lystn

Psalm 123:1 NLT

'I lift my eyes to you, O God, enthroned in heaven.'

For some, discerning God’s presence in the silence is too passive. For years my prayer was a response to present circumstance, with no focus on the end in view. I learned that God thinks from the end backwards. I have been created human, in the image of God, for the purpose of growing up into maturity in Christ. If I merely engage with the realities of the present it will lead to a stunted, abnormal Christian discipleship. Attentiveness enables me to discern the present in light of the end. I recover perspective.

As my first darling wife, Katey, battled with MS, our initial prayer focus was consumed with the present; an assumed need that she be physically healed. We knew God does intervene and heals physically today. We’d both prayed and seen medically confirmed healing through the vehicle of prayer, for others and ourselves. Yet, our learning was to be that physical healing is only ever incidental and not the end God has in view. This end is most certainly about healing, yet healing as wholeness or completion, where death is the door to such completion. While Katey and I, and a concerned congregation, threw every prayer we had at seeking to determine a new, or different, present, we failed to be still and attend to the distinct word of God in this season. In fact, we assumed we were mounting a raid against Satan to rescue Katey from what we assumed could only have been the devil's work.

Exhausted and disillusioned, alone and with a sense of abandonment, while an exhausted and confused congregation melted away, we began to pay attention to God, seeking to discern his voice. We again reminded ourselves we were God’s property, albeit “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14, NIV). God alone has the word of life, and so we directed our gaze to the Lord. No longer consumed by physical disease, we waited and began to develop attentiveness to who God was in this set of circumstances and discern his unique words for us both. We found comfort even as we knew pain and disappointment.

QUESTION: What are the challenges within your present circumstances?

PRAYER: Lord, help me to follow where you are leading me and not where I think you should be taking me.