Never Pray for This

Since it’s the New Year now, I thought I’d give you some helpful words of advice right up front. OK? Cool, here we go.

If there’s 3 things that you never ever ever ever want to pray for this year (or any year), it’s these 3 things:

1. patience
2. that you want to step-up your love walk
3. that God will help teach you humility.

Trust me... don’t ever do it. If you do you’re just stupid. Life’s hard enough as it is, so why would you want to make it more difficult by asking God to open up a can of whatever-it-is that you need to have that kind of prayer answered? Just wipe the very thought from your mind. Trust me on this one. I actually prayed a few weeks ago that God would get-out all of the junk in me that was holding me back from experiencing more of Him (this may be stupid prayer #4) and He’s obliged me, for sure. It seems like I could possibly of hit the “prayer trifecta” by praying that prayer. In one broad stroke, God’s shown me that I need to grow in the area of love, patience and humility all at the same time because it seems like I’ve had the “constant pressure” of - having to walk in love because everybody’s aggravating me, to be more patient even though I don’t get my way EVER and NOTHING ever goes as planned and God has revealed (to me) parts of me that have made me realize how broken I really am (and that’s definitely humbling).

I could literally give you hundreds of examples from any day we’ve been here (and since I prayed that prayer) of how hard it’s been. Because everything has been difficult, challenging, stressful, lonely, trying... just add any other negative adjective you can think of here and I’ve experienced it.

The thing that’s funny is that I don’t ever remember praying for patience, love or humility. I just wanted to be closer to God. So what’s up with that? Why couldn’t He just allow me to have a closer walk with Him by osmoses or by giving me a heavenly vision or by appearing to me in a dream or something? Why couldn’t I just go to bed one night and wake-up the next morning having had some type of out of body 3rd heaven experience like Paul had or something? Why is it that He has to have me walk through something difficult instead? Why? Because the only way to actually walk in love is to have the opportunity to “walk in love.” Anybody can “love” when there’s no conflict or when everybody’s getting along. And the only way to be humble is to actually be in a situation where you have the opportunity to humble yourself (you can exalt yourself but you choose to lay down your way for someone else’s, especially God’s, way). And the only way to be patient is to actually have the opportunity to exercise patience. Anybody can be patient when everything’s going exactly the way you want it to go.

It reminds me of a story I heard about the pipe they used to build “The Alaskan Pipeline.” It took hundreds of miles of pipe to build it and each piece of pipe had to be tested before it was installed. What they would do to test all the pipe, before it was installed out in the field, was hook it up to a machine that would apply pressure to it. Each piece of pipe was put under extreme pressure to make sure that it was going to hold-up under the pressure that it would have to be under, hundreds of miles out in the wilderness, pumping oil. They couldn’t run the risk of putting pipe into the pipeline that couldn’t hold-up under the stress of pumping oil. This machine would prove that the pipe was solid. It would expose any stress fractures or breaks in each piece of pipe (ahead of time) so that they knew that each piece of pipe had what it took to do what it was that it needed to do... pump oil.

It’s the same thing that God does with our lives. He applies pressure to different areas of our lives so that it reveals where the weak places are. And He doesn’t do it just to torture us but so that we can work on those areas. As frustrating and as painful as it is, it’s necessary. Because if we didn’t realize our weakness in those areas we’d crumble under the pressure of the “game-time” situation He’s preparing us for. We may not be pumping oil, but we are suppose to be carriers of the Gospel to the world, right?

So, if you keep facing the same frustrating situation, maybe God’s trying to strengthen you where you’re weak? Just something to think about: )

Feeling Like A Piece of Pipe,

Jim

PS- The picture at the top was taken this morning right before we took Michael (our firstborn) to the airport. He was with us for 10 days and it was difficult saying goodbye to him, to say the least. But we know that God has us here in Brazil and him in the US for a purpose. So despite a bunch of tears, we're good with it. Please pray for him as he's traveling over the next 24 hrs.