Praying in the Face of the Pandemic

I wanted to share with you some thoughts from the scriptures to encourage you today. We are not even 24 hours into the "stay at home" order issued by our governor and I'm certain the confinement, though necessary, is already getting old.

While Psalm 91 is definitely a Psalm that is applicable to our current situation, I want to point you to one of my favorite passages in the Old Testament, 2 Chronicles 20:1-23. 

The passage opens with "after this." Of course, you have to read what was going on in 2 Chronicles 19:4-11 to get the full sense of what the "after this" is really all about. Essentially, Jehoshaphat, being a king who wanted to serve and honor God,  appointed judges throughout the land who would judge with righteous judgment. After making this change, both in service to God and to the people of his kingdom, Jehoshaphat was confronted by the unexpected. Three nations had gathered to come in and destroy Jehoshaphat and the southern Kingdom of Judah. 

The response of Jehoshaphat is seen In the text in chapter 20 and I think will help us understand what our response needs to be in the face of the unexpected. 

He Prayed 

What was his motivation for prayer? Two things:

• Fear - verse 3 says that Jehoshaphat was "alarmed" or also translated "fearful." This was not a fear that overtook him or overpowered him. He didn't allow fear to paralyze him. At that moment some things still hadn't come into view, specifically, the word of God that would be delivered to him later in this passage to encourage both Jehoshaphat and the people.

• Faith - Yes, it sounds contradictory that both fear and faith can be the motivators to pray, but the momentary fear he felt at the beginning of his trial moved him to pray in faith. In fact, his prayer, while it is a prayer for help, had very little to do with addressing his own feeling of fear and more to do with what God had done in the past, as well as trusting God for a future that was still unknown. 

Briefly, his prayer is one of the great prayers in the Bible for a few reasons:

• The beginning of his prayer focuses on how great and awesome God is.
• He is fully aware of the word that God gave in the past to preserve the very nations that are now coming to war against them.
• He trusts that God's word was true back then and therefore must be true today.
• He makes one of the greatest statements of faith when he says, "we don't know what to do, but our eyes are upon you." Faith does not ignore the problem, it simply focuses more sharply on the One who is the answer. 

We, our leaders, our scientists, and the medical community may not have an answer to the pandemic we are faced with right now in our world, but I want to leave you with this final word of encouragement to pray for an answer. Pray that God will stem the tide of sickness in our world. Pray that you will honor Him with your life in spite of the pain and suffering you see around you. 

What God Sees!

One of my favorite accounts in all of Scripture is the account of Gideon. The opening scene in Judges 6 is nothing less than a contrast between what we see and what God sees!

Because of their sin, Israel was under the oppressive rule of the Midianites. It wasn't like the Midianites ruled with dignity, they just waited for the Israelites to plant their crops, get read to harvest it and then would come marching in and either destroy their food supply or take it from them. It is likely during this time that the people of Israel were beginning to starve. This is where we pick up with Gideon. We find him threshing wheat in a winepress in order to hide it from the Midianites. Gideon saw pain, suffering and injustice. He was hiding in order to have just a small amount of food by which to survive. He saw weakness...that which was around him but also his own. This is where most of us are stuck. We see pain, suffering, injustice, sin and our own weakness. We think there is nothing we can do, so let's hide and try to eek out a living in a survival mindset.

Maybe you are hiding behind past hurts and failures while life seemingly continues to march forward. You might look around you and feel that others are not just surviving, they are somehow thriving...but not you. No, you've been weakened by your frustration, your bitterness, your anger and your resentment. Someone, somewhere over the course of your life hurt you and brought you under their rule. The pain they caused steers your life, determines your trajectory and you find yourself limping along all the while thinking that no one really notices your pain.

But, in the story of Gideon, an angel of the Lord appears and calls Gideon a "Mighty Warrior" or as the King James Version puts it, a "Mighty Man of Valor." Clearly, the angel had the wrong address! The idea that Gideon was a mighty warrior was something that Gideon could not see. Seriously, he's threshing wheat in a winepress. He's in hiding, he's afraid and then goes on to argue with the angel about God's plan.

Yet, in this story as in other places in Scripture where man tends to get in the way of God's plan, it is not what we see that counts, it is what God sees that matters most. We see pain, but God sees potential. We see frustration, but God's remedy is faith. God, at that moment was not looking at Gideon for what Gideon saw or was even projecting or saying about himself, God was looking at Gideon for what He was going to help Gideon to become. So how was that going to happen? Gideon just had to get on board with what God wanted and let God guide him through impossible odds to show that what really mattered in his life was what God sees.

So it isn't what you see about yourself that really matters most, it is what God sees in your life. God sees great things! God sees potential! Rather than hide behind something, get ready to be part of God's solution to the problems you find around you. Begin to see what God sees!