Dust to Dust

If you’re most heart-felt prayers have yet to be answered, or if you’re living through painful or challenging times, then this devotional plan is for you.

Join us as we meditate on Jesus’ journey to the cross, we’ll explore the challenge of unanswered prayer, as well as the pain and disorientation we can feel when God seems to be silent.

Together, we will draw wisdom from Pete Greig’s book God on Mute and reflect on Pete and his wife Sammy’s story of suffering and faith. If you have ever wondered, ‘where is God in my situation’, then pray with us as we remember Christ’s sufferings, prepare to celebrate His resurrection and ask Him to meet with us in our own challenges…

As I enter this time of prayer, I repeat the words of Psalm 103:13–14, slowly, several times, making them my prayer to God:

‘The LORD has compassion on those who fear him;

for he knows how we are formed,

he remembers that we are dust.’

Pete writes, ‘I prayed like I’d never prayed before, helplessly convinced that I was watching my wife die. I begged God to make the convulsions stop so that she could at least draw breath. I prayed in the name of Jesus. I tried to have faith. I invoked the power of His blood. I rebuked and renounced everything I could think of rebuking and renouncing. This was not prayer for a parking space or a sunny day. This seemed to me to be a matter of life and death. Sammy was turning blue, and bloodied spittle was blotting the pillow. The ambulance was taking forever. My prayers weren’t working’ *

Your wilderness may not look like Pete’s but notice that it is the Holy Spirit who leads Jesus ‘into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil’ (Matt. 4:1). This isn’t the sort of thing we expect the Holy Spirit to do. Isn’t He supposed to protect us from satanic onslaughts, not lead us into them?

As I think about my own wilderness, could it be the Holy Spirit who has led me here into a dry and difficult place? And if so, why?

Pause and reflect

I am generally hungrier for physical food than the spiritual variety. Admitting this to the Lord now, I ask Him to radically increase my desire for ‘every word that comes from the mouth of God’ over these next forty days.

Pause and pray

Finally, as I embark upon this journey into the desert, I get my heart right with the words of Psalm 51:1-3, 10-12, traditionally prayed around the world on Ash Wednesday:

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love;

according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.

Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.

For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me …

Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

Amen.

*Pete Greig, God on Mute, David C Cook, (Colorado Springs, 2020), p37