February 16, 2025
listening for his prompting
While KingsWay member Aliza Williams was praying for her neighbor, the Lord led her to engage with that neighbor in a surprising way. Who is the Lord leading you to love well for the sake of his name?
I get to tell the story about a question I felt like God prompted me to ask my neighbor. This dear neighbor and her husband are in their 70’s and have lived across the street from us since we moved in 13 years ago. We always chat when we see them in the yard, we’ve borrowed countless tools, enlisted help on sewing projects and car maintenance, shared pictures from our travels, and generally kept in touch. They know Matthew is a pastor and will let us talk about God, but they usually change the subject when given the chance.
One morning I was praying for them and was also thinking about several friends, young and old, that had been recently hospitalized with serious health scares. I was struck by the reality that none of us know how much longer we have on this earth, but that for my neighbor in her 70’s, she clearly had more time behind her than in front of her. As I thought “Lord, how do I love her well in light of that reality?”, I felt like God gave me this question for her: “Ask her if she is ready to die.” I was a little surprised by the starkness of it. It felt like a potentially brash move. But God really impressed on my heart “if you really care about her, you will care about how prepared she is for this inevitability.” And I felt like he gave me an illustration:
What if I learned that a friend had planned a trip to visit another country, but didn’t have a passport and hadn’t looked into what was allowed or not allowed into the country. They simply bought a plane ticket and planned to just show up. What kind of friend would I be if I sat back and waited to see how that worked for them? Would a good friend not go and make sure they at least knew about the requirements? “Hey, you’re going to need a passport, and by the way, New Zealand won’t let you bring any pork products in with you, and they will test your boots for bio contaminants so make sure they are clean when you go….” Those things could save them from being turned back at the border, ruining their trip, wasting time and money. How much more would a good friend check on preparedness for the biggest journey of all? The one from life through death?
So armed with this illustration and some banana bread, I went over to talk to my neighbor. And I warned her up front. I said, “I have a question for you, and it may seem like a pretentious one, but this is why I want to ask it,” and I shared the trip illustration. And God’s peace was all over that conversation. Even as I stumbled my way through it, I was so aware, “I’m not asking you this awkward question for the sake of asking an awkward question, this is what love looks like, this is how I can express my care for you.” And to my relief and amazement, that’s exactly how she received it. She was not at all flustered or offended. She told me, “You know, you get to a point where you are just so done being in this body, that yes, you are ready to go.” So we talked a little about the fact that when we die we will stand before the Lord to give an account for our life. And she shared about her skepticism for deathbed conversions and talked about events in her life that turned her off from church. The conversation ebbed and flowed, but I was able to communicate that I would love to talk more with her about what God requires for us to enter his country when we die if she was interested. She was noncommittal, but did say as we were wrapping up, “You know, I’ve always thought it was no accident that you guys moved across the street.” And I was able to completely agree, it indeed was not an accident.
The whole experience made me so aware that our God goes before us to prepare the way to accomplish what he wants to accomplish. And it made me excited to keep asking the Lord, “What does love look like?” And listening for his prompting.
Aliza Williams