A Matter of Fact

“But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:13, NIV 2011).

I made a house call today and talked of heaven. I visited the home of a wonderful woman whom, earlier this week, I had told we could no longer treat her cancer. We sat in her den, her swollen feet propped up by the reclining chair, dealing with her symptoms and ways to improve them. Then she said, “I’m a Christian; I know where I’m going. It’s okay.” After a pause, she added, “And the best thing is, I will get to see my dad.” We then talked together of heaven as it should be discussed: a matter of fact, not a matter of conjecture.

Heaven is a fact, not a conjecture. Our eternal hope is a journey toward the truth of life, not a passive wish imagined from defeated life.
Heaven means: whatever the struggle in our lives, it will all be okay, someday.
But most of us are not where my patient is, one foot in heaven, where God makes His glory clear. For most of us, heaven is Christmas morning and this is June.
With such a distance between us and our future home, we address the truth of heaven with passivity, and even doubt, and rarely let it change our lives. We claim heaven as home, but live and think like we are citizens of this world. We grasp and control the things that matter to us now, not realizing that the purpose and value of everything now is totally transformed by the truth of heaven.
It was good today to sit with one so close to glory and talk the truth of life.

Dear Father,
Thank you for the certainty of life forever. Let me take this truth and transform my life today.
Amen

Once Again

“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light” (1 Peter 2:9, NIV 1984).

I was seeing Jason for the first time for a blood disorder and he was going to be fine. I had frankly forgotten that I had cared for his father with pancreatic cancer about 10 years prior. When we were through with Jason’s problem, he reminded me, “I will never forget that you prayed with us when my father died. You don’t know how much that bolstered my faith during that difficult time. We even had a few family members start going back to church after that.”
I nodded and smiled, not remembering the experience but grateful that God had been there.

It’s time I get back to praying more with my patients.
I go in spurts. Some months I feel God’s presence clearly with my patients and other months seem to fly by with my hardly noticing He is near. Usually, it is a patient faithful to our Lord who wakes me up and reminds me how much God wants to enter my examining rooms.
How do I become consistent with my personal witness in a world that demands I focus on so many other issues in a rapid-fire manner?
There are some things I know I need to do:
I need to pray each morning that the Lord will let me speak when I serve.
I need to pray as I enter each patient’s room, “What is God doing?” (as Dr. Walt Larimore teaches us in Grace Prescriptions).
I need to, throughout the day, repeatedly refocus on my purpose for living:
“Dear God, may I rise up and meet you and empty myself for you. Fill me—that the lost may be brought home to you, the broken made whole in you and you may be glorified.”
How many times in this life must I leave my mission and return, leave and return, leave and return?
As often as necessary.

Dear Father,
Bring me back again into the center of your mission for my life, for the sake of my patients, for the sake of your people and for your glory.
Amen

Different Formulas

“Be joyful always; pray continually” (1 Thessalonians 5:17, NIV 1984).

I had two great disappointments this week. I had been praying desperately and long term for each outcome. One of my close friends, for whom I care as a doctor, had a recurrence of his cancer. One of my fellows who had failed his internal medicine boards on his first try found out he had failed them on his most recent try by four points. For at least a year I had been praying that God would make both things turn out differently, and He did not. This morning as I was running, I cried out, “What good are my prayers?” Sometimes it feels like a crapshoot. But I know it’s not.

Followers of Christ pray faithfully with many different formulas: some have a steady outline—like praise, thanks, confession, petition, etc. Others pray purely spontaneously from the heart. For myself, I use a formula, beginning with spontaneous thoughts, followed by the Lord’s Prayer, requests for family, close friends, fellows, colleagues, church, etc. Then I move geographically around the world and pray for those I love. I end in surrender. There is nothing better in my way than others, and there are many things I could learn from others about how to pray more effectively. But why do it? Some of my prayers seem to get answered and others don’t, no matter what method I use.

Is God not just working out His plan, His way, unaffected by my heartfelt petitions?

I don’t think so. I think prayer really matters.

1. I trust Jesus and Jesus told me to pray.
2. I have seen amazing, impossible events in life that have unfolded when I prayed, events that could not have happened without the intervention of God.
3. If I did not pray, I would only think about God, without ever really knowing Him.
4. If I did not pray, I would rarely hear God speak to me.
5. If I did not pray, I would much less often change my actions toward those for whom I pray.

Of course, there is the matter of often failing to get what I want through my prayers. I probably need to trust God with that.

Dear God,
Thank you for the amazing gift of listening to me and speaking to me. Who am I that the Creator of the universe would bend an ear my way? And thank you that occasionally you change the universe when my petitions fall in line with your will.
Amen

Ripple Effect

“Abraham was the father of Isaac…Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of King David…and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ” (Matthew 1:2-16, NIV 1984).

A prominent pastor in our city is retiring this year. Under his leadership, his church has directly impacted thousands for Christ in deep and productive ways, touching hundreds of thousands more in their outreach.
I was sitting at breakfast this morning with Dr. Bill Wood, a world-renowned leader in breast cancer and past chair of surgery at Emory University. Prior to Emory, Bill had spent 28 years in Boston at Mass General Hospital.
When we mentioned the retiring pastor’s name, Bill’s wife told us that this pastor had come to know Christ in a Sunday morning Bible study that Bill had led in Boston, after which he left his secular job and surrendered to the ministry.

The ripple effect of our lives is amazing, for good and for ill.
Thank God that He occasionally allows us brief glimpses of His work in those ripples. If we saw too much, we would likely crash and burn in either shame or pride. But a glimpse every now and again does bring us hope that God is at work in the arena He has placed us.
We so often think that the things we choose as important in our lives are the key factors for God’s work in the world. Often they are.
But I suspect God’s greatest work rides on ripples we cannot now comprehend, though someday will appreciate in glory.

Dear God,
Take care of the ripples from my life and fill them with your power and purpose.
Amen