Posts Tagged ‘prayer’
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.
the susie solution 