“My prayer is not that you take them out of the world…” I couldn’t help but be amazed by this prayer of Jesus for his disciples, hours before he was captured and crucified. Wouldn’t it be much better to be taken out of this world – this world of hardships, struggles, and chronic disappointments? When I see someone I love who is hurting, is it not my desire to somehow rescue them from the pain?
How often do we pray that the Lord would “take us out” of a bad situation – a painful disease, a broken relationship, a financial loss, or a depressing circumstance? Maybe some sort of miracle from our Father’s hand would be timely right now.
But the miracle we pray for doesn’t come; the rescue we plead for doesn’t happen. Instead, I read, “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world…” What purposes does Jesus have for wanting to keep us in the boiling pot of life? The rest of Jesus’s prayer in John 17 provides answers: “That the world may believe”, “That they may be sanctified in truth”, “That they may have my joy”, “that they may be one.”
A strange God, indeed, who chooses to use the tools of testing, trials, and adversity to chisel out joy, unity, and something called sanctification, all for the purpose of showing the world that there is something better than “the world” for those who give their life to the Lord, Jesus Christ. Someone has said, “Faith is like Kodak film; both are best developed in the dark.” A joyful faith in the midst of a troublesome world is what makes our light shine. Even a weak flashlight shines best when the night is at its darkest.
In the past couple of weeks, we have seen 9 people choose to let their faith shine by following the Lord in the waters of baptism. Despite poverty, rejection, and endless testing, they have put a smile on their face because they have discovered a joy in their heart that adversity has failed to extinguish. They join 85 others who, since August, have shown through baptism that heavenly joy can overcome worldly heartaches.
Last week I conducted CPM training for several Filipino missionaries who will be going to China and Cambodia. They will be leaving with meager means of support in order to share the Good News to people in a land not their own. Through living “in the world” of heartaches and disappointments, they have found a joy and purpose that lifts them above all of life’s troubles and trials.
These are the people for whom the world is not worthy. These are the people whom Jesus spoke of, in his prayer, “…glory has come to Me through them.”
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