Not Quite Finished

Psalms 37.5: “Commit everything you do to the Lord. Trust him and he will help you.”

Following God requires demanding and challenging work. While His love and blessings may be easy to acquire, obedience to God requires us to do something counter to our human nature. Several conflicts come upon us that test our responsibilities to Him. God desires his holiness in us to take root in our lives, and he can use these conflicts to make us more like him.

There are countless stories in the Bible that demonstrate this situation but I want to share this one. Peter was a disciple of Jesus for three years. He had seen innumerable miracles, many times he and Jesus were alone talking about love, he had witnessed the blessings Jesus gave to the other disciples, he was with Jesus on the Mount of Olives just before his death. Yet he denied Jesus three times prior to his crucifixion on the cross. The Lord looked at him after the third time and the words of Jesus sprang through Peter’s mind. He wept bitterly. He wasn’t obedient…

When we were in northern Sudan 95% of the people were Muslims. God led us to three or four believers from different tribes and we were grateful and blessed. One day we had a team come out that was exploring ministry possibilities. We were looking for places we could go that no one else had gone to. One of the Sudanese believers said to us “I know a place that some believers are in and they would be blessed to have you come and preach the word.” It was about three hours away and I was fidgety about that trip – but that is why the team came out. I couldn’t go because of my status in the country, but we sent Deng along with them. 

They left early in the morning and were scheduled to come back that evening. When they didn’t show up and we couldn’t contact them (no cell phones back then) we were worried and scared. We didn’t know if they had gotten in an accident or encountered officials in the village. I was so fearful and anxious that I spread myself out on the ground of my bedroom and prayed. I was thinking of David when he was praying for his child on the ground after Nathan came and rebuked him. David confessed to Nathan , “I have sinned against the Lord”. I was petrified that something bad had happened to them and I was going to be at fault for it. It turns out that they were taken in by the police in that town. They got home early the next morning (which we didn’t know till I went to the hotel they were staying at). I was so grateful to the Lord that he rescued the team and our family.

I learned that asking God was a key ingredient in prayer. In Psalms 50.15 it says: “Then call on me when you are in trouble, and I will rescue you, and you will give me glory.”(NLT). 

I am writing this story to give HIM the glory and to remind you that Peter gave God glory throughout his lifetime after he had made that disobedience. And we spent another 30 years on the field serving our Savior. Praise the Lord.