A strange thing happened to me this morning.
I was thinking about a birthday party Linda and I will be attending tonight. I’ve been asked to say a prayer at a close friend’s (Steve Stern’s) birthday party tonight. Steve has ALS, but ALS doesn’t have him.
I was thinking about what I might pray when I sensed I should ask God what I should say to Him when I pray tonight. Now that’s a strange thing. I don’t remember God ever impressing me to ask Him what to say to Him later in the day. But that is what I thought I heard him say.
So I sat in front of my computer and began to type what he put on my mind. I thought I’d share a little of what He impressed me to say:
“God, more than three thousand years ago, you gave King David of Israel a prayer to pray to you. You guided him to write his prayer down. Thanks for doing that. Thank you for bringing one paragraph of that prayer to my mind today as I asked you about tonight. As so we say back to you something you said to David, and actually said to us through him, three thousand years ago, knowing that to you, to whom a thousand years is as a day, it seems like three days ago. Here it is Lord …
You saw me before I was born.
Every day of my life was recorded in your book.
Every moment was laid out
before a single day had passed. Psalm 139:16
God, we love Steve. He is precious to us a friend, as child, as a sibling, as a husband, as father, as brother in Christ.
God, thank you for ordaining Steve’s birth. Thank you for giving him the gift of biological life. Thank you a thousand times for causing him to hear of your offer of another dimension of life, the eternal kind of life. Thank you that he prayed a sincere prayer many years ago, asking your forgiveness of his sin, and giving his very life back to you in recognition of the fact that you gave him life in the first place. Thank you that on that day of decision he began to live a kind of life that would go on forever. We know that if and when he experiences biological death, it will be but a hiccup, a blip on the screen, a step across a dotted line, and he will be once again experience what he experienced 49 year ago, entrance into a new, even bigger, even better residence. At that point, he, who had a first birth and a second birth, will have a third birth, a birth into the very highest form of joy, and life and adventure in partnership with You!
Dear Lord, today we declare that Steve will live to the fullest every day you’ve ordained for him. Because of our faith in You, we lay claim on every single one of those days. God, you chose to include in the scriptures several stories where people had a prognosis of but weeks to live and you miraculously extended their lives. Lord, we ask you to do the same thing with Steve. Unless and until you tell us otherwise, we are ASSUMING IN FAITH that you will.
Lord, make us like Steve. He is living each day fully aware … that day is a gift from you. Treasuring his family. Cherishing each friend. O Lord, Forgive us where we’ve grown accustomed to the staggering gifts of physical life and spiritual life. Help us to rejoice in the possession of the eternal kind of life, as we all move toward our final day in the womb of biological life, knowing that our last breath of oxygen will be but a second before our first breath of eternal aliveness.
You are good God. We know you. You are altogether good. Smile on this happy occasion!”
Like I said, I don’t recall this has never happened to me before that I recall. But that is how it is living in relatioinship with the Living God. He’s often doing things that are foreign, strange, new to me.