Dear Friends,

This is the sixth and last message in a series on the Apostle Paul’s Letter to Philemon.

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One thing more–prepare a guest room for me, for I am hoping through your prayers to be restored to you (Phil 22)

Paul was far from home when he wrote the letter to Philemon. He had taken a stand for some Christian companions in Jerusalem. The resulting dispute with the religious leadership led to political intrigue. Before it was over, Paul was arrested on trumped-up charges.

As a Roman citizen, Paul appealed to have his case heard by Caesar. On the trip to Rome he had survived riots, an assassination attempt, a long voyage, a terrible storm, a shipwreck, and snake bite. When he reached Rome, he was subjected to house imprisonment. Waiting trial on Nero’s whim, waiting the next chapter in his life with God.

Waiting is the predominant activity of the Christian life. The whole of recorded history from the Christian viewpoint amounts to this: humankind walked away from God to seek an existence of our own; we are unable to sustain that life from our finite resources; we cannot make it back to the state of grace on our own; and we are waiting for God to take us home.

How do we deal with the waiting? Waiting is a fertile ground for temptation and sin. Many sexual affairs, addictions, and conflicts arise from a demand for instant gratification of desire rather than waiting for God’s purpose to be fulfilled in God’s time in God’s way.

But the imprisoned Paul learned waiting is an opportunity for prayer and hope. He writes Philemon, “I am hoping through your prayers to be restored to you.” Prayer is the source of hope. A common modern saying goes, “You’d better hope and pray that this or that doesn’t happen.” When we repeat this phrase we are implying we need to hope before we can pray, but we are wrong.

Prayer is for those moments when we have hope and for those times when we have no hope at all. “Pray without ceasing,” Paul wrote the Thessalonians (1 Thess 5:17). “Pray in the Spirit at all times,” he told the Ephesians (Eph 6:18). “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Phi 4:6).

To pray is simply to turn one’s heart toward God and the possibilities of God. One can pray anytime or anywhere with hope because God is always bigger than our circumstances. I learned this during the worst winter of my life.

The first thing that comes to mind about that time was the smell. All college dormitories smell like dirty socks and Lysol after awhile. My dorm was very old and therefore all the more odiferous to me as I sat in my wheel chair waiting out the nights of January and February, 1974.

My childhood sweetheart was dead by car accident. Our plans of marriage and mission service were beautiful but useless. The present and the future were realities stripped of meaning. I had no clue as to what to do tomorrow or next year.

Sleep denied me its comfort for the first time in my twenty years. The person most important to me was gone forever. My body was broken. I’d had three surgeries since the accident. I was confined to my wheel chair, couch and bed. My left leg was encased in a heavy cast, my right hip ached with the gravelly residue of a wrenching dislocation.

I roomed alone. During the day, I attended my classes. At night, I would pull myself out of my wheel-chair to sit on an old naugahyde couch. There I would grapple through grief and pain in prayer and reading the Psalms, trying to reach a God who, I now realized, I’d only heard about, but hadn’t yet met personally.

When my prayer efforts wound down, I would medicate my broken heart by studying into the morning hours, before praying myself into a short stretch of fitful sleep. So it went for many nights until the Holy Spirit led me to understand I would never know the “why” and “wherefores” of my loss and wounds, but I needed to move on with life with faith — not faith in God’s purpose or plan — but in God alone.

What I had been taught about God up to then was a transaction — what he had done and would do for me and what I must do for him. Waiting and prayer sifted through the neat pre-packaged answers I thought I knew and left me with a God who was present with me in the dark. This gave me real hope.

Waiting is the spiritual discipline of hope. David prayed for this discipline: “Make me to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all day long” (Ps 25:4-5).  Those without hope have nothing and no one to wait for. Those who will not wait have nothing and no one to hope for beyond their finite existence

Waiting for God means praying. A common phrase to describe hopelessness is “You don’t have a prayer of making it.” The  reverse is true. Those who pray have hope.

But the prayer, Paul was seeking was Philemon’s. “Pray that I will be restored to you.” Just as waiting involves prayer and prayer leads to hope, hope leads to relationship and community.

Relationship is really what Paul was writing about. He was seeking to bring Onesimus and Philemon together as brothers in the Lord rather than slave and master. He was hoping to join them in fellowship.

Forgiveness, mercy, grace, prayer, hope, reconciliation, restored relationships, spiritual renewal, community — these are all fibers that bind believers together with Christ and attract others to him. They are fibers of a life we are called to live. They are the practical points Paul addressed in his little letter to Philemon.

We live in a world that is rapidly disintegrating into hatred and violence. Vulgar personal insults and vitriolic attacks dominate the conversations of those who would be our leaders including shouting bombast over which of the candidates is the most Christian. The contagion has spread into the body of Christ and divides it with fear and anger.

Paul’s little letter to his friend Philemon is worth reading these grim days. “Refresh my heart in Christ,”  Paul asked Philemon (v 20). It is what we need to do for each other if we are going to make it through these times to the end.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Psalm 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

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Please note that the content and viewpoints of Mr. Hansen are his own and are not necessarily those of the C.S. Lewis Foundation. We have not edited his writing in any substantial way and have permission from him to post his content.

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Kent Hansen is a Christian attorney, author and speaker. He practices corporate law and is the managing attorney of the firm of Clayson, Mann, Yaeger & Hansen in Corona, California. Kent also serves as the general counsel of Loma Linda University and Medical Center in Loma Linda, California.

Finding God’s grace revealed in the ordinary experiences of life, spiritual renewal in Christ and prayer are Kent’s passions. He has written two books, Grace at 30,000 Feet and Other Unexpected Places published by Review & Herald in 2002 and Cleansing Fire, Healing Streams: Experiencing God’s Love Through Prayer, published by Pacific Press in spring 2007. Many of his stories and essays about God’s encompassing love have been published in magazines and journals. Kent is often found on the hiking trails of the southern California mountains, following major league baseball, playing the piano or writing his weekly email devotional, “A Word of Grace for Your Monday” that is read by men and women from Alaska to Zimbabwe.