Walking in Obedience

And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands.  As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love.  (2 John 1:6)

A while ago, I asked God to guide me and show me how I can best serve Him.  I've long known that to counsel and otherwise tend to victims of crime was my calling, and I have pursued that calling in my professional life.  But there is a longing to hone that calling in ways that intentionally expose these victims to the healing love and grace of Christ.  Only Jesus can heal the deepest of wounds, and the desire to share that truth has been impressed upon me with greater urgency of late.  So I asked God to illuminate ways in which I could satisfy that urgency in accordance with His will.

A word of caution, in case you were usure about this: God answers prayer, but not always in the way you expect.  Rarely does He choose the path of least resistance.

In addition to calling me to walk more fully in my own truth as a victim of crime, a walk that produces both pain and freedom, God has recently placed a most unusual challenge in my path that jars me out of my comfort zone.  I have a dear friend, an amazing man and elder brother in Christ, whose calling is ministering to prisoners.  For years, he has prayed with prisoners, led Bible studies among them, and taught them to read God's Word.  An untold number of prisoners have come to faith in Christ through my friend's willingness to minister to them.  We have supported each other in prayer over the years.  In the past few months, he has begun doing what has always been his greatest desire - counseling inmates on death row.  Over lunch recently, he asked me to pray specifically and frequently for a particular prisoner he is counseling, someone destined to die for a crime so horrific it turns my stomach and summons an anguish I'd rather not feel. 

My friend knows that what he is asking of me is not easy.  He knows that I've spent countless hours with hundreds of crime victims and their loved ones who have suffered the terrible impact of human cruelty, some of them on the brink of death themselves.  He knows that I have tasted that suffering myself, and it is bitter.  To honestly and purposefully pray for the salvation of one who has caused such immense suffering is a daunting request, and one never before presented to me.  As you can imagine, my friend has very few supporters, very few people in his life that agree with what he's doing or have sympathy for the importance or difficulty of it.  If I'm being honest with you, the temptation to join the ranks of those detractors is strong, and I am ever weak.

Ultimately, I cannot refuse my faithful friend's request, nor can I refuse the opportunity God has placed in my path to grow in my own faith.  If I believe in the salvation and healing power of Christ, who pulled me from the pit of my own sin and despair, how can I not pray for that same salvation and healing for a man whose days are literally numbered?  My Jesus knows no depth too deep, no sin too awful, no person too fallen.  Grace is for all who choose to believe, not just those I deem worthy.  After all, there is a scar somewhere on my Lord's precious body that has my name on it.

The lesson in all this for me is that I cannot faithfully and effectively pursue a ministry of sharing the truth and grace of Christ with anyone unless I am willing to share that truth and grace with everyone.  To withhold God's love from anyone who needs it is to deny what Jesus did for me on the cross. 

May we all walk in obedience to His love.  It's okay if it's not easy.  Obedience rarely is.