When God Answers Your Prayer with Dumbbells
Why the people who test our patience may be part of how God forms love in us
Imagine praying one night, "Lord, give me stronger arms."
You mean it. You know you are weak, and you have seen strength in others that you do not seem to have. The next morning, you wake up, walk to the mirror and check your arms.
Nothing. No visible change. No sudden miracle. No biceps worth mentioning.
Then you go downstairs and find a pair of dumbbells on the kitchen table.
Spiritual growth often feels like that. We ask God to make us loving, and then we are given someone difficult to love. We ask God to make us patient, and then life slows down. We ask God to make us generous, and then someone needs something from us at an inconvenient time. We ask God to make us humble, and then we are corrected, misunderstood, overlooked or contradicted.
We may be expecting God to change our hearts by placing finished virtues inside us overnight. He can work deeply and directly in the heart. But Scripture often describes growth as something produced through testing, endurance, practice and obedience.
James says that the testing of our faith produces steadfastness, and that steadfastness has a maturing work in us until we become "perfect and complete, lacking in nothing" (James 1:2-4). Paul says something similar: suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character and character produces hope (Romans 5:3-5).
God often gives us the place where virtue has to be exercised.
The prayer beneath the prayer
I have often prayed for God to change other people.
Sometimes that prayer is right. We should pray for God to convict, heal, soften, restore and sanctify others. But I have also noticed something uncomfortable in myself. Sometimes when I pray, "Lord, change them," I really mean, "Lord, remove the difficulty they are causing me."
Or, if I am being less spiritual about it: "Lord, make them easier for me to deal with. Also, please show them that I am right."
In marriage, this becomes painfully clear. I may notice something that seems wrong and convince myself that my job is to explain it clearly enough for the other person to finally see it. So I explain. Then I explain again. Then I try another angle, because apparently the problem must be that I have not yet found the perfect arrangement of words.
Strangely, this does not always produce humility and gratitude on the other side of the conversation.
So the prayer becomes, "Lord, please show them. Please change them. Please fix this." And in that same place, God may be showing me something too. He may be using what I cannot control in another person to expose what He wants to transform in me.
Jesus' words about the speck and the log land hard here. He does not say there is no speck in the other person's eye. There may be. But He warns us that we are often least qualified to help with someone else's eye when we are ignoring the plank in our own (Matthew 7:3-5).
I may be right about what I see in another person. Being right still does not give me permission to become unloving. Their defensiveness never gives me permission to become harsh. Their immaturity never gives me permission to become proud. Their confusion never gives me permission to become controlling. Their sin never gives me permission to sin in response.
That is often where the real work begins.
The dumbbells often have names
The weights God uses to form us are not always made of iron. Sometimes they have names. Sometimes they live in our house, sit across the table, show up at church, send the email or ask for help at the least convenient time.
They are the people who interrupt our peace, expose our impatience, frustrate our expectations and reveal that our love is not yet as much like Christ's love as we imagined.
The fruit of the Spirit is more than a list. Paul describes that fruit as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). But fruit grows. It is living, which means it grows through seasons, weather, pruning and time.
Patience is trained by delay. Forgiveness is trained by real offense. Gentleness is trained by provocation. Humility is trained by correction. Generosity is trained by cost, and self-control is trained by the desire to do otherwise.
We ask God for fruit. He often gives us soil.
A guardrail
One guardrail needs to stay in view. Nobody should tolerate abuse, coercion, cruelty, manipulation or serious destructive behaviour in the name of spiritual growth.
Patience can act. Forgiveness can tell the truth. Submission to God may require resisting another person's sin. Love does not require us to remain in danger, excuse evil or refuse wise help. There are times when boundaries, counselling, pastoral care, outside intervention or physical separation may be necessary.
Many daily relational struggles, though, are the ordinary frictions of life: irritation, contradiction, disappointment, defensiveness, inconvenience and the painful discovery that we are not as loving under pressure as we thought.
Those places are part of discipleship too.
I am not the Holy Spirit
There is a strange mercy in realizing that I am not the Holy Spirit.
I cannot sanctify another person by pressure. I cannot argue someone into humility. I cannot nag someone into peace. I cannot make someone gentle by becoming less gentle myself.
There are times to speak, challenge, set boundaries and ask for help. Love can tell the truth, and peace does not require avoidance. But I am not responsible for doing God's work in someone else's heart. I am responsible for responding to God's work in mine.
Paul tells believers, "If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all" (Romans 12:18). He gives us a boundary: "so far as it depends on you." Another person's repentance, maturity and response are not mine to control.
But my patience, humility, gentleness, truthfulness, willingness to forgive and refusal to return evil for evil do depend on me (Romans 12:17-21).
That is humbling and freeing. I do not have to carry the impossible burden of changing someone else. I can pray, speak truth in love, confess my own sin, act faithfully and entrust the rest to God.
Jesus loved us while we were still difficult to love
The gospel begins with God loving us while we were still sinners. Paul says, "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). Jesus did not wait until we were reasonable, humble, grateful and responsive before giving Himself for us.
He loved us in our disorder and resistance, when there was nothing lovely about us. And now, by His Spirit, He is forming that same love in us.
The love of Christ tells the truth without contempt. It remains patient without becoming passive. It forgives without calling evil good. It serves without needing applause. It entrusts people to the Father instead of trying to control them.
That is the miracle we are asking for when we pray, "Lord, make me more like Jesus."
And sometimes, the next morning, God answers by putting dumbbells on the kitchen table.
Learning to recognize the answer
So perhaps I need to pray more fully.
"Lord, change them" may still be a valid prayer. But I need another prayer beside it: "Lord, change me in this. Show me what You are forming. Teach me to love without controlling, speak without wounding, be patient without becoming resentful, forgive without pretending and trust You with what I cannot fix."
God is forming Christ in us, even when our circumstances stay harder than we would prefer.
The difficult person may be wrong. Their behaviour may need to be confronted. Your pain may be real. Still, God wastes nothing. He can use the resistance, the frustration and even the person we keep asking Him to change.
Sometimes, when we ask God for strength, He gives us weights. And later, if we keep lifting by grace, we may discover that the very thing we wanted removed was one of the ways He was making us strong.