At least once every other month I see the people of God arguing on social media and I start a blog post but I step back and think “am I adding to the noise or am I contributing to peace-making” and then I usually delete my post. This time I’m not deleting because I have a unique perspective on this particular argument and I want to share. It could be that I’m just adding to the noise but this time I feel like my noise might be valuable so here goes…

Very recently there was a church praying for the resurrection of a precious 2-year-old, Olive, who stopped breathing. This church family gathered to pray for God to miraculously resurrect Olive back to physical life. I saw a lot of people on social media joining the call to pray for resurrection for Olive. I was also introduced, through social media, to a large number of people decrying the prayers, worrying about the mental and emotional health of the parents and disparaging the church leaders who allowed this. The questions that come to us, as believers who look with great anticipation to an eternity in the presence of God, are many; why would we ever want to call someone back from the face to face presence of God, isn’t Olive better off where she is now, how can this be healthy for her family, shouldn’t they just accept their loss and move on, how is this fair to other people who’ve lost children and on the questions roll. I absolutely understand how disturbing and weird it can seem to pray for resurrection. I understand how nerve-wracking, uncomfortable and even fear inducing it can feel. I understand because I spent a week in October 2004 praying every night for resurrection, just like Olive’s family.

This is probably the most personal thing I will ever share, and I have been pretty candid with my posts so bear with me as I tell this story. I’m not asking you to believe my story but if you’re here I’m asking you to listen. On a random October evening in 2004 my dad suffered a massive brain aneurysm. His doctor told us that it was the worst brain bleed he had ever seen and that we shouldn’t expect Dad to make it through the night. My incredible, loving dad defied the odds and, even after suffering a second brain bleed in the hospital, he made daily progress much to the doctor’s astonishment. For several long weeks my days consisted of a morning trip to the hospital on my way to work and a hospital stop on my way home so that Mom could grab a bite to eat. I would get home, fix supper for my grandmother and younger brother and then I would try to psyche myself up for the next day. I loved the quiet mornings with Dad in the head trauma unit. He would wake up and talk to me about anything and nothing. The conversations were short because it took a lot of energy to talk and he was on a lot of meds. I wrote down everything we talked about in a journal for which I am incredibly grateful today! On Sunday, October 17, 2004 the phone rang letting us know that a blood clot had been dislodged from behind his knee and had caused a pulmonary embolism. I will never forget walking into the trauma unit and seeing the tear-filled eyes of all the nurses as we came through the doors. That was how I knew he was gone. The rest of that day is mostly a blur. I remember some specific moments but overall I just moved along in a state of shock. After making a few calls to out of town family, our pastor and close friends; my mom, brother and I got back in the car and drove to church, it was Sunday morning after all. That was home for us and those people were our family. We sat and worshiped, we were wrapped in hugs, enveloped in prayer and held by comforting hearts.

*Important note: I am one of those wonderfully weird charismatic Christians and everything that follows is through that lens.*

That evening the calls and emails started coming in from across the states, Canada, Mexico and from as far away as Paraguay, Zimbabwe, and Israel…pray for resurrection! Some people had seen visions or dreams that my dad showed up somewhere saying that he looked at his watch wrong. Others just called to say that they knew that God was asking us to believe for something miraculous and they would stand with my family. Without hesitation, beginning on Monday night a small group of friends gathered with us at our church to pray for my dad to be resurrected from the dead. We prayed every night until Saturday when we had his memorial and buried his body. You might be saying “Wait! Your dad wasn’t miraculously resurrected?!” and I will answer “not this time” but stay with me, I promise that I’m getting somewhere!

Why did we pray without hesitation? That is a miraculous story in and of itself. I knew a little bit about the story growing up but Dad didn’t really talk about it because he didn’t remember it well. It wasn’t until I was in my mid-twenties that I heard my grandfather tell the whole story while he was preaching on the resurrection power of Jesus at a little church in Louisville, KY. I’m giving you the short version of a very long story. My dad had seizures as a child and young teen which were thought to be related to a bad case of Scarlet Fever (it wasn’t until my youngest brother started having seizures that we realized it was a genetic thing). When Dad was 14 he was fishing in a Texas river with my grandfather, my uncle and a family friend. While standing in the river Dad had a massive seizure and drowned. It took over an hour and a half to get to any sort of civilization. He had been completely unresponsive, had taken no breaths and was declared dead. From the moment that Dad was fished out of the river until that pronouncement of death, my grandfather held my dad’s head in his hands and spoke into his ears. He declared over and over the words of Psalm 118:17 – you shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord, into my dad’s ears. He begged God to let his son live for the sake of my precious grandmother. You see my dad’s oldest brother had been killed in a car accident years before at the young age of 21 and it nearly destroyed my tender-hearted Grandma. Grandpa reminded God of every promise he could remember and refused to give up! He fought in every way he knew how for his son’s life and God listened! My dad, miraculously, coughed up buckets of sludge, sand and river water and began to breath. He went from a stiff, blue corpse to a warm, breathing, perfectly whole pink body in a matter of minutes with absolutely no physical evidence of what had happened. The only thing my dad ever told me about this event was that he wasn’t really serving the Lord at this time and he didn’t know what his eternal destination would have been and it was the grace of God that he was given his life back. In addition to my dad, I grew up being taught in both church and elementary school by an incredible woman, Grace, who was resurrected back to life. Grace was shown a glimpse of Heaven but she would only ever talk about Jesus and how his eyes were full of love and I have also known Joel for almost my entire life. He is a Haitian pastor who died as a child and was resurrected in the coffin on the way to his funeral. I always chuckle when I think of how shocked people must have been to hear the sneeze coming from inside his coffin.

My dad had already been resurrected from the dead once so it wasn’t a big leap to think that it could happen again. I mentioned that we gathered with a small group of friends but we weren’t the only ones praying. All our international friends, the kids at my brother’s college and other loved ones far and wide joined us every night that week in October. I was comforted by the routine of those nights; curling up on the floor under the pews I had grown up in, hearing familiar voices calling out to God, crying and hoping with people who had helped raise me in the faith, those nights spent seeking God strengthened me for what was to come. I was amazed at the great, expectant faith all around me but deep inside I was terrified. I harbored an intense fear that if I didn’t believe enough it wouldn’t happen. I believed without an ounce of doubt that God could raise my daddy from the grave but I didn’t know if He would. I didn’t know if I believed enough. I didn’t know if I had even a mustard seed’s worth of faith and it tormented me…until. I love the word until because it is pregnant with promise. Until means something is coming and my until was one of the singlemost revelatory faith-building moments in my life and it completely changed me. I hadn’t told anyone how I was feeling because I didn’t want to burden anyone or cause anyone else to feel afraid. I wanted to be strong for my family, honor my precious Dad and have faith in my Redeemer so I just kept going, planning a funeral, meeting people at airports, coordinating food drop offs, taking care of my grandmother who lived with us and so on. Eventually I mustered up the courage to tell my mom. She had given her bedroom to my grandparents and was sleeping in my room. I confessed my fears to her and she told me the last thing I ever expected to hear. She didn’t tell me that she shared my fears or that it was going to be okay or anything you might expect. What she told me was that she had awoken every night that week to discover me praying in tongues in my sleep. I have always been a sleep-talker, my college roommates could tell you some great stories, but this was different. Mom said that I was praying with intensity and she would lay there and join me. I had and still to this day have no recollection of praying in my sleep all those nights. That was my until, it was a recognition that greater is He who is in me than he who is in the world, I understood that my flesh was weak but my spirit was willing and for the first time I really felt like I actively understood Romans 8:26. I didn’t know what to pray or how to pray and my conscious self was struggling but the Holy Spirit was interceding for me and I could rest in the hands of the Comforter. I wasn’t afraid anymore. I knew that my spirit was in tune with the Holy Spirit and I could believe without fear that whatever God had in store would be for the ultimate good of those involved. I have sat under some of the most incredible Biblical scholars alive, I have graduated from Bible College, I have seen miraculous healings with my own eyes but this week of praying for something outlandish was one of the most important periods of growth in my spiritual walk. It has been a steadying point at times where I didn’t think I could keep going. It has become a reminder that I am not alone no matter what the circumstance. It reinforces every verse and promise about how God cares for me and guess what?! We buried my dad on October 21, 2004, he wasn’t miraculously brought back to life for a second time. But there is still an until!

So this brings me back to Olive and social media and the point of this post. As I got sucked into the morass of negativity on Twitter I kept finding myself thinking again and again of Job’s friends. They had the best of intentions but they brought him nothing of real value. They brought accusations and empty words when they thought they were giving him wisdom of the highest caliber. I began to feel deeply saddened for these people who seemed to have lost their childlike belief that God can do anything. This is the God who created all things, split the Red Sea, held the Sun in place during a battle, commands angel armies and provided salvation to all; just to name a few small things. I was heartbroken for people who seemed to be more concerned with labeling people as heretics than about following Romans 12:15-16 which says “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight.” I understand the importance of making sure that our actions line up with the Word of God and in my own circles, with people I know and whose lives I can see, I am quick to speak up if I see something out of whack. I trust those same people to do the same if they see me going out on a spiritual tangent. I get exhausted with the way that we, and by we I mostly mean the North American church because that’s where I live, seem to feel like we have the right to share our opinion just because we have an avenue to share our opinion. I’m all about calling out foolishness and we have some great examples of people doing just that in the Bible (I’m looking at you Jesus and especially you Paul). The thing about Paul that is different from the Twitter-ranting crowd is pretty simple. Paul was an overseer with responsibility to watch over specific groups of people and he was writing letters to those under his care about immediate threats to their spiritual wellbeing. If you’re a pastor or parent who isn’t doing the same thing for your congregation or family then you aren’t doing your job; but if you are just jumping into public forums calling people out because you can are you actually protecting or training anyone or are you simply causing division. Whenever I see church arguments played out in public forums John 13:35 comes to mind “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” It is absolutely possible to show love to someone with whom I disagree and still speak with wisdom, cautioning those who I know personally to carefully seek the Word for how to respond to potential heresies. What would it cost to publicly encourage Olive’s parents or others like them, mourn with them, rejoice with them and still privately share your thoughts and concerns with those who you personally know? The answer is nothing, absolutely nothing. What fruit might grow from a public display of love? Oh so much! What if our entire approach to social media was the classic “If you can’t say something nice don’t say anything at all?”

Okay back to the until…Olive didn’t miraculously get up from her coffin like my friend Joel, Dad didn’t walk out of his grave but that doesn’t mean that all those prayers went unanswered! We won’t see them…until…but we will see them. “But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. ¹⁸ Therefore encourage one another with these words. – I Thessalonians 4:13-18. I can’t wait until…