Don't Give Up the Ship

Sundays downtown we project out prayer requests up on the screen. I recently had the thought that we could just chisel some of these lines into stone; they seem to describe eternally unwavering circumstances. However... 

For as long as I have known Richard, he has been praying for his unsaved dad to come to faith. Richard himself has an amazing testimony as one who endured shame and hardship throughout his childhood in East Cleveland. He experienced severe racial hostility as a black-Asian mix. Even into his adult life, he has battled fear, anxiety, and loneliness. Richard answered Jesus' call more than seven years ago and, though he's been through many ups and downs, good times and hard times, he has demonstrated serious faith and commitment to know the Word.

Richard stood in the gap, uniquely qualified to speak into his dad's life. His dad went down with a stroke and is, even now, secluded in an assisted living apartment near Kinsman on the east side. (As an editorial note, the place he lives in is filled with characters who likeness I can only compare to the Adam's family of the hood.) For longer than I can remember, Richard has been faithful to visit, share the gospel, and pray that the Spirit would move in his father's heart. Even in his debilitated state, Richard's father would sometimes reach out and close the Bible when Richard began to speak.

You can understand how it took me by surprise when Richard stood in church last Sunday to tell us that his dad had answered the call and turned to Jesus. We went to go see Richard's father on Tuesday and prayed with him. I will never forget how he cried when he told us that he could "only give us one hand." (He was not able to use his right hand to shake our hands as a result of the stroke.) Pastor Ken was also moved to tears because he understood the pain of being severely limited by failing health. There is a lot of joy in knowing that the best kind of healing is ahead for Richard's father, even if it's not on this side of heaven. I have prayed fiercely that God would demonstrate his power in healing Richard right now, but God obviously knows better and brought this whole situation about by intention!

2 Corinthians 4:16

"Therefore we do not give up. Even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day."

People like me from the microwave generation can learn something about the God who lives outside of time. He is faithful even when we are faithless (2 Timothy 2:13). He is working for good even when we are too spiritually blind to see it (Ecclesiastes 11:5). And practically speaking, coming out of a hard weekend with a lot of teens and a lot of spiritual warfare at play, I have to remind myself that God is the one at work; if anyone is giving up the ship in prayer, it's got to be on us.

"God was either in them or on them - either he resided in them, because they had given their lives to Christ, or He was influencing them, using people and circumstances to draw their attention to themselves." - Ted Travis, Building Cathedrals