Too Little on My Part

Distraction.  Discouragement.  Disappointment.  I wish I had more stamina when it comes to praying--hard!--for Tue's salvation.  I have lost ... well, not hope but urgency.  I want to know everything about his journey.  I dare not ask, however, for fear of tipping my hand (i.e., knowledge).  

So, Lord, how do people pray consistently if ignorantly?  Is there anything I need to know about his questions and his quest?  What stopped the plan for proposing, if indeed it is not really stopped but only suspended?  How, Lord, can I help?

I do know one answer to that question.  I need to PRAY.  And I have been distracted, discouraged, and disappointed.  This seems so clearly a tactic of the enemy, and I have fallen for it.  Forgive me, please.  Since I am helpless to overcome my lazy, sinful nature, please do something to me to spur me on.  

I love You, Jesus.  I want Tue to love You, too.  I know he loves Julie; I want Tue to get the beautiful example of the groom and his bride that You set with Your church.  I recognize that this is Your work alone and that You allow us to partner with You in it, even though we can do nothing to accomplish it.  Please do that work!  In Jesus's name, Amen.

Willfulness

Maybe this is really a subsection of my prayer blog.

Maybe I can import the entirety of the most recent communication with Tue.

Maybe the spiritual battle is heating up.  

I woke up a couple of times this morning--in itself not terribly unusual--but during one of those times I was definitely thinking of Tue.  Then this afternoon, I received his email response.  (He sent it yesterday, but I did not open it until this afternoon.) In the privacy of this blog, I will note my honest and sometimes not gentle or loving impressions:

1. His willful refusal to consider "Christianity."
2. His embrace of his world view through his buddhist lens.
3. His somewhat hostile "full disclosure" about ... something ... it was not totally clear to me what that sentence actually meant.
4. His understandable limit-setting on the confidentiality of his communications with Lou Soiles.
5. His description of some of his anticipated questions and challenges to Lou as antagonistic.

Wow.  Maybe later I will go back and review the email again.  But for now, I feel punched in the stomach.  I immediately thought of several biting retorts and a few hurt ones.  I believe, God, that those responses are NOT Godly, and I am choosing to suppress them--with Your help and Your hand over my mouth and my mind's mouth.

I vow to keep praying, hard, because this is my daughter's possibly future husband.  More than him, though, I care about Julie.  How is her heart?  Her relationship with You?  And in addition to the particular people involved here, I am ticked off at the people claiming Your name to perpetrate hateful and evil policies and practices.

So, dear Lord, please keep working and allow my prayers to energize that work, but don't limit Yourself to my feeble and erratic prayers.  This situation with Tue is extremely important from at least two perspectives: first, for Julie, and second, for Tue.  Work a life-giving miracle, please.  In Jesus's name, in His miraculous power, and for His kingdom and family~~Amen.