It
seems to me that one should not endeavor to undertake ministry as a
Christian worker, Christian doctor, or life itself
as a Christian, without entering into the presence of God on a daily
basis for serious and concentrated prayer. I find that the more I work with people, the more I must both bring to, and receive from God. It is
a matter of emotional and spiritual survival to bring to the alter the
people and things of the day. For if I am really ministering to
people, if I am truly taking them seriously and trying to share in
their joys and sorrows, they inevitably bring to me worrisome
burdens, unsolvable problems, and deep and prolonged heart aches of
every sort, which I then very naturally mull over and worry about.
Not to mention the great landscape of bad choices that one finds
people in, their houses built long ago firmly in the center of a
hopeless flood plane with such little insight much less desire to
move to higher ground. When I bring these people one by one to the
Lord in prayer, the unbearable burden is found by an unseen assisting
hand and somehow I am able to step out into the day.
Besides
the people themselves, there is the very setting of ministry. Great
consuming and dehumanizing political and cultural systems, deep and
defining histories, overwhelming bureaucracies, endless noisy
advertising, and all the world itself clamoring for the attention of
anyone who will dare open his eyes for even a moment. Along this path
of snakes we are called to walk as Jesus did, as his hands and feet
for the world. In prayer, I find I must close my eyes to the world
in order to receive that message of guidance, peace, and assignment
that comes from God. If I do not daily, deeply, with structure and
persistence, seek the Lord in this way, my attentions are hopelessly
subject to the first minor demand made upon them in the wrong
direction. Even with prayer, I daily fall to one way or another. Yet
our Lord calls us sinners to go out into the invisible fields, work
with tools we cannot touch or feel, and bring in a harvest of which
we cannot truly taste in this world. To even attempt to do so we must
daily receive redirection by blocking out what we can see, and hear
the message from above.
In our struggle, God gives us His word. That
which we cannot see, we are gifted to hear described. That which we
cannot touch, we are told to trust Him to hold for us. And when we
cannot taste those first bites from our gatherings, He gives us
glimpses of His very glory in times of prayer.
That is a much needed reminder for me Paul, thank you for the timeliness of this!
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