Fullbacks and Fallbacks

When one is hospitalized for an extended period of time, one gets to know something about his caregivers. Amazing! They are people, too, with their own personal burdens and hopes and dreams and pains and anguish. 

This morning, I learned that my night nurse will be reducing her working hours to care for her husband who has been recently diagnosed with a rare, congenital heart condition that can cause a sudden onset of ventricular fibrillation (v-fib). V-fib is essentially a loss of coordination in the heart beat of the lower chambers (ventricles) of the heart. Instead of periodically contracting as a unit in order to pump blood out into the body and especially to the brain and lungs, the muscle fibers begin randomly contracting so that the ventricles fibrillate, defined as "uncontrolled twitching or quivering of muscular fibrils." 

Think of a football team that lines up to run the fullback through the middle of the offensive line, but when the ball is snapped each player on the team simply runs around doing his own thing, instead of making a coordinated effort to block the opponents out of the way, opening a pathway for the fullback. That fullback's not going anywhere. 

In the same way a fibrillating ventricle cannot move the blood effectively into the arteries so it can feed the body cells oxygen and other nutrients. The oxygen content of the blood, which is no longer circulating through the lungs, drops precipitously. What blood does make it to the brain, then, cannot supply the oxygen the brain needs to function, and within minutes brain damage or death can follow. This is even more important than the fullback not getting through the line to advance the football, in spite of what your coach may tell you. 

Thank God there are treatments available for this kind of heart ailment. One is an implanted electronic defibrillator (IED). It is the same thing you see on TV when the ER doc applies electrodes to the chest of a patient with v-fib, shouts "clear" and then sends an electrical shock through the patient's torso in order to reestablish proper heart rhythm. Only, the IED is small enough to be implanted into the patient's body. It is computerized to sense an onset of v-fib and automatically administer the needed electrical stimulus to restore normal heart rhythm. 

I told my nurse that I would add her husband to my prayer list. That is a big responsibility that I do not take lightly. I use a phone app to keep track of prayer requests, so I added his name to my prayer list. Then I pondered how to pray for him, exactly. The Bible tells me that if I ask for anything according to God's will it will be granted. And that's where a lot of confusion comes into my head. How do I pray according to God's will, when I pray for another person? Or for that matter, for myself. 

Our pastor started a series of sermons last Sunday focused on the Book of Colossians in the New Testament of the Bible. This "book" is really a letter written by the Apostle Paul to a church in the city of Colassae, in Asia Minor. In the first part of the letter, Paul tells the Colossians that he is praying for them: 

And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, ¹⁰ so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; ¹¹ being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy... (Colossians 1:9-11)

So, it looks like praying according to God's will may mean first praying that we "may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding." Once we receive that wisdom and understanding, it looks like we can be "strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy." So, these are good things to ask for others when we pray for them.

A question I often hear from Christians is, "How can I know God's will?" Interestingly, it is not that difficult. He has given us a written record of His will. The Ten Commandments tell us His will, and Jesus summed them up in Matthew 22:37-39: 

And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. ³⁸ This is the great and first commandment. ³⁹ And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Boom! God's will is that we love Him and love our neighbors as much as we love ourselves. A lot of the Bible is about learning to know God's will and acting on it. Jesus told his twelve closest friends:

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. ¹⁶ And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, ¹⁷ even the Spirit of truth... These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. ²⁶ But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you." (John 14:15-17, 25-26) 

So, loving God means keeping his commandments. If you love someone, you naturally want to please him/her. Jesus tells us here that what pleases God is keeping His commandments. And furthermore, He tells us that, even though Jesus died, was resurrected and went to be with God the Father in heaven as our advocate, we are not left alone to figure out His will. The Father Himself has sent the Holy Spirit to dwell in us and "teach [us] all things and bring to [our] remembrance all that [Jesus has] said to [us]." 

There's one more thing we need to understand in this. In the very first book of the Bible, Genesis, we are told that God made man with free will. In other words, we are free to make choices about what we do. Can we choose not to do God's will? Yes. If we did not have that choice, we could not love God. Love is a choice we make. Without choice "love" would be nothing more than forced servitude. 

So, God tells us His will, and He gives us free will. What will we choose? I believe that there is a large overlap between God's will and ours. That is to say we can make different choices for ourselves and still be within God's will. The question we need to ask ourselves is this: "Does the choice I am making demonstrate my love for God, and does it demonstrate that I love my neighbor as I love myself?" 

Or to put it another way, does my choice in any way dishonor God, or does it in any way negatively impact my neighbor? (Perhaps I should define neighbor: how about "one's fellow human being.") If the answer to these questions is "no," I think we are on solid ground, but checking in with the Holy Spirit through prayer, so he can "teach [us] all things and bring to [our] remembrance all that [Jesus has] said to [us]" is a great way to check our motives first. 

So, how can I pray for my nurse's husband? First, that he will be filled with the knowledge of God's will in spiritual wisdom and understanding, and that he will be strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy. 

Second, I can remember the passage in Hebrews that tells me I am welcome to come to God and boldly ask that He will fulfill His promises: 

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one [Jesus] who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. ¹⁶ Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:15-16, bracketed material and emphasis added)

And when we still don't know how to pray for another or for ourselves, as I often don't in very difficult circumstances, God has even provided for that: 

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. (Romans 8:26)

This Spirit is the same Helper that Jesus promised the Father would send to dwell within us, and now we see why. I am comforted to know that when I promise to pray for another, I will not have to wing it like a fullback without an offensive line. I have guidelines. I have a Heavenly Father who loves me and has invited me to come to him for help. I have a Helper, the Holy Spirit, to help me bring my concerns to the Father, even when I don't know how to ask. 

I can do this!