A Force to be Reckoned With!

I remember when our Pastor back in Santa Rosa preached a sermon early on in his tenure at our church and described the reading and study of the scriptures as being similar to the skin of an onion.  Now that rang a very familiar tune in my heart as I have had lots of experience peeling and chopping onions in preparation for my world famous… at least in my head… pasta sauce!

For me, one of the foundational steps in the making of my sauce is the peeling, chopping and then lightly browning of the onion(s) in olive oil, before any of the other ingredients are added to the sauce pot… and believe me… when it comes to sauce pots, I have a pretty good selection of them for almost any size crowd who will enjoy my all-time favorite meal.  On both ends of the spectrum, I have some for one or two diners and a couple of very large, heavy-duty stainless-steel containers for the times the different youth groups we worked with held church-wide spaghetti dinner fundraisers.

So, yeah!  I am familiar with the unique consistency of the many layers to an onion!  That said, over the years, I have also become very familiar with the one-of-a-kind, unique and special make-up of the Holy Scriptures that are contained within the pages of yours and my Bibles.

Like many of you have most likely experienced before, I still find myself in awe when I read a familiar verse in one of my 50 plus Bibles (I like to collect different translations…) and see something in it that I had NEVER seen before… a word, a thought, or a totally different viewpoint that brings a deeper revelation and understanding to my life… and many times… it is exactly what I needed for a particular situation that I was facing at that specific moment in time!  You know what I mean?

Well, that happened numerous times over the last three days as I read from I Corinthians 2:15-16 in Piper’s 1974 New Living Bible where Paul wrote to straighten out some theological problems in the struggling church at Corinth.  He taught,

“But the spiritual man has insight into everything, and that bothers and baffles the man of the world, who can’t understand him at all.  (and) How could he?  For certainly he has never been one to know the Lord’s thoughts, or to discuss them with Him, or to move the hands of God by prayer.  But, strange as it seems, we Christians actually DO HAVE within us a portion of the very thoughts and mind of Christ.”

When I read this translation for the first-time last week, my thoughts, as seems to be a common practice for me lately… went back to my early days with Piper!  And I reminisced and wrote in my notebook “One of the first things that I learned from Piper was that I could actually have a two-way conversation with God!  Before her, my prayers consisted of a lot of begging and very little believing!”

As I have mentioned before, when Piper and I got together, I was a practicing, good Catholic boy with a heart toward God… and very little else when it came to any practical knowledge about Him!  Before Piper I knew God like I knew a celebrity on one of my favorite TV shows!  I knew of and about him or her, but I didn’t really “KNOW” them personally.  The only thing I was familiar with was what I saw on their TV show or heard on the news!  Likewise with God.  Even though I attended Parochial School for six years, was an altar boy in good standing and went to church every Sunday, I knew a lot about Him… but had absolutely NO idea that I could interact with Him on a personal basis!

I can still remember hanging up the wall phone in my parent’s kitchen (anyone remember those?) after talking to Piper for an hour or two (every night after dinner) with my head spinning (in a good sense) over the things we had talked about concerning our religious beliefs.  She could quote chapter and verse from the Bible to prove most of what she said, while the things I thought to be true were only based on what I had heard or decided upon in my own rather limited understanding.

When I prayed back then, it was like me trying to converse with a character on the TV set in the middle of the show… while I sat on the couch in my parent’s living room!  The section of our verse in I Corinthians that initially caught my attention was where Paul said,

“For certainly he (the man of the world) has never been one to know the Lord’s thoughts, or to discuss them with Him, or to move the hands of God by prayer.”

Beginning in high school and then ensuing over the many years of our relationship, I learned and had repeatedly witnessed that Piper’s prayers definitely moved the hand of God!  By the time that we were in our thirties, I realized that Piper’s prayers were a force to be reckoned with!

If I had the time, I could give seemingly countless examples of when she prayed and stood in faith for a variety of situations that others around us said was impossible.  Be it our family’s needs, a friend’s healing from a report of cancer, extended family members returning to church, people in situations needing a reversal from the path that they were heading or for church members who had gone off course in their personal faith…  when Piper went to the Lord in prayer… she meant business!

You see, she “KNEW” Him.  She “KNEW” how much He loved and cared for her… as well as for all who have committed their lives to Him.  She “KNEW” her Bible.  She “KNEW” who the Word of God says that we are, she “KNEW” the benefits of being a son or daughter of the living God, and she strove to live her life according to the standards set within the pages of our Bibles… no matter what others around her thought… or how strange the world’s ever-changing standards may have been!

And you know… She was absolutely NO DIFFERENT than you or me!  She wasn’t some super-spiritual person who walked on the water.  She liked to have fun and sometimes do outlandish things!  She was just an ordinary (cute) girl who loved God (and happened to capture my heart in the process) and wanted to do right by Him!

Romans 2:11 tells us that, “God does not play favorites.”  *  If her prayers could “move the hand of God”, and “bother and baffle” those living their lives in doubt and unbelief around her, then so can yours and mine!  I’ve seen the progression in my own life from my early Catholic days that changed dramatically by the influence of one individual… and so can you!

So, what do you think?  Do you want your prayers to “move the hand of God?”  Well then… grab your Bible (I suggest you get one that is easy for YOU to understand – and one will do… you don’t need 50 of them!) and begin to get to “KNOW” Him and all that He has promised and provided for you! 

Then begin to pray and step out in faith… fully EXPECTING your prayers to be “A Force to be Reckoned With” as they enable God to move on your behalf and do what He says in His Word that He will do for you!

 

*God’s Word ©