“God will answer His pleading people in their anguish. He has wonders in store for them. What they have never seen, heard of, or dreamed of, He will do for them. He will invent new blessings if needful. He will ransack sea and land to feed them: He will send every angel out of heaven to succor them, if their distress requires it. He will astound us with His grace and make us feel that it was never before done in this fashion. All He asks of us is that we will call upon Him. He cannot ask less of us. Let us cheerfully render Him our prayers at once.” Faith’s Checkbook
This is God’s posture toward us in our “anguish” and “distress” over Ian’s circumstances. He is able to comfort us, give us faith in God’s kindness and love no matter what the circumstances, and even to return Ian back to us exactly as he was. He “will send every angel out of heaven” and “astound us with His grace.” He has wonders in store for us. Thank you for call on Him on behalf of the Murphy family.
We went to see Ian last night; Mary, Gretchen Allen, Larissa and me. We had heard from a friend that lived through a similar experience to work hard to wake Ian up. So we did. All evening Mary, in her sweet, gentle voice saying, “Hey sweetie. It’s Mommy. You’ve been in an accident. That’s why you can’t move very well….” and “Hi honey. It’s me, Mommy. You’re in the hospital. Everything is going to be ok….” It was so awesome to witness this beautiful soul, “…with a gentle and quiet spirit which is precious to God.” tending to her son with the voice that fills his oldest memories; the voice that is the most familiar to him in the world; the voice that sang to him as a baby and sings to him now.
Later in the evening, the nurse came in to re-position him. She pulled him onto his side, and as she did, his eyes opened. Mary was leaning close to him, and looking right into his eyes as he opened them. “Hi honey! Can you see me? It’s Mommy. How are you? Can you see me? I can see you!” And on she went, until he closed his eyes again. I wish I could have somehow captured that moment for others to witness. It was magical. I will never forget her face as I watched her look into Ian’s eyes. There was joy in her eyes; love and hope. Her face was bright with God and I can’t help but believe that he saw her through his unseeing eyes. I don’t think that his sleepy mind could have possible resisted her love and the coma, for a few moments, gave way.
As we asked him over and over again to squeeze Larissa’s hand, I think all of us would agree that he worked very hard at trying to do it. He moved his fingers a lot. He squeezed her hand. Sometimes he would–sometimes he wouldn’t but I’m pretty sure he was really trying. His nurse told us to come and get her if he responded to a specific sequence of commands because “I would die twice to see it.” He wasn’t able to do it, so I’m happy that she will live at least another night. But who can say about tonight????
Jesus is in that room, tenderly caring for His fallen lamb, making Ian’s sick bed for him as Charles Spurgeon says. His angels are hovering around him, ministering in ways that we can not see or imagine. Jesus is sweet beyond comprehension.
“Therefore the LORD waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the LORD is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.” -Isaiah 30:18
The Lord waits to answer our prayers for a reason! It’s not something on his to-do list he hasn’t gotten around to, but he stands purposefully waiting.
Why is he waiting? He waits to exalt himself. And when he exalts himself, we will see how great he is:
“When all the people of Israel saw the fire come down and the glory of the LORD on the temple, they bowed down with their faces to the ground on the pavement and worshiped and gave thanks to the LORD, saying, ‘For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.'”
Blessed are all those who wait for him because they will see his glory. Whether God exalts himself through healing Ian or not healing Ian, let this encourage us to keep praying, because God wants to show us himself through Ian!
“When we plead with God and have not realized success, we become more earnest and more intent and our hunger increases. If we obtained the blessing when we first asked, we would not have a sense of mercy’s value.” -Charles Spurgeon, Beside Still Waters p.31
What comfort I have found in God’s word and books that help me meditate on His word. My dear friend Gretchen Allen had been telling me that she often fell asleep with this book in her arms but I wasn’t motivated to read it until I myself became desperate for comfort. Life can be confusing, but God’s word is wonderfully simple and oh so sweet.
“If the ships of prayer do not speedily return, it is because they are heavily loaded with blessings. When prayer is not immediately answered, it will be all the sweeter when the answer arrives. Prayer, like fruit, is ripened by hanging longer on the tree.”
Tomorrow Ian goes in for a skin graft on his knee. In a few days after he’s recuperated from that surgery, we’re expecting to have to make the decision about a transitional facility, unless there are more things that need to be done to him in the hospital. When he leaves the hospital, we’ll be pushing for an aggressive approach to physical therapy; we really don’t want him just to be in a nursing home. We want him to recover from this either by a miracle or by God’s provision of various therapies. It may mean he can’t stay locally, but we’d prefer to have him where they can really work with him.
He appears to be responding to familiar people! Larissa and David (Ian’s best friend since the day they were born) noticed him responding to very simple commands like, “move your arms,” “move your legs,” etc. Pray that he keeps it up. Pray that these small steps would be much more obvious. Pray that he would respond to commands from less familiar voices and even from the medical staff. Pray, most of all, that he would wake up.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your prayers….
I believe the time has come to recount the mercies God has already shown us in our prayers for Ian.
God spared Ian from death in the initial car wreck. He kept Ian alive amidst the mangled wreckage that we might lift prayers on his behalf.
God spared Ian when his brain was dying. Doctors gave him 2-4 hours to live. In his astonishing mercy, God again spared Ian’s life, allowing us to lift more prayers on his behalf.
God touched Ian’s knee. The doctors went in, expecting to repair a destroyed ligament. Instead they found a ligament that needed very little work at all. How kind of God!
Ian is breathing on his own, without the respirator. His heart is strong. His fever is down. God is preserving Ian!
Thank you Father for the mercies you have given Ian. Thank you for how you have already answered so many of our prayers!
Doesn’t this encourage you to pray all the more fervently that God would wake Ian’s sleeping brain! God is an astonishingly lavish God and I don’t believe that we have reached the end of his mercies. He has already poured out incredible mercy on Ian thus far. This encourages me that He desires to continue to pour out his mercy. Let’s pray that God would pour out more mercy on Ian by waking him up. For His glory alone…
For those of you who may not know Ian, here’s a sampling of his humor. It’s an eight-part series he and his friend David created, inspired by Herman Melville’s Moby Dick…
“Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” James 5:16
Oh the power that is packed into these two verses! In these verses we are informed that the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. In and of ourselves, we are not righteous. We are filthy, wicked sinners who fully deserve the wrath of God. But God, because of His great love for us, has provided One who is righteous to stand in our place. Jesus Christ lived a life of perfect and absolute righteousness. Then He was hung upon a wooden cross where He endured the awful fury of God’s wrath towards sin. Now God credits the absolute, perfect righteousness of Christ to all who trust in Him. This is astonishing! God calls us ‘righteous’ in Christ.
This gospel truth should absolutely revolutionize our prayers for Ian. If we have trusted in Jesus, we are counted as righteous. We are His children and He is our Father. He delights in us and our prayers. Not only that, He tells us that our prayers have great power when they are working. Not some power. Not mediocre power. Great power! Meditate on that for a moment. Each and every prayer has great power. Why? Because we are praying to an infinitely powerful God who made us righteous in Christ and delights in our prayers. Each prayer you pray is jam packed with power from God. What a sweet promise!
Let this truth encourage you to pray in faith for Ian’s complete healing. Ask big things of our infinite God. Ask Him to do the absolutely impossible. Why? Because He already did the most difficult thing possible by saving us. Now He beckons us to lift our prayers to Him and tells us that these prayers are full of great power. What a wonderful God we serve. Keep praying!
I just checked this morning. Ian stayed off the vent all night. 24 hours off of the ventilator! And, he hasn’t had a fever for two days. Thank you, Lord.
At 11am today, the respiratory therapist removed the ventilator from Ian’s trach, and tonight’s report is that he’s doing really well with his breathing. Progress! They said he does get tired, so they’ll put him back on the ventilator at night until he’s stronger.
They’re going to do a skin graft next on his knee to close the wound.
It was three weeks ago today when the car wreck happened. I can’t tell how helpful it is to us to know that you’re praying…
Steve Murphy
P.S. When you visit Ian, make sure you ask permission from the nurses by calling them on the house phone in the waiting room before going through the ICU to his room. One of the nurses reminded me of this policy this morning.
