Praying For What?

Have I told you about Allen Bryant, who asked God for the time to finish two books he was trying to write and then subsequently fell down the back-door stairs, breaking both legs?  He was laid up for six months and was able to complete both manuscripts.  He later spoke at a church workshop that I attended warning, "Be careful what you pray for!"

That is a very needed warning because, without doubt, "We do not know what we ought to pray for" (Rom 8:26).  Back in the late 70s, when I felt called into ministry, I prayed for the financial blessing to be able to pay off our bills and put away some money over the next year, preparing for preaching school.  Shortly thereafter, my wife began having a very difficult time with her pregnancy and had to give up working, cutting our income in half.

I didn't understand what was happening.  I remember asking God why he would allow such a thing.  Nonetheless, in the course of the following year, by cutting our spending down to the bare essentials, we managed to pay off our debts, have the funds for making the move and we learned how to get by on nearly nothing, which was exactly what we would be doing for the next two years in Harding's preaching program.  God answered our prayer but we did not know what we were praying for.

When you pray for patience, God may send you the most annoying or challenging person you have ever encountered, someone you are forced to get along with and deal with his/her bad or plain stuped behavior.  When you pray for strength, the answer may be a greater burden to test and develop your endurance.  When you ask God to increase your love factor, there is a good chance he will send you a very difficult person to love in order stretch your capacity and open your heart to those you normally felt repulsion.

When an elderly loved one is very sick, should you pray for extended life or a speedy death?  An extended life might mean more suffering and a speedy death might mean leaving before needed preparation is complete.  How do we know?  We don't.

If your boss is driving you crazy, what do you pray for?  Praying to get out from under him/her might mean a trip to the unemployment line.  Praying for a new position might mean exchanging an irritating boss for a mind-numbing job.  Perhaps the needed response to prayer has to do more with changing you and your attitude than changing yur boss or employment.

The real question is not so much, "What do I want?" but "What is right and good?"  Those two things might be the same or world's apart.  So, while the beginning point in prayer is found in your desire or felt need, the capstone of prayer must be the Father's will for he knows precisely what is good and right.  Do you recall the Lord's prayer in the Garden?  "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done" (Lk 22:42).

We need to pray in accordance with God's will but so often our thinking is very far from his, therefore we need help in our prayers, help which the Father gladly sends to those who are willing: "the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans" (Rom 8:26).

Don't be afraid to pray.  Pray with abandon and with assurance, but pray seeking the Spirit's direction, ready to embrace the Father's answer.  Instead of asking why this is happening to me, ask "What can I do for your glory with this?  How can I grow from this?  Who can I serve in this?  Ask your heart's desire and embrace the Lord's answer.  Praying for what becomes so much less important when praying to Whom, takes the front seat.  Jus' Say'n.