Category — Suffering

Before I almost died ten years ago, Christians who actually asked God for something in faith and expected Him to answer made me feel uncomfortable. Like most Christians, my role had always been to pray for others who may have lost perspective in a tragedy.

But on that day I realized the enormous difference between standing at someone’s deathbed and lying in your own.

Stop telling God what He already knows! I wanted to shout. Look at my wife, my children. I’m dying and you’re preaching on the sovereignty of God? Somebody ask Him for something. There’s not enough faith in this room to heal a bunny rabbit!

Time was running out.

Today our family returns to this desperate place of prayer. My son-in-law, David Newkirk lies in a hospital bed in Pasadena, and he is very, very sick with Gillian Barre Syndrome. An excerpt from my book, When God Breaks Your Heart, summarizes our feelings, our request, and the man who taught us how to pray dangerous prayers of faith:

Just then our elders walked into the room. Even they were shaken by the tortured figure in the bed that eerily resembled their pastor.

Charlie White, mentor to most of us in the room and friend to all, taught us all a lesson in prayer at that moment. Leaning across my bed like a prophet of old, this dear brother cried out to His God:

Father, we are frail and foolish. There is little here we comprehend. But we remember Your love for us and hear the words of Your Son who taught us to pray. He promised us You would listen to our prayers and that He would remind You that we are weak. He told us to pray with the faith of a mustard seed, to believe that You are able to answer our prayers. He told us that with You all things are possible. And so, our Father, we come now to Your throne of grace with this one request: Please heal our pastor. O Lord, we love him and do not want him to die. There is so much to do. Our church needs him; his family needs Him. Please let him live. We beg You, in Jesus’ name.

And then, his own private appeal: “Lord, I love Ed. Please let this boy live and serve. Amen.”

The fear and doubt drained from my heart as this old saint and retired pastor spoke his mighty prayer. His bold words gave us hope. His faith kindled a fire of courageous faith that spread around the world. By the next day, over ten thousand Christians were repeating Charlie’s simple request: Please let Ed live and serve.

There’s a young man I love more than life, my Celia’s David. Yesterday he asked her to tell people to just pray for healing, and “not all that other stuff.”

I know how he feels.

Please kneel with Celia, Judy, and me at the throne of grace and beg our Father in heaven: “Please heal David Newkirk.”

If you believe, you will see the glory of God (John 11:40).

One of the most desperate prayers of my life came from my hospital bed at USC’s University Hospital nine years ago. My doctors had just diagnosed me with this deadly disease, my organs were failing, and my skin refused to stay on my body.

Those were difficult days for our entire family, but especially for my baby girl, Celia. Only a sophomore in high school, I knew my death would be harder on her than Judy, our two adult children or the grandchildren. The idea of her facing the challenges of adolescence without me broke my heart.

As we asked people to pray, “Please let Ed live and serve,” my private addition was always, “at least until Celia graduates from high school. Please, in Jesus’ name, let me see her walk the aisle to receive her high school diploma.

As God always does, He provided above and beyond – not only did he say “yes” to my prayer to see my baby girl receive her high school diploma, I was there years later for the other “aisle” walks of her life: her graduation from Biola University, her wedding day and I was there when she received her Masters from Pepperdine University.

God, in His gracious love, presented my family and I another gift last Thursday, April 16^th at 1:10 AM . . . I stood outside my baby girl’s hospital room listening as my son-in-law coached her through the delivery of our 7^th grandbaby, Zachary James Newkirk! (Don’t you just love that name?!)

As a Pastor, I am privileged to see first-hand in our church family how God’s timing and His gifts serve to glorify Him . . . this past week, I was the recipient of an incredible gift and reminded so vividly of His gracious timing in our lives.

To all who have begged God to let me live and serve over the last nine years, thank you. I continue to believe that your prayers are my only hope. And, to my Lord Jesus, thank You my sweet and gracious Savior for your mercy…and for the privilege of holding this little gift to our family.

I can’t know what’s breaking your heart today, but I do know that Someone cares and you can trust His timing. From births to graduations and someday to our eternal graduation, for all the time in between, He will take care of all that concerns us.

“The Lord will accomplish that which concerns me” (Psalm 138:8).

Nobody Gets That!

A young Bible School graduate marched into my office and announced, “I’m through with God. This isn’t at all what I expected my life to look like. So I just wanted you to know that I won’t be doing anything at church anymore!”

Before I had a chance to respond, he explained his decision, careful to emphatically count off each of his supporting points on the fingers of his left hand. “I’ve been out of school for two years. I prayed for a wife, and I don’t have one yet. I prayed for a full-time position in a church, and I don’t have one yet. If I would have known that God wasn’t going to let me do these things, I could have gone to a regular college and studied engineering. I’d be making a lot of money right now.”

After he calmed down, I jolted him with my answer: “Nobody gets that.”

He shot back. “Nobody gets what?”

“What they expected.” He seemed bewildered.

I knew I could prove my point from Scripture, but I decided to tell him stories instead.

Living Proof

I told him about some of the ladies in Judy’s His Alone class who did everything “right” but have to move on without a husband because he decided he would be much “happier” with a new wife and family.

I told him about a friend who teaches at a seminary who lives with a disease that randomly confines him to a wheel chair and sometimes even threatens his life.

I told him about the dedicated Christian couple whose only daughter was born with such a severe birth defect that in the precious few months they had with her this side of heaven she never smiled…never acknowledged their presence in the ways most mommies and daddies long for.

I told him stories for ten minutes.

Expectations, or God’s Best?

And then I told him how the Lord used each of these disappointments and tragedies to transform not only the ones suffering through the pain, but also those who were watching.

We talked. He cried. By the end of our time together, he was able to hear what I wanted to tell him when he first walked in. “It’s not what you’re expecting God to do that matters, it’s what He wants to do. Once you get that straight, you are ready to receive His very best for your life–both the expected and the unexpected.”

“For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing” (James 1:3-4, New Living Translation).

Desperate Prayer

Most of you who read these Tipping Points know that I have been living with a deadly disease for some time now. I wrote an entire book, When God Breaks Your Heart, detailing my journey. When I finished the book, I felt like I had said it all.

I’m discovering that there are days that I just have to tell you one more thing. Today is one of those days.

It was April in 2000 when I wrote this desperate prayer and accompanying plea from Scripture in my journal:

“Father, please give me ministry in my grandchildren’s lives.” Let Your work appear to Your servants, and Your glory to their children. (Psalm 90: 16)

If you knew me back then or you’ve read the book, you know how bold that request was. I had nearly died in March and had not improved much since. The doctors were suspecting lymphoma, and following test after test, what they called my “numbers” refused to turn around.

I remember the day I wrote those sentences in my blood-stained journal vividly. Tears flowed as I begged God to let me have some influence in my grandchildren’s lives. Back then I was only thinking of two—Jackson and Megan.

Great Answer!

I’m writing these words from my son’s home in Atlanta, where we just greeted Amelia Joy, grandchild number 6 who joins Jackson, Megan, Camryn, Mary, and Wyatt. This spring number 7—Zachary James—is scheduled to show up.

Last Saturday, the 10th of January 2009, I spent the day with Amelia’s older sister and brother, Mary, and Wyatt. I watched Mary’s skating lessons and Wyatt’s hockey practice. I was vaguely aware of some other children on the ice, but my heart glued my attention to one little twirling princess and one little bruiser in pads.

On the way home, Wyatt put his little arms around my neck and shouted, “We’re best pals, Papa!”

The Spirit reminded me one more time about the power of prayer and the comfort of being loved by a God who is perfectly reliable and strong.

I don’t know what’s breaking your heart today, but I suspect something is.

God knows, and He loves it when you ask Him for big things. You never know, He might just say yes.

Just like He did for me.

Thank you, Father, for hearing my desperate prayer. And for that nearly-nine-years-later reminder from a blue-eyed little hockey star that You, not my doctors, number my days.

Still Want to Live and Serve?

A friend asked me recently if I still wanted him to ask God to “Please let Ed live and serve.”

My response? “Absolutely! Why wouldn’t I want you to continue praying for me?”

He seemed surprised. “But we’ve been praying this for eight years! Isn’t it time to stop asking or at least time to change the prayer a little? Don’t you think,” he wondered, “that God’s tired of hearing the same thing over and over again?”

His comment unmasks a common misconception about prayer: That we should communicate with God in adult ways—trying to figure out what He wants to hear and then making sure that we get it right and don’t bore Him.

Welcome to Kindergarten!

When the Lord Jesus taught on prayer, He encouraged His disciples to relate to the Heavenly Father with childlike faith, words, and behavior. His central teaching on prayer, Luke 11:1-13, reads like a kindergarten lesson plan rather than a seminary course.

A childlike request precipitates the teaching, “Lord, teach us to pray” (v 1).

Jesus’ model prayer expresses simple, innocent thoughts to the Father (vv 2-4):

–I wish and cannot wait until you are in charge of everything!

–Until then, please take care of my physical needs and my daily spiritual needs for forgiveness, strength to forgive others, and protect me from temptation and the devil.

The Lord finishes his lesson with two illustrations which adults wonder about but children immediately understand.

–Adults wonder why God is compared to this lousy guy who won’t even get up and help a friend unless he keeps pounding on the door. (5-8) But a child thinks, “Oh, Jesus says that I should just keep on asking until I get my answer.” (Every child knows how to do that…if you don’t think so, take one shopping sometime!)

–Adults try to figure out the nuances and symbolism of the bread that the little boy asks for and the stone that a father wouldn’t offer. And then adults get a little miffed that Jesus calls them evil. We begin thinking, “Hey, I’m a good dad. Why is Jesus calling me evil? I’m not so bad!” But a child just takes the Lord at face value and concludes, “Jesus is saying, ‘don’t be afraid of the answer your Heavenly Father gives you. He knows best how to give you good things.’”

Children Just Ask!

And so, while adults argue over the interpretation and try to figure out God, children just pray and get answers from God.

That’s what I’m looking for—answers! And you would too if you had this disease.

I don’t understand the mystery of prayer, but this I know: The Lord Jesus told me to ask my Loving Father in Heaven for what I want—and I want to live and serve.

It’s been eight years since my diagnosis and just yesterday the doctors told me again that I’m the only person with this disease who lives such a normal life! So, to my friend w2ho asked me if I wanted him to keep praying (and to the rest of my faithful friends!), thanks for praying for me—please don’t stop!

And remember, though you and I are adults, we are still just His little children. And with such a kind and generous Father, we should never hesitate to ask again and again for what our hearts desire. We don’t have to be afraid of His answer.

“You do not have because you do not ask” (James 4:2).