The Stammering Heart

In tandem with the Week of Prayer, traditionally observed the first week of the year, the church I attend in Montana opened its doors each evening during the first week of 2012 for corporate prayer.


The first night of prayer, I came to the church with my agenda. And God came with His.


It’s easy for me to go into ask-mode when I pray: ask God for this, ask God for that, and if I keep on asking, it's easy for me to assure myself that I’ve really “prayed.” But when I do this, I forget one important tidbit of information: prayer is two-way. Meaning that it is a conversation. You know, A and B, give and take, ask and listen. And sometimes when I launch full-force into my ask-mode, God doesn't wait for me to finish all my asking until He can speak. While God is polite, He is also in love, and sometimes (or oftentimes, or every time) what He needs to speak into my life is more important than what I think I need to accomplish during a time of prayer. Sometimes He brings a message to me smack-dab in the middle of my asking. Such was the case this night.


I leaned back in my chair and began my time of prayer by asking God to bless the upcoming details of my life. I affirmed God's control over the specifics of my missions assignment. Time is of the essence, and with the knowledge of the impending future, I prayed with the conviction that steps toward realizing my future could not be taken a moment too soon. My prayers were tinged with urgency and saturated by a matter-of-fact attitude: These things have to be done, Lord, and these needs have to be met, and while I expect You’ll meet them, I ask you to meet them now. As I continued pummeling through my request list, my thoughts took a sudden turn: How did I get to where I am now?


What?


How did I get to where I am now? Not accustomed to interrupting my own thoughts, I nevertheless stopped petitioning and started reflecting. How did I become this person on the cusp of a major life change? How did I grow from Butte girl to college student? How did I...?


My life passed before me in miniature.


I saw myself as a kindergartner—who instilled within my parents, who'd only been saved a couple of years at best, the desire to teach their daughter the ways of the Lord?


I saw myself as a sixth-grader—who gave me a passion to seek a relationship with Jesus that is both powerful and transformational? And who fed that passion until it burned as a desire that melted my apathy and spilled over into a need to share His truths with others?


I saw myself as a seventh grader—who called me into missions and out of my dream of becoming an astronaut? Who told me that what I give up for God is nothing compared to what I will find in Him?


I saw myself as a ninth grader—who told me that popularity wasn’t worth the compromise it would have necessitated had I chosen friends over faith? Who told me that when I am alone, I still have Christ, and therefore I have all I need?


As more scenes from my life flitted through my memory, I realized that these thoughts didn't just trace the history of God's call to missions on my life; they traced God's history with me—more important than leading me to one specific place or word or set of details, God has been interested in my heart. He stays with me and calls me and nourishes me and saves me not just so I can go somewhere and be something, but so I can be someone. So I can be His.


The life-snapshots blurred together in a hymn of thankfulness to God. At this point in my time of prayer, I realized music was playing in little church building. The portion of the song repeating over and over was, “How I love You! How I love You! How I love You!” All I could see was God’s hand orchestrating and blessing every part of my life.


And then another question came to my mind: What do you have that God hasn’t given you?


Really, what do I have that God hasn't given me?


A rhetorical question. Answer: Nothing.


While it stung my pride, it produced joy in a humble corner of my heart. I came to God that night with thankless asking, but now I couldn't even continue with my asking because my thoughts had moved from particulars to the big picture, and the thankfulness in my spirit grew until it crowded out all temporary concerns. I could see evidence of His presence and guidance over the course of my existence.


The question that came to my mind is found in 1 Corinthians 4:7 as part of a passage in which Paul is urging believers to attain unity in their faith by keeping Christ at the center of all they do. He was addressing their pride, their tendency to forget that they did not give themselves the gift of salvation or the generous blessings of the Lord. When we forget who bestows the gifts, we forget to thank.


The thought that I do not have anything that God has not given me is really a tender one—I am touched when I think of the fact that God was just waiting for me to think of Him! My mind was on the tasks without also being on the God who engineers my circumstances.


His question from Scripture cut through all my requests to the core of the issue: God just wanted to hear my heart. When He did, He found that it didn’t rush and rattle on.


Realizing that his heap of blessings which I call my life has been crafted by Him, I leaned forward in my seat, tears welling in my eyes. I looked at the ground. I stuttered. I stammered. But not because I was nervous. Not because I couldn’t think of anything to say. Because I was overcome with thankfulness, with undeserved grace, with a sense of His divine intervention and abundant provision. All these welled up simultaneously and choked my words until my long, fluid sentences turned into fragments, half spoken and half thoughts. The music in the room swelled: “How I love You! How I love You! How I love You!”


As I struggled to talk, I was struck by the ironic contrast of my previous effusion of words with my current stultified speech in a moment of raw, unrehearsed thankfulness.


The words of Jane Austen's character Mr. Knightley rang as true for me in relation to God as they did for Knightley in relation to Emma: "If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more" (Emma ch. XIII). I was lost for words with so much to say. My heart stammered under the weight of His love.


I admit: at first, I was startled by the change in my thought pattern and thought it may have resulted from being unfocused during a time of petitioning prayer. But I soon realized that God orchestrated the alteration in my mindset to recalibrate what I ask and why I ask it. And this vital revelation, or rather, this re-revelation, showed me that oftentimes I can find myself in a rut of doing things just to do them, get through them, and do more things. Why do I do what I do?


And why do you?


Myriad reasons exist, but our reason should be singular. In the truest sense, it should all boil down to Christ: “For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, ...everything got started in Him and finds its purpose in Him" (Colossians 1:16 The Message).


And if the act of acknowledging this fact isn’t driving my actions, I can quit going to school, stop asking for financial support, and shred my missions approval letter. If I’m not loving God, what I’m doing doesn’t matter—and never will, even if I succeed at what I do.


My life isn’t about some mission in a foreign country. My life isn’t about what I’ve accomplished or where I’ve been or what people think of me or even about the dreams I have. My life is about Christ. About finding Him and finding Him all over again. It’s about love, so lavishly bestowed by our Father, so weakly reciprocated by us, and yet so rejoiced over by the One who sees our hearts beating closer toward His. Dare we place more importance on where we are than on the One who placed us there.


God’s love has an uncanny ability to break light over our circumstances until the rays permeate all we see and we are blinded by a heavenly consciousness, a dominating awareness of the goodness of God, even just the fragment of His goodness that has been evidenced in our lives. And yet a mere fragment, a tiny portion of the goodness of our Lord has light enough to burn in our retinas for eternity the striking power of God’s love.


Am I starving my love life with God by valuing task over relationship?


Reflecting on even a few small scenes from my life, I saw enough to know that God wasn’t dipping a finger in the waters of my life every so often to stir things up a bit. He wasn’t throwing a bit of fairy dust here and there, scattering some disinterested benevolence when He found extra time. No, I could see indelible marks of God’s faithfulness in my life. His tracks weren’t sporadic or spotty. They were constant. They were deep. They are deep.


And it was then that I realized that my prayers, although terribly important, were surface-level prayers. I was unconsciously forgetting the reason I was praying, the reason I could or can pray any prayers at all: Christ. And in one fell swoop, God both convicted me of a lack of thankfulness and caused an increase of thanks.


So often I focus on the fact that I have something: Okay, I have "it." Now bless it, God. I’ve acquired this or attained to that and I need You to move me from point A to point B because I’m on track with Your will, God, and your next step for me is…


And this attitude is thankless.


It’s not a conscious ungratefulness. Rather, it’s an attitude that treats my relationship with God as purely functional. He does for me so I can do for Him. He brings me to a place so I can be used of Him. And this vicious pushing-ahead that I do so well subtly erases the habit of reflection. The attitude should not be, Thanks, God, for doing [x] in me so I can go do [y] in my world, although God does bring breakthroughs and loose fetters so we can walk in His will more freely. But where is the thankfulness? The emphasis in this attitude is on the work of God, not on God Himself. God doesn’t work in our lives only so we can get to the next step in our journey. God intervenes on our behalf because He loves us. He is less concerned about output than He is on the condition of our souls. He is far less concerned about output than I am. I was using prayer as a way to get from where I was to where I needed to be: a functional but essentially thankless attitude.


That night I had my agenda—but He had His. I was interested in obtaining a blessing, receiving an extra word of direction, and gaining insight into strategies which will enable me to succeed—but He was interested in awakening my heart: I think of Psalm 45, a song of love. Its first verse says that “[m]y heart overflows with a good theme; I address my verses to the King; My tongue is the pen of a ready writer.” In the NASB, the word king is capitalized, and many commentaries say that the psalmist is addressing the coming Messiah. It was customary for Asiatic poets of ancient times to recite their verses before royalty, and here the Psalmist speaks for and to the King of Kings, the One who has given him such a noble theme that he cannot contain it. The workings of God on our hearts are at times so beautiful, so pronounced, that we cannot help but gush forth His praises to the exclusion of all else. Matthew Henry, the English preacher who generated a commentary on the entire Bible in the early eighteenth century, made this remark about the opening lines of Psalm 45: “There is more in Christ to engage our love than there is or can be in any creature.”


The sweet moments of divine recalibration I experienced lasted only a few minutes at best, but they shaped the way I prayed the rest of the evening and, hopefully, the way I pray the rest of my year and the rest of my life.


Don’t be hesitant to halt the recitation of your wish-list when God brings a fresh reminder of His care into your life. Sometimes God's love strikes our souls unexpectedly. And when it does, it's okay if your heart stammers to express itself under the weight of this glorious love. What happened that night is an echo of a promise of God found in Zephaniah 3:17: “The Lord your God is with you[.]  …[H]e will quiet you with his love.”


So ask, and keep on asking. And thank, oh, thank with all that is within you, and bless His holy name.

Benefit of the Doubt

As a child, I never understood what the phrase "benefit of the doubt" meant. For years I was puzzled as to what it could mean, and for some reason or another, the answers I received did not suffice. Not until I reflected that I was actually doing it--giving people the "benefit of the doubt"--did I come to understand its meaning. It's not a complex term; it just took me a while to see how doubt could be beneficial. But it can be. And I've noticed that recently, I have been using that phrase very often.

I give my teachers the benefit of the doubt when I receive back papers into which I've put long hours and on which they put a letter grade but no comments--perhaps they're too busy to take the time to address my papers' strengths and weaknesses.

I give my friends the benefit of the doubt when they don't respond to a phonecall or text message--perhaps my call or message to them didn't go through.

I give my classmates the benefit of the doubt when the don't show up for meetings--perhaps they're just running late.

You see, giving people the benefit of the doubt is a rather gracious act. It means, in all the cases above, not assuming the negative. It means making allowances for the shortcomings of others. It means acknowledging that I may not see the full picture.

And sometimes I do this with God.

I give God the benefit of the doubt when I see that His calling on my life as a missionary is about to be realized and yet still feel under-prepared--perhaps I'm misreading my life's events and God didn't really mean for me to step into anything new right now.

I give God the benefit of the doubt when I have a multi-thousand dollar budget to be raised in eight months--perhaps it won't come to pass because God wants to impress upon me the value of planning ahead.

I give God the benefit of the doubt when I sense little direction in how to minister to, educate, and serve those with whom I will live overseas--perhaps I'm not hearing anything because God just wants to teach me more than them.

Of course, the benefits of the doubt I give to God can have a positive side, too--perhaps He has in mind some kind of learning experience that will result from all these lofty plans. Perhaps He'll come in and fill in here and there where I'm lacking. And it goes on: perhaps, perhaps, perhaps...

And that's the problem with giving God the benefit of the doubt: doubt is involved. All the "perhaps" statements are indicators of doubt. We muse that perhaps God really didn't mean for this to happen; maybe I'm misinterpreting His words. Perhaps God doesn't mean for all this to come together; maybe He just wants to teach me a lesson about what is possible and what is not. It would be a good lesson, mind you, and would teach me something about the character of God...

We cushion ourselves from the blows of failure, defeat, and deflated dreams by giving God the benefit of the doubt. But the caveat to the phrase that puzzled my childhood is this: It only works on people. Not on God.

When God gives us a dream, makes us a promise, or shows us a glimpse of our future, rarely do we accept it without question and believe unwaveringly that it will come to pass. The frailty in our humanity cries out for constant proof, and when we don't find it right away, we shrink back. Who are we to set such goals, craft such plans, or hold such hopes? But we know that God is God, and we don't want to tell Him, "I don't believe what you've said to me." The feeling remains, however, so we cover this phrase in more socially acceptable statements such as, "Well, I think I feel led to..." or "I thought God spoke to me once..." or "I mean, if God wants it to happen, then it will, but..."

And all of these statements, gracious as they seem, seemingly allowing God the freedom to work and move and change His plans, stem from a heart that struggles with unbelief. While we're helping our friends by giving them the benefit of the doubt, we're hurting God by doing it.

I believe God longs for more people to be like the man in Mark 9:14-32.

The son of the man in this passage was regularly seized by an evil spirit. The man brought his son to Jesus, who by this time had garnered a reputation for performing miracles. Wanting his son to be delivered yet discouraged by the disciples' inability to heal his demon-possessed son, the man addressed Jesus: "But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us." The man would not have brought his afflicted son to the Son of the living God if he did not believe that Jesus could work a miracle. He had hope--some hope. He had faith--some faith. But he recognized that not all the people who crowded around Jesus walked away healed. He knew Jesus made a difference in some people's realities--but maybe He wouldn't make one in his.

"'"If you can"?' said Jesus. 'Everything is possible for him who believes.'
"Immediately the boy's father exclaimed, 'I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!'" (Mark 9:23-24).

Jesus didn't despise this man for his avowed lack of faith. Neither does He despise us for ours. That very hour, Jesus freed the man's son from demon possession. And our lack of faith, our doubt, does not necessarily prevent God from working in our lives. He knows that we are but flesh and is not "a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses" (Hebrews 4:15). When we are convicted that we are infusing doubt into the words God has spoken, softening their impact just in case they don't pan out, let us exclaim immediately, as did the boy's father, "I have doubt! Help me overcome it!" Such is a prayer that God never refuses, "for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust" (Psalm 103:14). God is near to and moves on behalf of honest hearts.

It's okay to grapple with the words God speaks over your life. But let your doubt turn into faith. It won't morph by itself, though; rather, it changes by making a deliberate decision to believe that what God has said to you will come to pass. This won't happen on its own. James 1:6-8 says that "when [we] ask [for wisdom], [we] must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does." So although we are not necessarily preventing God from translating His words into our reality, we are undermining the entire process by our misplaced cautiousness. We ask God for wisdom, we ask God for answers, and we ask God to reveal Himself in our world. And when the words leave our mouth--or even before they do so--our minds are running amok with what ifs regarding what we've asked of Him. And when God shows up and proclaims His will in our lives, we still doubt why He's here and what He means by His coming. We're just trying to be reasonable, we say. But we're reasoning the faith out of our lives in particular situations, dwindling its effectiveness down to far less than what it could be.

And yet even our doubt-saturated outlooks are not entirely bleak; yes, left to themselves the doubtful thoughts will move us nowhere, but when brought to God, the what ifs and the perhaps lose their power. James says that God "gives generously to all" when we ask of Him. Proverbs 30:5 says that "[e]very word of God is flawless; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him." We have these and many other words of truth to confirm His promises to us and His plans for our lives. God, who knows us completely and "is greater than our hearts" (1 John 3:20), invites us to bring every doubt to Him, and He invites us to stay to watch Him extinguish it by the power of His Word and the reputation of His faithfulness.

That said, let us resolve to be like Mary, mother of Jesus, who took the words of God over her life to heart; not because it was easy but because it was necessary. "Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished!" (Luke 1:45). Mary demonstrated a trust in God's character that superseded her doubts.

So my life calling? My budget? The people in my future? Oh, I may waver with doubt on occasion regarding them, but not for long. And not often. Because I have exclaimed that I want Jesus to help me overcome my unbelief, even if it's just a tiny fleck of doubt, He has answered. And because of that, I've stopped giving Him the benefit of the doubt. He doesn't need it.

"All the Lord's promises prove true. He is a shield for all who look to him for protection" (2 Samuel 22:31).