Give ear, O God, and hear;
open your eyes and see the desolation of the city that bears your Name.
We do not make requests of you because we are righteous,
but because of your great mercy. Daniel 9:18, NIV*
Sometimes the very magnitude of prayer needs can reach a point where prayer feels more like a barrier to fellowship with the Lord than a doorway into His presence. We ask and don’t receive. We knock and hear no answer. The mountain’s not going anywhere but up.
Still God invites us to bring our cares and needs to Him. (1 Peter 5:7)
As we pray, may God grant us to yearn for Him, to see Him, to be still long enough to sense His presence. We may come because of external need, but let’s stay until we’re reminded that our souls’ real need is Him.
Father, thank You we can find our rest in You, that we can bring all things to You, our Rock and our Salvation. Turn our eyes and hearts to Yourself, and by Your presence give us hope. Help us rejoice no matter what our circumstances, because You are mighty to save, and You are with us.
Who among you fears the LORD
and obeys the word of his servant?
Let him who walks in the dark,
who has no light,
trust in the name of the LORD
and rely on his God. Isaiah 50:10, NIV*
The past few weeks have weighed a bit heavily on me. Prayers, alone and in groups, dwell on a mountain of needs: sickness, death, emotional suffering.
In one of my prayer groups, a member spoke of having a hard time “seeing God’s plan” in a heartbreaking need. Not that God caused the problem, but why isn’t He intervening with the miracle we’re praying to see?
I thought of this on Good Friday. Nobody could see God’s plan when it included Jesus dying on the Cross.
But He had a plan.
And it shook the universe.
If we know God’s character, we know we can trust Him. Even when He’s silent and everything is going all wrong.
So I choose to keep bringing the sick and wounded to Him, bringing my lack of vision too.
Father, prayer isn’t meant to dwell on the problems, but to dwell on You. Forgive us when we get it wrong. Thank You that we can bring these needs to You. Help us find our rest in who You are, in Your character and Your promises. When we can’t see Your plan, let us see You – caring, moving, sustaining.
If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does. James 1:5-8, NIV*
I used to think these verses meant I had to be sure I’d get what I asked from God. The kicker was, I wasn’t always sure what He wanted to give.
It’s clear from other parts of the Bible that we need to ask in keeping with God’s will. (We don’t even need to leave the Book of James to see this: “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” James 4:3, NIV)
Sometimes we have “how” or the “why” doubts, but James is talking about the “Who” doubts: about God’s character. It’s okay to be unsure of what to pray for, but we need to be sure of God. His character is revealed in Scripture and in our lives, and we need to remember and rely on it.
I have a friend whose cancer sounds terminal. Does God want to heal her, or to reward her with Heaven? I don’t know. But I can pray for God’s care in the details of her life, without any doubt in His love and provision for her.
The two men I’m praying for with depression/alcohol issues… Jesus came to set the captives free. I can be confident He wants to finish the job in their lives.
The people He’s placed on my heart who don’t know Him… God is not willing that anyone should perish (2 Peter 3:9) and I know it’s His prompting that has me praying. He longs to adopt them as His own.
In the end, it’s all about God. The better we know Him, the easier it is to trust Him. He gives us the faith, but we need to walk in it.
In Lystra there sat a man crippled in his feet, who was lame from birth and had never walked. He listened to Paul as he was speaking. Paul looked directly at him, saw that he had faith to be healed and called out, ‘Stand up on your feet!’ At that, the man jumped up and began to walk. Acts 14:8-10, NIV*
Paul was spreading the good news of Jesus: Emmanuel, God with us. He saw this crippled man – really saw him, and saw he had faith to be healed.
This reminds me of Jesus teaching in his home town: “… he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith.” (Matthew 13:58, NIV) And of the way He had to first deal with the father’s faith issue before healing the tortured son:
“O unbelieving generation,” Jesus replied, “how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy to me.”
So they brought him. When the spirit saw Jesus, it immediately threw the boy into a convulsion. He fell to the ground and rolled around, foaming at the mouth. Jesus asked the boy’s father, “How long has he been like this?”
“From childhood,” he answered. It has often thrown him into fire or water to kill him. But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.”
“‘If you can’?” said Jesus. “Everything is possible for him who believes.”
Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”
When Jesus saw that a crowd was running to the scene, he rebuked the evil spirit. “You deaf and mute spirit,” he said, “I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.” Mark 9:19-25, NIV*
God is all-wise, and if He chooses not to heal someone, no amount of manufactured faith can make it happen. But if He offers healing, or deliverance, or salvation… it seems to me like we need faith to receive it.
The good news here is it’s God who gives us the faith: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9, NIV)
The gift of God: but we still need to receive it.
For the people on my prayer list, this adds to my prayers. I’m praying for God to give them faith to receive the salvation, healing, and/or deliverance they need.
For me, I need to pray for faith to receive whatever God wants to give me. He’s still growing and shaping me, and I don’t want to miss anything because I couldn’t receive it.
I wanted to share a link to Robin Mark’s “With All Faith,” but couldn’t find it on YouTube. Instead, here is a song the LORD and I shared yesterday as part of my prayer for a young man who doesn’t know Jesus. I’m playing it now in anticipation of the day when he can sing it himself. This is the David Crowder Band’s rendition of “Heaven Came Down” from the Illuminate CD. I prefer the simpler version on their Lime CD, but this is still great – and check out the pictures with it.
