Prayers for the New Year

I’m striving to be accountable to God and His people.

As we adjusts our thinking to what God actually said, one of the most difficult things we do is get a grip on His promises. When He said things about “prosperity” it was seldom with any of the baggage we associate with it in our Western culture. We have been taught to expect a steady-state in all things, as if this were optimal. It is not. Indeed, it is fundamentally wrong to think so. Roller-coasters and cycles are reality.

My household starts the year in a very tough position. I’d rather not whine about how things got this way, as if someone else were responsible for making sure we our financial situation retains some mythical steady state. Sure, my donate page here still works and we recently received a donation that will surely help. I’d rather have your prayers, though. I’d rather we all exchange our deep affection and the miracles of God helping us see His hand more clearly.

That’s because we are headed for even more difficulty — all of us. In one way or another, the hand of God will bring wrath and cleansing, and that’s never fun for our human existence. At the minimum, you’ll go through some inner turmoil just trying to understand what you see, trying to make sense of it as we all strive for a clearer moral grasp.

So on the one hand we could wish our world hadn’t gotten so very far away from God’s ideals for us, but we are stuck in a world that ignores His revelation. That means sometimes I have to eat stuff that will offer at least some margin of harm and at other times just skip eating to avoid it, and trust God for the difference any of it makes. If walking in His will means surrendering some health ideal, then we have to rely on the broader general promise that He will take care of things. Don’t put God in a box, particularly one designed by Western mythology.

So I’m praying for you to find a place where you can stack those moral priorities with clarity. Don’t make a donation here for all the wrong reasons we have thrown at us by every other form of begging so common in our world. The only reason you should even think about it is that God won’t leave you in peace any other way. Brother Ed is going to make it one way or another, so that’s not the issue. Rather, it’s most important that we all recognize Who owns us and gets to make the final decisions in everything.

What I will not do is exaggerate the problem to jerk tears from your eyes. To symbolize it for you, I’ll be making smaller pots of coffee for a while, and could end up drinking tea before it’s over (because that’s cheaper around here). So for every one of you who doesn’t want to hear about it, I’d also face the irritation and censure from those who wanted to know. Pray first and make sure you know what God wants from you. We all will have a lot on our plates in one way or another all too soon.