Who Prays for the "Worst of These"?

I got up at 3:45 this morning to watch the Leonid Meteor Shower. By all reports I'd read it was supposed to be awesome this year. And I'm sure it was . . . somewhere.

The sky was black and clear. The stars stood out magnificently. I've seen it darker and clearer and more breathtaking, but this was good and I was sure it would be a fine morning for viewing the meteors. I guess I should tell you now that after laying there for forty-five minutes at the proposed "perfect time" I saw exactly one (1) meteor whose flameout lasted about half a second. I must have been looking at the wrong sky. Maybe they meant that other sky over there.

At any rate, the Leonid meteor shower turned out to be a meteor drip for me. But the morning was not wasted. Far from it. As I lay there on my back staring at the stars a thought began to take shape in my mind. "There are so many of them," I thought. So many beyond counting. We see a few, but not even a countable number compared to how many there are. It was captivating, but it was the thought that God threw in next that actually caused my heart to skip a beat and me to catch my breath and hold it for a moment.

"As the stars, so are those whose lives, and bodies, and minds, and hearts are enslaved by pornography." I wasn't expecting that. At all. Suddenly my mind began a slow tumble back to the day we discovered the two grocery bags of magazines my stepfather kept in the attic, the Playboys we lifted from the rack at the corner drugstore across the street from Hardees where Lumpkin Rd. diverts from Cusseta Rd., to a bachelor party the year I left for college. I shook my head not wanting and not willing to return to the places I left behind when I came to the cross.

But God was unrelenting. "I want you here. I want you to recall faces you have forgotten, faces you will never know, faces about which you never cared. Dale, they are like the stars in the heavens. You have seen a few, but there are millions more. Millions more women and girls, boys and men trapped, enslaved, selling what they think they have to get what they think they want and coming away used, empty, and too often dead. And Dale, I want you to answer this question: who prays for these?"

Producers, publishers, printers, photographers, models, actors, owners, distributors, buyers, viewers: victims, everyone of them, of an unspeakable evil more repugnant to genteel folk than AIDS victims in our day. We pray for the persecuted, the sick, the "lost," the imprisoned, the unfortunate, the nation, the president, the school, the church, the potluck, the pastor, the people, and the parking lot, but who prays for these?

Who begs God to send into the filthiest of industries One who will bring hope, deliverance, and true, lifesaving love. We preach, and rightly so, against the dangers of pornography. We rave against the addiction. We filter the Internet. But who prays for the people? Who intercedes on their behalf, these ones who turn a glorious gift into a freak show for perverted minds and hearts? Who prays for them to find someone who genuinely cares for their souls? Who prays to be someone who genuinely cares for their souls?

I finally exhaled as the shower of divine concern subsided. I cried. And I prayed. And I cried some more as I tried to get my mind around how many people in our world (out of perhaps 9 billion people) might be caught in this wicked trap. How many children sold out by desperate parents who can't feed the rest any other way? How many fatherless boys seeking affirmation? How many girls just looking for love? How many women, frightened or fighting for some shred of self, selling themselves one photo set, one film, one view at a time? How many men loving and hating, lusting and loathing, not able to be free and whole? They are more than we can count. And we consider them, all of them, the "worst of these." We recoil at even the thought of what they do, what they have become.

Who will pray for them? Who will pray for the "worst of these," that by the mercy of God someone, somewhere, full of grace and truth, will intersect their lives and offer them Christ? Offer them hope? Offer them a way out and a way home?

I will. I've decided that every time I have to take an impure thought captive to Christ, every time Satan launches a stray image into my mind, every time my eyes are assaulted by unclean things, I will pray for those caught in the spider web of pornography. I will fight back on their behalf. I will not let them die alone, forgotten, unloved. Not everyone can do this. Not everyone should do this. Even the best intentions can be exploited by the evil one. But until God says otherwise, I'm going to pray that a very specific group of people hear a life changing testimony about the grace of God in Christ Jesus every time I think of them.

There are more of them than I can count or even imagine. But God is great. He loves them. He has asked, "Who will pray for these?" He must have a plan for them. I will pray. Perhaps you will too?

A "Well duh!" Moment

I sat down in my favorite booth at the local cafe this morning to order my favorite breakfast and read my favorite prophet. You c'aint git no grits this far north (they think grits is the stuff left over on the road after they sand all winter), so I order biscuits and gravy, two eggs over easy on top, and pass the Tabasco. It's close as I can get to home without ordering fried chicken.

Anyway, I sat down in the booth, ordered decaf and breakfast, and started reading Jeremiah. I've said it before, and I'm saying it again, Jeremiah is the bomb! God sends him out to preach and tells him, right up front, "Ain't gonna be easy, but don't you get discouraged, 'cause if you get dismayed by them, I'll dismay you before them." C'mon, you gotta love a job description that starts out, "They will fight against you but they shall not prevail against you."

So what was Jeremiah expecting? Chapter twelve records his complaint to God. "Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all who are treacherous thrive?" What kind of question is that, don'tcha know? What did he think God meant? Did he think God was kidding when he said, "They will fight against you."

Maybe Jeremiah thought, "Gee, I'm a prophet of God. Surely everyone who loves God will love the messages I bring and the whole nation will treat me like a hero." They treated him like dirt. They threw him down a well and left him there. They ignored what he said. It was just like God told him. There would be occasions when he would be tempted to despair.

God answers Jeremiah's complaint in the latter half of chapter twelve. Essentially he says to Jeremiah, "If you think you have it bad, imagine how I feel! This is my house. These are my beloved. Many shepherds have destroyed my vineyard; they have made my pleasant portion a desolate place." God continues by promising to "pluck Judah" from among the nations that seek to destroy her. He promises to do them good after accounting for the bad they have done to him.

In case you were looking for a definition of grace, that's a good one.

Anyway, I'm reading through all this and smiling at the lessons God supplies faithful Jeremiah, when I get to chapter 13 verse 12. God gives Jeremiah a message to give to the people. It is a serious statement of the obvious. Jeremiah is to tell the people, "Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, 'Every jar shall be filled with wine.'" It's one doozy of a "well duh!" moment. The people respond, "Do we not know indeed know that every jar will be filled with wine?"

"Of course wine jars will be filled with wine, Jeremiah. What do you think wine jars are for? And don't you think we're smart enough to know wine jars will be filled with wine? What kind of message is this." I can just hear them, can't you. Sometimes, we get that response, don't we? We try to tell people about life, and God, and grace, and we get that response, "C'mon we already know all this. What's the big deal?"

Here's the big deal: God used a statement of the obvious as an introduction for a not so obvious announcement. Verse thirteen says, "Then you will say to them, 'Thus says the LORD: Behold, I will fill with drunkenness all the inhabitants of this land . . . and I will dash them one against another . . . I will not pity or spare or have compassion, that I should not destroy them.'"

Everybody stop and bow your head. God used the obvious to convey a less obvious message. The people were the wine jars and they were to be filled, not for storage but for destruction. Now, there's a time to make the same point about God's justice upon his people (and all people) in regard to sin, but what struck me this morning, was that, as the people responded to Jeremiah, they were stuck in earth-based, time-trapped, self-focused thinking. They did not expect Jeremiah to be providing a spiritual message and so they did not discern the spiritual message written on the face of the obvious. God was telling them more than they recognized.

Thank God Jeremiah kept talking. I've come to realize that God's warnings are occasions for grace. They are invitations to repent and find forgiveness and repair to the mercy and compassion of God before that mercy and compassion become unattainable.

Look for the message God is writing in the world around you. Look for the warning, or the grace, or the mercy that comes in a shooting, or a football game, or a sunset, or a sermon. It is likely there is more to them than the obvious, more than "well duh" can account for.

A Pastor's Down Time Prayer

It has been more than a month since my last post. I thought I might have more to say. Actually, I do have more to say, but so much of what I have to say I need to say to God before I say it to anyone else. I need a divine editor these days, not only of my words, but of my heart.

So much troubles me. So much seems wrong, out of sorts with God and His word. So many willing to cut theological corners, short sheet the word of God in their lives, even ignore the clear injunctions of Scripture to their lives: thoughts, words, actions, and attitudes included. I have been cursed and dismissed and complimented and affirmed all at the same time. I look at Jesus and I think, "Look out! Crucifixion ahead."

O Lord, make me like you. There are other aspirations that float through my mind and spirit, but please, make that one the priority. Tomorrow I may feel differently, but right this moment, while I'm still in my right mind, accept this plea. Make me like you.

You did not lash out. You did not scorn. You did not despair. For the joy set before you, you endured the cross. I feel the cross today, but the joy? Not so much. So make me like you. Please.

I need to be faithful. I need to be gracious, truthful, and filled with unconditional love and forgiveness because the god of this world has blinded their eyes and "they do not know what they are doing." Please, please. Make me like you.

Let me bare my back to the scourging of gossip and misunderstanding, not because those who give it are right, but because you who took it are right. let me open my heart to the heartless and rebellious, not because they deserve my love, but because I do not deserve your love. Please, make me like you.

"I once was blind." In some ways I still am, so please, Lord, don't just give me sight, but fulfill what the author to the Hebrews said when he exclaimed, "We see Jesus!" Make me like you, able to see what you see in my heart, in the hearts of others, in the Father's heart most of all.

I am full of "I" when I should be full of You, full of Spirit, full of faith. Please, Jesus, make me like you.

What's that, Lord? Before the words leave my lips you are answering? What did I think these difficulties and distresses were all about? You sent them ahead in answer to the prayer you knew I would pray when you sent them?

Oh.

Okay.

No, seriously. It's okay. I just sort of forgot as I got wrapped up in my own little--very little--world. I'm better now. You know the plans you have for me, plans of good and not of evil, to give me hope and a future. These are your unthwartable plans. Good plans. Hopeful plans. Plans that, as the future becomes today and passes into tomorrow, will make me like you.

Thank you.

I love you.