We have finally gotten to a place ( I arrived here as pastor in late June of 2009) where we can post our blogs, sermons, outreach, music and other areas on our web site. My time line would have been "sooner" than this ( this is 4/21/2010). But "my" time line and the "Lords" are by no means on the same page.
My experience has been that God moves and opens doors on his timeline ("karios" Greek word for God's time) verus ("chronus" Greek word for our time line for events to happen or the current day) our time. Gods timing for Jesus to come into the world Paul said in Galatians 4:4 came at the exact right moment in time (Paul says the "fulness of time") when if it had been left up to me or someone in the world to make that kind of decision we most likely would have mishandled it. The writer of Ecclesiastes speaks of a "time for every matter under heaven, (Ecclesiastes 3:1)."
The purpose in God's timing is to teach us the importance of patience with the Lord and to trust the Lord's timing with all things in our lives. The best thing I know on this very day, which is full of challenges, is that I am not in control of my life in the literal sense of the word. God is the one who allows my heart to beat each second and there is nothing I can do about this apart from doing something foolish.
One of my closest friends in the Jennings church has told me on a couple of occasions, today being one of them, that it is a good thing to "wait upon the Lord." My district superintendant calls this attitude to life one where a believer/follower/Christian learns to "lean upon the Lord" or to "trust Him" with all of life's anxious moments. I Peter 5:7 says, "Cast all of your anxiety upon Him because he cares for you." This is the way to go through life.
The late Rabbi Edwin Friedman describes this attitude toward life in his book written after 30 some odd years of practicing psychotherapy a state of being he called "a non-anxious presence." His book that took Rabbi Friedman five years to write is a classic in the field for clergy entitled "Generation to Generation: Family process in church and synagogue." And it is a goal of mine to live this kind of life but "in the flesh" I cannot do it. Only as the Spirit of God helps me and aids me am I able to pull this off on any given day of the week or month.
A member of the Jennings church and I decided to go out cold calling one afternoon. We went up to each persons home house by house and I said, "I am Ted Freeland Pastor of the Jennings United Methodist Church just down the street here and this is (and I called the name of the person who went with me and said she is a member of the Jennings United Methodist Church). I then said, "We are not here to sell you anything we are here to ask you 'if there is anything we can pray for you about today?'" We did this for two and a half hours. At more than one persons home there were people who stated they were clearly "anxious" about some aspect of their lives;whether it was a daughter, son, or something related to job seeking during this time of recession. What I didn't have with me that day was a "Faith Sharing New Testament." So, at one particular home where the mother was very anxious about one of her children I did my best to quote the following verses to her, "Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:6-7)." And then we prayed for her child. When we were finished a look of "peace" had come over her face as she thanked us for coming by that afternoon. This look of peace and words of appreciation happened on every single visit to my knowledge. There was no door slamming in our faces.
I saw one man that as we approached had a "hard look" in his eye and a "furrowed brow." I could read his body language, he thought, (and who could really blame him?), that we were going to try and sell him something that day. From a distance of some twenty yards as we approached him I went through the whole smear just as I had at every visit we had made that day. By the time he heard that we were there to pray for whatever he asked us to pray about I saw his entire facial appearance change. By the time we had finished praying for him, he like others before him, thanked us for coming by that day and "he" thought it must have been "God's timing" that brought us by. (And hey we just thought...lets go see who will give us the priviledge of praying for them today?)
What a blessing we could be for others if we spent a tad more time praying for them and a little less time seeking to find one of their faults or weaknesses. What a joy we could be if we had people in our lives whose only desire was basically to bless our lives, to pray for us according to our requests and in line with Gods will. I don't know about you but that type of visiting I believe can be a "kairos" moment for just about any of us who have the time to stop long enough on any given day to recieve the blessing God has in store for us.
Join me if you will and let us pray that we as believers in Christ can pray to be a blessing to others in a timely manner and a prayerful way. May the (chronos) moments of our lives become kairos moments for the lives of other people.
In Him, Ted
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
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