Some of you who are reading this are praying for the return of a “prodigal spouse.”

I was one once, you know? A prodigal spouse. A wanderer. And now, it humbles me to wash the feet of those who are waiting in this wilderness.

4th of July weekend, 1999. I started coming clean. After wallowing in the slop and stench of my sin for several years, something in me…no…SomeOne in me sat up and looked around,

Because someone like you was praying for me.

I saw my sin. Muddy. Thick.

And, while I still don’t really know how God raised me up from that mire and set my feet running toward home, He did. 

HE DID.

HE DOES.

HE WILL.

¹ Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.² (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.) 

Mary and Martha found themselves knee-deep in the muck of God’s mission as they helplessly watched their brother slip into the grave. How does one reconcile death as it draws near…and knocks? Nothing fits together when you’re standing on that threshold. However, the Healer had been among them. So they did the only thing they knew to do.

³ So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.”  ⁴ When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” 

Everything will be alright now. Jesus has been called to the scene. He is coming. (Phew!) The Father will be glorified when Lazarus is healed. The Son will be glorified when Lazarus is healed. Not dead. Made well. All better.

Happy ending.

⁵ Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. ⁶ So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days…

He what? Jesus did what? He…waited? He waited two more days?

Jesus loved Martha, Mary, and Lazarus with such great depth that…

He didn’t come before Lazarus died.

Excuse me? Do you mean to tell me that Jesus didn’t show up until it was…(dare I say) too late?

Am I the only one having a hard time reconciling this as I wait for Jesus to ride in and save the day and you wait for Jesus to ride in and save the day…and two more days pass…and what feels like two plus two hundred more days pass and still…

Jesus is a no-show?

³² When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 

Do I have the right to expect Jesus to arrive on the scene before death?

Jesus waited because He loved Mary, Martha, and Lazarus.

Out of immense His love, He waited.

And, Lazarus…died.

When we’re stranded in the muck of God’s mission and then God waits…and waits some more…and leaves us there…and waits, “two more days”…it sure doesn’t feel like love.

It doesn’t feel like love when something dies. Or…someone.

No. THAT doesn’t feel like love at all.

Does this mean that…

LOVE =  GOD INTENTIONALLY WAITS TO ANSWER MY PRAYER?

Or, maybe…

LOVE = I INTENTIONALLY WAIT ON GOD TO ANSWER MY PRAYER?

Or, both?

This is the exact point at which our faith must kick up its hackles and come bounding in. We look for Jesus to come riding in on His white horse and save the day, but it is our faith that must stand tall in the stirrups. Now. Like, right now.

With hope against ALL hope, our faith must ride to the rescue and trample over the neck of the enemy we call, Unbelief.

⁴⁰ Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” ⁴¹ So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. ⁴² I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”

Jesus is delaying His arrival for my benefit. And not just for mine, but for the benefit of all the other people “standing here” with me (that would be YOU). Jesus Christ is delaying His arrival for my benefit and yours. Because He loves me that much.

Because He loves you that much.

⁴³ When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”

⁴⁴ The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.

Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”

Let FAITH arise from our tombs of unbelief, shed its grave clothes, and ride forth to save the day.

(John 11, emphasis added.)

Sometimes when we’re in the middle of the muck and mire of God’s mission, we get short-sighted. Fussing and fidgeting to find a way out becomes the order of the day. We focus on our circumstances and we need tangible experiences to shift our gaze.

This morning after my walk at the ocean, I watched as a paralyzed woman in a wheel chair was rolled to the shoreline by her friend. A few moments later, her friend returned with a beach chair. The friend then helped the woman shift from one chair to the other. As the woman’s legs dangled limply in the water I wondered, “Can she feel the ocean on her legs? Does she know when the tide breaks across her toes? Or, does she have to look down at the ocean to see that she is joined to it?”

Things like legs that work I take for granted…took for granted…until I saw her there. It’s so easy to do that when we’re in the muck of the mission…until we come face-to-face with something like a woman in the wheelchair at the edge of the ocean. I bowed my head and asked for forgiveness.

After a while, the tide had flowed out significantly enough that the woman’s legs were no longer in the water. She really struggled this time…fighting to find enough arm strength to shift herself up into her wheelchair so that her friend could move the low beach chair back into the foamy tide. Just then, a strong young man came up alongside them offering to help. The paralyzed woman agreed. Effortlessly, the man lifted her up out of the beach chair and held her in his arms until her friend moved the chair out into the water. Then, the man gently placed the woman back down into the chair and continued walking.

God’s love is just like that when we feel stuck and pinched by life’s circumstances. When we stop our striving and allow Him into that very place–into the middle of the muck–He will gently pick us up in our paralysis; our legs dangling helplessly from His everlasting arms. He will cradle us to Himself and then, when it’s time, He will set us down in the spacious place of His presence–an ocean of grace. “When hard pressed, I cried to the LORD; he brought me into a spacious place.” Psalm 118:5

In case no one told you, God’s mission will include muck…a lot of muck. Because, for as much as His mission has eternal impact, you’re still walking it out on earth. A fallen world filled with dense brokenness; yours and the brokenness of others. Muck is thick. It’s deep. If you’re not careful, it will swallow you into itself. The deeper you sink, the harder it is to get out. Stuck in muck. Been there. Not pretty.

What is the remedy for release? Intention.

Intention. Intentional. Intentionality. What do those words really mean? Deliberate. Willful. Planned. Purposeful. An act or instance of determining mentally upon some action or result. 

Intentionality about what? That depends on the leading of the Holy Spirit. For one, it could be intentional prayer. For another, it could be intentional gratitude. Whatever form or substance intentionality takes in you, the core of it must be the pursuit of God. Not the pursuit of a person. Not the pursuit of a way out. The pursuit of God–His presence with you right there in the middle of the muck. And, as hard as it may be to believe this now, when you intentionally pursue the presence of a holy God in the middle of the unholy muck of His mission, you may actually find that you’d like to linger there a little longer.

We cannot think of a single person in our lives right now who isn’t in need of a major miracle at this phase of their mission. They’ve been waiting and praying. Praying and waiting. Still nothing. Sound familiar?

Daylight brings new speculation over delay’s good reason. Nighttime rolls a mental movie reel riddled with deliverance scenarios, each one a little less heroic than the one before. Things look beyond bleak, but somehow you muster up just enough faith to fan hope’s dwindling flame for one more day.

We know this season well because we’re right there with you…waiting, praying…praying, waiting…speculating, imagining, fanning and all. Like you, we are begging our guts out for a miracle from the only One who is mighty to save. And still…Heaven seems silent.

God’s Word speaks to THIS very desperation with a tangible admonition: We must meditate on the miracles of ages past. We must strain hard to look beyond today’s pain (and beyond what seems like a seriously befuddling lack of activity on God’s part) and appeal to the miracles of yesterday…and to the God who so faithfully and mightily performed them.

“Then I thought, ‘To this I will appeal; the years of the right hand of the Most High.’ I will remember the deeds of the LORD; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago. I will meditate on all your works and consider all your mighty deeds.” Psalm 77:10-12

God of the once-barren womb….God of the ram in the thicket…God of the parted sea…God of the well-fed wanderers…God of the tumbled walls…God of Gideon’s fleece…God of the widow’s oil…God of the breath-filled bones…

God of the floating axe-head…God of the prophet’s fire…God of the shepherd’s slain giant…God of the fiery furnace…God of the lion’s den…God of the latter glory…

God of the virgin birth…God of the water to wine…God of the miraculous catch…God of the cleansed lepers…God of the sighted beggar…God of the stilled tempest…God of the risen brother…God of the delivered demoniac…God of the returned prodigal…God of the repentant sinner…

GOD OF DEATH’S CRUSHING BLOW!

There are days during Plan Faith when you will stand on a razor’s edge. There is no step of faith nor action to take. Not one. Taking a step in ANY direction would satisfy your flesh, but it would also set you outside the will of God. Though everything (everything!) appears to be crumbling around you, your job is to stay perched in pure faith on a razor’s edge…balanced by the presence of God and God alone. And there…you wait. In silence, you wait.

“My soul, wait in silence for God only, For my hope is from Him.” Psalm 62:5

Over the years we’ve been reconciled and in ministry, we’ve realized how much of God’s mission is fueled by faith. You know…it’s the kind of faith that makes your armpits sweat. The fearless leaping kind of faith. The bounding over mountains kind of faith. The free-fall with no safety net kind of faith. Although the motive is never to gain attention, others can’t help but take notice when you leap, bound, and free-fall.

Yes, on God’s mission, that kind of remarkable faith is sometimes required. However, more often than not, it is the one…little…tiny…baby…seemingly obscure step of faith–made during a totally private moment alone with God–that will serve as THE most powerful catalyst to ignite His heart and move His hand.

God has a mission for your marriage; an earthly mission that will have a heavenly impact. And, He knows you’ve been hungering for something more. He put that heart hunger inside of you. But, there’s a catch.

      This is the dividing line for many. Countless people before you have gotten to this exact place and totally missed the boat. Why? Because instead of hungering after God and letting Him reveal His mission for their marriage, they hungered for the mission. Under the guise of good intentions, they crafted their own plans to fill the void in their hearts with God’s mission instead of with God Himself.

    Get one thing straight: Your heart must hunger for God, more than for God’s mission.

   When we were married to each other the first time, it took less than two years for us to become another casualty in the Church. We chased after the mission, instead of chasing after our Maker. We had everything backwards. We put the cart before the horse. As a result, we bottomed out. We may sound like a broken record when we repeat over and over again that discovering God’s mission for your marriage is about discovering God. You are on a discovery mission; a mission to follow everything the Father tells you, to be joined to Jesus Christ in a deeper way, and to heed the Holy Spirit in every area of your lives together.

In 2007, God moved us more than 3,000 miles away from our family and everything familiar. Since then, it has seemed rather ironic that in order to help bring marriages and families together, we must be apart from our own. No one one told me about this when I signed up for God’s mission. Or, did they?

Still another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.” Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” Luke 9:61-62

Over the past several days, there have been three separate crises in our extended family and honestly, everything in me wants to pack up my missionary marbles and go home.
However, Jesus’ words in the above passage pierce my heart. If a farmer looked back while he was plowing, he would not be able to keep the furrows straight for planting his seed.

Crooked furrows didn’t cut it for service in Jesus’ day and they don’t work when you’re out to discover God’s mission for your marriage either. Hand to the plow, people. Hand to the plow.

Like many couples, we had no clue that God had a mission for our marriage. When we were married in 1989 we thought we had the world by the tail. Instead, the world snuffed us out in less than two years. Mission aborted. However, God had a unique plan to awaken us to our own sins and His divine mercy, much of which came through some extraordinary friends, like the one you see in this photo.

Annie and I have been friends for over thirty years. She was there when Clint and I were dating. She was my maid of honor when we married the first time. Annie was also there when I walked out on Clint and our marriage blew apart. And, during the years I ran from God, she stayed beside me with only one motive in her heart: love.

While she didn’t approve of what I had done, Annie knew that God was the only one who could turn my heart of stone into a heart of flesh. And when He did just that, she was there to help me pick up the pieces of rubble in the wake of my poor choices, and to start the rebuilding process. Not once did she dishonor our friendship or her relationship with God. And, not once did she realize how powerfully God was going to use her years of unconditional love and faithfulness as part of the means to reconcile Clint and I.

Annie visited our home recently and the three of us talked in depth about those years when our marriage unraveled. After our discussion, we felt led to record an unscripted video interview with Annie, hoping that it would testify to how important it is to love those spouses who wander away from the faith and from their marriages.

Annie, from the depth of our hearts, we thank you. Thank you for loving us the way God does.

Click here to view our video interview entitled, “A Friend Loves at All Times.”