Warning: Be Careful What You Pray For

I was reflecting on something about God this week. How he loves us, answers prayer, guides us along our lives, providing at every moment. My friend Jeremy is the best songwriter I know. In one of the worship songs he wrote (Come and Rest; see the DSF myspace link to the right-- go and listen to the song! as well as the other three that are on there...), he writes these words: "Oh God we pray be faithful, Oh God we pray be Gentle." I love this line; because it recognizes the truth of the old adage: be careful what you pray for. How often we pray that God would do something without an eye on how God might decide to do that. But people who often pray, and see God answer know what asking God to be gentle is all about. "Do you really want God to do that?Even if it meant that this needs to happen and then that and then that!"

What if in order for God to be faithful he needs to scold us, test us, put us through the fire in order to refine us. What then? That is why I think the song finds it necessary to ask God to be gentle when he is being faithful: because the writer (and singer) is knows that there are times when in order for God to be God he must be strong-armed and "rough"-- he must be allowed to be God. That is why we trust him.

I am reminded of the famous conversation in C.S. Lewis' classic "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe": One of the children asks Mr. and Mrs. Beaver about Aslan the Lion, who is a figure of Jesus: "Is Aslan quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion."

"That you will dearie, and no mistake," said Mrs. Beaver. "If there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or just plain silly."

"Then he isn't safe?" said Lucy.

"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver; "don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? Of course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."

Mark Buchanan wrote a book called "Your God is Too Safe"-- I haven't read it but I like the title. God isn't safe. He causes us to be the most radical people we can possibly be! Revolutionaries until the very end. We rebel against what the world, the flesh and the devil tempt us with (Ephesians 2.1-3)-- usually it all revolves around the same stuff-- self-centeredness. Martin Luther defined sin by the latin phrase "homo incurvatus", 'mankind turned in on itself'-- amkes sense. Do we have the guts to pray that God works his amazing power even if it might cause inconvenience or a change of plans for us?

Four years ago I was comfortable. I had alot of great friends, close to my family, loved working under my mentor as I studied Scripture-- and then I followed where the Lord was leading Erin and I and it became uncomfortable: it caused us to move across the country where we did not know a soul. Not one living breathing human being! "God, why do you have to be so harsh? Can't there be a good school in Ontario where you want me to go?" But, of course, God decided to be faithful instead of gentle. In retropsect God was doing much more in our lives than simply bringing me out here to go to school. He had bigger plans for us here and we are just beginning the amazing journey He is taking us on.

God, be faithful, but (please) be gentle. Sometimes he listens to the latter request, but sometimes, when necessary, he ignores the request for gentlessness, in order to accomplish the first part of the prayer. And thank God he does because if it were up to me life would never be uncomfortable, and as Malcolm Muggeridge once said, life without discomfort would ultimately mean life too meaningless to be worth waking up for.