Two by Two

Mark 6:7-13

Phrases that spoke to me today:
• Began to send them out two by two
• Gave them authority over unclean spirits
• So they went off and preached repentance
• They anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them

Applying the Word to My Life:
A saint does not begin as someone impressive. Paul called a church full of division and scandal "saints" before he corrected a single thing in them. The call came first. Holiness was what happened as they kept answering it.

That is what I was honoring when I knelt a few feet from the relic of St. Jude's arm. I was not reverencing bone for its own sake. I was reverencing what God had done through a man who heard the call and kept saying yes until that yes eventually cost him his life. The relic mattered because the life mattered, and the life mattered because God had done something with it.

Death did not bring that story to an end. If anything, it removed the things that still limited Jude here on earth. He is not less alive now, or less connected to the Body of Christ. He is more closely united to Christ than he ever could have been on earth.

And Jude knew something about God working through ordinary people.

He was one of the Twelve when Jesus summoned them and sent them out two by two, giving them authority over unclean spirits. Jesus did not wait until they had everything figured out. These were men who would still misunderstand Him, argue among themselves, scatter when He was arrested, and, in Peter's case, deny Him three times.

Jesus sent them anyway.

They preached repentance, drove out demons, anointed the sick with oil, and healed them. None of that power originated with them. It was Christ's power, entrusted to people willing to go where He sent them.

I have seen a very small glimpse of that myself on a prayer team. One night, someone asked us to pray over a wrist that had been injured for a while and would not stop hurting. A few of us gathered around. I put my hand on the wrist, and we began to pray. Partway through, it started getting warm beneath my hand. Then it became hot enough that I could feel the heat moving up my own arm. When we finished, the wrist felt good again. Months later, I was told it still did.

There was nothing I did there.

I did not create the heat or decide what God should do. I had simply shown up and prayed, the same way I have done plenty of other times when nothing unusual happened. Whatever happened in that moment belonged to God.

So when I ask a saint to pray for someone I love, I am not asking a myth, or a memory, or a statue. I am asking someone who said yes, whom God worked through, whom I already honor for exactly that - and who is more closely united to Christ than I am.

The saint is not the source of the power. He never was. God is.

Intercession does not compete with that truth; it depends on it. When I ask a saint to pray for someone I love, I am doing what Christians have always done: asking another member of Christ's Body to bring that person before Him.

The only difference is that this member of the Body has already finished the part of the road I am still walking.

My Response for Today:
Today I'll ask a saint to intercede for someone I love, trusting that the request reaches someone who is still alive in Christ.