MY GREAT SIN OF OMISSION

Many times in my life I have sinned in not doing what I thought or knew that I should. My life has been so characterized by not doing what I should that hearing Frank Sinatra sing "Regrets, I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention. . ." R E A L L Y bothers me. Am I the only person so tormented by things I've left undone ("procrastinated")?

But I want to tell you of only one great sin of omission here.

In 2002 and 2003, in the time after 9/11 but before President Bush attacked Iraq in order to bring down Saddam Hussein and in order to be consistent with the ultimatum that he, Bush, had issued to Saddam, I wondered to myself, "What if I send a letter to Saddam Hussein, or have one published in the paper?” That letter would say something like:

"Dear Saddam,

"There is a God who created you and all things. He is all-powerful. He can see you where- ever you may hide. Even if you can defeat every man that is your enemy Our God, the God of all, can see you and touch you.

"So that you may know that there is a God most high, and so you will know that you must be humble before the Lord God most high who has made Himself known to us through Jesus Christ His son, I am going to pray in Jesus' name that the Lord will cause a pain in your left elbow that is unexplainable and not the result of a natural event. Also, I will encourage other Christians to pray for this also, so that you may know that God is God, that Jesus is the way to God, and so that you may humble yourself before God and put yourself into God's loving care and as a result of putting your faith in God, your may do what is best for your people, all Iraqis, and surrender to the U.S. forces. Even if you don't trust the U.S. and don't think that Bush is right to make the demands on you that he has, you can still trust God, if He, God, proves Himself to you by putting a pain in your left elbow."

I thought about writing such a letter to Saddam Hussein and trying to rouse Christians around the world to pray in faith and in love – for Iraqis, for Saddam Hussein himself, for God’s glory and name- that God would give Saddam a pain in his left elbow. (Why the left elbow? Because it is more easily examined, it is an easily-specified area, it’s not life-threatening and I assumed the man was right-handed and that pain from wear and tear would naturally occur in the right elbow, not the left.)

Well, I did nothing. I tried to talk myself into it. I said, “Joan, even if it’s a failure, at least it will be a glorious failure.” “Won’t you risk a failure for the sake of the possibility of God’s success, of averting a war?” Of course, at that time, all the years and pain and horror and muddle and mire were still unknown.

Don’t you wish that I had tried my little “Saddam’s left elbow” project? Even if it had failed! It would still have been worth it to say that we, in love and in trying to follow Jesus’ way, tried to avert conflict between Saddam and the U.S.

As an addendum to this story, let me tell you that six months or a year before the Saddam Bush ultimatum crisis started, I DID feel God’s leading to pray about something: That a giant pine tree in our yard that was dying and then dead would come alive and live.

I really DID feel God was asking me to pray in faith about that and even to tell others that I was praying for this tree to live or to live again. (My thoughts on the Saddam project were not the same way. That was more a matter of thinking about the power that God has given to us believers and logically thinking about what we as followers can and should do, prayer or otherwise, in response to crises.)


I couldn’t do it. I COULD NOT DO IT. First of all, I couldn’t believe that God would ask me to pray for a tree when people are dying and tormented all over the World, and babies are being aborted. Secondly, I didn’t think there was precedent in the Bible for praying for a tree to come back to life for no other reason than to prove God answers prayer. (I’m trying to remember my thoughts of that time. I was VERY sad about this giant tree dying. I was grieving. Therefore, I thought that this type of prayer would be selfish and inappropriate, since this tree wasn’t a person. I thought, “If I’m going to pray resurrection, it ought to be for a person to live- not a tree.) Of course, I can see in hindsight that praying for that tree could have been an important step up in my walk with God—in two ways, being willing to pray and believe for whacko stuff; and being willing to be judged whacko in the following of what I believed God told me to do (which did not conflict with God’s truth in the Bible. See I JOHN 4:1.)

Now today I was listening to REVIVE OUR HEARTS with Cathy Lee DeMoss on the radio. She was speaking on “the Sin of Tolerance”, based on REVELATION 2:20-25. This is wonderful, strong teaching and made me wonder if my “whacko” ideas are away from God. But I put Jesus and God at the center. I will never pray for a thing out of God’s will. Also, any prayer-in-agreement project would have as a precept that the pray-ers ask that God ONLY act in agreement with His perfect will in any matter. (I believe that in the verse JAMES 4:3, James and our God are giving us a promise along with the chastisement. I find it very comforting to know that God will not grant prayers we pray that are not in His will. I want only God’s will because I believe that God is love.)

That’s all I have to say for now. God bless you and me. AND HIS KINGDOM COME AND HIS WILL BE DONE ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN. AMEN.