Those Who Did and Didn’t Respond

Posted by franksullivan on May 14, 2010 in Daily Bread | 4 comments

Sometimes when I am asked where I go to church and after I tell them I have often heard "is that the big metal building behind Burger King? I thought that was supposed to be a sports bar or something like that." For many years, that seemed to be our identity in the Smyrna community, we were the church that meets in the place that was going to be a bar. But, over the last few years we have really done a lot to change people’s perception of who we are. Now it is common for the response to be: "I think it is really great what you did at Campbell High School or Argyle Elementary."

All this week I have been thinking about our FIA Sunday coming up. I’ve thought how far we have come as a church to where we are actually going to walk the streets of Smyrna praying individually and collectively for the residents and businesses that surround us. We sent out cards asking for people to respond with their prayer requests so that when we walk past their home or business we can pray specifically for their needs.

The thing I can’t seem to get out of my mind is the person who to begin with is skeptical about the whole God thing receiving one of our prayer request cards in the mail. What was there initial response? Laugh and throw it in the trash? Write it off as another way a church is trying to get into their wallet? Look at the card and think, there is no way I am going to send in a card with my innermost struggle so that some people I don’t even know can stand in front of my house judging me and pretending that they actually care about what is going on in my life? Did they think about it later and wonder what they would have put on the card if they did fill it out? Did they regret not filling it out and sending it back "just in case?"

Even as a believer it can be hard to open up and share my personal prayer requests. It is even sometimes hard to actually pray them to God because that means I have to verbalize the struggle that I hope will finally resolve so I can stop thinking about it 24 hours every day. So how hard is it for someone who is unsure of whom God is or if there is even really a God who cares enough to notice they even exist?

I can’t wait to hear the stories from the people who responded talking about how God answered the exact prayers they wrote on their cards and how much it impacted their lives and really grew their faith in a God who loves them.

But wouldn’t it be even cooler if some of the people who reacted to the cards like I described the skeptics above, even though they didn’t fill out the card and send it back to us, came forward and told how immediately following our prayer walk the struggle in their lives that they would have filled out on the card if they had actually filled it out, suddenly and miraculously was solved or healed or taken away or answered?

So on Sunday as we walk the streets of our community, lets pray expectantly for those who did and didn’t respond and ask God to work a miracle in their lives in such a way they will know in their hearts it had to be God that did it.