God answered my prayer
The doctor looked serious. ‘Jeff, I must warn you that the surgery that you need calls for a two week recovery period which will be extremely painful’. I nodded, and signed the consent form. ‘Any allergies?, he asked, a question usually put to me in restaurants. Only to pain, I thought.
As the cloudy day of the surgery dawned, I told God that I wanted to use my enforced surgical slowdown as a spiritual retreat. This was no casual request. The last five years have been brutal, and now my faith was not dead, but dormant, hibernating beneath the arctic frost of a seemingly never ending winter, bruised and huddled up with barely a pulse. I still believed what I believe, but faith had turned into frozen theory. And so I mumbled a prayer that I was desperate to see Jesus move, act, speak, nudge - anything, really, that might show that He was alive on that grey Wednesday rather than just on that Easter Sunday morning two millennia earlier.
The promised two weeks of excruciating agony stretched into a full month. Here I fear that some will tag me as a pathetic male: hearing of my discomfort, some of our female friends game me that facial expression that says, ‘But you haven’t given birth, now have you?’ Indeed I have not given birth, but my screaming was probably heard in Jupiter.
Yet in the midst of it all, there was a moment when I sensed God speaking. My doctor told me that taking four warm salt baths daily would be helpful for healing. That month I bathed around a hundred times, making me extremely clean, if rather wrinkly.
It happened during what was likely my thirty fifth soaking.
Parked in the tub, I felt I heard God whisper.
‘I have something to say to you about warm bath water’.
What? This was bizarre. Not exactly an epic announcement. So I just sat there for a couple of minutes, waiting. Perhaps the Lord might part the waters of my bath, like Evan Almighty’s soup. Wondering if the thought that I’d heard God was in reality caused by pain medication, I exited the bath, dried off, and picked up a random book that had been left nearby. I flicked it open, and five minutes after hearing that whisper, my eyes immediately fell upon these words from Brennan Manning: ‘The most important thing that ever happens in prayer is letting ourselves be loved by God. It's like slipping into a tub of hot water and letting God's love wash over us and fold us…. the awareness of being loved brings a touch of lightness and a tint of brightness, and sometimes, for no apparent reason, a smile plays at the corner of your mouth’. The thaw had begun, a beautiful, tender springtime.
There are some Bible truths that can be difficult to believe, like the thought of the Alpha and the Omega becoming a speck in a virgins’ womb. Raising stinky Lazarus. Making the sun stand still for a while. But then, God is God, so why not?
But I’m convinced that the very hardest truth for us to wrap our faith around is this: that God loves….us. He loves the world, sure. And of course He likes and loves that keen chap who, Sunday by Sunday, raises his hands in worship during the announcements. But He loves…me? I know me all too well. And you know you. Can God really utterly know us, no nasty nook and cranny hid from Him, and still love us so?
Wonderfully, He does. And so I share my single New Year resolution for 2026, one that I commend for you. It is that we will each rest in, revel in, respond to, and pass around the love of God. Or as Paul, murderer turned apostle, staggered by that love, put it: ‘May you, being rooted and established in love, have power…to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge’ (Eph 3:17–19).
This much is certain, so let’s agree. Yes, Jesus loves us. The bible tells us so.