I Can’t Comtrol the Orbit of Saturn

This is the report of a prayer time earlier this week in which the Holy Spirit interrogated me about how a passage in Colossians 1 that I was praying through applied to my life, as enlarged by some later meditation. God is able to take care of even of the people I worry about and other believers I've hurt, Reconciliation comes only from Him.  Enough people have watched me tear myself apart this year with worry and self-condemnation that I knew I should make it public to reassure them that I’m still listening to God.  It may also be helpful to other chronic codependent worriers who hear it.

Link to YouTube video “I Can’t Control the Orbit of Saturn.”

This is the report of a prayer time earlier this week in which the Holy Spirit interrogated me about how a passage of Scripture I was praying through applied to my life, as enlarged by some later meditation.  I had originally thought to keep it to myself and a very few other people.  But I was impressed today that enough people have watched me tear myself apart this year with worry and self-condemnation that I should make it public (with a little editing) to reassure them that I’m still listening to God.  It may also be helpful to other chronic codependent worriers who hear it.

Earlier this week, I was praying through a passage out of Colossians 1 that appears to be presented as a model prayer:

Colossians 1:9-12 (NASB).

I was praying through this prayer, as I do fairly often, trying to apply it to the people and worrisome situations in my life.  And I was praying it in the way that, unfortunately, I usually do:  I was trying to apply it, and other scriptures, to tell God how he could most easily and quickly accomplish what I thought His will was.  So I know what God should do?

I would normally have ended my prayer after verse 12.  But God started to interrogate me in verse 12:

God made three points right up front:

1.  He is the one who makes me qualified to share in his inheritance, and in everything in his inheritance.  This includes anything he wants to do in and through me. This answered my objection that, while a certain unreconciled offense situation continues, I am not qualified to do anything for him.  I was never qualified to do anything for him.  But he makes me qualified to share in his inheritance.  I do nothing to earn that.

2.  I am qualified not because of me, but because I am a part of “us.”  God qualifies all of “us” who believe. This is bigger than me, bigger than the church in ancient Colossae, and bigger than my little local church.  It is all of us who believe, for all time.  God is working on a much bigger picture than my worries.

3.We are all qualified together.  We are not qualified separately from each other. He made that point even more strongly later.  I am qualified together with all the other believers I worry about and those separated from me by an offense.  Together, not separately.

He then made it very clear that I was not to stop praying with verse 12, but to go on to the next part of the chapter:

Colossians 1:13-18 (NASB)

This is basic Christology—the doctrine of who Jesus is, and what he has done, is doing, and will do.  Doctrine is often considered impractical and boring.  But it became painfully and embarrassingly practical when God himself interrogated me about its meaning:

I don’t rescue myself from the domain of darkness.

I can’t rescue anyone else from the domain of darkness, either.

In myself, I can’t rescue anyone from anything.

Jesus has already rescued us.  It is done.  I can’t add anything to it.  And he has rescued all of us who will ever believe in Him together.  Together, not separately.

Here again, we, we together, are in Jesus’ kingdom because he transferred all of us into it from the domain of darkness.  Jesus did it—past tense. It is already done.

I get to benefit from it because I am one of “us.”  We all benefit together.

I could not save myself.  I did not save myself. I did nothing.  Jesus transferred us into his Kingdom.  He did everything.

I did nothing to earn or add to what he did.  I still can do nothing to add to it.

I created nothing in this world.  I have some very limited power to do work on things that already exist, to put them into different and sometimes unique forms.  This is the limit of human “creativity.”  It always acts on things that already exist, things that were previously created.  I create nothing.

Because I have created nothing, nothing exists for me either.  It was created for its Creator—the Lord Jesus.

This is also true of the people in my world, including those I worry about.  They were not created by or for me. They were created by Jesus and for Jesus.

I am completely unable to keep the whole universe together, functioning as it should. I don’t even know what the whole universe is.  Most of it is completely beyond my knowledge.  Fortunately, its Creator, Jesus, also keeps it together.  I don’t have to worry about the universe flying apart or collapsing.  Jesus keeps it.

But I am incompetent even on a much smaller scale.  Maintaining the orbit of Saturn is a much smaller task than keeping the whole universe together.  But I can’t control the orbit of Saturn, either.  I can’t make it stay on course, and not spiral inward and, say, crash into the Earth. But I don’t have to worry about whether this is going to happen.  God is in control.

I don’t even do very well keeping my own life together and on course.  God has to do that for me.  Still, I try to do that for myself, and to do it for other people, too.  Foolish, eh?

That “us” I’m a part of is Christ’s Body, the Church.  It is His Body, not mine.  He has made me a part of it, but it is not my body.

Christ is the Head of His Body. I am a member, not the Head. I do not decide where the Body goes or what it does.

When the stomach tries to be the brain, there are problems!

Jesus is the beginning of everything.  So he is before me, and everything that is.

He is the firstborn from the dead, the one my life really comes from.

God the Father gave Jesus first place in everything.  It is already done.

He has first place.  I do not.

Now continuing the passage from Colossians 1:

Colossians 1:19-22 (NASB)

Where does reconciliation come from?

Reconciliation comes from Jesus, who made peace by dying for us. 

Jesus could do this because the Father placed all of the fullness in Him.  Yes, all the fullness of the Godhead, but more than this.  All of the fullness of everything He created, all of which exists for Him.  All of the fullness of the Church, which is His Body.   All of the fullness of everything.

Through Jesus, God is reconciling everything to Himself.  This hasn’t been completed yet, but it is now continuing to happen.  And it will be completed.

It is Jesus who is reconciling all things to God. 

Causing reconciliation is not my job.  I can proclaim it, but only Jesus is making it happen.

God is fully reconciled to me, and to all of us who believe.  This is done.

But I am not yet fully reconciled to Him.  When He rescued me from the domain of darkness and transferred me into the Kingdom, I had previously been hostile to Him.  I did not trust Him, because I incorrectly believed He was my enemy.  I came to Him with faith (which He gave me) that he would save me, but I still had to battle with my old belief that he was opposed to me.  He has had to overcome that, showing himself faithful, a process which is not yet complete.  I still act in ways that show I don’t trust him often, and sometimes very destructively. 

This is also true of all of my fellow believers in this world, including those I am worrying about.  Our reconciliation to God is still incomplete.  We distrust Him, and sin, often.

Because of this, our reconciliation to each other is also still incomplete.  We hurt each other, and forgiveness is usually hard to come by. 

But this isn’t the end of the story:

This is another plural “you,” that refers to all of us.

Jesus has reconciled us, not just to Himself, but to each other, through His death.  This is already done.

But just like our reconciliation, as former enemies, to God is still incomplete, our reconciliation, as sometimes present enemies, to each other in the Church is still incomplete.  This has consequences for us and for the Church in the present world.  But since Jesus has already reconciled us on the Cross, we know he will complete our reconciliation.  Just maybe, in our treatment of each other, not today.

When I know I have offended another believer, I should seek reconciliation promptly, as Jesus told me in writing I should do.  I should trust Him to show me the right time and opportunity, the right means, and the right words.  And then I should continue to pray for the person and do good to that person when the opportunity is present.  I should do these things just as if no offense separated us, and even if they become openly hostile toward me.

But that is all I can do.

Jesus has reconciled us.

Making reconciliation happen isn’t my job.

Here is where things really started to become uncomfortable!

This is another plural “you” that refers to all of us.

But the Spirit applied it first to me alone.

I know I am unable to complete on my own what God is doing in my life.

When my life here is over, I know I cannot present myself to Him holy, blameless and without reproach.  This kind of purity is not in me, except in Jesus, who lives in me.

So I have to trust Jesus to continue and complete the work He is doing in me.

I won’t be doing it—only letting Him do it.

I felt pretty stupid when the Spirit closed his  interrogation of me with the question “do you think I can take care of her?”

Of course you can take care of her, Lord.  And I can’t.

I can no more carry her to where you want her to be than I can change the orbit of Saturn.

You are the one who will present her to Yourself holy and blameless and without reproach—a member, along with me, of the spotless Bride You are preparing for Yourself.  I can be completely sure that at that time there will be no defect in either one of us.  And You know how to get us there.  I don’t.

It has been quite foolish of me to let almost five months now be dominated by anguished prayers and scheming seeking to get her to forgive and be healed without any pain, just because I didn’t want her to feel pain on account of me.   I actually felt it would be unfair of God to allow her pain because of my sin—but I was ignoring her choice not to forgive as a separate and necessary cause of that pain!

 God, unfair?  I now recognize that there was pride mixed up in all of this.  I still have a lot of that to work on, unfortunately.  I was telling God how to get to the end I was pretty sure he wanted in what I thought to be the shortest, simplest and least painful way.  In my puny wisdom.

But what if He knows that the time and pain are necessary to get us both to where He is taking us?

This obviously has application to much more than just the situation with my dear offended friend. 

It has application to everything I do and say, and particularly to everything I pray.   Jesus should be telling me what to do.  I should not be telling Him what to do.

I think I will be chewing on this for a long time!

Email me: Ian Johnson.