Monday Prayer and Fasting December 21, 2009

Dear Pray-ers and Fast-ers,

This is the weekly email reminder that we are fasting and praying today for God to bring healing and redemption in places where we are stuck and broken;  give the gift of marriage to those of us that desire it; and work redemption and strength in men so that they can (and do!) pursue and commit to a woman.

I’ve been one of the many recipients of the east-coast blizzard, and I have to say it’s been rather nice to be cooped up at home, unable to get out.  And the snow is gorgeous. Despite the beauty outside and all the happy holiday tv shows and commercials, holidays can be such a painful time… for me it has been the painful yearly “mark” I’ve used to tick off one more year that my life has not changed in the way I want it to change. I’ve often struggled at Christmas to believe that God is good to me. I’ve known it in my head, but my emotions have often had a hard time catching up.  And although God has bruoght a wonderful man this year, life is not pain free, nor is everything the way I want it to be–in some arenas of my life, not even close! Pain has abounded even more.  I still struggle to trust that God can and will show up with his goodness.  The devotion I read this morning from a little devotional book by World Harvest Mission called My Luggage is Not Heavy spoke to this, so I wanted to share it with you. This was written by Patric Knaak. I hope you find it encouraging.

My most persistent “hard questions” have to do with God’s goodness. I don’t really have a hard time believing that God is all powerful or all knowing. And, on a theoretical level, I don’t doubt that God is good.

But where I do wrestle, often in direct relationship to the circumstances of my life, is with questions like, “Is God really willing to be good to me, here, today, in the midst of my unbelief? Does God really, truly love me? And if he does, why isn’t he doing something to make things better?

Early on in his ministry, Jesus ran into a man who was asking the same sort of questions. The story is told in Mark 1:

A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cured.  Jesus sent him away at once with a strong warning: “See to it that you don’t tell this to anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.” Instead he went out and began to talk freely, spreading the news. As a result, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly but stayed outside in lonely places.

Did you catch what the man said? “If”–”If you are willing, you can make me clean.” Just like me, the leper isn’t questioning Jesus’ abilities. He’s wondering about Jesus’ goodness.

Its an understandable question given what the leper was going through.  He was dying from a painful, disfiguring disease. And because of the OT laws on cleanness, he was forced to live apart from his family and friends and barred from worshipping at the temple. The leper’s physical disease is a tangible illustration of what sin does in our lives. Sin causes physical suffering and eventual death, isolates us from those we love, and ultimately separates us from God.

Jesus’ response is no less revealing than the leper’s question. As Jesus looks down on this wreck of a human, he sees someone who has been so crushed by his circumstances that he is unsure if his heavenly Father even loves him anymore. Mark’s particular choice of works in the original text tells us that Jesus “fills up to overflowing with compassion” for the leper. What could be more awesome than looking up into the eyes of the Alpha and Omega, the Firstborn Over All Creation, and seeing pure, unadulterated compassion and tenderness?

Then, Jesus reaches out his hand and firmly puts it on the man. (And when do you suppose was the last time someone did that?)  A second or two goes by, and Jesus removes all doubt about his desire to heal the man, saying “I am willing. Be clean!”

At those words, this shell of a human, this dead man walking among the living, is brought back to health, life, and peace with God. And with that new life, the leper literally “began to preach a lot in order to tell others about what Jesus had done for him. He is a new man with a new story to tell.

Even here, thought, my own leprous heart is tempted to complain: “Yes, but he got what he wanted, didn’t he? He was healed and restored. But Jesus hasn’t really fixed the issues in my life that need fixing and until he does, I’m having a hard time trusting him.” And so I need people around me who will lovingly challenge me and point me back to the truth of the gospel: God’s lavish goodness had already been poured out on me through Christ’s death on the cross.

In the larger context of Mark’s Gospel, we see that before meeting the leper, Jesus was free to travel where he wanted, spreading the good news of hte kingdom, while the leper was isolated and unable to move freely. At the end of his encounter with Jesus, it is now the leper who is surrounded by people and preaching about Jesus, while Jesus is confined to the lonely places.

Mark is subtly pointing us ahead to the great exchange that takes place on the cross: our healing is dependent on Christ’s affliction.  In a very real sense, Jesus is saying to us, “I am willing,” because the ultimate statement of “I am willing” has already come in the form of “It is finished.”

Powerful, huh?

We’re going to take a break from prayer and fasting for the next 2 weeks, then we’ll be back at it January 10th.

May God’s grace be to you over the holidays, and may you truly believe and trust his goodness.

Anne

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