The Prayer of Abandonment
On they went over the years with many upheavals and many answers to prayer, and always, abiding grace. The Lord empowered Mandy to love Jack in spite of his temperament, and oddly, Jack had many customers who were strong Christians, and they shared their faith with him. He heard the gospel message time and again even though he never went to church. On occasion, it seemed he might become a believer, and in fact, once he said he had accepted Christ, but nothing changed in his behavior. Nevertheless, the Lord has promised, “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.” (John 6:37)
I believed this promise and that Jack had crossed a certain threshold, but by any observer, Hebrews 6:4 could also have been quoted: “It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.”
It couldn’t be said, though, that Jack had tasted the goodness of the word of God or had shared in the Holy Spirit. A verbal assent is only a vote of confidence, but God can take the smallest seed and grow it into a tree so large and strong that birds can rest in its branches.
Besides honoring Mandy’s obedience by sending people to witness to Jack, God also permitted certain disasters to capture his attention. One occurred when Maddison at age eight was thrown from her horse, landing on her head which caused a concussion. Not long after she had recovered, she knocked heads with a playmate at the bottom of opposing slopes on a fateful sleigh run, which gave her a new concussion. In both incidences she could have been rendered a paralytic or comatose, but God preserved her from tragedy.
Sadly, after the time of the trauma and the period of relief and thankfulness, Jack returned to his old ways, and he was getting worse.
One spring I visited the family following a time when I had been praying a lot for him, and I believed all our prayers were about to be answered. I awoke around 2:30 in the morning when I heard Jack coming home late and then up the stairs. I began to pray fervently that God would finally accomplish his conversion. Not long afterward, I heard someone walking down the hall and down the stairs. I felt sure God was answering and Jack was being moved to go downstairs to pray! I decided after a while to go see if he wanted to talk, but when I got downstairs, I instead found my sister in the living room. She had a terrible headache and had taken some aspirin.
We began to talk. Things were at a drastic point in their marriage. Perhaps Jack was in an affair. Maybe he was in a mid-life crisis since he was now 41. In any case he was drinking too much and showing no concern for Mandy’s feelings at all. We began to pray, and these were our words: “Dear God, we have prayed for Jack for so long that we don’t know how to pray anymore. We’ve prayed for him to come to you in every way we can think of. Now we are asking you to save him whatever it takes. If our prayers have brought him protection, we understand if it has to be removed to accomplish your will for him. Whatever must happen for Jack to be saved, we ask you to do it.” We also prayed he would separate Jack from his real estate office which we felt was a bad influence on him and that God would judge that place.
Was this a prayer of relinquishment— a final letting go? The urgent request that God’s will be done? No, it was a prayer of abandonment. We were not relinquishing Jack as though our own spirits had desired something for him other than God’s perfect and highest will. We were abandoning him to be dealt with in whatever way would way would accomplish his salvation, or the realization of it. This, too, is a form of intercession.
Comment on the Westminster Confession
Baptism, like circumcision, is a sign and seal of God’s covenant of grace. The person who is baptized demonstrates his faith in the Lord and a desire and decision to belong to him, just as the person who was circumcised showed trust in God. Parents who present their children for baptism are proving their belief that this sign and seal are God’s, not man’s. However, any baptized person who fails to walk with God as he or she grows older, choosing instead to rebel against him, cannot rely on their baptism as securing God’s promise of eternal life. Baptism saves no one.
Westminster Confession Chapter 28
Of Baptism
1. Baptism is a sacrament of the New Testament, ordained by Jesus Christ, not only for the solemn admission of the party baptized into the visible Church; but also to be unto him a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, of his ingrafting into Christ, of regeneration, of remission of sins, and of his giving up unto God, through Jesus Christ, to walk in the newness of life. Which sacrament is, by Christ’s own appointment, to be continued in His Church until the end of the world.
2. The outward element to be used in this sacrament is water, wherewith the party is to be baptized, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, by a minister of the Gospel, lawfully called thereunto.
3. Dipping of the person into the water is not necessary; but Baptism is rightly administered by pouring, or sprinkling water upon the person.
4. Not only those that do actually profess faith in and obedience unto Christ, but also the infants of one, or both, believing parents, are to be baptized.
5. Although it is a great sin to contemn or neglect this ordinance, yet grace and salvation are not so inseparably annexed unto it, as that no person can be regenerated, or saved, without it: or, that all that are baptized are undoubtedly regenerated.
6. The efficacy of Baptism is not tied to that moment of time wherein it is administered; yet, notwithstanding, by the right use of this ordinance, the grace promised is not only offered, but really exhibited, and conferred, by the Holy Ghost, to such (whether of age or infants) as that grace belongs unto, according to the counsel of God’s own will, in His appointed time.
7. The sacrament of Baptism is but once to be administered unto any person.