The air we breathe

Prayer is like the air we breathe.  We are desperate for it.  Desperate to communicate with God.  Desperate to hear his reply.  Desperate for his intervention.  We intercede with desperation.  We are desperate for intercession.  There have been times when I was desperate for air.  Just recently I was showing the boys how you could blow all your air out and lay at the bottom of the pool.  Well out of four boys, you know that at least one is going to give it a go and stand on Dad, making sure he stays at the bottom.  Desperate… to breathe.  Air is just one of those things you can’t get enough of.  It is also one of those things you take for granted until it starts getting a little thin or tainted.  It’s absence is noticeably unhealthy, affecting us to the core.  Prayer is like the air we breathe.  To live is to breathe, to live with God is to pray.  God listens.  God hears.  My son Taylor is convinced of that.  Just last night he prayed that rain would come today for the farmer’s crops in Togo.  We had to go pick him up from school this afternoon because the rain was too heavy to ride his bike.  Please pray.  Please breathe.  Thanks.

 

Fighting for joy in Vogan

It is really difficult to put into words what happened today in Vogan. We have struggled in the church there against some men who have made it their goal to divide the church and for more than a year have worked to that end. They have attacked and we have taught on reconciliation. Then they apologized and soon attacked again. Over the last year it has built up to the point where they respect neither man nor God and have only their own purposes in mind. It came upon us today, the sad work of asking them to step down as leaders because of their unwillingness to love and submit themselves to serve the believers there. We prayed with other leaders from concerned churches last night as well as this morning before heading from Tabligbo to Vogan. We went and from the moment we arrived, the fight was on. An oppression has been upon this church for months. It has been as discernable as the overcast of a winter sky. After the announcement asking the present committees and leaders to step down for a period of time, they one at a time began to assert themselves ranting and raving against all present. We prayed and listened and then just prayed and prayed. After four hours of this, the eight to ten of them, after wearing themselves out with senseless words of defense, finally departed from the building. Then singing began and praying continued. In the midst of the last hour or so, the joy returned and the cloud lifted.

I guess what I realized through this is that some of our sweetest moments in life, when joy bursts forth from us, occur not on the mountaintop but actually in the valley at the moment of rescue after the deepest longings have been finally realized. Then there is left within us an incomprehensible yearning to remain in the moment and savor that realization of joy brought about by the rescue, in other words a desire to be rescued yet again. This doesn’t compel most of us to dash headlong into destructive behavior in order to remain in the valley, yet in a sense it does cause us to cast off restraint and begin to live more boldly, willfully entering the dangerous valleys of others.

The very nature of Joy makes nonsense of our common distinction between having and wanting. There, to have is to want and to want is to have. Thus, the very moment when I longed to be so stabbed again (with Joy), was itself again such a stabbing.

C.S. Lewis - Surprised by Joy