I am continually amazed at the timing of God, how He sets things in motion in my life at just the right time.
The quotes that I have chosen to use for this year were from books I read the last few years. I compiled 365 quotes, and then I put them in random order before the beginning of this 2015 year.
At the same time, our church family decided to join with other church families in our community to come together and pray for unity and community among the diversity of believers in Newton, MS. We have church members from about seven different churches coming together for prayer each month. The pastors of these churches felt that if we could learn to love each other as brothers and sisters in Christ by praying together, it would change our hearts and the hearts of our entire Christian community in Newton.
I think every person who has come to one or more of the prayer meetings has been surprised at how sweet the fellowship has been as we are learning not only to pray together, but learning to love one another. It is destroying prejudice in the hearts of those who attend.
And on this day when I will meet for community prayer with brothers and sisters in Christ, with some of who have a different skin color than me but who have the same passionate heart for God as me, God selected to have this quote on this day. In the midst of all that is causing division in our nation, God continues to amaze me in His timing. I thought that I was putting quotes in random order, but God knew the day that He wanted each quote to be placed, and He again has challenged me at just the right time with just the right quote. I hope that you are also able to see God’s amazing timing in your own life, as God reveals His truths to you one-at-a-time, just when you are ready for the next one.
Here is today’s quote in the midst of all the divisive issues between people of different skin colors. I don’t know what your prejudice is, but I know what remains very divisive here in the South. And so I think Philip Yancey does a good job of being transparent about his own need for reconciliation and redemption and community in a way that reveals where the hearts of many in our nation still remain today:
I grew up in Atlanta, across town from Martin Luther King, Jr., and I confess with some shame that while he was leading marches in places like Selma and Montgomery and Memphis, I was on the side of the white sheriffs with the nightsticks and German shepherds.
I was quick to pounce on his moral flaws and slow to recognize my own blind sin. But because he stayed faithful, by offering his body as a target but never as a weapon, he broke through my moral calluses.
The real goal, King used to say, was not to defeat the white man, but “to awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor and challenge his false sense of superiority…. The end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community.”
And that is what Martin Luther King Jr. finally set into motion, even in racists like me.
–Philip Yancey
I pray that God will continue to set in motion in my heart, and in the heart of my church, a sense of the need of reconciliation, redemption, and the creation of a beautiful community of Christians who look different from one another, but who worship their One Savior with One Heart.
And if you live in Newton, MS… come join us tonight for our Community Prayer Meeting and let God continue to work on your heart as you join in prayer with brothers and sisters in Christ. We have One Father, and that makes us all One Family. We will be together forever, so let’s learn to love one another now, instead of waiting until we get to Heaven.