The woman with me in this picture is Diana Desens. She and her parents helped plant Elim Grace Church over 50 years ago. Together Diana and I are standing in front of “The Desens House”, a home and ministry Elim has started from the ground up.
The Desens House exists to set generations free one life at a time. This home will welcome women in recovery from addiction for a long term stay of 12-18 months. The home itself is at the center of a larger and growing ministry network and family we’ve been building.
We named this ministry after Diana and her family, not only because we wanted to honor them for their past sacrifice and work, but also because we believe their lives will continue to bear fruit in this community long into the future.
As I reflect back on the Desens family and those who began this work with them, I imagine a few things about them. (I have recorded minutes dating back to their very first meetings.) Above all I imagine them as a people of prayer. They were a people who prayed without ceasing. Yet I don’t imagine they could see all that God would do in and through their prayers 50 years from that small beginning.
In other words, they didn’t know and they couldn’t know what the city and county of Oswego would look like today. They couldn’t know about the growing opioid crisis, poverty rate, homeless population, number of children in foster care,…They didn’t know The Desens House would come into existence. But God knew, so he called them. Or better said, God knows, so he called them.
Dear Elim Grace, we also pray according to what we know and can see around us now. We pray according to what by faith we believe God is doing and calling us to do today. Yet we don’t and we can’t see what our city and county will look like in the year 2075 anymore than the Desens family could see ahead to 2023. But imagine if Diana and her family had not prayed? What would the city and county of Oswego look like without Elim Grace Church? What if they had not sowed into the kingdom of God with their prayers and tears and efforts? What fruit might God not reap today?
Peter writes that “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” (2 Peter 3:8) This was not an insight unique to Peter. Centuries before Moses had written “For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night.” (Psalm 90:4) God is eternal, seeing yesterday, today and tomorrow all at once. We think of time and understand time sequentially. But if all of time is imagined as one straight line across a blank page, God sees not only the line but the entirety of the page at once.
So since God is eternal and outside of time—since all of time and history fits into the smallest crease of His hand—the prayers of His people are never outdated, expired, past. They are ever present and ever effective for the purposes of God across every age and century, across every culture and generation. And so God can hear the prayers of the Desens family over 50 years ago and in ways beyond our ability to imagine or comprehend, answer them yesterday, today and tomorrow.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. To Him has been given all the authority in heaven and on earth to rule over all heaven and earth. His is the kingdom and the power and the glory of God forever. In His name the prayers of His people rise before the throne of God eternal.
I have heard my mom say that “our prayers never die”. I believe it and see it in ways I never could before. Our prayers never die, Elim Grace, because Jesus Christ lives forever. So pray! 50 years from now our prayers will have accomplished things beyond what we could possibly think or see today. Or as Paul expresses this eternal truth:
“Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (Ephesians 3:20–21)