I pray a lot. I pray as my day begins. I pray as my day ends. I pray with people. I pray for people. I pray before, during and after conversations and meetings. I pray through the day as I encounter different experiences and the Holy Spirit taps me on the shoulder and says “Hey, I’m still here you know!” I pray for wisdom and understanding, guidance and faithfulness. And of course, a lot more.
Somewhere in the past three decades a change happened in my prayer. I can’t tell you when it happened, though I believe I understand why. It is really the result of several insights the Lord has allowed me to have over the years.
The first is that we don’t always get what we want. So many times I hear someone ask, “Why should I pray if God isn’t going to give me what I
ask?” I used to wonder that as well. Some said the problem was my faith wasn’t strong enough and I should pray “harder”. But then, they don’t get whatever they ask for either, so something is wrong with that approach. What’s the answer? Prayer isn’t about me asking and God saying “Yes, no, maybe or not yet (or some other variations).” In fact, prayer isn’t about what we ask at all!
The next insight came when I was studying again the account of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus prayed honestly and “hard”—as hard as anyone in history has ever prayed. He told the Father what he wanted in no uncertain terms, but that wasn’t the request. Because right after he told the Father what he wanted, he immediately asked the Father NOT to do what Jesus wanted, but what the Father wanted. He prayed that His will would be done.
The third insight came some years ago as I took up a challenge from another preacher—read Jesus’ prayers, and Paul’s prayers, and compare them with your prayers. If Paul is a model of who we should be—if Jesus is the one we seek to be like!—certainly then our prayer should be like theirs, right? Well, mine weren’t. Mine are about me, or others I care about, asking for physical healing or safety, for safety of travel, for jobs and financial provision. Read the prayers of Jesus and Paul. They pray for the will of the Father and spiritual strength and growth. They almost never pray for healing, or wealth, or safety.
So What?
I am writing this in a hospital room. Specifically a pediatric intensive care unit. Two people just wheeled a big scary machine next to my 19 month old granddaughter’s bed. She is already connected to more machines than I can count (literally, though there are more than 10). She can’t breathe on her own, and now they are going to connect her to a dialysis machine because her kidneys aren’t working. It hurts me to see her this way, and everything in me calls out to the Lord to heal her! Protect her! Save her!
I do pray that. But since Jesus prayed as He did in Gethsemane, I have to ask for something else. I have to ask that, no matter whether I understand or not, the Father do His will in her life.
And that scares me.
So I also pray for spiritual strength, for growth, for faithfulness—for me, for my wife, for my son and his wife, for the rest of our family and friends—and for all those who are being impacted by this little girl’s illness. I pray for this because these are the things Jesus and Paul prayed for.
Don’t get me wrong. I beg God to be merciful and restore Livy to health—just as I pray for her cousin as she struggles with asthma. But what if she isn’t healed? My prayer is just as effective if Livy isn’t healed as if she is! In fact, I have learned that my request isn’t even what prayer is about.
Instead, it is about the fact that I am coming to the Lord at all. That the circumstances in my life have caused me, a wandering child of God, to focus again on my relationship with my perfect Father. That through this prayer I am made more like what He wants me to be. That no matter what happens with Livy (and I am still praying for healing!) the important thing is the eternal relationship she and I have with our Lord, which will last untold millennia after we are both grown old and dead, and raised again.
I have learned this: Prayer isn’t about the request. It’s about the relationship.
in Christ,
Randy Christian
