The High Cost of Shining

Shining is always costly.  Light comes only at the cost of that which produces it.  An unlit candle does no shining.  Burning must come before shining. We cannot be of great use to others without cost to ourselves.  Burning suggests suffering.  We shrink from pain..."The glory of tomorrow is rooted in the drudgery of today."  Many want the glory without the cross, the shining without the suffering, but  crucifixion comes before coronation.

When the Answer is "Get Outta My Way"

It is even more difficult when God's method to answer our prayer is to use our lives without our mouths: we struggle with going into action without words. Wives who have prayed for their husband to be the spiritual leader struggle to close their mouths long enough for their husband to initiate any spiritual behavior. We are so full of our own understanding of Scripture, our children, disciple, or partner have no opportunity to get their oar into the waters of conversation. We are so enamored with our own understanding of the situation, we can't stop and let the other person speak--and miss out on God's answers that might come if we just listened.


Frankly, for all our praying, too often we are really too full of us. Sometimes God introduces pain into our world precisely to stop us in our tracks long enough that He will have room to work. Paul talked about how his experiences had a tendency to go to his head. So, God arranged for pain in his life to there would be more of God and less of Paul. 2CO 12:7 To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9 But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Sometimes our excuses, failures, inadequacies and "What If's" are the backdrop for God to get the greater glory…if we will allow Him to get us out of the way long enough to answer our prayers His way rather than our way. It is a challenge to know when God wants to use us in the answer to our prayer, and even more difficult when our involvement is just getting out of His way.

When Pointing Undermines our Praying

There are times when we actually avoid God's answers to our prayers. We pray and pray, but then, when He answers, are unwilling to be part of it. Take Moses, for instance. It was obvious that Moses had been interested in seeing God answer Israel's prayer for relief from Egyptian slavery. But, when God, meeting him at the corner of the Burning Bush and the backside of the desert, told him that He was going to do something about the slavery, Moses balked.


Here is what it was like,

The LORD said, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt....And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. 1So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt." EX 3:7-10

Listen to Moses' various excuses and attempts to avoid being part of God's answer

But Moses said to God, "Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?" EX 3:11

Moses said to God, "Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, `The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, `What is his name?' Then what shall I tell them?" EX 3:13

Moses answered, "What if they do not believe me or listen to me EX 4:1

Moses said to the LORD, "O Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue." EX 4:10

Moses sounds a bit like us. We too easily are "pointers" (pointing at what God's people need or what they could do), and many of our prayers are "pointing" to what we want God to do. Too often, however, like Moses, when God tosses it back into our lap and implies that we are a part of His answers to our own prayers, we get all full of "what if's" and negative self-image. "I can't" sometimes become our mantra in spite of all the emphasis on positive thinking today.

Too often we are the parent or partner who pleads with God for changes in children or mate, but when God calls us to change so He can engineer an answer, we become too busy with our work. We can easily see how our church ought to reach into the community and pull the gospel net by sharing Christ, but find our schedules so full of church activities that we have no time for staffing our corner of the net. Our lives are so full of good things we are too busy on the back side of our deserts to be God's instrument. We know what God should do but feel like too much of a failure in our previous efforts, to jump in again.

When you pray, expect God to answer, using you in some way! Instead of excuses and inadequate feelings, prepare to leave the desert and align yourself with His answers.