INTIMACY IN OUR VICTORY AND PROSPERITY

There is nothing that a spouse enjoys more than seeing their mate succeed. Over the past few years, I have watched my wife, Diane, build a real estate business from the ground up. It has seen much success, helping to find housing for International House of Prayer missionaries and others around the Kansas City area. She determined to give the corporate profits of her business to support IHOP-KC, blessing many on our staff who receive small amounts of monthly work scholarships.

I know the long hours she has invested, the late nights at a computer, the early morning coffee meetings with a waver- ing client, the phone calls from finance offices expecting her to produce documents out of thin air, over a cell phone, while she is shopping for groceries. When Diane comes home with a smile and says, “Today was a good day,” I rejoice with her because I understand that today’s good day was more than just a sweet set of circumstances. She’s been working to produce today’s good day for the last few years. I have appreciation and joy for her victory because I have watched her work hard for it. I enjoy seeing what she is capable of. When we first discussed her plan to start a new business, we were positive it would be successful.

But she has easily surpassed all our expectations and I couldn’t be happier for her.

What we feel about our spouse’s success is a mere shadow of what God feels when one of us does well in our endeavors. By nature of being our Creator, He knows fully of what we are ca- pable. But being also our Redeemer, He knows just as well how often we fall short of our capabilities. He is simultaneously our greatest coach, cheerleader, supporter and defender.

God is like the football coach who looks past his first string of players to the scrawny ninth grader sitting on the bench. The poor kid looks pitiful. His jersey hangs to his knees, his shoul- der pads dwarf his upper body, and his football pants are com- pletely free of grass stains because he has yet to actually take to the field. Every Friday night under the lights, the kid sits and watches…and between calling plays in the big game, the coach watches him. The coach is watching in practice too. He sees that the young guy is the first on the field and the last to leave. He sees him studying his playbook when he could be doing pretty much anything else. The coach drives by the boy’s house on Sunday afternoon to see him running plays in the back yard with his dad.

One Friday night, they walk back to the team bus after the game. The coach is tired from another long day. The kid is rest- less, having sat faithfully on the bench for hours. His pants are still spotless. The coach glances at the scrawny ninth grader and says, “You’re going to make it…and you’re going to make it big.” The player is astonished. What does the coach know that no one else does? What could he possibly see that is unseen to the rest of the world? When God looks at you, even if you’re not in the game yet, He sees the potential He invested in you. While He is fully aware of your failings, He is looking beyond them to the successes in your future. At a time when all indicators would suggest otherwise, He looks you squarely in the eye and says, “You’re going to make it.”

The coach who sees potential in the skinny ninth grader

shares a special moment when that ninth grader is suddenly a high school senior and catches the touchdown pass to win the championship. The coach’s joy transcends that moment to cover the whole of their relationship. The Lord celebrates the now in us, but he also celebrates the then, when we do well in the full- est sense. God celebrates us throughout the entire journey. Our intimacy with Him includes a far broader experience than what we are doing right now. He clearly sees where we are going in His grand plan for our lives.

It may seem unimportant that God celebrates our victories with us. One would expect that intimacy would be easy to grasp if you are successful, but human experience suggests otherwise. It’s not always a given that those closest to you will celebrate your victories. Jesus alone knows the full implications of our true greatness in Him. As the football coach may see in us what we cannot see about ourselves, so the Lord sees much more in us than we could even consider. God alone fully understands our true nobility and the heights of our greatness in Him. He will experience greatness with us. Jesus knows your greatness far better than you know it. He alone really knows who we are.

Novelist Vicki Baum once wrote, “Fame always brings loneli- ness. Success is as ice-cold and lonely as the North Pole.” When we are successful, all sorts of people gather around us and pat us on the back, but many do so with the intention of leveraging our success for their good, or siphoning off our fame and fortune for their own purposes. They are not sharing our success out of intimacy; they are manipulating it for their opportunity. With a depth of sincerity unlike theirs, Jesus fully embodies what Paul wrote when he exhorted us to “rejoice with those who rejoice” (Romans 12:15). Like no human can, Jesus rejoices with us when we rejoice. His intimate knowledge of our potential for good and evil makes His joy that much more complete in those sea- sons when success is finally realized, both in this age and the age to come.

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