The Envelope, Please

Then he said to me, “Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand and humbled yourself before your God, your words have been heard, and I have come because of your words.  The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days, but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I was left there with the kings of Persia, and came to make you understand what is to happen to your people in the latter days. For the vision is for days yet to come.” – Daniel 10:12-14

Through his study of the writings of the prophets before him, Daniel was given understanding of the times and of the deliverance of his people from exile to return to Jerusalem.  Even though it was prophesied, Daniel prayed, confessing his sins and the sins of his nation, and asking that God’s will might be done according to the revelation given. 

In the film, Lawrence of Arabia, Lawrence famously counters the fatalistic determinism of his Mohammedan allies by saying, “Nothing is written.”  God does have a will, and the Son has called us to pray that the will of the Father be done.  We cannot be fatalists for we are the instruments of the Divine will.  Lawrence’s statement goes to the other extreme, exalting the will of man and making him the measure of all things.  

 Man can do what he wants, but he cannot change the truth.  The will of God is the truth.  To ignore it or defy it is to be broken by it.  To align ourselves with truth and reality, we must take in the sails of our own desires, fears, emotions, and insecurities that the fickle winds of worldly thinking might not seize control of our lives to overthrow us and sink us in the depths or cast us shattered upon the rocks and reefs.   

From the moment Daniel began to pray, he was heard.  There is often opposition and resistance that must be broken down in order for an answer to reach us.  As was the case with Daniel, the answer is not always as much an immediate manifestation as a confirmation or assurance.  God tells us, “You’ve got it.”  For us, much of the time, what impedes this assurance is not “a prince of the kingdom”, some dark external power, but our guilt, our lack of faith, and the contrary desires of our own fleshly thinking. 

I’m not sure there’s a lot we can do to assist warring angels in their battles.  For our guilt, though, we have the justification of the Cross.  If we need faith, it comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.  As Daniel’s faith came from reading Moses, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, our faith is quickened and fortified as we study the Scriptures.  Putting aside the obstacle of my own will can be the roughest and most trying part of prayer as it is often bulwarked with rationalizations, dread of loss, and pride.  The discipline of persistent prayer aids us in breaking through this last barrier from our side. 

One thing about persistent prayer where I think there is sometimes a misunderstanding -- at least, I had a misunderstanding:  importune intercession is not necessarily long.  When some people pray, they seem to be making a case with God.  When Jesus taught us to pray to our Father in heaven, He did not urge us to use many words or to plead exhaustively.  In the illustration Jesus gave us of the persistent widow and the unjust judge in Luke 18, the plaintiff simply says, “Give me justice against my adversary.”  She knew her rights.  She knew the law, but she didn’t spend an hour giving the details.  Sometimes, “Help!” is all we need to say. 

Also, we should not be confused by the translation of Matthew 6:7 from the King James Version:  But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do:  for they think they shall be heard for their much speaking.  

The ESV gives a clearer understanding:  And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.  Don’t be afraid to pray often and repeatedly for the same thing.  Our job is to ask God to do His will – which is always the right, lawful and good thing that is needed.  It is not to nag Him into doing what we want or to win a debate with Him and convince Him to change His mind. 

God is our Father and our Sovereign Lord.  If His will is done, we are happy.

But Never Everything

For whenever the Israelites planted crops, the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the East would come up against them.  They would encamp against them and devour the produce of the land, as far as Gaza, and leave no sustenance in Israel and no sheep or ox or donkey.  For they would come up with their livestock and their tents; they would come like locusts in number—both they and their camels could not be counted—so that they laid waste the land as they came in.  And Israel was brought very low because of Midian. And the people of Israel cried out for help to the Lord. – Judges 6:3-6

In the movie The Magnificent Seven, a Mexican village is raided by bandits and plundered season after season, leaving the villagers with little to sustain them.  They have no hope of prosperity or a better life for their children.  In desperation they go up on the mountainside to the house of a wise old man believing that he can give them the guidance and wisdom they need.  Do they risk the bandits’ anger by hiding food?  Do they abandon the village and try to live elsewhere?  Do they resist?  The old man tells them they must fight the bandits.  When they say they have no weapons, the old man offers them his gold watch which he keeps secreted in a bag.  He tells them to take the watch along with all the other small treasures of the villagers and travel to a border town where they are to sell the valuables so that they might be able to purchase guns and ammunition.

When those sent on the mission arrive at a town, they witness a pair of what are obviously warriors engage in an act of defiance and daring in the face of unrighteousness.  They go to one of the warriors afterward, a man named Chris – short, perhaps, for Christopher, i.e., “Christ-bearer”, or Christian.  They tell him that they trust him to help them in their mission.  He suggests that instead of buying weapons they do not know how to use, they should hire men, who, he says are cheaper than weapons. 

Like the villagers and like the Israelites of old, we often find ourselves assailed by an enemy we cannot handle.  We seem to lack the tools and the skills needed to address the spiritual assaults we face.  Perhaps we resign ourselves to living spiritually demolished and ravaged.  Perhaps we try to negotiate with an intractable foe.  Perhaps we work a little harder, try a little harder.  We think that, sooner or later, the attacks will cease.  The enemy will forget about us.  But he is implacable and relentless.  He just keeps coming back.  At some point we have to decide if we are going to try to continue to live an impoverished life accommodating our foe, or if we are going to find a way to defeat him. 

The first thing Jesus tells us to do is to count the cost.  Do not pass over this point lightly.  It is better, as Henry Hazlitt said, to make fewer resolutions and keep more of them.  Consider if you are really “all in” to destroying the enemy.  To fight, to resist oppression, to throw off the domination of thought patterns and mental strongholds and find spiritual freedom is not cheap.  It will cost us all that we have.  All the little treasures we hide away and cherish in secret must be surrendered to Christ.  When the villagers tell Chris they have sold all they have, he says, "I have been offered a lot for my work, but never everything."  Like the gunmen Chris brought to the battle, Christ does not ask us to pay what He is worth.  This is infinitely beyond our means.  He simply asks for what we have, asks us to entrust our meager wealth to Him – all of it.  He will make what we give Him more than enough, just as He did with a couple of fish and five loaves of bread in feeding a multitude.  We must go to the Spirit of Wisdom who dwells within us but apart and a little higher up.  As we seek His counsel, He will instruct us on surrendering our treasures to a Man We Can Trust. 

It is Christ Himself, the mighty warrior, who will come to aid us.  We have seen Him upon the Cross defy and defeat death, hell, and the grave.  He will come to us and break the chains of bondage and enslavement, release us from fear and captivity, empower us to face our enemies and throw them down.  There is no need to live in spiritual poverty, hopelessness, and defeat.  God intends for us to live in victory, to live lives filled with truth, power, and liberty. 

There is a danger illustrated by the movie as well.  Just at the point where there is a chance of driving away the bandits, some of the village leaders decide to surrender to them rather than fight.  They prefer the devil they know.  And we are often similarly tempted.  Even positive change is uncomfortable for us.  We decide, after struggling and not achieving immediate and complete victory, that the cost is higher than we anticipated, and we are not really willing to pay the price.  Perhaps we are not cut out to be overcomers.  Slavery may suit us better – keep us humble.  Freedom, really, can be a little scary. 

Great victories are rarely flawless.  Every battle has its setbacks and fluctuations.  Sometimes things get messy and chaotic.  We are not sure how it is going to turn out.  But that is the time to hold onto our trust in Christ and fight on.  If we slip and fall or get knocked down, we are not defeated so long as we get back up.  If the battle drags on longer than we expected, we keep going.  Liberation can take time.  Freedom is worth the fight.

Second Story Man

When He entered Capernaum again after some days, it was reported that He was at home. So many people gathered together that there was no more room, not even in the doorway, and He was speaking the message to them. Then they came to Him bringing a paralytic, carried by four men. Since they were not able to bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above where He was. And when they had broken through, they lowered the stretcher on which the paralytic was lying.

Seeing their faith, Jesus told the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” -- Mark 2:1-5

This became a favorite passage for me one Sunday night down in a little town south of Fort Worth. We had shown up at church along with the rest of the very small congregation back in those pre-cellphone or at least pre-ubiquitous-cellphone days. The word came just as the service was to begin that the pastor and his family had an emergency requiring immediate attention. In a larger church that would have been no problem. In our little group, the pastor, his wife, and daughter were the entirety of the staff as well as the musicians and choir. We had no actual deacons or associate pastors. My only status was that of FOTP (friend of the pastor). We weren’t even technically members of that church. Still, rather than send everyone home or to one of the other local churches, my wife suggested I grab a music stand (as opposed to the pulpit) and start talking. We had one older lady with a beautiful and loud singing voice, and I asked her if she could lead us in a couple of a cappella songs. While she did that, I opened my Bible, which just happened to open to Mark 2.

For someone forced to speak extemporaneously and with no preparation time, the great thing about this story is its visual character. We can see those four friends hauling their buddy down the street, coming up against the loose fringe of the human mass, pushing forward a little then realizing that advance is hopeless. We can imagine them retreating and regrouping. One says we might as well give this up. Maybe we can catch Jesus tomorrow. Another is reluctant saying that their paralyzed friend was suffering and needs help today. And besides I have to shear sheep tomorrow. Three of them are arguing about the obstacles and the impossibility of the situation. But one guy is standing there just staring at the roof. Finally, when the thought is fully formed, he voices his suggestion. The other three are a little skeptical at first, but, as they ponder it, they begin to smile. It just might work.

A desperately unprepared person can use this quality of the narrative to draw in the listeners while creating both time and verbal space to pick up a salient point for teaching or inspiring, and this little passage is loaded with them: unity of purpose and the power of teamwork, persistence in the face of difficulty, the reality that sometimes none of us can make it alone, where there is a will there is a way, or the fact that Jesus won’t reject you just because you don’t come in the front door – just to mention the obvious.

The one that always jumps out at me first is that the four men carrying that stretcher must have loved their helpless, paralyzed brother and believed beyond all reason that Jesus was capable of restoring him. It says that Jesus saw their faith, but He also saw their love, their willingness to try anything to get to the Lord – not for their own benefit, but for the sake of someone else. The paralyzed man may not have been a particularly good person. We don’t know. He may have been just like us. After all, Jesus had to tell him his sins were forgiven before he could be healed. We don’t know if the four stretcher-bearers were part of the man’s family, some friends, or maybe they were just people who had gotten caught up in the moment, saw a crippled guy and wondered if Jesus could heal that one. The Spirit can work with most anything, and it was the Holy Spirit who grabbed those men and set them off.

I see, too, that Jesus didn’t have to ask them, as He often did with others, if they believed. He could see their faith – as James says, “I’ll show you my faith by my works.” These guys were the epitome of that statement. They didn’t hang back and say, “Well, let’s just pray and believe that old Sam here will be delivered and healed.” They pushed and pulled and sweated and maybe even cussed a little. I’m guessing these weren’t structures with high ceilings. Nevertheless, getting the deadweight of a person on cot onto a roof then down through a roof is work, not to mention tearing away the shingles or thatch or whatever it was they had to get through. Sometimes faith is manifested in simple acceptance of the word -- like the centurion in Luke chapter 7, but sometimes it must be evidenced by a depleted bank account when we give until it hurts or seen in broken blisters or felt in aching muscles when we press on through the pain.

The man on the cot is all of us. His paralysis is a picture of the human will in bondage. We are powerless to do anything for ourselves. Sometimes we know too well the path we took to this place. For others it appears they were simply born in their helpless states. No matter how we happened to get here, the only hope we have for freedom from our condition is Jesus. But what can we do? The New Testament gives us various illustrations. In some cases, seemingly out of the blue, like the man at the Pool of Bethesda in John 5, Jesus comes to us and asks us if we want to be healed. Other times, like Jairus’ daughter or Lazarus, someone may carry the word of our need to Jesus and implore Him to visit us. Or, someone may pick us up and carry us to Him.


That last method is work always because it involves close and sustained contact between the bearer and the borne. These that we carry are the impotent among are friends, family, and the people with whom we work. We have to live our lives consistently and persistently if we are going to get them past the many obstacles, past the hypocritical and hypercritical crowds. When our way is blocked, we can’t make it a one-man operation. We may need help. We may need to step back and think about a new approach, and we cannot be overly sensitive about offending anyone or anything that gets in the way.