Unanswered Prayer (4)

  

I want to share an experience I had a few years ago before I move on…hopefully to a conclusion: I was part of a team leading a weekend retreat for a church outside Richmond. One of the associate pastors stopped by the retreat center to spend a couple of hours with us. When the time came for him to leave, I asked him if we could pray for him and he readily agreed. We gathered around him (there were 20 or 30 of us), laid hands on him, and prayed…we prayed all at once and we prayed individually…and we prayed silently…waiting on the Lord. We were in no hurry.

 

After our prayer time, the pastor said to me, “This was wonderful. I can’t tell you how I feel. When I was around 22 years old I had a similar experience when people gathered around me and prayed for me. This is just great.” The dear brother was about 65 years old when he told me this. I wondered, “Why did you wait so long?” And then, if our dear brother had experienced the power and grace of the Body of Christ praying for one another, serving one another, why not introduce the entire congregation, of 600 – 800 people, to their inheritance in Jesus Christ as His People? But of course that would entail rethinking the wineskin…a dangerous endeavor.

 

I have been in countless small group settings over the years in which people were encouraged to organically gather in Christ, they have gone by different names and sometimes by no names; sometimes they have been incorporated within a congregation and sometimes nurtured by other ministries, sometimes they have been truly organic, that is, they have “sprung up” like a volunteer fruit tree in a garden. This is where I have seen the organic expression of the Body of Christ, this is where things happen, this is where prayer is answered, and if prayer is seemingly unanswered, there are brothers and sisters to help carry the load.

 

So here again, as with John chapters 13 – 17, we come back to context. What is the context in which we are meant to understand and experience the many promises of God? By and large the Bible is written to a People, and if I do not see the Bible and its promises as given to a People, a People to whom I belong, then will I really be in a place to see and experience what God’s Word is saying?

 

We are called, as Bonhoeffer might say, to share life together. We might even title John chapters 13 – 17 as Life Together. This is to be the fabric of our life in Christ.

 

Conclusion:

 

This really isn’t a conclusion, can there be one? We see through a glass darkly, and “hope deferred makes the heart sick,” I can’t deny that. Yes, His grace is sufficient for us, but isn’t it harder when it is those we love who are experiencing the pain?

 

Help us Lord Jesus…and help us to help one another.

 

Amen.

 

Thanking God for our friendship,

 

Bob