What Does It Look Like to Co-Labor With God?

Nuts and bolts, from a recent conversation with inmates.

I’ve been writing a lot lately about the idea of “co-laboring with God.” It sounds nice (albeit a little cliche in certain circles). But what does it actually mean?

A couple of weeks ago I had a wonderful experience that showed me, at the nuts and bolts level, what this phenomenon actually means, and I thought I’d try and share it with you.

God, Please Save This

It was a Tuesday, which meant that I was doing prison ministry. My co-facilitator had just finished their session, which meant that I was up. Prison is a hotbed of triggers and temptation, and my goal was to lead a discussion in which I could encourage the inmates to lean on Christ for strength and guidance to do the right thing in those moments when doing the wrong thing seems so tempting.

I stood up, and within a minute I felt like I was crashing and burning. I was trying to help the inmates to introspect about their own choices, but the opening example I gave made everyone think that I was the one who needed their help (more on that in a moment). One of the guys asked me a pretty basic question that I had no idea how to answer. None of my questions seemed to land with the men I was working with, and I felt like the discussion wasn’t going anywhere.

I felt awkward and tongue-tied and like I didn’t know what I was doing, and I was primarily conscious of the feeling that I was completely whiffing on this incredible opportunity I’d been given to help some of these men.

And so, as I watched the discussion spiral out of control, I prayed, right then and there: God, I feel like I’m screwing everything up.Will You please come in and save this situation?

And within seconds, the tenor of the discussion changed.

One of the inmates picked up on the theme I’d been trying to get to and gave an incredible testimony. He had been a drug dealer in prison before he had an encounter with the Holy Spirit and became a Christian, and he told the story of how someone who owed him money had recently refused to pay. If this had been a year ago, the speaker said, he and one of his buddies would have snapped the debtor’s neck. But now, with Christ in his heart, he forgave the debtor and offered him a Bible verse.

It was exactly the lesson I’d been trying to impart, encoded in a story that was too visceral to forget.

Then another man started talking. He said that he’d been in prison for decades, and over that period a lot of different men had wanted to kill him. Each time, he said, he relied on the Holy Spirit and somehow he was protected. He never fought back or tried to get even with his would-be murderers; he just relied on God’s wisdom and guidance, and suddenly there was peace.

The entire conversation was incredible. I think it had a real impact on the other inmates, too: a few weeks later, one of them told me that he’d had the opportunity to pick a fight with a man who had wronged him, and he chose peace and reconciliation instead. It was exactly the kind of heart change that I went into prison ministry hoping to facilitate (or at least witness).

And it had nothing to do with me.

I don’t mean that to sound pejorative; it’s the simple truth. I believe that God would have worked in these men’s lives even if I simply stayed at home and put my feet up.

One of my friends is a professional musician, and he says that writing music is like having a front-row ticket to a fireworks show: there’s awesome stuff happening right in front of you, but at the same time you know that you’re not the producer of the fireworks. You’re just excited to be there to witness it.

So that’s the first lesson I’ve learned about co-laboring with God, these past few weeks: it’s REALLY not on my shoulders. I’m not the cause of the fireworks; I’m just excited to be in the front row when God starts moving.

Daniel

I mentioned above that I wanted to help the men to introspect and to look at their own triggers and temptations, but that the opening example I gave made everyone think that I was the one who needed their help. That’s true. I told a story about how I would be spending a lot of time with someone who was kind of a pain, and how I knew the right thing to do was to love him but that at some point in the course of our interactions I’d be tempted to give him a verbal smack upside the head.

In particular, one man seemed to really think that the other inmates and he needed to rally around me and help me to find the strength to tend to my difficult friend with love and compassion. Let’s call this inmate Daniel (not his real name).

When Daniel redirected the conversation to me and my problems, I was mortified. I thought I was failing as a facilitator. Part of that was ego: I didn’t want these guys to think I needed their help. Part of it was a more pure motive: I wanted them to introspect, not focus on helping a man who already has his own support structures. I tried to (politely) tell Daniel that I didn’t need his help, but he was insistent.

But here’s the thing that I missed, in my ego and in my belief that I was crashing and burning: in that interaction with Daniel, God was already at work.

When I first started facilitating, Daniel seemed like he barely cared. He slept through most of the first class.

But over the past week or two, Daniel’s been a lot more engaged. He thanks each of the facilitators, sincerely, for our time and effort running the class. He speaks up. He answers questions. He seems to genuinely like being there.

And the change seemed to happen right around the time that he tried to help me.

I explained this situation to my wife and to one of our wise Christian friends, and their response was along the lines of: “Well, obviously.” They explained: imagine being the kind of person who society tells has nothing useful to contribute (as far as society’s concerned, the best thing Daniel can do is to go away). Then suddenly a guy walks into your life and actually seems to invite your help. That guy thinks that you have something to contribute. Wouldn’t that motivate you?

So that’s the second lesson I learned: even when we think we’re failing, we never know what God’s doing with it all.

This Place Is A Mess

Outside of my classroom, the prison where I volunteer is one of the most messed up systems I’ve ever seen. There’s heroine—lots of heroine. There are inmates who want to kill each other. The inmates are dehumanized in a thousand ways, from the brutal to the petty. The food is terrible.

There are people in the prison system who will never see the outside. Some of that’s required: I’m not especially soft on crime, and there are murderers and rapists in prison who absolutely need to be behind bars. But people also change, and I know men serving 100+-year sentences for crimes they would give anything to take back. I know Seminary students serving life without parole. I know men who have genuinely turned over a new leaf, but have no opportunity to show that to the prison system, because their next parole meeting isn’t until the 22nd century.

Mostly, when I walk into prison I see a system designed to dehumanize everyone involved in as many ways as possible. I see a system in which almost everyone is scared (often justifiably) and where so many people are drawn into a zero-sum worldview of “Me and mine against you and yours.”

For the first few weeks that I walked into the prison, the darkness and the dehumanization got to me. I would come home and that would be all I wanted to talk about. I felt heavy and bleak, like I was walking around in a jacket lined with lead weights.

Then I spoke with my spiritual director, who’s been doing prison ministry for years, and she helped me see that the source of my heaviness was that I felt like I was responsible for fixing the whole system. I was carrying the weight of it on my shoulders.

At her suggestion I asked God what it would look like to co-labor with Him in this area, and an image came to me: of me walking into the prison, facilitating my class, and walking out again without carrying the brutality of the prison with me. Of me doing my part, and letting go of the rest.

I asked my spiritual director if that sounded lazy. Her response: “No. It sounds like trust.”

Since that conversation I’ve been able to walk in and out of the prison, and do my small part to help the inmates, without taking on the emotional burden of feeling like I have to fix the entire system. I’ve taken on the weight of the tiny part of the problem that I can carry, and left the bigger problem in God’s hands. It’s left me lighter and more free, and more able to minister to the inmates without burning myself out in the process.

I think that’s another piece of what it means to co-labor with God: to carry the small part that we were actually designed to carry, and to leave the rest in the capable hands of the Divine. To trust that He can handle problems that are way too big for us, and to know in our hearts that He will.

To let the weight of the world fall off of our own shoulders, and to put it back on the shoulders of the only being strong enough to carry it.

Or to put it another way: co-laboring with God feels active and engaging, and leaves me spent in the best way…but it never feels like toil.

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