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Ever feel like your prayers are bouncing off the walls and smacking you right back in the face? Like you're trying to cry out but you just realized that you have no vocal cords? Like your trying to climb out of an endless pit and the harder you try the more it pulls you back in?… Ok I'm done. Well that has been my experience for the past year, and I can say, honestly, it sucks!!! Reading my Bible became harder and harder; praying even more so…. I tried. I really did. Fought a decent battle for months, but in the end it brought me low. Lower than I have ever been before, and things suffered greatly. Worst of all my walk with God, and secondly my marriage. Don't get me wrong Maggie and I are great, but she has suffered from my poor excuse as a godly husband that she so rightly deserves. One of the ways she feels most loved is by people praying over her, and with me unwilling or not able to pray she was hurt, and that hurts me more than I can express in words. Now if you ask her she will deny ever feeling this way, but that's because she is a saint and the best wife a man could have. Through all of this she has been right there beside me encouraging me in the Word and with God's promises. Ever faithful, never wavering. Something I should have been for her. All this to say…. I was in a bad state. ha God saw this. He knew what I was struggling with and He knew exactly what I needed and when I needed it. Enter Luke. Now Luke… Luke is a kindly fellow with a shimmering head and the facial hair like that of the burning sun. Always ready to make you smile and is the life of the party. It's never a dull moment around him. Luke and I have been friends since we were young adolescent boys. We share common interests and are always planning wild adventures together (whether we actually follow through with them or not). However, near the end of our teenage years we did find different paths. He ran as fast as he could from Jesus and the church. He had been burned too many times. "Too many hypocrites" he said. I stayed on… Living my mediocre christian life. Doing enough to get by. Probably just as bad as running away. It wasn't until I was 21 before I got serious about my walk with Jesus. Now me and Luke have still been great friends throughout the years. We talked about Jesus, church, christian things. We just had different things to say about it. I would encourage him to read the Word for himself and invite him to church. I didn't think I brought it up too much, but he says otherwise. haha This was our relationship for years. Just two guys enjoying each others company, having fun doing crazy things, and waiting to see which one would turn to the others way of life first. Now Luke and some others have been some of the people I have consistently prayed for throughout the years. No matter how difficult the conversations got between us, how far he was running away, how off base his logic got, God just kept him on my heart and in my prayers. I could see something in his eyes, something he was searching for, but couldn't find. I guess I saw that because it was the same desire I had in myself years before I surrendered to the Lord. One week before we left for the World Race, Luke had moved back to Shreveport. We got to hang out and have lunch together. We caught up on what had been happening and what our futures looked like and ultimately that lead to Jesus again. Throughout this conversation he basically said that he wasn't even sure anymore if Jesus was real not to mention if He was God. This was a pretty disheartening conversation for me, but at the end I was determined to get him to come to my church. Ha. So now to my diabolical plan. I had this creative idea to shoot underwater wedding photos and I needed someone to take the pictures. I asked Luke if he would be interested in doing it and he agreed. I told him that the only day we had free to do it before we left was Sunday, so I asked him to come to church and afterwards we would go shoot the photos. He reluctantly agreed. 🙂 Anyway, Sunday came and he actually showed up to church!!! And wouldn't you know it my pastor (Billy) preaches on Matthew 19. Mostly about marriage! Haha I was like "Come on Billy!!! Your suppose to hear from the Lord and preach on things that are relative to Luke's life!" Anyway, He told me that he got something out of it. So we took the pictures and that Tuesday Maggie and I left for Atlanta and Luke got on a bus to backpack through the mountains in Washington. So Luke's journey up to Washington could be turned into a Hollywood movie. It involved hitchhiking with hippies that sold "medicinal" drugs, being recruited to be a raft guide on a river with no rafting experience, and saving some people that overdosed on drugs. However, He made it into the mountains, set up his tent along a beautiful lake surrounded by God's glory, and threw his fishing line into the lake hoping for some dinner that night. Nothing happened. Not even a bite. The next day rolled around, same thing. He couldn't catch a break even if he wanted to. Then a weird thought popped into his head. Just before leaving he had borrowed his dad's pocket Bible. So he got it out and found his way to Matthew. While reading this God made Himself known in a very real way. It was as if he was reading the scriptures for the first time. My friend for years, right then and there, became my brother in Christ! He surrendered his life completely. After praising our father he checked on his fishing line (and i think you know where i'm going with this) there was a fish on the other end of it. Every time he cast his line back into the water God provided a fish. God knows what He is doing. He had been drawing my friend Luke to the base of that mountain in His perfect timing. He had been drawing me to rely on His goodness and not my own strength. To continue to be diligent even in my weakness, because that's when God truly shines through our lives. In my weakest moment He used an answered pray to spring me back to life. He does listen. He knows the desires of our hearts and in His perfect timing He answers our prayers. Sometimes we just need to stop… Stop talking, stop moving, stop complaining, stop thinking, stop trying to make everything go according to OUR plan… and listen. God answered my prayer in a very mighty way. Showing me He does care about me and hears my prayers (the big) AND even better, my best friend now knows the Lord (the bigger). God works all things out for the good of those who love Him!!! |
