Archive for the ‘prayer’ Category
First, for the nitpickers, yes, I know that’s not quite a direct quote. Poetic license.
I have an extreme dislike of the unscriptural term “prayer warrior”. Unscriptural? Yep. Although there are some who are recorded as “wrestling in prayer” for others (see Epaphras), nowhere does the Bible distinguish some believers as “better” pray-ers than others. Certainly there were instances of someone who was willing to “stand in the breach” on behalf of others, but it was that person’s willingness to intercede, not some special ability to do so, that garnered God’s favor. Look at the lists of specific, special spiritual gifts and guess what you won’t find? Prayer. Soldiers fight wars; civilians don’t. If the Church has “prayer warriors”, then an impression may be given that prayer is something that should be left to the “professionals”. Non-“warriors” get the idea that “warriors” are somehow more “effective” pray-ers. Both ideas are mistaken. There are no prayer elites; ALL believers are commanded to pray. Just as there are those who have a great passion for study, for missions, for caring for the poor, for working with children, there are some within the Church who have a greater PASSION for prayer than others – but that does not make them a class apart, let alone somehow “above” the rest.
Given that every believer should pray, I decided I would share how I keep track of who and what I pray for. (This isn’t about my personal prayer – my own confession, praise, supplication, or time spent listening – though all are key parts of a believer’s prayer life. For these, I don’t have a schedule, and I don’t follow a formula. Those are meaningful to many, but I don’t happen to use them. Yea, freedom!) Although I do a lot of on-the-spot prayer for and with others, I floundered for years trying to figure out a way to be more consistent about praying for the people who are a more or less permanent part of my life. I finally ran across some descriptions by other folks that inspired me some years ago, and over time those suggestions jelled into my current practice. I don’t necessarily get this routine done every day. Weekends, and Sunday especially, I’m most likely to not get it done, since Saturday I’m totally out of my weekday routine, and Sunday I’m getting ready for church. Some days I blitz through, and some days I spend a half hour. I’m not as consistent as I’d like to be, but doing it this way at least keeps me MORE consistent than I otherwise would be. This is not intended as a “how to” for everyone – it’s just a “how I” that might give you ideas as others did for me.
I have a small 3-ring binder to keep my prayer stuff in, with three sections. The first has a month by month calendar in which I’ve noted birthdays and anniversaries, and to which I add things such as surgery dates, test dates or graduation dates for students I know, travel dates for mission trips – anything with a specific time frame.
Stuck in the current month, and moved along through the year, is a card with lists of people for whom I pray every time. I list moms-to-be and their due month, with baby’s name if known; these may be family or friends, or increasingly common, children of my friends as we all enter the enchanting land of grandparenthood; I pray that God would knit those babies safely in their mothers’ wombs and keep the mom in good health as she carries her precious burden. (If there are specific concerns, I mention those, too.) Having lost my own father 21 years ago when I was only 30, I have a heart for those who have lost parents, so there is a list of folks who have lost their parents within the last year, which parent, and the month of the loss; I pray that God would comfort them in any stray moments of grief that hit or any anniversaries of events such as birthdays or wedding anniversaries. We have several friends who have children who have turned from the Lord completely, and our own son who, while he has not turned from the Lord, is not living by His standards, either; these are all brought up with a prayer that He would draw them back to Himself, and give the parents wisdom on how to love them with God’s fatherheart. There is a list of soldiers deployed to dangerous places, for whom I pray safety, and that they would take no action for which they would feel shame confessing before God or man; and I pray for their wives and children, that they would be provided for and protected. I pray for our nephew, who is currently a missionary in Africa, that he would be kept safe and that his work would be fruitful. Finally, I have a list of specific family and friends who either don’t know the Lord or who have walked away from childhood training in Him; for these I pray that God would send folks into their path that would speak His word to them, that He would give us wisdom on what/if to say ourselves, and that He would bring them to know Him. Notice that none of these take more than a few sentences each. God listens to our heart, not the word count.
The next section to come up is my immediate family. I pray daily for my husband. I’ve used prayers modeled out of Stormy Omartian’s book The Power of a Praying Wife and others, but I focus a lot on his work, since he labors in a spiritually and emotionally toxic environment. After Rob, is the kids’ section. For them, as for the next section, each has his/her own page, with general and specific prayer items underneath. Since we have five kids, and there are conveniently five days in the week, each kid gets his/her own day for me to focus on in prayer. (If that child has a family now, then I do the whole family on that day.) Some years ago, I chose a theme verse for each of the kids/families, and have it written at the top of their page, so I first pray that verse over them. Then I pray the general things. For all the kids, I pray for their relationship with the Lord. For married kids, I pray such things as for the husbands to cherish the wives, for the wives to trust the husbands’ leading, for the wives to be good managers of their homes, for the husbands to find favor with their employers. I pray for wisdom for their parenting. I pray for my grandkids to grow in grace and the knowledge of the Truth. For my unmarried girls, I pray that if it is God’s intent that they should marry, that they would keep themselves in purity and that they would be preparing themselves to be fitting helpers for their husbands, and (as we have prayed for all the kids since they were little and have seen come to fruition with our oldest two) that God would likewise be preparing their future spouses. Then there are prayers for specific things such as jobs needed, school, housing, illness and such. Answers are noted, too, both here and in the next section.
The final section is by far the longest. It is similar to the kids’, except that it doesn’t have a verse for each one. In this section, I have a page for each extended family member/whole family (mom, siblings and siblings-in-love, aunts, uncles, cousins), close friends and their children, and my “otherkids” who I have known from infancy or toddlerhood here and am very close to. I also have some pages with lists of names that I don’t do as extensive prayers for, such as old homeschool friends who I am in little contact with now but who I still think of fondly or all the pastors I know. The key to doing this section is that I do not pray through all these pages every time, but just for a few, moving a marker along. Some days I may pray one or two pages, sometimes four or five, depending on time and how the Spirit moves. Sometimes someone is on my heart “out of turn”, or there are other things on my heart and I don’t get to that section at all. It generally takes me a couple of weeks to go all the way through the section – but at least no one gets forgotten!
There is no one “right” way to conduct our prayer life, no one “right” cause to pray for. I have a friend whose passion comes from the injunction to pray for government leaders. She begins every school day with a folder containing the names of every elected official for our county, for every state and federal legislator, for judges, for Cabinet members, and the President. She prays for them each by name. There are those whose passion is for missions, so they pray for many missionaries and mission organizations and for specific countries. There are those whose passion is the unborn, so they pray for the unborn, for their mothers, for agencies reaching out to them, for the holding back of agencies working against them, for government policy makers. And there are many, many Christians who don’t feel a particular burden for ANY special group, need, or cause! If you’ve asked God to lay something on your heart, and He hasn’t, then don’t worry. He obviously isn’t calling you to prayer as a passion, but has some other ministry for you to focus on.
Whether we have a passion for prayer, or a particular passion for which we pray, we are all TO pray; it is not optional. Like any spiritual discipline, the more we pray, the more familiar doing it becomes. If we ask God to teach us to pray, as Jesus’ disciples did, He will surely do so.
Prayer isn’t a matter of being a “warrior”. It is a matter of being aligned with God’s heart – and that is something open to ANY of His children.
All in favor…
Posted on: January 10, 2013
My husband’s name is Robert. During the seven or eight years in which he was Executive Director of one congregation, he had fun with the fact that meetings were run by Robert’s Rules of Order – especially when it turned out that there were a few in the Voters’ Assembly who didn’t realize that that is the name of a codified body of rules for conducting formal meetings, named after a man whose LAST name was Robert, not just something my hubbie made up as he went along so he could control the group. While many of us may not be familiar with much of the bulk of Robert’s Rules, there is one aspect that virtually every American knows: the vote. “All in favor, say ‘aye’. All opposed, say ‘no’.” Majority rules. It’s a cherished American tradition, applied to a vast spectrum of life, and, for the most part, it works well.
It doesn’t, of course, apply to parenting. “I don’t care if all five of you vote for sundaes for dinner, you’re still having tuna casserole.” It doesn’t fly in the military, either. “Sorry, Sarg, but we voted to cut the hike to 5 miles, and we don’t want to carry packs today, either.” And although it is common to speak of America as being a democracy, it isn’t; it’s a republic. There’s a big difference! One is rule by simple, direct majority – mob rule. The other is rule by elected representatives… of the mob.
There’s one place that thinking in terms of sheer numbers as carrying the day is troubling to me: the church – specifically, in prayer. This is typified in comments such as “Yes, my doctor was amazed at how fast I recovered from surgery. But, you know, I had a LOT of people praying for me.” “We’re just praising God for this new job, but you know, we just had SO many people praying for us.” “There were so many people praying for this baby, I just KNEW I’d get pregnant!”
Many of us are part of telephone, or its modern incarnation, email, prayer chains. With the advent of the internet, a prayer request can now garner literally thousands of prayers in a matter of hours. Don’t get me wrong here: I firmly believe in this kind of prayer. When I have a great need, I don’t hesitate to reach out to friends and family to request prayer on my behalf. I consider it a privilege to pray for others. In fact, I confess I get, well, miffed, if I find out a close friend had some kind of big crisis and didn’t let anyone else know so they could be lifting the one in need up in prayer. We are commanded to pray for one another and carry each other’s burdens.
I see a problem, though, when we act as if the more people there are praying, the more likely it is that God grant the desired outcome. When we credit a recovery, a healing, a new job, a pregnancy to the quantity of voices raised on our behalf, we are, in fact, implying that someone who DIDN’T get those results just didn’t have enough people on their side. It’s as if we think God is tallying votes! “Let’s see…. 997…998…999…1000! Bingo! OK, I’ll heal this child. Now, next one…. 995… 996… …. …. Nope, sorry, didn’t make the quota. You lose.”
It’s as if we believe the point of prayer is to convince God to do what He otherwise would not – to convince Him to be merciful as if He otherwise would be cruel, to convince Him to be generous as if He otherwise would be stingy, to convince Him to be kind as if He would otherwise be harsh. To think this way is to misjudge His character, and, indeed, slander it. No matter what the answer to our prayers, God is ALWAYS merciful. He is ALWAYS kind. He is ALWAYS generous. He is ALWAYS good. Whether He grants life or allows death, brings healing or allows sickness, saves our house or allows us to lose it, keeps us in our job or allows us to be let go, gives us that child or leaves our womb empty. His character and qualities never change.
We are free to pray for healing. We are free to pray for provision. We are free to pray for restoration. We pray for life rather than death, for a child rather than barrenness, for a job rather than unemployment. We are told to present ALL our requests to God, but all of our requests are ultimately supposed to be Jesus’ prayer, “Not my will but THINE be done.” If we think we can sway God by by th mere count of votes in favor of the proposal, we are, in fact, treating Him as the Great Gumball Machine for which we need only enough coins to turn His will to OURS.
Whether it is one righteous man or ten thousand, God is not a God of majority rule. Or, well, maybe He is. HE is The Majority. Rather than praying to get Him on OUR side, we should be praying that we would be on HIS.
Don’t be thankful “at least”
Posted on: September 23, 2012
My year of “not my agenda but Thine be done” continues. In July we got our middle daughter moved across the state to live with our oldest son, wife and granddaughter, which is working out delightfully for all concerned. Marie’s situation was stabilized. In August, we prepared to move onto our major summer plans: paint the entire exterior of the house (first time since moving in in ’92!), hopefully taking no more than about 3 weeks other than final touch-ups; replace some of the flooring in the attic storage area, another week or so; then attend to the TON of yard/garden work that needs to be done in the time remaining before the fall rains set in, which could be any time in September. I was healthy and more than ready to get these things DONE. Yessirree, projects, here we come!
So, of course, on Thursday, August 9th, about 5 minutes after starting the very first prep work for the house, I sprained my left ankle and had to spend the next 4 days RICEing it. I worked the next couple of days on more prep work, but that following Friday night, I noticed something wrong with my left arm that by Saturday night landed me in the ER being treated for cellulitis (a very nasty skin infection.) Spent the next 4 days with my arm elevated, moving as little as possible to keep the infection out of the blood stream, where it is potentially life-threatening. (yikes!) During the next week, my 18 yo dd and I managed to get the front of the house entirely painted with two coats, and had started on the trim…. when I bolluxed up my neck. But good. I could hardly turn my head to the side more than about 30 degrees either direction, and even less up and down. That was nearly four weeks, a dozen chiropractor visits, traction table sessions, and massage appointments ago. Needless to say, I’ve been on the disabled list the entire time, and am only now ready to start light physical therapy. So much for plans.
Oh, the painting DID get done. The final touches (at least as far as we’re going to worry about doing this year) got done this past week, about 6 weeks after starting. Our youngest daughter worked hours every week. Hubbie on weekends. Oldest daughter and son-in-love worked two Saturdays. Dh’s bro worked Labor Day. My sis and bro-in-love worked a Saturday. Our niece worked three days. My mom worked a day. I am more grateful to them all than I can express. How could I NOT be? Without all their help, we’d probably have had to just leave the project as the front wall for this year! Would have looked might strange, since it is a complete color change.
When I’ve talked about the whole situation to others, especially if I mention how much of a pain in the neck this paint in the neck has been and how much I’ve missed being able to join in the painting, the most common response is an “at least”. I should be thankful that ‘at least” I had all that help. That “at least” my injuries weren’t worse. That “at least” the weather held out. (Here in western WA, in September, that truly is unexpected!). I even catch myself saying the same kinds of things. “At least”, “at least”, “at least”. Sound familiar? For ANY situation we’re in that isn’t what we’d like it to be, that’s the solution we usually turn to make ourselves feel better.
I AM thankful. Deeply and truly. But I’ve decided I don’t want to be thankful “at least”.
We’re not called to comparative thankfulness, being thankful only in comparison to the fact that we might have had less. Saying “thank you that at least life doesn’t suck as bad as it could” is hardly real praise. It feels like accusing God of somehow shorting me in one area, but at least I’ll give Him credit for trying to make up in this other way. Or that I’m denying the reality of what I feel by covering it up with a version of the Pollyanna Glad Game, as if I can’t allow expression of hurt, or anger, or perplexity without negating it with at “at least” that I’m thankful for. And what if the “at least” that we’re thankful for goes away, and our situation becomes like what we’d been thankful it wasn’t? As in, what do I do if my ‘thanks’ is saying “I have cancer, but thank you that at least I’m not in pain”, and then I end up IN pain? Do I just keep finding some other “at least”, some other worse that I can compare my situation to to make myself feel thankful?
Another problem with being comparatively thankful is that we aren’t the best judges of what is “better” or “worse”. Remember that old adage, “I mourned the fact that I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet”? The clear assertion is that I am better off simply because I possess feet. Yet who am I to say but that the man with no feet might, in fact, be experiencing a far richer life than I am, footed though I be? By the same token, you see, we can envy the man with the fancy shoes – because all we see are the shoes, or the feet. We can’t see the heart. We can’t see the whole pattern of a person’s life. When we are thankful that “at least” we’re not as “bad off” as we might be, we speak from ignorance – and perhaps we even question God’s wisdom in assigning us the life He has.
We are told “Give thanks in all things”. Period. “Give thanks in all things”, not “In all things, find something you can at least be thankful for.” Comparative thankfulness focuses our eyes on our circumstances to judge them for what we think they could be. Fixing our eyes on Christ enables us to be thankful for every gift simply because He sent it. In Him we find endless reasons for giving thanks regardless of circumstance. God’s goodness, love and faithfulness never change, nor are they ever second best to what He could have given us. God never gives us “at least”; He always gives us His most!
To give thanks only “at least”, is to give the least thanks of all.
Dash it all, that snow
Posted on: January 18, 2012
I hate snow. Really. The only way I enjoy snow is on a pretty picture post card. I spent 6 years in northern Utah, and 4 years in eastern Washington, and had snow enough to last me a lifetime. One of the things I like about being now in WESTERN Washington, at the bottom of Puget Sound, is that we can go entire winters without getting a single flake. Most years that we do get snow, we get a maybe an inch or two that lasts for a day or two, once or twice the whole winter. Then there are the other years.
We’ve had a bit of snow – a few inches – the last few days. Big, fat, fluffy flakes came down thick yesterday morning for some time, but had turned to rain in the afternoon so most main streets were pretty bare and parking lots were fields of slush puddles. Last night, however, a major storm moved in. We were warned to expect up 11-14 INCHES here in Olympia, with total growing less as you move toward Seattle, about 60 miles north. Travel advisories. School closures. State offices closed, workers telecommuting. Only idiots and the desperate would go out in something like this. (We don’t have as much snow equipment to handle it – plows, de-icers, etc. – like places that regularly get snow do, so it really is more of an issue. Besides the fact that the vast majority of western Washingtonians freak out at the mere thought of driving on s-s-s-s-s-now.) So, naturally, it was THIS morning that I had to have my cousin, Marie, up to Seattle by 9:30 for a crucial medical appointment. Idiot or desperate? Not sure there’s a difference! This is the story of our dash through the snow.
Before leaving, I prayed, “Lord, please get us there.” The drive to the side street to Marie’s apartment complex at 6:45 was a breeze, since main roads and the freeway had been plowed not too long before. The side road, and the drive through the complex, however, had not seen a plow since the whole thing began. Snow was easily already at least 8″ high. I followed a set of tracks someone had already driven through. Got Marie in the car. Tried to back out the way I’d come in…. and was stuck! Tried digging out the wheels, rocking it, etc. All the usual tricks for snow. Nothing. “Lord, you got me this far. Please don’t let it end here. Send someone to help.” In my rearview, I saw a figure, snow shovel in hand approaching down the drive!
I got out to greet him, and explained WHY I was out in that snow. Jay is a maintenance worker with the complex, and he promised he’d get me out, whatever it took. After working for 10 minutes, though, he had made little progress. “Lord, either let this work, or send someone else to help!” Another figure approached, this time a resident who’d heard the noise. Together, it took them another 20 minutes or more, but they did it. God bless them!!!! By 7:30, Marie and I were on the freeway headed north.
For the first nearly 20 miles, it was just snow driving, which is pretty easy. Visibility was good, no one was being stupid, things were fine. Then the snow on the road turned into thick, mushy slush, at least 6″ deep. If you’ve never driven on it, let me tell you that driving in that is MUCH, much harder than on just nice, dry snow. Mostly, you just try to choose one set of tracks and follow them. Sometimes, though, there aren’t any clear tracks through a patch. Then you lose traction, and you can be forced hither and yon following whichever way has the most “give” to it. Hit a place where one set of wheels has traction and the other one suddenly doesn’t…. and you can find yourself in a spin out. You don’t have to be going very fast! You’re in the spin before you know it. Oh, yeah. Spun all the way from the left of the freeway across two other lanes to bump the front left corner of the car into the center barrier, coming to a stop at a 45 degree angle backwards to the oncoming traffic, but with just a bit of the tail sticking into the lane. Amazing what prayers can go up in that time. I don’t coherently remember them, but I know they were going. No one hit us. Everyone went around us, except this one little car that stopped in that near lane. I waited for it to move so I could maneuver more to the side, maybe turn a 360 if aI got a gap, when he flipped on his lights. Oooh, highway patrol, I get it. I got out, took a look at my front end, and shrugged my shoulders. The cop looked back to the road, and there was no more traffic for a MILE behind us. He grinned, told me to just back up in a U-turn and be on my way then! The whole thing took less than a minute. “Thank you, thank you, thank you….” repeat repeat repeat
Roads got even nastier toward Seattle, but we made it. (more “Thank you s”) Got off onto city streets. Had to climb about 7 blocks of a stiff hill to get to the medical building – and had green lights at all the right places, and reds only where it wasn’t a problem to stop. 2 hours drive time, which is pretty good for what would normally have been about an hour fifteen. I dropped Marie off at the patient drop/pick up, got back in the car, had a mini-sob session, and went to park. When we were done with the appointment, I got a suggestion from the doctor for a different way to go when we left that didn’t involve going back DOWN that hill. This time, too, the lights were always with us, all the way to the freeway. (More “Thank you s”. He got a lot of those today.)
Roads outbound were even worse than they’d been, for the first 15 miles, with the last being about terrifying, with not one, but TWO, misses-by-inches of big pick-up trucks barreling past us, slewing this way and that in the slush. (I kept a smile on my face for Marie’s sake and was inwardly, um, “crying out” to the Lord, shall we say? Something like a white-eyed, pee your pants “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”) Then, for about 30 miles, we had bare, wet pavement with slush only down the middle and between lanes. Glorious! What a relief! Then the last 15 miles of the trip… Ever sit in one of those vibrating massage chairs at the fair? The kind that sorta make your teeth feel like they’re going to rattle out? Well, we hit slush again, but this time over FROZEN, chain-chewed-up ice! It wasn’t slick, but oh, my goodness, was it rough – and say goodbye to any sense of real control of where you were going! You just followed the ruts, no matter where they wandered. (I wonder if my prayers vibrated as much as our voices did if we tried to talk?) But we made it back to Olympia in about the same time it took the other way! I stopped at our house and picked up Rob and a snow shovel, unsure what we’d find back at Marie’s apartment complex, but Rob was able to pull in and back right out. (Yet another “Thank you!”) Got poor Marie back to her apartment and us back home. I think none of us are budging again until this snow is GONE!
Now, the fact that God got me to Marie’s didn’t mean He was obligated to get me back out. Even the fact that He sent people to HELP didn’t obligate Him to let it be successful. The fact that He got me out didn’t mean He was obligated to keep us from spinning out on the way. The fact that He kept us safe in that spin out didn’t mean He was obligated to get us to Seattle. The fact that He got us to Seattle didn’t mean He was obligated to get us to the medical building. The fact that He got us there, didn’t mean He had to …. You get the idea.
I know a lot of people who would talk about this trip and say something like, “It was just so obvious that God was with you!” But I can’t say that. That is, yes, He WAS with us – but He would have been just as much with us if at any of those points, things had gone another way! Some would say, “Wow! God really answered our prayers!” But I can’t say that. That is, yes, He DID answer our prayers – but He would have been answering our prayers just as much if had things gone differently, for, at heart, our prayers are essentially all “Thy will be done”, aren’t they? And it always is! I admit it’s easier to be thankful when things go all “cool” like they did this trip, but we should always be just as ready to accept the difficult as the easy from His hand.
All day I’ve had a rhyme going through my head that a friend taught me years ago. “Has He taught us to love Him and call on His name/And thus far has brought us – but to put us to shame?” It’s a rhetorical question, of course. No matter what happens to us, whether the trip goes well or we spin out, we get hit or we escape, His purposes are always good. He will never put us to shame.
Now (my snow-loving friends, forgive me) I hope He’ll take away this dashed snow….
“Pay” to pray? No way!
Posted on: January 13, 2012
- In: Christianity | freedom | prayer
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We get some odd ideas about God, don’t we?
My first pregnancy was pretty easy. My second was not. From early on in that pregnancy, I resented that fact. I was so mad at God about it that I basically sat and pouted about it for nine months, refusing to look at Him. When it came time for delivery, things got really, really bad. It was an induced labor done way too soon, and was terrible, awful, horrible, horrendous…. You get the idea. Worse than all the physical pain, though, was that I had this idea that because I’d spent the previous nine months in a tantrum, I had no “right” to ask God to help me through it. So I went it alone.
It was several months after the birth before I finally dared to look at Him. Honestly, I expected Him to be mad at me. I expected Him to resent my tantrum, my lack of trust. I pictured Him standing there with His arms crossed, one toe tapping impatiently, lips pursed to the side, eyebrows raised…… just waiting to chew me out as soon as I came crawling back. I figured He’d tell me the birth experience was payback for not walking right during the pregnancy. “It’s just as well you didn’t pray, kid. I sure wouldn’t have been listening, not after what you pulled!”
Of course, that’s not what happened. While I was sitting pouting, thinking I had my back to Him as He stood somewhere aways away, He was sitting right in front of me. Instead of arms crossed, His arms were held out to me wide open, just waiting for me to fall into His lap. His face was lit with a warm, sympathetic smile, and His eyes glowed with a loving gaze that still held a trace of a tear – and I realized that while He had been sad about my tantrum, it had never – NEVER – “offended” Him. He had never been mad back at me. And I saw that I had never been alone. I had cut myself off from FEELING His presence, yes, but nothing I could do could ever cut me off from His presence. He had still been the One carrying me through that awful time. Had I cried out to Him during that delivery, He wouldn’t have held His love hostage to a confession of my sin; He would have immediately rushed to reassure me of His love.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot this week after reading a prayer request that left me so, so sad. It’s not the first time that I’ve run across the sentiment, of course, but to see it in this particular situation just grieved me. It was written by a dad requesting prayer for his little girl who is very, very ill. The blog post basically stated that because God is holy and righteous, unless we have our act together, hands all clean and hearts all repentant, before we pray, He won’t listen to us. If we have unconfessed sin in our life, our prayers won’t work. This poor, sweet father whose heart is so burdened for his little one was worried that unless those praying for her were coming to God repentantly, confessing their sins, their prayers wouldn’t really ring “loud and clear” in His ears. So, so sad. What a misperception of God!
Imagine the most loving parent you possibly can – one who would do (and has done) absolutely anything for his child. Suppose the parent has told the child not to eat a cookie, but the child “sneaks” one anyway. Before the parent has chosen to scold the child about it, or the child’s conscience has moved him to confess it, suppose the child falls from a tree and breaks his leg. Imagine that parent listening to that child scream in pain and standing there saying, “Well, I’ll help you, of course, but FIRST there’s that matter of the cookie to take care of.”
Seems ludicrous to even think of it, yet that’s exactly how we picture God if we lay ourselves under the expectation that unless we have gotten ourselves all straightened out first, He’s going to put His fingers in His ears and sing “La la la Can’t hear you!” when we cry to Him in time of need. What bondage to believe that we have to essentially EARN the “right” to have our Father pay attention to us.
Christ died for us while we were sinners. God gave us His Son when we couldn’t have cared less. He extended His grace to us while we still hated Him. So, now that we have become His dearly beloved children, fellow heirs with His Son, indwelt by His Spirit – NOW we think He’s going to stand in a huff at us when we trip and fall short? NOW we think He holds it against us that we’re not perfect? Do we really think that in a time of dire need, He is going to withhold His help until we get our act all together, or use just the right words, or whatever? The God Who sends rain on the just and the unjust, Who instructed us to bless those who curse us, and do good to those who do us evil – now that we’re His children, He’s going to take an “I’ll only be nice to you if you do everything like you’re supposed to” position?
There is no sin which we have to take care of before He can hear our prayers because the things that we need to repent of and confess have already been covered by the Blood of the Lamb. God’s holiness and righteousness have been satisfied on the cross. Our acceptance by God is not conditional on how clean our hands are or how repentant we are. We are His children, beloved, warts and all. NOTHING – not even our failures, our not-yet-repentant hearts, or our not-yet-confessed sins – can separate us from His love. If we have “cookie” issues, He’ll deal with those because they aren’t good for us and distract us from the right path, but they’ll never be something He’ll hold against us and use as an excuse to withhold His love or His attention from us.
No matter what other issues we may have in our life, God will NEVER turn a deaf ear to the heart-cry of the children He gave His Son’s life for.
the susie solution 