I enjoy our hockey team and want them to win. I love family and friends and want them to be well and do well. I pray for our messy world and want peace on earth. At the same time, Jesus tells me to pray: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:10)
What is the will of God for this world, for friends who are ill or in trouble? Who does God want to win the game or take the prize? I’ve learned that there is one safe prayer, safe in the sense that I’m not praying against the will of God. While watching any sport, I pray that whoever gives the most glory to God will win the game. When praying for those who are sick, I pray that God will have His way in their life, whether to use their struggle to edify them, or restore them to health, or to take them home. As for this messy world, reading Revelation gives clues to what will happen eventually. It is safe to pray that Jesus will bring everything in subjection to God the Father, knowing that even now the mess is under His control.
Christians know the power of prayer. It may happen in the crowded parking lot when we pray for a space and someone pulls out right in front of us. It may happen when we ask to find a camel-colored coat even when they are not ‘in’ right now and there it is, the first thing we see in the store. It may happen when a friend is told her hubby is dying and prepares for a funeral and is amazed when everyone prays and God restores him. It may happen when we pray for Jesus to be glorified in a faraway country and soon the news comes of a revival in that place.
Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit. (James 5:13–18)
These verses reminds me not to wallow in suffering or use it to get attention. I must pray, just as I must praise God when I’m joyful. If I’m sick, call for prayer. Trust God and keep short accounts with Him and with others. I’ve often prayed when feeling a bit ill, “God, if I need this, then I accept it, but if not, please take whatever it is off me.” God can use sickness, but if that isn’t His plan, He can remove it — and He does.
I’m to pray that way for others too. Sickness so easily turns our attention to ‘poor me’ and that is not the will of God, so I pray for Him to use it or get rid of it.
Elijah was just like us. He trusted God, but not always. He ran into the wilderness when threatened by a woman, but God sent ravens to feed him. He prayed that it would not rain — and then that it would. His prayers changed the weather.
Lord God, I can remember times of praying ‘big’ things and You did what I asked, as if You put Your will in my heart and goaded me to pray so I could see that I was with You in Your plans. Prayer is a mystery, yet however it works, those thoughts of remarkable things, or small, impossible or even ridiculous (remember, I once prayed for a piece of scrimshaw and You gave me two) must make it into my prayers. I don’t always know Your will, but heaven forbid that I pray my own will be done. That just causes trouble:
What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. (James 4:1–3)
Help me to always pray with faith, trusting You and Your will, knowing that above any desires I might have. You always make the best decisions.
STUDY the principles Jesus teaches in Luke 18:1–8. What should be my foundation for persistence in prayer?
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