Pray Move Grow Transform

When the whole world conspires against our day,

And all our hope has turned from sunlight to grey,

Decision time beckons,

So our sense for reason reckons.

***

There is only one good thing about a day that turns to mud. When all our hope has turned from sunlight to grey, apart from the default feeling of rancorous despair we struggle with, there is a golden cue; a goad; a cattle prod.

God is compelling us toward decision time. So our sense for reason can reckon.

When the day in a life becomes confounding, sometimes before it’s even begun, when hope is strangled for lack of sleep and the list of tasks seems endless, a shrieking complaint becomes us.

When a day has no hope, and we add to our hopelessness thoughts of panicked helplessness, we enter into a double hell.

God is compelling us toward decision time. So our sense for reason can reckon.

An important juncture has emerged. When we reckon it to be God’s will that we respond to this double hellishness we admit within our minds and hearts that God is for us, not against us; that God provides power in this very weakness.

Just the very fact we can get through—and positively, by God’s strength, even despite our fleeting negativity—means over the longer haul we have found our way.

Turning About-Face

One of the enduring memories I have of A.W. Tozer’s preaching is his way of illustrating the sort of hard about-face we put in when we turn back to God in repentance.

Struggling with the death of hope is our opportunity to turn back to God in repentance. Maybe the death of our hope, as it is portrayed in our moments, has nothing to do with our sin, but our response, via complaint, is the sin of pride lampooned on Broadway; a grotesque sin.

Turning about-face in our turning back to God in repentance is a momentary prayer, a commitment to move, along the path of growth, toward transformation. In a moment God came to rescue us—not out of the situation, but out of the situation of our thinking.

***

When our hope has plummeted, and fears abound, or our head is full of complaint, our best response is to pray—for knowledge of truth and reason—which compels us to move, to believe in our growth, which ignites transformation—even in that moment.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.