see is a doctor or nurse followed by their mother and father. Then in their early years and all the years before they leave home, they will see their parents’ faces probably more than anyone else. Single–parent homes will add a different dynamic to this experience.

Over the years their parents’ faces will communicate different emotions to them. In an emotionally healthy family, lots of love, acceptance, sense of belonging, respect, and appreciation will be communicated. In an unhealthy family, just the opposite, or a confusing mixture of false and true messages, will be communicated and will leave the child with the wound of rejection.

The wound of rejection has to be one of the most difficult wounds to heal. It occurs not only in parent–child relationships, but also in husband–wife, sibling, peer, employer–employee, and  priest/pastor–flock relationships. It cuts deep because it communicates to the person not that they are doing something wrong, but that there is something wrong with them.

The face they see in their mind’s eye tells them that they are defective, second-rate, not good enough, and unlovable. For many this face, and its false messages will plague them the rest of their lives.

It would be foolish for me to try to pretend to solve a complex problem like this in one blog post. However, it is not foolish for someone like me, who has also felt the sting of rejection, to try to provide a helpful beginning.

For starters, one thing that helped me was to realize that the person(s) who rejected me didn’t reject me because I was inherently unlovable; they rejected me because they didn’t have the wherewithal, inner resources, or ability to love me like I needed to be loved. It wasn’t about me; it was about them. Embracing this truth, for many people, can be the beginning of healing.

Another thing that helped me was contemplative prayer. Now when many people hear the words “contemplative prayer,” they feel intimidated and think that such a thing must be reserved only for mystics, monks, and very holy people. That’s not true. Contemplative prayer is for everybody.

When St. John Vianney entered his church and found an old farmer praying, he asked him what he was doing and the peasant told him, “I look at him and he looks at me.” That’s contemplative prayer. St. Teresa of Avila said that “Contemplative prayer, in my opinion, is nothing else than a close sharing between friends.”

We see the face of Jesus and he sees us and there is an intimate exchange. Contemplative prayer is helpful for the person who is wounded by rejection because they replace the face of the person(s) who has/have wounded them and  their false messages with the face of Christ and his true messages about you. So the main question for us as we read this is “Whose face are we looking at?” 

I hope that it’s the face that I see in Zephaniah 3:16 and 17. Please remember that what is said in this passage to Israel under the old covenant is even more true to us today under a better covenant and one greater than Moses (Jesus):

“On that day they will say to Jerusalem, ‘Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands hang limp. The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.'”

God is singing. Why? Because he is rejoicing and delighting over us with an overflowing, super–abundant love. This is the face of Christ that should replace the other faces that we constantly see that have given us the wound of rejection.

Additional to this, it’s also important to have friends and family that become the face of Christ to us or what a psychologist friend of mine called “Jesus with skin on.” With all these things in place we can truly shout from the rooftops, “Let the healing begin!”

ybic, Jonathan

 

If you like this post from Jonathan Coe, you may also like his new book, Letters from Fawn Creek, that now can be purchased at this link:

https://www.tatepublishing.com/bookstore/book.php?w=9781628542035

Letters from Fawn Creek

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cover art/photo: http://www.adventistonline.com

The Ransom Note

depression-note

“We collapse in the dust,
    lying face down in the dirt.
26 Rise up! Help us!
    Ransom us because of your unfailing love.”

Psalm 44:25-26, NLT

“For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Mark 10:45

“God chose him as your ransom long before the world began, but he has now revealed him to you in these last days.”

1 Peter 1:20

I think that God has more or less ransacked the human language in His effort to get through to us the critical nature of what exactly has been done just for us. When it comes to our salvation and what that means to the universe, the word, “ransom” is used.

The connection for us, as we consider the implications, has mainly a connection with the crime of “kidnapping.” This is when someone is captured by other men, and held in captivity until certain terms are met. When the kidnapper feels his needs are fully met, then the hostage is released.

In the Bible sense, we should work through several verses. There are at least three Hebrew words. In the N.T. Greek just a single word to explain “ransom” is seen. And yet we can say, each word is linked back to the idea of being “helpless.” And helpless is far more than a definition, rather it is a description of a “state of being.”

We come to understand that helplessness is the natural state of human beings. We each have been captured, taken away and are being held, until terms are met for our release. I suppose that some see this helplessness easier than others. (And I’m sure a few will never acknowledge it at all). But nevertheless, it is real and it describes every single person that has ever lived.

Being completely helpless is hardly a situation we would ever choose. Having ransom demands being made to set us free is mostly awkward. And it’s an affront. Perhaps, we feel we are worth more? But the issues here are eternal, and currency concepts are never the consideration.

But there is a present need, to purchase back those who are being held as captives. The absolute clear position is that the Lord Jesus Christ, died in our place. Choosing to die for us, he was essentially tortured before his cruel death. In this decision, he himself paid my ransom. In doing this, I was set free and fully able to return home.

There are many who have been free. But there is a thing called “the Stockholm Syndrome.” This refers to those in captivity who somehow “connect” with their kidnappers through a prolonged captivity. This is to the point where they begin to act less than the victims, and more like the captor. It is confusing. They seem to go out of their way to act “pro-kidnapper”. This can get very disturbing.

We must look to our children, and closest family and our friends. They are toiling for Satan, the captor of our souls (past-tense). Many different tactics are being used– depression, addictions, lust, greed, anger, gluttony, pride, guilt and many other deceitful things. They are being held, until faith (the key) “springs” them out of their prison.

Thank you Jesus, for coming to free us. Thank you for forgiving us. We have been released, and now walk away free. You died, so we might live. We desperately want to see the others we love set free.

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ybic, Bryan

 

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Praying Out the Dark

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