A Glimpse at His Heart and Our Response

A Glimpse…

Picture this scene. An anxious father is sitting at the bedside of his frail, hospitalized child. The diagnosis has been made. The prognosis is not good. Through moistly clouded eyes, he watches her sleep. “She’s so small,” he thinks. “She’s just too small to be suffering the pain of tubes and needles and tests; too small to have to be confronting this malicious attacker. She should be playing instead of fearfully watching the doorway for who would come in next. It’s so unfair!” It is agonizing for him to witness and he wishes he could take her place. The tears roll down his cheeks as he prays, “God have mercy, God help. Please relieve her suffering. Please let her survive this. I can’t imagine living a life without her.”

Now, imagine a similar scene – this one recently shown to me by the Lord.

Another child lies sleeping in another place. This one is also small. This one also, instead of play, endures unjust daily pain, is abused by an evil enemy, and watches the doorway with fear. But, there are differences. This child’s room has no window to let in color or the light of day and her bed is neither clean nor soft. Her bed is a slab of stone levels below the earths’ surface and on it she is raped 20-30 times a day. She is a child sex slave. Her bedside companion stays near but she cannot see Him. It is Jesus. He loves her. He hurts for her and prays for her. He can’t imagine a life without her. And so, again, he retraces His steps to the doorway to see if we are coming. He doesn’t see us and so He cries out in desperation, his voice tear choked, pain ravaged, and hoarse from repetition, “Come find her! COME FIND HER!”

...at His Heart…

What kind of heart does that - draws willingly near to that degree of suffering and filth and remains, steadfast and faithful? His heart never gets hard as ours does. He never looks away like we do. He doesn’t medicate with the multitude of substances we have at our disposal to numb ourselves. He stays, eyes wide open to the horror, heart exposed to an agony we cannot imagine. We read in Psalm 139 that there is no place we can go where God is not, that He knows our every thought and sees our every move and we are made glad by it. We read in Psalm 34:18 that God is close to the brokenhearted and we are thankful. But do we ever stop to consider the price His heart pays for being Who He is?

The church must be about the cause of rescuing these children. This situation is everything the Lord tells us to war against. These victims are: children (Mark 9: 37, 42), innocent (Proverbs 6:17), weak and needy (Psalms 82:4), oppressed, hungry, poor, and naked (Isaiah 58: 6, 7, 9, 10), and they are broken hearted, held captive, in darkness, mourning, grieving and despairing (Isaiah 61:1-3).

We need to get them out for their sake, but we also need to be about getting them out for the sake of the heart of Jesus - OUR Jesus. We are His, but HE IS OURS (Solomon 2:16), and He is hurting.

…and Our Response.

He is calling. And, as Henry Blackaby said in his book, Experiencing God, “Gods revelation of His activity is an invitation for me to adjust my life to Him and join in His work.” How do we adjust our lives to Him? We pray. In Run with the Horses, Eugene Peterson tells us to “pray. Search for that center in which God’s will is being worked out (which is what we do when we pray) and work from that center.” And then, most amazingly, we have the apostle Paul telling us in 2 Corinthians 1:11, that our prayers are a real and actual part of the rescue operation!

And so, pray. Pray that the scene depicted in Exodus 14, when the waters flowed “back over the Egyptians and their chariots and horsemen”, would be a visual example of our prayers flooding and covering this detestable and unacceptable situation.

Pray that the church would be united in this cause. (Philippians 2:2)

Pray that God would grow our faith in regards to Who He is and what He is able to do. When the Israelites were delivered out of Egypt, God made it possible for them to walk out easily!

Pray for the deliverance of these children that they could have “bestowed on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair… that they would be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.”

Let us pray.