The Truth Behind Every Prayer

My name is Mark, one of the pastors here. I want to welcome you. So glad you're here this morning. And we are kicking off a brand new message series for the entire summer called "Aha!" And you are going to hear some amazing speakers this summer talk about essentially moments when God's Word and God's Spirit intersected or perhaps even collided with their life in a way that brought profound insight and understanding. And we are going to benefit from that. You are going to benefit from that. So I hope that you will take advantage of this because these "aha!" moments that these very speakers are going to be speaking about, in many cases, perhaps most cases, came to them at some cost.

Think of Dave Dravecki. You wouldn't know his name today had he not gotten cancer and eventually had his arm amputated. He would just be some forgotten major league pitcher except for his story that is able to profoundly encourage us. And so don't miss that when he is here on Father's Day weekend or even last weekend as René shared about the passing of his dear mom Rosemary. And it was touching and it was powerful. It was tender because it cost him.

And as I was sitting there last weekend in support of my friend, I had no idea that this weekend I would be sharing with you about a monumental loss in my own life because on Thursday of this week I lost my best friend. And my best friend, if you know anything about the story of David and Jonathan in the Old Testament, my friend Phil was my Jonathan in life. I want to make something very clear from the beginning. What I'm going to share with you the minutes to come isn't really about me or about Phil. I'll be sharing some events from this week but it's essentially about all of us.

Because if you've never had a week or in a time in your life when you were at the highest of highs emotionally, spiritually, relationally, and then found yourself at the lowest lows crushed by grief and disappointment, I have news for you. If you've never had a week like that, you will. You will. So my hope this morning is to point you to the hope and the encouragement that you can have. Very real hope, very real encouragement when you will need it. And perhaps some of you need that right now. Perhaps you had a week similar to mine.

Can't really do justice to a 40-year relationship. Phil and I met in the third grade. And over the years, there's how many times I practically lived at their house in high school because his house was closer to the beach than mine was. And so we wanted to surf all the time. As a parent now, I have no idea how his mom allowed that because how many parents, you know, you're happy when the kids' friends come over for sleepovers but you can't wait till they all leave. And I mean, I was there every weekend.

And we went on to, we got married two weeks apart. He married his lovely wife, Sharon, and two weeks later, Laura and I were married. We were, of course, in each other's weddings. And one of the double blessings, and this happens so rarely, it's rare to have a friend in this day and age for 40 years. But then when we got married, the Lord who had already knit our hearts together, saw fit to knit together the hearts of Sharon and Laura, and they just adore each other. And then our kids as well. They have twin boys who are 11. And they're like cousins to Jack, Luke, and Anna. And so it just doesn't get any better than that.

Ten years ago, they moved to Bend, Oregon, which was a blow for us. But in some ways, it intensified the friendship because we've become so much more intentional about our times together. We made a point of spending summer vacations together or spring break or however and whenever we had an opportunity to get together, we would. And if there's one word that captures the essence of our times together, it's laughter. We would laugh, do in large part to Phil's incredible sense of humor and incredibly buoyant personality. He is perhaps the most buoyant personality I've ever met. Always cheerful, always smiling, always looking how the glass is half full.

And so he's the kind of person that leaves you better than he found you, always invariably. And so our times together were life-giving for our families. But there has been for some years a cloud looming on the horizon. Twenty years ago, Phil developed this nagging cough that wouldn't go away. And doctors could not figure out what it was for the following ten years. They just didn't know. Well, keep using a lot of expressions of time, so I hope not to confuse you. But about ten years ago, they diagnosed Phil with a progressive and incurable lung disease, a lung disease that would slowly eliminate his lungs ability to absorb oxygen.

And so a little less than two years ago, he required supplemental oxygen with him wherever he was. And then last year, they'd been in communication with the University of Washington Medical Center. They have one of the most successful lung transplant programs in the entire world. And if you're put on their list for a transplant, on average you receive a transplant within seven months. They have an 80% success rate, and there are lung transplant recipients from there and other places that are right now competing in marathons, if you can believe that.

So we had very high hopes when Phil was put on the transplant list at the beginning of July last summer. And from the day we heard that he was listed, we've been praying for him, but we really knuckled down and we prayed every single day, my kids, if we would forget, they wouldn't. And every time we would sit down for dinner, one of them would pray for Phil that he would receive new lungs. And of course, we prayed that knowing that that would come on the heels of someone else's tragedy. And so we weren't wishing tragedy to befall anyone else. We simply knew that tragedies do happen. And when they do, there can be an amazing redemptive thing, a gift of life given for someone else.

And of course, we prayed that for Phil day after day after day after day. Seven months rolled around, he'd hit the average point, there had been no call, but it's, you know, averages are averages, right? There's got to be a high and a low. So we weren't terribly concerned, although his condition continued to deteriorate and really the deterioration was accelerating. In March, he had a bit of a setback, we went up there, but he recovered from that and he was put, number one, on the list. For the entire Western United States and Alaska, he was the first person who would receive a lung transplant provided they were the right size, essentially.

He had a blood type that would allow him to receive lungs from any other type of blood type. Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months. And this Monday began with word that he had been rushed to the hospital. He could simply not get enough oxygen, even though they had a system at home that could deliver massive amounts of it. Even at the hospital, they were having a very hard time stabilizing him. And so we spent Monday praying in earnest over and over again that somehow God would intervene, that somehow God would work a miracle.

But then they discovered later in the afternoon that the reason he couldn't get enough oxygen despite all the assistance was that he had pneumonia. And that would certainly be something that could end his life. And so we went to deep, deep concern, obviously. And then six o'clock, Monday evening, his brother-in-law Jimmy calls me on the phone and he says, "Seattle has just called. Lungs have become available. They are preparing to airlift Phil to Seattle." And when I gathered my family together in the kitchen to share that, I was overwhelmed. I could hardly get, I still can hardly get the words out. It was like, we're on the cusp of a miracle.

And we were praying a prayer of such joy and gratitude and at the same time praying for the family who obviously had undergone a tragedy as well. But for us, it was obviously something we had been asking Phil would be able to receive for 12 months. I don't want to be handcuffed by the notes this morning. So if you have those, and they're in your bulletin, and you're the kind of person who suffers anxiety if you don't get all the fill-ins, you need to get help for that. I shouldn't say that. Undermining a paradigm here as I speak. But I don't want to be handcuffed today, I think you understand that.

So I'm just going to give you the answers really quickly, and we're going to move on. So here we go. You notice it says there are three possible answers to prayer as far as I can tell, and they are yes, wait, and no. Yes, wait, and no. But there is a truth behind every prayer, and that truth is this. God hears me, God loves me, and God is in control. Now those are profound truths, I don't mean to make light of them, but again I want to have a little bit more freedom.

We went to bed celebrating the first answer, yes. We went to bed feeling, I'm sure, how David felt when he wrote in Psalm 116, "I loved the Lord for He heard my voice, He heard my cry for mercy because He turned His ear to me. I will call on Him as long as I live." I mean, of course you will. It worked. Ever have a yes given to you as an answer to prayer? Let me see your hands if God has ever said yes to something you specifically asked Him for. Man, it was, it's amazing, and we felt like we were getting perhaps like one of the best yeses ever.

Went to bed thinking that probably the surgery would start sometime in the wee hours of the morning, and woke up at probably six and found out that it was scheduled for eight, and I thought, well okay, that's probably because this is like one of the most complicated surgeries imaginable, and there's lots of teams and things that have to be all readied and staged and all this kind of stuff, and so it wasn't really alarmed until nine o'clock, ten o'clock, it's still being delayed.

10:15, Jimmy texts me and says they're doing a CT scan on the donor's lungs, and then for the next four plus hours there's just complete silence, nothing. Nothing. I come into work, and at 2:30, Jimmy texts me and says transplant has been canceled. Donor's lungs are not viable, which was probably a shame for that family that wanted them to be donated as well. I walked over to the office for Twin Lakes Christian School, which is in the corner of this building, and told my wife Laura, and we cried and we prayed, and then I found myself wandering into this building, the lights were off, it was dark, there was no one here but me, and I was sitting back in one of those pews right there in the very back there.

I was on the phone with my cousin Janet, she's best friends with Phil's little sister, and so we're all going through this week together. We cried and we talked, we thought, "Well, it's not really a no, maybe it's kind of a maybe." Came down to the front of these steps right here and got on my knees and prayed with everything I have, that somehow God would intervene in the life of my friend. And I found my thoughts turning to the book of Lamentations, which is a great book when you're really bummed out because it's just like... You would be surprised what God's book says about him. You really would.

I mean, in the verses preceding the ones you're gonna see, the writer basically says, "God, you're like a lion or a bear who has mauled me. You shoot me with your arrows like I'm your target, and they just pierce me over again. I try to pray to you, but you shut it out. You shut out my prayer." It's amazing the permission that Scripture gives us to be very raw and authentic with the Lord. But then it says in verses 18 through 20, chapter 3, "So I say, 'My splendor is gone in all that I had hoped from the Lord. I remember my affliction and my wandering. I remember them, I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me.'" All this writer can see is devastation. This was written in the wake of Babylon's obliteration of Jerusalem. God's holy city is lying in ruin and rubble, and there is no yes on the horizon as far as the author can see.

But there's an amazing shift starting at verse 22, I believe, or 21. "Yet this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope. Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed, for His compassion's never failed. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, 'The Lord is my portion, therefore I will wait for Him.'" Did you catch that? He didn't get what he wanted from the Lord, but he realizes that he still has the Lord, that the Lord is His portion. And so he can wait to see what the Lord will do.

Sometimes you get the gift, you get the yes, and it's awesome. Sometimes you don't, but you always have the giver. You always have the Lord as your portion. And realizing that, we just waited. We waited through Tuesday night and into Wednesday, and after talking with Phil's younger brother Mark and his wife Sharon, I booked a seat on the first flight out of San Jose to Seattle. What we had been told was that Phil would stay in Seattle and that they had this machine that could oxygenate his blood in the same way that a dialysis machine works, similar to that, and they could possibly keep him alive in the hospital for two more months and keep the window of opportunity open.

And so we're waiting, but we're praying, and there's some remaining ray of hope in all of this. And then Wednesday night while I'm packing my bags to catch a six o'clock flight in the morning, Phil's brother Mark calls me, and yet another curve had been thrown into this saga. And if I learned anything this week, it's the moment you think was going to happen next, you may very well be wrong. And Mark told me that unless the transplant could happen that night, that in the morning the physicians were going to convene and basically transition to comfort care. So get here as fast as you can.

And while I was still on the phone and I knew that he was right by Phil's bedside, I asked him if he could hold the phone to Phil's ear. Phil was on a ventilator so he wouldn't be able to speak, but he could hear me. And I told him, like I've told him many times, how much I love him. And how much of a gift he has been to my life. When you have a friend who can read your mind, finish your sentences, that's a special thing. And I told him that I was getting up there as quickly as I possibly could, and I hoped and prayed that I would see him in the morning, but if I didn't, that I knew without a doubt that we would see each other in heaven. And that is the way that it will be.

Because at two o'clock in the morning on Thursday, that's where Phil arrived. And I have to think that first deep breath was so sweet. And you know, when pastors write messages, they tend to think of it as the task that they are endeavoring to do. And in most cases, generally, that's the case. It's your job to do it, put your energy into it. This week, I felt over and over again like the sermon was writing itself through every twist and turn.

In fact, the three scriptures that you see in your notes were really three different sermons. The yes sermon, the wait sermon, and finally, the no sermon. And this last scripture from Habakkuk 3, this one has spoken to me the most. It came in a very unlikely way. It came from Valerie, who was in Jordan this last week. Yeah, Jordan, the place you hear about on the news every day, and our intrepid, courageous Pastor Val was there, and she was giving me an update. And by the way, she's gonna be sharing about this next week. You won't want to miss that, but she was at a church service where an Iraqi pastor was speaking to a room of fellow refugees in Jordan, many of whom had arrived in Jordan with nothing but the shirts on their back.

So you can imagine the loss, the grief, the injustice, the suffering that these people collectively could speak to. Maybe you can't even imagine it. I don't know if that's even a fair statement. But this was the scripture that he chose for his message in Habakkuk 3 that says in verses 17 through 19, "Though the fig tree does not bud, and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in God my Savior. The sovereign Lord is my strength. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer. He enables me to go on the heights."

Now let me ask you something. How do you have that kind of hope? How do you have that kind of hope? Someday, if you haven't already, you're going to have a week like I had, and the question that's gonna come to you is, "Now what?" Now what? Can God be trusted? Is Jesus real enough to still make a difference in my life? Do I have a firm foundation or is the sand slipping away under my feet? That question will come to you. How will you be able to say, "Nevertheless, I will rejoice in the Lord"? I'll tell you how. It's when you can say these three words, "God, my Savior." God, my Savior. Not just somebody else's Savior, my Savior.

He was Phil's Savior, especially in these last years. The sickness, it was a crucible for Him, and maybe He was ready to see the Lord. Are you? You can be, you will be when you can say, "God, my Savior." You know, this is really the gospel. This is what happens to you when your life gets swallowed up into the life of Christ and not just the life of Christ, but the death of Christ and the resurrection of Christ. In fact, I was talking to our good friend Craig Barnes on Friday. He was kind enough to call me, and if you know about Craig, he's one of the smartest, wisest guys. That's why he's the president of Princeton Seminary, and yet for some reason that I can't explain, he still chooses to call me his friend.

And as I described to him the arc of this week from the highs of Monday and the yes, and then the descent into wait, and then into no. He said, "Mark, that's the same arc as Holy Week. That's Jesus riding high on a donkey as He enters Jerusalem, and everyone's saying, 'Hosanna, blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord, we're saved. Yes, God!' But then that's Jesus in the garden saying, 'Father, if it's possible, take this cup from me.' It was one of the last things I prayed on Wednesday night. 'Father, if it's possible, take this cup.' I think Phil's okay with this cup, but take it from his wife and his boys.

And then, of course, there is the agony of Jesus on the cross, dying by suffocation, though less, saying, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' You see, if you follow Jesus long enough, you will begin to recognize that the life and death and resurrection of His life, it impresses its shape upon your own life. There is a contour to the gospel that shapes our lives in a mysterious way. You start to see these connections that remind you that your life is bound up in His.

But when you're reminded of that, you realize that you could say, "Nevertheless, I will rejoice in the Lord." Again, this is about all of us. This is about you. And so when you're in the highest of highs, by all means, give God the glory. And when you're in the waiting times, remember, you may not have the answer, but you have something better. You have Him. You know, when you were a kid and you were in the dark and you had a nightmare or you thought there was a monster under your bed, it wasn't your mom's words that made it better, it was her presence.

You have His presence always. And when you find yourself in the lowest of griefs, where the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vine, I hope and I pray that you always remember that in your darkest moments, He will give you strength. He will make your feet like the feet of a deer and enable you to go on to the heights like He did for my dear friend Phil. Godspeed and Godspeed to all of you.