“Those who know Your name will trust in You, for You, LORD, have never forsaken those who seek You.” Psalm 9:10
“What’s the good of praying? My friends and I have prayed for years and nothing has happened. God doesn’t care. For all I know, He’s off playing golf.”
The young woman who spoke so passionately about her disappointment with God is not alone.
I understand her dilemma. One day my husband, a strong Christian leader, signed himself into a mental hospital. He had suffered a complete mental breakdown. Many people prayed for him. We were so certain that God would heal him. We clung to Bible verses that promised healing, such as:
“The prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven” (James 5:15).
Healing made sense to me: we’d have a strong message of hope for the world. But my husband did not recover. Today he’s in a care home.
I admit, sometimes I’ve felt like giving up on prayer. I mean, what was the use? Things were taking their course from bad to worse just as though we had never prayed.
Yet what was the alternative? If I walked away from God, I would lose my source of greatest comfort and strength. So, I made a choice to press in deeper into the mystery of prayer.
As I’ve studied the Bible and many other books, I’ve come to the conclusion that prayer is not reciting a wish list to God. It’s not checking off answers. It’s not even cashing in promissory notes. When we are focused on answers, we become manipulative in our praying. We treat God as though He exists to serve us. And when the answers aren’t to our liking, we get in a huff with God.
There will always be a mystery regarding prayer: Why does God seem distant and silent when we need Him the most? Why do answers to prayer seem so inconsistent? Some people are healed; some are not. Some are delivered, some are not. What is the real purpose of prayer?
My search has led me to believe that the chief end of prayer is to develop a love relationship with God. As we get to know Him, we learn to trust Him. Instead of praying “give me answers” we learn to pray “your will be done.” In connecting with the universal purposes of God, we reach answers bigger and better than we imagined.
Father, teach me to be still and know that
you are God.
by Helen Grace Lescheid
Used by Permission
To read more of Helen’s writings go to http://www.helenlescheid.com
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