Those were the words I used when I was praying to God to help me with cutting my Ash tree down. Curious choice of words – would you agree? I mean, if you want God’s help doing anything would you normally start your prayer by saying: I don’t know if you are real or if you even exist but if you do, hey, I could use a little help here. . . So why did I use those words? I can tell you what was going on in my mind easy enough but I cannot tell you why I felt the need to protect myself as I did that day.
In my mind, I was embarrassed to not be able to cut down the tree. I was embarrassed to not be able to cut down the tree using a modern chain saw. I was embarrassed to not be able to push that tree over as I had done on so many other occasions when out harvesting trees. I was deep down furious with myself for failing at cutting this tree down. My pride was on the line and I was about to admit I was at a loss for what else to do. All of these things are true, but to get much closer to the truth, I didn’t want anyone who might have heard me to think I believed in prayer. Now there wasn’t anyone out there in the field with me. So who exactly was I afraid of hearing me that I couched my words so carefully by prefacing the prayer with the words: “I don’t know”.
The words “I don’t know”meant excuse me if I am wrong. It meant; I am not right in saying this I know. . .. “I don’t know” was a self serving set of words that I used to excuse myself for “doing what I was about to do”. I was excusing my outer self for embarrassing itself to my inner self. I was excusing me … to me. I was setting the stage for the expectation that I knew was going to come, the expectation that the tree wasn’t going to fall over by prayer. The expectation that although I was calling on the LORD, I knew He would not answer. It was foolishness to me to say such words and yet here I was calling on the LORD when I knew in my heart (inner man) Jesus would not answer.
I feel so dirty. So cheap. I cannot seem to forget it. Maybe I am not suppose to forget. It is a big lesson that all of us should remember. There is inside of us another person. His name is the same as yours. And we all know instinctively that we have this other person, this inner man. We know we have private thoughts that no one can know unless we tell them. We all know that we can control our outer bodies and mouth to project to the rest of society whatever we want them to believe. Meanwhile we do whatever we really want to do inside our own mind. We all know our inner man does not have to believe, do, or say what we project to the people around us.
At the Tree, my inner man who did not believe in prayer was in conflict with my outer man in that the outer man was about to pray. Therefore I said: I don’t know. As if the outer man was saying to the inner man, I don’t know if this will work, let’s just try it and see. As if the outer man was seeking the approval of the inner man.
Who would ever have thought that the outer man has his own mind? Yet this experience tells me at least, that he does. The outer man was searching for a solution to the tree problem. It was he that through out the idea of a prayer. (I know this even if you won’t believe.)
Normally this inner man/outer man situation would not be a problem. The outer man would pray and nothing would happen. The inner man would say, I thought so and I was right, prayer does not work. Both men would simply chalk it up to a repeated experiment that also did not work and go on.
BUT, Jesus did answer. The tree did go down, and up, and down again. Kaboom.
Now we have a situation. The outer man was right and the inner man wrong. Now both must deal with a different truth than the one we have always known. God is real and He does have a Son named Jesus. Oh boy. What are we going to do now? The normal course of action is to continue with life as if nothing happened. That’s the simplest way to go. The hard road is to now rethink everything. This goes for the outer man too. He cannot go through life on autopilot. They now must change both the inner man and the outer man because Jesus is real and He knows both sets of thoughts. Inner and outer. He knows if you’ve been bad or good (so be good for goodness sake).
This situation has been so unsettling to me. Why? Because I really did say those words and I said them out loud and I know I did not believe that anything would happen and yet the LORD heard me and answered the prayer in a spectacular way. (Please read my other blog essays). The Bible says you gotta believe, you must have faith and I can truthfully say I was not a believer as outlined by the Bible nor did I have faith. If anything I was throwing in the towel, giving up, preparing myself for failure. None of which should have lead Jesus to help me just because I requested it. His help came to me through His mercy. I know I didn’t deserve His help just because I said a prayer to Jesus. That is what is very unsettling to me that Jesus had mercy on me. I still don’t believe I deserved such mercy.
I guess that is the whole point of this Tree incident. When I was at the end of my rope, I called upon the LORD for help. People don’t call on the LORD much when they have everything under control. People don’t call on the LORD TO DO SOMETHING for them, when they have a phone, a car, a government, an insurance card, a surgeon, a firemen, police officers, the military and parents or spouse to do for them. We usually wait until all other options have been used up, before we call upon the LORD, if we even do so then. I was no different. But now I call upon Him often. (I tell you something of major importance, if you belong to Him, Jesus will help you on the smallest of needs.)
I love and have loved all of God’s creation. I always believed in a God. But not necessarily the God of the Bible. I did use the name of Jesus in my prayer. I did not call upon a generic God when I said my words. I called upon Jesus simply because I knew that He was the originator of the scripture that said: “Whatever you ask for in my name I will do.” (John 14:14) So I called upon His name. I could have said: God I don’t know if your Bible is true. Yet, to this day, I believe, had I said that the prayer would not have been answered. Of course I do not know this for sure.
Today I do get mad with people who always speak the word God in place of the name Jesus. Oh, I know Jesus called Himself God in the bible and I know people are right to use that name. But as for me, I have moved away from using the God word unless I am thinking or speaking about Almighty God, the Great I Am, otherwise known as Jehovah. I think many prayers go unanswered because people use the God word. My tree taught me that, it did not come out of somebody’s mouth. I also know the scriptures confirm what I have written just now. They say by no other name can you be saved and I believe it.
Jesus.
L.
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