A lifelong journey of prayer and action (part 3)

This is part three of my story, told in response to the question:

In your partnership with God. how has the balance of your role/God’s role and prayer/action changed over the years?

The next three years contained so much wrestling with God that at time it resembled a bloodbath. I guess this is because whilst there was space for God to do His role and action on the outside, there was still much space to be cleared internally. A lovely caring prophet eyeballed me one day in a very scary way and asked “Is He enough?” I answered yes, knowing what I’d given up for Him. The prophet asked again, “Is He? Is He enough?” (I felt like Peter on the beach… “Lord, you know…”). I wanted to shout “Stop asking me that question! If there is something I haven’t given up, something I am not doing, just tell me!”

I discovered that when God gives a confusing, difficult word, it is not to taunt us, but it is an invitation. In a way God was teasing me, he was provoking me and upsetting me. He was also wooing me, wanting me to come closer, inviting me to play with the puzzle, to search more deeply for the clues which would tell me why He’d asked such a question.

 I’m giving you this detail because I think it is important. I wrestled with God with such anger and frustration and desperation. “Why won’t you just tell me plainly what to do?” was a frequent question. God had promised a new house and garden with space for hospitality, prayer, creativity and growing things, where much of what he was calling us to would make sense… but it wasn’t here yet and there was no sign of it. After much research and prayer I realised what God was asking me not to do regarding the education of my children… but God seemed very quiet when it came to what I was to do. During this time a prophet would only have to come within a hundred yards of me, or on one occasion my wife, and they would be blurting out that I was a writer…. but I had written nothing. God prompted one person to tell me I should paint, and another person to send money for art lessons… but I couldn’t paint, had no time to paint, couldn’t find any art lessons or any time to get to any art lessons. God would tell me clearly what work I should not do, what jobs not to apply for, and eventually not to be employed by someone else at all… but said very little about what I should do or how to earn money. Many times God would direct us to do something that we did not have the money to do.

 And so it went on. Whenever I met someone new and they asked “What do you do?” I had no idea what to say. The one thing I was confronted with over and over again, in so many different ways, from so many different angles, was “Be still and know that I am God.” Gradually, step by step, with different experiences and friends helping along the way, I tried putting that verse into practice. The more I learnt to be still, the more I found I could trust God. The more I stopped fretting and asked God to show me things from his perspective, the more at ease I became. Also, I was getting used to spending all the money I had on something God was asking me to buy, knowing that this would mean that there was no money left for food for the rest of the week, and then God provide money or food in an unexpected way. I think God was delighting in finding new ways to surprise me with his provision. When this happens over a period of months and years, I suppose we naturally learn that we can trust God for our needs, and for the other things he has promised but which aren’t here yet.

 I spent some time with one friend who, after many years of discussing “My yoke is easy and my burden is light” actually seemed to be living it. Over all the years I had known him, I had never seen him so relaxed and at peace. He was working hard, but his work, for him, was easy. He spent enough time in prayer, enough time with his family, enough time relaxing, and enough time working. He was working less hours and less frantically than I’d ever seen him, but achieving so much more than ever; the fruit was more bountiful and spreading further than ever. His secret was in letting his Father show him what to do and then doing just that and no more.

 Alongside this, I was beginning to understand self-limitation. God gave us free will and in that one stroke, deliberately limited his influence over us and gave his power away. Jesus came to earth as a human, even a baby, and deliberately limited himself and gave his power away, even to the point of public execution. I could see how missionaries I knew had limited contacts, limited language, limited resources, yet were able to achieve so much. In my own life, I had limited time, limited opportunities to meet and encourage others, yet when I did get the chance to meet with someone after a month of trying, we would have such an important, God-ordained conversation.

God also showed me very clearly one day, that I was serving him in praying what he asked me to pray, where he sent me, when he sent me. This might only happen once in six weeks, but these rare opportunities were all that God needed for me to partner with him. Sometimes God sends me to a particular place in the city where I live, and when I get there I follow the small prompts I have to pray and do certain things. In this way, I have seen the landscape and environment and activity in those places change in ways that astonish and humble me. God takes me and my role seriously, and so should I. I might not be involved with the sick, the poor, the lost, the badly housed, the addicted every day. I may feel like I am not doing the work of the Kingdom at all sometimes. Yet, if I can surrender myself to Him, and do the little bit he gives me to do, then that is enough.

 I thank God for the turmoil of the last few years. Step by step, slowly but very surely, God has taught me to trust Him. When fear whispers that I have limited the opportunities for my children and hampered their chances of success, when doubt questions God’s promises and renames them fantasy, when frustration triggers anger at yet more foolishness, when the future looks further away and more impossible than ever… I am now in the place where God has nurtured me to the point of trust. He is my friend and I can trust him. When nothing he has said seems to be happening and nothing he has shown me seems real, He is enough.

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