My 2001 Prayer Revisited
My wife Cheryl and I had another couple over for dinner last Saturday. After eating we took our friends down to our family room, which happens to be where I keep many of my books. The husband looked through the shelves (something I love for guests to do) and pulled off the workbook edition of Experiencing God by Henry Blackaby. I was introduced to this great book by one of my mentors in 2001. Cheryl and I each worked through our own copy together back then. God worked in each of our lives in major ways through Blackaby’s words. We have both taught from and led groups through Experiencing God over the years. (Incidentally, both Cheryl’s and my copies were on the shelf, but my friend just happened to extract mine.)
After flipping through the pages for a minute, my friend opened the book to a particular page, handed it to me and said, “Read the comments in the margin, out loud.” In truth, I wasn’t exactly thrilled that he had pulled that book off the shelf to read through, since it was a workbook study I had actually completed. Translation: he was looking at all my personal comments! Not that I had anything to hide. I just felt suddenly vulnerable. And now, he wanted me to read one of those personal thoughts out loud!
I took a quick glance at what I had written, to make sure it wasn’t about lustful thoughts or something else not fit for mixed company. Just above my note in the margin there was a pull-quote in bold type from the text of the book that said, “You cannot stay the way you are and go with God.” After jogging my memory as to the relevance of that statement to the book, I read aloud these words, which I had written on October 18, 2001:
My prayer: Lord, you have just spoken the words above into my heart. [referring to the pull-quote] You have been trying to mold me and I have resisted. You have invited me and I have gone my own way time and time again. Please make this the day, the hour, the minute, the second, the moment that your will takes hold in me and over my life. Give me the strength to do what I cannot do alone, but only through you! Amen
In October of 2001, graduation from seminary was still nine months away. I had not started to look for ministry staff positions, partly because I thought I knew what I wanted to do after graduation (emphasis on “I”). In less than two months I would complete my internship in the Small Groups area of an organization that existed to equip church leaders to do ministry more effectively. Having worked in (and having felt very comfortable in) the business world for more than twenty years, as well as having worked for three years training pastors and small group leaders to start and lead groups in their churches, I thought that my staying on and working for that organization was the perfect path for me. In my loving and compassionate way, I knew that rather than working in an actual church, I wanted to travel around the country “kicking leaders’ butts and showing them how to do small group ministry right.” (I often used those very words.)
Thankfully, I had prayed that prayer in October. Because when my internship ended that December, I was surprised to feel like a chapter in my ministry was closing. Despite how clearly I had seen my own path to the future, I found myself in my final meeting with my internship supervisor. The conversation went something like this: “Hey, it’s been great working with you. You’ve been a good student and you’ve done a good job here. But I don’t really see that this area of ministry is exactly making your heart race and keeping you up at night.” My response was something like, “You’re right. You’ve been great and I’m really glad I got to work with you. But I don’t feel like this is the plan for me in ministry.” After leaving his office I was soon asking God, “What’s the deal? You’ve been telling me to trust you and you would reveal your plan along the way. I thought that was it! Now what am I supposed to do?”
Again, I reference my 10/21/01 prayer. God was answering it before my eyes. He had closed the door to what I thought was my ministry future. (Even though I was so good at it, and it matched-up with my skills, and I was so comfortable with it! Go figure!) God had been molding my heart and filling it with compassion (which it had been sadly lacking for most of my life). Very soon after the end of my internship, God led me to a ministry I knew little, if not nothing about, and in which I would not have foreseen myself working, ever. On December 24th, 2001, I showed up in the Pastoral Care ministry at Willow Creek. I needed to complete one more piece of field work and this was one of the few places in the church where I could do that.
I wouldn’t begin to realize it for another month or so, but God had done just what I had prayed for. He had now brought me to a place that lined-up with His plan and not mine. And without a doubt, this was a place where I would need to rely on him every single day! And God in fact showed up, day after day for the entire run of seven years I served in that ministry. I started as a student, then stayed on as a volunteer because I couldn’t imagine serving anywhere else, and shortly after that they made me part of the staff because they could see I wasn’t leaving, no matter what.
And now, eight years later I realize that I need to pray the same prayer I prayed in 2001. I need God to show up again, to change me as He sees fit, to give me his invitation to the next leg of my ministry journey. I believe that once again he will answer my prayer and “give me the strength to do what I cannot do alone,” but only through Him. Amen!
Do you need to pray that prayer, or one like it? Has there been a time in your life when you asked God to have his way in you and with you, and He did just that? What happened?
