Prayer!

There is a bit of a reoccurring question in our house – “Is there any point praying when it doesn’t work all the time? Should we keep praying?”

I must say I would say 100% yes and 100% no. I really do think prayer works all the time. Example – a couple of weeks ago I was feeling really, really low and whilst out walking the dog was crying and telling God that I couldn’t trust Him and listing all the prayers He hadn’t answered and how that had made it harder at home. In all this rant I opened myself totally up to God, gave Him everything I felt, and you know what, He gave me a hug. Oh He didn’t come and answer anything, sort anything out, even give me any strategies  for sorting things out, but He gave me a big heavenly hug. Ok so how do I know that? There was something inside. You know when you get hugged by that person, parent, spouse, child, and you know they just love you for being you and it does something to you inside, well that was how I felt after. I was comforted, but that sounds really bland 🙂 Something inside me had a reassurance that the God of the Universe loved me, even if He didn’t give me what I wanted, or what lots of other people wanted. And interestingly enough I was telling this story to another friend who then told me about one of the sons of the friend who left her husband and how his reaction to his parent’s break-up has sent him to the chaplain of his local church and he is growing deeper with God.  It is like God takes our honesty and brings us deeper to Him. He doesn’t answer things for us as we would like but He is there.

But also I wouldn’t stop praying. I’m praying for The Eden projects across the country, Lifeline in Haiti, friends how are sick, friends who are struggling, me and mine. Why? Because I know God answers prayer and I know that my praying will alter things in the heavenlies. But I also know it is all about God and not about me and how I pray. There is an “interesting” thing going round facebook at the moment disclaiming Bill Johnson and Bethel, California, because Bill Johnson has said that because Jesus was fully human he never healed anyone, etc. If you read on it is an encouragement to all of us that Jesus was filled with the same power of God as we are and we can do the same as he did, and like him we need to do what God tells us to do. Ok so I know in the Bible every time Jesus prayed things happened. I wonder if it would be blasphemous to say that maybe there were times when Jesus prayed that things didn’t happen. Why record them? I have read stories about “big name christians” some of which I know, and you know it is only the bits that make a good story that are shared. If I told you my life it would depend what angle I wanted to tell what I told you. It isn’t that I would be lying but actually for all the things that have gone on in my life, from the totally amazing to the totally awful to the totally mundane, you wouldn’t want to hear all of. And there wouldn’t be time. The Gospel of John finishes with the words “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written” (John 21:25) which surely says there were lots of things Jesus did that we will never ever read about.

And actually I do like to think that Jesus was so in tune with God that he did only pray what he knew God wanted, and I think that’s the difference – we pray what we want not what God wants. And sometimes when we pray what God wants it’s scary. I remember wanting to pray for my step-dad to be healed the last time and very clearly heard God say not to because my step-dad was ready to meet with Him. Straight after that I got a phone call from my mum’s vicar to say he’d prayed with my step-dad and he’d said he wanted to be with God, did the whole repentance things, accepted God, and then went into a morphine induced delirium for the last 2 weeks of his life. It was very hard not to pray for him to be healed, especially as we had prayed for healing for him on and off for the last 10 years and he had been healed. Most of the time it’s quicker to pray what we want to happen than to slow down, listen to God, be sure that we are hearing from God and then obey that. That would be fine if what He said was to pray but how do we feel when He says don’t? Not good.

Years ago someone spoke on one of these visions from God stuff and they were in heaven and God showed them this beautiful tapestry and said this was their life, but they said their life felt like it was a mess, and so God showed them the underside, which if you have ever seen a tapestry is all knots and cut thread. God said to this person that this is what we see of our lives, the knots and broken threads, but He sees the beautiful tapestry. We need to trust in the fact that a beautiful tapestry is growing even if it just feels like a series of hurts, griefs, struggles and unanswered prayer.

So yes I would say prayer is worth it 100% but that there is also time when it feels like prayer doesn’t work at all and we need to hold on to the dicotomy and know that God is God and learn to trust. I truly believe that the whole of life is a journey in relationship with God, learning to trust in Him, and that the answered prayers are just the icings on the cake of life. The icing is to be enjoyed and to ask for, but in reality what we should be craving is the depth of relationship – both of which only come via prayer and lots of it.