In James chapter five, beginning in verse 13, we read about the power of prayer in the life of believers: “Is any on of you in trouble? He should pray.” (v.13)  James continues “Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord.”  James 5:16 says “the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.”  

We know that God hears and attends to our prayers.  We know this because His Word tells us so.  Psalm 6:9 confirms that “the Lord has heard my cry for mercy; the Lord accepts my prayer.”  Yet, often it seems that our prayers fall on deaf ears as we pray for the same thing for weeks or months or even years.  I have certainly had my share of times when it seemed as if God was not listening to my prayers.  It can be discouraging.  When I was a student in seminary, I had been praying relentlessly for God to open the door to a part time ministry.  Most of my friends had located a ministry to gain experience while in school, yet all I could hear was the shutting of doors.  

I recall my lowest point came when we had just found out that Lori was pregnant.  I remember thinking “I am going to be a father soon, and I can’t even get a job.”  At that time I was working in the maintenance department for the school. One day I went to the supply closet to get something and I stayed in the closet for about an hour praying and crying out to God to hear my prayer and grant my request.  What I soon found out was that He was still preparing the place where He wanted me.  Within a few months I had been called to a church that worked out wonderfully.  So often, what we think is unanswered prayer is simply our impatience with God’s timing and perfect plan.  Other times, God simply calls us to a season of waiting.

But there are times when it seems that God answers a prayer almost before we have lifted it up to Him.  Those times are wonderful, unmistakable signs of God’s care for us. One such time came for me a while ago.  

I have a friend, Neil, who ministers in Ohio (about 3 hours from Owosso).  We got to know each other when we ministered near each other in Indiana.  We talk occasionally and get together sometimes, but I hadn’t talked with him in a few months.  But one morning, during a rough time in life and ministry, I was thinking to myself that I wanted to give him a call and talk with him.  He is a wonderful encourager and I just wanted a shot in the arm of encouragement.  So there I was in the bathroom at about 7:30am, thinking and praying about getting together with Neil, when my phone rang.  

I didn’t get to it in time so my son brought it to me and said that someone left a voice message.  It was from Neil. Let me reiterate that I had not talked with him in several months, yet here he is calling me at 7:30am at the exact moment I’m thinking of calling him.  I was in awe of God’s timing.  So I listened to the message expecting him to say “Hey, give me a call when you can.”  But he didn’t say that.  He called because he just felt that he needed to give me a call and wanted to know if I would be free for lunch because he was going to fly to Owosso just to spend some time with me (he has a pilot’s license).  I just sat in stunned silence.  This was no coincidence.  This was God answering a prayer really before I had prayed it!  I called him and asked what had led him to call and fly here.  He said that the day before, he just felt the Spirit prompting him that he needed to give me a call.  When he saw it was going to be nice weather, he just decided to fly here.  God is so awesome.  Don’t tell me it was a strange coincidence.

I think that often God answers our prayers but we don’t give Him the credit, glory, or praise.  Answers to prayer are not always so obvious, unmistakable and obvious.  But He does answer our prayers and knows the deepest needs of our hearts. Psalm 121 says “He will not let your foot slip—he who watches over you will not slumber.”

A couple of years ago we spent the summer swimming through a sermon series on Jonah (or maybe drowning would be a better way to put it).  And yet, perhaps more than any other series I have done in the last ten years, Jonah has stuck with me and frequently comes to mind.  If you weren’t here for the series or if you just need a reminder, Jonah is the Old Testament prophet who was given a particularly difficult assignment by God.  God told him to go to the city of Nineveh, the capital of Assyria and a city of wicked people, and preach to them.  Understandable, Jonah did not want to go.  In fact, he tried to run away heading in the exact opposite direction.  But God would not let Jonah out of the assignment eventually urging his compliance by sending a big fish to swallow him.  Jonah ultimately complied to the Lord’s command but really didn’t embrace it with his heart.  Kind of like the little girl who was being punished by being made to sit in the corner.  “I may be sitting down on the outside, but I’m standing on the inside,” she fumed to her mother.  Similarly, Jonah pretty much had a lousy attitude about the whole thing.  

The bottom line for Jonah was simply to obey God and do what He wants him to do.  And this is the bottom line for us as well-to obey God and quit making excuses and justifying our failure to obey.  Most of what God wants us to do is in the Bible.  It’s not rocket science.  But there are times that God gives us assignments or burdens and we know that we are to obey but it’s hard.  And, at times, we want to run and disobey.  Jonah was a prophet sent to minister God’s Word to people.  And this is a hard thing to do faithfully in season and out of season. 

A couple Sundays ago our church ordained my son, Daniel, to Christian Ministry.  This is basically affirming God’s call on his life and sending him forth to minister God’s Word in whatever way God leads.  We are indeed very proud of him and are so blessed to have the support of our church family.  I was ordained to ministry exactly 20 years ago this October.  And I will tell you that over the last 23 years of being in ministry I have often felt like Jonah. I have never doubted for once in 23 years in ministry that God has called and still calls me to be in ministry.  But I have doubted many times my ability, I have doubted the results, I have often been very honest with God in my lack of desire to do certain hard things and to face difficult situations.  

And, yes, at times I have even tried to run away. At least in my heart.  

Ministry, for many reasons which are very hard to understand unless you have been there, is a difficult life work.  Or I should say it is difficult if you desire to be a conscientious pleaser of God and not a pleaser of people. 
Yet, as I look back over the last 25 years, I wouldn’t trade any of it. And I especially wouldn’t trade the very hard times.  These are the times which God uses to forge us into real men and women of God. It’s easier to see that in hindsight than when you are on the ship headed to Nineveh or picking krill out of your hair in the belly of the beast.  And, yet, that’s ministry.  

And so as Dan is ordained I know that he will be in store for some awesome blessings but also for some hard times in ministry life.  He has had a front row seat to ministry life with it’s many blessings.  He has been able to be a part of a very loving and great congregation.  But through the years he has also been able to see some of the reality of ministry.  

And like Jonah (and me) I am sure there will be times when he will not feel very “ministerly.”   But it’s the call on his life, like Jonah, that will keep him lashed to the mast of ministry.  And this is a good thing.  I have seen all too many folks start out great in ministry life only to give it up because it’s difficult.  There are many times I want to bail because it’s difficult. But it’s the unrelenting call of God on my life which keeps me doing my best to do my best. I recognize that there might be a good many who think “what’s so hard about  ministry?”  And I get that.  I would never think of comparing ministry to other jobs in terms of which is more difficult.  Yet, ministry is a uniquely difficult calling for many reasons.  This has led many to hitch a ride to Tarshish when God says go to Ninevah.  So  I would really appreciate your prayers for Dan as he begins what I believe will be a lifetime of serving the Lord and obeying His call.  It won’t be easy.  He will face times of uncertainty, disappointment, criticism, and feelings of unworthiness.  There will be times when he will wonder what in the world he is doing in ministry.  There will be times when he will say with the prophet Jeremiah “Lord, you deceived me and I was deceived.” But he will also experience abundant grace, provision, blessing, and the satisfaction of living a life worthy of the call.  The liberating reality is that in our weakness God is strong and that we are nothing but earthen vessels.  

In the end, my only hope is that what was said of David (and I hope will be said of me) will be said of Daniel:  “And David shepherded them with integrity of heart; with skillful hands he led them.”  (Psalm 78:72)

A while ago I was becoming increasingly disgusted by the volume of email I was getting.  This is the email which is getting by Gmail filters and making it to my inbox not to mention all the junk mail which doesn’t get past the spam filters.  Much of it is stuff that I at one time signed up for never realize that it would continue to flood my inbox and waste my time.   As I found myself deleting every day or every week the same email from the same senders I started to contemplate that most extreme of actions to the email weary–starting over from scratch with a new email account.  Just like God said “let’s start from scratch with a flood to ride the world of evil” I thought about starting from scratch to rid my inbox of the evil flood of email.  

Great idea, but then I started to think about all the stuff I have linked to that email address that I would have to change.  And what if I forgot to make the email change on one website or one login?  That could be catastrophic!  Probabably not, but you never know!   But then I noticed a little thing that nearly all such emails seem to have at the bottom–the words “unsubscribe.”  Could it be as easy as that?  Just click that little word and I will magically cease to get the emails.  I thought it must be a joke.  

Surely a wary click on that word would lead to a labyrinth of websites which would result in more emails from the Chinese mob or Russian hackers (like those responsible for the Conficker virus) who might hack my Mac and steal my iTunes library.    

But I tried it, and miracle of miracles it works most of the time.  Sometimes a click on Unsubsribe takes you to a form where you are asked why you no longer what to receive their life changing emails. But it takes just a little time and prevents you from aving to deal with their unwanted email again. Other times just one click will make the emails go away with no further hassle.   I little time spent in simplifying my inbox results in less distraction and time wasted. 

We all have many things piling up in the inbox of life.  We need to be as diligent to eliminate some of these attention stealers from our lives so that we can discern the important from the frivilous.  I love tech, but let’s be honest so much of it is chasing rabbit trails (kind of like writing on a blog that no one will see!).  But it steals our time and we spend time looking at stuff and thinking about stuff that we never would if it weren’t in our inbox, so to speak.  So how about doing the same thing with life as I am doing with my inbox? Just little by little, systematically evaluating what gets our time and attention.  And then hitting “Unsubscribe” on some of it.  It may take a little more time and thought initially.  But the reward could be a less cluttered life with fewer distractions.  Sure, you might miss that crucial email alerting you to the latest greatest thing you could take advantage of.  But if you don’t know about it, you won’t miss it.  And I think that’s just as good . . . if not better!

“There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.”  Or so Dorothy incants in an effort to get back to this place called home in The Wizard of Oz. As clear as the concept of home might be to Dorothy, I think that it’s much more vague to most of us.  For example, you’re filling out a form or updating your Facebook profile and it wants to know your hometown.  Does it mean the town where you were born? Or does it mean the place you spent the majority of your youth?  Or is home the place you have lived for the past 12 years–the longest you have lived in any one place?  As important as a city, house, or location is, they are not the best understanding of what this elusive word “home” is.

 Was it Robert Frost who said something to the effect that your family are those who, when you go there, have to take you in?  This connotes the relationships which really make home, home.  The relationships were the lure enticing Dorothy homeward.  Or more so, at least, than the physical place.

And, yet, the very thing–relationships–which make home that place of eternal longing can also evoke the most pain and suffering.  What if those precious relationships are no more due to death? What if our gilded childhood memories have long given way to more mature and accurate ones.  And we find out that home isn’t or wasn’t the place we thought it to be.   Or, for those of us who did have a great childhood and home, capturing that for ourselves or our children can become just a quixotic quest.  

I would never have told Dorothy this if I would have been with her, but the sad (yet, also, very liberating) truth is that you really can’t go back home.  Or, at least, the home that most of us would aspire to go to.   But this is a gift from God meant to point us to our real home–our heavenly home–the place where all of our youthful longings and future aspirations will finally and completely and eternally be met.  “In my Father’s house are many rooms,” said Jesus, “and I am going there to prepare a place for you.”  

According to a great writer, Mark Buchanan, this inner longing we have for home is a really a taste of the eternal given to us by God to orient us toward our real home.  It is a foretaste of things unseen.  It is a longing for all the relationships, the locale, the food, the smells, the sights, the sounds, the laughter, and the contentment which home brings.  This longing for home, properly understood, centers us around the most important thing–our relationship with God, the Good Shepherd, in whose house we will dwell forever.

One of best shows that I have seen in a long, long time (perhaps the best show) is the PBS show, Call the Midwife.  It’s hard to explain my love for this show.  And, as the title would suggest, it’s not really a show that guys are supposed to be into.  So, man cards willingly surrendered, I will say that I truly love this show.  This is because it revolves so heavily around the relationships which make an otherwise difficult life of the people it portrays more homelike.   The show is based on the memoirs of Jennifer Worth who was a midwife in the 50’s in London’s East End where the poverty was nearly as prolific as the procreation.   At the end of a particularly poignant recent episode the voiceover closes with these words.  I love this description of home.  Whether the author intended it or not, I believe that it aptly describes our heavenly home.

Home is not simply a mark upon a map anymore than a river is simply water. It is a place at the center of the compass from which every arrow radiates and where the heart is fixed. It is a force that forever draws us back or lures us on. For where the home is, there lies hope. And the future waits and everything is possible.  -Jennifer Worth, Call the Midwife