Keep squeezing the magnets
fitting together the World & Word
Have you ever tried to hold magnets together against their will?
It fascinated me as a child (and still to this day) that no matter what you try, the magnets will have their way.
It’s a reality of nature.
The same magnets that resist us will instantly and effortlessly cling together if we simply change their direction!
Sometimes prayer feels like squeezing the magnets together, doesn’t it?
It feels like we’re trying to make things fit together that don’t. The world we live in seems to resist the Word of God when they should line up.
Don’t is different than won’t, Christian. The tension you feel in prayer will resolve one day.
I want you to lean into the tension of prayer in the hope of what God is doing in you and what God is doing in the world.
A paradox of the world is that waiting on God speeds our growth. Being pressed down causes our faith to sprout up.
This true when we pray. This is part of the value of tension we wait in.
We must depend on strength outside our own to wait and we must rely on strength not our own to grow.
God’s work in you is an important priority to Him–He loves you! It should be a hope giving priority to us!
Look at the relationship between suffering, growth, and hope in Romans 5,
And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
Why is God allowing the magnets to resist? Why doesn’t this world perfectly align with the Word yet? Cause we don’t align yet– more needs to flip inside you and me! He’s transforming you in the waiting!
Keep praying!
God’s also patiently calling people back to Himself in the world. When the magnets of His Word and His World finally flip together it will be final judgment for unrepentant sinners.
The tension we feel is part of waiting for God to fix things. God is allowing that tension and making room for people to be made right.
We don’t know why all things go wrong and can’t trace the cause for every calamity. We can be confident that the distance between Heaven and Earth is on purpose at this point. One primary purpose is the salvation of the lost.
Soon enough the magnets will stick together as He designed.
Prayer exists in a broken world because God is still saving sinners from a broken world.
The question is not,
“Will the world and the Word of God fit together?”
…but…
“When Jesus fits them together at His return, will you still be praying?”
(that’s the argument of Luke 18 I’ve copied below btw)
Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. 2 He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. 3 And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’
4 “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’ ”
6 And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7 And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? 8 I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”
Luke 18:1–8
Keep squeezing the magnets, Children!