More Than Watchmen...

Isaiah 62:6-7a
"On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have set watchmen; all the day and all the night they shall never be silent. You who put the Lord in remembrance, take no rest, and give Him no rest until He establishes Jerusalem..."
Micah 7:4b-7
"The day of your watchmen, of your punishment, has come; now their confusion is at hand. Put no trust in a neighbor; have no confidence in a friend; guard the doors of your mouth from her who lies in your arms; for the son treats the father with contempt, the daughter rises up against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; a mans enemies are the men of his own house. But as for me, I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me..."
Psalm 130:5-6
"I will wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His Word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning."

I think my fingers are gaining a permanent layer of sticky.  The last couple of weeks at Hope Pregnancy I have seen no guy partners, so I and the other volunteers stuffed and stuck addresses on hundreds of envelopes.  Busy time for the center, just not for me.  Which isn't all bad.

One of the other volunteers said that sometimes we just need a break from the heavy work we do at Hope, and these mindless days are a way to keep us from feeling weighed down by the wonderfully challenging counsels we give.  And I can always enjoy a day of the simple.

More than that, on these days it feels that I am able only to pray for clients.  Instead of serving them by listening, telling the Good News, and offering information and services for them, I just pray--and I love it.  How?

Because I know that I am a watchman, like those in the verses above.  Because I love the power I find in prayer.

Don't believe in the "power of prayer"?  Well I can't say that belief is easy on this topic, not at all.  Which I think makes it worth the struggle.  Part of prayer is for us individually, to look to God in good and bad and strength and failure and hardship, then to see our own limitations; He doesn't want to humiliate, He just wants us to see the truth that we must depend on Him.  In truth, if we believe the Scriptures then we know that "faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ"--as a gift, so no one can boast (Romans 10:17).

Even if we have received this gift, it is like all other gifts from God in that it must grow if you want to see God's power in it.  You have to exercise it, or it will atrophy; you have to eat the food that will sustain it's growth, the Word of God, or it will starve to death.

So we start simple and small with what we can lift for now, then we keep asking God for more faith because we will not be complete until the New Heaven and New Earth.  We will always need more.  I know, some of us are too proud to ask for these things, especially if we feel like we've already received much from someone.  "I've gotten so much more than this person, I'll be fine on my own.  I can use what I have to fix my own problems."

Sorry, but even the Greeks knew that man only fixed a problem by creating a bigger one.  Why do you think there hasn't yet been a master political plan to fix everything that all people love?  Why do you think, with all of the good that even one person can do like Greg Mortenson in the book Three Cups of Tea, do we still have millions of people still enslaved (there are more now than ever before, I believe) and entire governments willing to slaughter their people to stay in power?

Can't fix it ourselves, guys, so God gives us prayer as a way to take part essentially in His Creation.  Think about it--if God is outside of time, then He heard and answered our prayers at the same moment that He created everything.  Sometimes it seems He maneuvers world events to answers those prayers, and sometimes it's Him actively intervening in our time.  He does answer prayers, even through scientific breakthroughs that some use to debunk the idea of God, and those answered prayers change the world.

And if we're weak prayers, know this: God has placed watchmen in the walls, in positions to defend people and be open to outsiders and see what comes from the horizon, to pray night and day for us.  More than that, He sends us His Spirit to cry out to Him for us! God is praying for us to God!

And I feel called by that Spirit within me to be like a watchman.  My Myers-Briggs Personality Type is the Counselor (INFJ), which is described as one who engages people deeply to share their burdens and help them grow.  God tells watchmen to basically pester Himself with prayers for His children.  So I pray night and day, waiting with absolute assurance of God who will shine through brighter than any morning sun cutting through the clouds and reflecting off snow-covered mountains.  And I couldn't love it more.

**by the way, read that book Three Cups of Tea. It will challenge your perspective on global politics, on Pakistan & Afghanistan, and on the influence that even one person without any seeming resources can "randomly" have on thousands of lives.