Devotions

Facing Uncertainty

And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. And they went and woke him, saying, "Save us, Lord; we are perishing." And he said to them, "Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?" Matthew 8:23-26

Why didn’t somebody tell me earlier in my life that I can’t fix everything? I thought that with due diligence, everything can get resolved. If there were things up ahead that concerned me, I could just make a plan to solve them. In time, I could have it all figured out and then set the automatic “good life” pilot and let it take over.

It’s only more recently that I have grasped that life will never be “together” this side of eternity. It’s hard to accept sometimes that perfect is only for heaven.

There will always be people problems. There will always be financial challenges.

There will always be a home burden, or a crisis of some kind. Every day I live in this world, there will always be some uncertainty ringing my doorbell.

So much for my assumption that if you worked hard enough, eventually everything would be sorted out, categorized, and put neatly on the shelf. I have never gotten to that day and what’s more, I now know it’s never coming.

In Matthew 8:23–24, we land in Jesus’ life on a day that perfectly illustrates the imperfections of human existence. “When he got into the boat, His disciplines followed him. And behold, there arose a great storm.” In the original language, the two words great storm can be translated to mega and seismic. As in, And behold, there arose a mega seismic on the sea, so that the boat was consumed by the waves. It’s worth remembering that this description comes from Matthew, one of the disciples who wasn’t a fisherman. He had the terrified layman’s perspective on this storm!

I have a few questions about that whole scene:

1. Did Jesus not check the Weather Channel? He totally knew that storm was coming yet He led them right into it. Get in the boat, boys. He knowingly took them into harm’s way.

2. Could Jesus have stopped the storm before it started? Sure He could have but He let the storm come.

3. So is it true to say that He wanted the storm? I think we could surmise that He was actually looking forward to how He was going to use the storm in the disciples’ lives.

Let’s get our theology straight. Sometimes Jesus disguises exciting opportunities for personal growth as difficult circumstances. We would choose to avoid trials at all costs, but Jesus sees the bigger picture.

Thomas Brooks

Today I watched my kids, Hudson and Daniel, playing with forty African AIDS orphans. Depressingly, to be African and to be orphaned by AIDS has become a cliché. Trips so easily off the tongue and onto the keyboard: African. AIDS. Orphans.

(God help us).

So I wish you could have seen those forty, smiling children dancing around my two blonde boys singing ‘White boy in da ring, tra-la-la-la-la’ (apparently it was a traditional African song long before Boney M made it a hit in the 80’s) . I watched as Hudson and Danny’s innate Western suspicion (where did that come from?) began to evaporate in the Zambian sun and before long they too were dancing, singing along and laughing without worrying about looking cool (they didn’t!) It was a beautiful sight for a father to see, and it dawned on me that my children were being given permission by these children simply to be children again. ‘Who needs who?’ I wondered.

Stolen Water
It’s hard to feel sorry for people who don’t feel sorry for themselves. These Zambian children find themselves alive without parents, living from day-to-day in a compound called Koloko, where there is no water and no electricity and precious little hope. But they are joyful! They search the rubbish dumps for tires which they burn to extract valuable wires. They also trudge back-and-forth to the fractured, mains water-pipe to fill jerry-cans full of precious, red, muddy, drinking water. Stolen water.

I watched an eight-year-old girl called Gracious carrying her baby brother on her back. I’d heard about orphaned children who have to raise their younger siblings; I’d even studied the statistics about them (they’re shocking), but it all comes home when you’re singing ‘Boney M’ hits with a girl like Gracious who’s the age of your own children and yet a mother too.

Those forty kids dancing round my boys are being given free education at a simple little school set up in Koloko by my wife’s parents. Next door they have also started an AIDS counselling service. It’s run by a local bishop called Dixon whose own daughter died of an AIDS related illness last month. Come to places like Koloko and you quickly realise that the church really is the only hope for the world’s poor.

A verb, not a noun...
But you may be wodering what African AIDS Orphans have to do with 24-7 Prayer?
Prayer is like pregnancy: it gives birth to miraculous new life (mission, innovation, community, creativity, social justice - you name it.) Many people I meet define 24-7 as a particular model of prayer, but we actually don’t mind how people pray as long as they pray! Prayer rooms are certainly a brilliant way of engaging with God, but they aren’t the only way. And although prayer is the heartbeat of everything we do, you’ll have noticed that it isn’t the only thing we do. A friend in Scotland recently explained it like this:

24-7 is meant to be a verb – an action, and not a noun – an object or organisation. We are friends giving permission to one another to do creative, courageous, Kingdom things. Prayer propels us out to make a difference in the world. How can we NOT respond to situations like Koloko when the bible so clearly links prayer with our attitude to the poor (Isaiah 58)?

From Zambia to Uganda, prayer is propelling us out to make a difference. I was so excited to read the story on this website about an island on Lake Victoria which was recently evangelised thanks to a Ugandan 24-7 prayer room! In the place of prayer God commissioned these intercessors to go to a particular island. They arrived and found a totally unevangelised people group (with a 90% HIV infection rate). They preached the gospel and, as a result, a church of fifty was born amongst some of the poorest people on earth!

It’s because prayer is a pregnancy that the 24-7 community has also recently given birth to an exciting new devotional resource. Our funny little podcast, recorded in my front room for the price of a take-away curry, has somehow gone straight to the top of the iTunes religion and spirituality charts ahead of sophisticated, expensive (and frankly much better) downloads recorded in proper studios by people who actually know what they are doing. We’d always assumed that 24-7 Prayer Spaces would start small and build slowly so (as you may have noticed) the recording is pretty duff and we’re only just working out how to do it properly. Life happens.

Sitting here in Africa yesterday I was reminded of another sign of life: it came in the form of a text message from Phil Anderson, author of the 24-7 Title Lord of the Ring and one of the pioneers of the Boiler Room in Corringham, near London. Phil now works in the British Parliament and was asking us to pray for a key meeting of political leaders yesterday afternoon. From the poor of Zambia to the politicians of Britain via podcasts on iTunes, I’m convinced that stuff like this only happens because of our commitment to prayer. We certainly never planned it this way, and even if we had, we could never have made all these exciting things happen.

God of the (im)Possible
Satan HATES it when we pray (ever wondered why it’s always such a struggle?). He HATES it when we discover the mind-bending truth that ‘Everything is possible for him who believes’ (Mark 9:23) and that ‘all things are possible with God’ (Mark 10:27) and that ‘My Father will give you whatever you ask in my name’ (John 16:23). Satan wants us to despair about these kids in Koloko. It’s God alone who enables us to look at their situation with eyes of faith.

Did you know that Satan has an agenda for your life? He wants to hurt you. He wants to intimidate you. He wants to undermine the absolute self-confidence with which you were born. He knows that when humans get wounded they tend to seek safety instead of adventure, they default to an ‘I can’t do that’ outlook and they water-down their prayers. No wonder the most frequent commandment in the bible is ‘Do not be afraid! Be courageous! Don’t fear!’ How do we get such courage? We get it from the One who made heaven and earth, the One who overcame death, the One who invites us into the place of prayer.

The other way Satan tries to stop you believing is by turning your relationship with Jesus (which is – let’s face it – the most exciting thing about you) into a rigid set of religious rules that restrict, suspect and protect instead of releasing you to start fires. Satan wants to turn every Jesus-verb into a religious-noun, every permission into a restriction, he wants to reduce ‘now’ stories into ancient histories and possibilities into apparently insurmountable problems.

Last night as I prayed with my kids, Hudson announced that he wants to give half of his pocket money to the orphan kids in Koloko. If we keep praying, who knows what’ll happen next?

Bio
Pete Greig is an author, church-planter and one of the founding leaders of 24-7prayer. Proposed by Relevant Magazine as one of the top fifty 'Revolutionary Leaders' of his generation, Pete is a popular speaker whose books have been translated into a number of languages.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

Live the Truth

Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. Ephesians 24 - 29

In a society built upon lying, it’s easy to rationalize and reduce our responsibility for not living the truth. Lying is not just speaking the wrong, lying is also presenting a false view of ourselves. It’s all deception and it’s in all of us. We all lie and if you think that you don’t, you just did.

All of us fight a constant battle between truth and error inside our heads. We pretend to be different than we are, we lie about ourselves, our circumstances, and our spirituality. We lie by what we say, by what we don’t say, gray areas, angles, and imprecision in our speech. This lying bent is a characteristic of our old nature and incredibly hard to shake.

We lie to acquire. Sometimes we lie to get something we want--money on tax returns, a job, a promotion, a relationship. We fear if we tell the truth, we’ll go without.

We lie to enhance. I want people to think I’m smarter or better than I am. Nobody would love me if they knew what I was really like.

We lie to protect ourselves or to avoid something that we don’t want to happen. I don’t want to pay that fine . . . or lose that chance, or deal with that problem.

The follower of Christ is called to higher living--an authentic, truthful, trustworthy standard.

There is no clearer way to say it: stop lying and live the truth. Ephesians 4:25 says, “Therefore, having put away falsehood let each one of you speak the truth.”

Aren’t you glad to know that true spirituality isn’t like duct tape? I’ll just stop talking--if my lips are sealed then I won’t lie. But God doesn’t want us to stop speaking or relating, He wants truth to come out of our hearts and mouths instead. He wants us to be open and transparent, building healthy relationships and living out the Word of God. Truth is the very best thing we have and as Jesus said, it’s what sets you free.

Stand for Christ

So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven. Matthew 10:32-33

A hundred years from today there will be only one choice that will matter to you: Did I stand for Christ?

We’re not on a small subject here. Do you confess Jesus Christ as Your Lord and Savior?--Not just at church but everywhere you go? Is there a growing pattern of loyalty to Him? Does your love for Him resonate in your heart? Do you commit like me to putting Him first in everything?

Whatever else I get done in this world, God help me stand for Him. I will not lower the flag. I will not back up or shut up or hide the reality of my allegiance to Jesus Christ. I will not do that. I cannot do that. I choose to stand.

By standing, I mean a state of mind from which we are free from doubt. Allegiance. Assurance. Certainty. Certitude. Commitment. Confidence. Decisiveness. Fidelity. Firmness. Fortitude. Grit loyalty. Persistence. Steadfast resolve. Tenacity. Trust.

The opposite of standing would be things like: Backing down. Doubting. Faltering. Hesitating. Indecision. Skepticism. Suspicion. Unbelief. Uncertainty. Vacillating. Wavering.

The people who know you best should be absolutely certain that you love Jesus Christ as your highest priority. Something is desperately wrong if they don’t know that. Do you need to go to work this week and say, “Hey, there’s something I’ve never told you about myself before. Let me tell you what matters most to me.”

Are you standing for Christ? I commend to you the courage to examine this area of your life. Wherever life takes you, whatever happens to you, whatever you face or deal with that you couldn’t possibly know of right now, may your deepest passion and commitment be the reality that you stand for Jesus. Every chance I get, every place I go, this is what my life is going to be about.

That’s a powerful commitment. God can do awesome things with a person who is totally yielded to Him. There will be a day (unless the Lord returns first) when you will have a tombstone. Written on it will be the summary of your life. It would be amazing if it said, This person confessed Jesus Christ. He had a growing loyalty and an allegiance to Jesus. Or she grew to love Jesus more and more. Or He stood for God. What would be more important to your eternity than this?

Stand at the foot of the cross, and count the purple drops by which you have been cleansed; see the thorn-crown; mark His scourged shoulders, still gushing with encrimsoned rills . . . . And if you do not lie prostrate on the ground before that cross, you have never seen it.