Have you ever asked yourself what’s the point of prayer?
Especially if you prayed for or about something and the answer appeared . . . awful?
What if a friend, an old friend you’d prayed for before many times, came to you and asked you to pray because she was in despair about her child?
“You helped pray her into being, Michelle. I know I can count on you.”
The daughter, we’ll call her Faye though that’s not who she is, had gone off to college but something had happened. “I don’t know what it is, but she’s distant. She won’t talk about it and I’m afraid.”
Of course I prayed.
People ask me to pray for them or their family members all the time. I always agreed. It’s an honor to pray.
Sometimes the prayers are intense and run for many days. Sometimes they seem to resolve themselves in good order (hey, was that rain in California?) and we’re thankful. Click to Tweet
I keep a list in my kitchen window of pregnant moms in my life, so I remember to pray for them. I had nine names at the start of 2014, now we’re down to three.
I pray when people come to mind, paying particular attention when folks I’ve not thought of in years spring into my memory.
“Lord, be with them, whatever their situation and circumstance. Help them to see your truth and follow the Holy Spirit in whatever circumstances they find themselves in.”
One of the things I love about our church is the corporate prayer. The pastor pauses to give us time to think about who needs prayer in our life and then to offer them to God.
My mind scours the country thinking about people I know in need. I’ll mentally travel to Southern California, cross to the Midwest, zip down to the deep South, jaunt up to Washington D.C. and thence to New England. I pause to remember specific people and whisper their names.
Faye always came up on Sunday mornings, about 11:30.
And so I prayed.
I prayed for Faye’s spiritual life, her physical safety, her emotional development, for her studies and that she would seek after the living God.
It felt sufficient.
Until one dreadful afternoon.
I’d been reading a popular book about horrific sociological trends on the nation’s college campuses. The journalist writing the book used case studies of three specific young women from several elite colleges.
It was difficult to read. I couldn’t imagine young women subjecting themselves to such demeaning behavior, particularly strong feminist women like those depicted at these schools.
Three chapters from the end, the journalist introduced a final student, using specific facts to make her distinctive from the other girls, and to demonstrate all types of young women were participating in this way.
My stomach roiled.
The girl, who had yet another pseudonym, was Faye.
How could that possibly be?
Faye?
I read through the description again, not believing.
But I knew too many details about Faye, her family circumstances, her field of study and her university, not to mention her high school and her age.
(What a totally unprofessional prize-winning journalist.)
The girl I had been praying for on all those Sunday mornings, had participated in some of the most vile behavior I’d ever read. Her heart had become so hardened to truth that she couldn’t bring herself to name rape as rape, or even be bothered to report it.
I became enraged–for Faye and at God.
What had been the point of prayer, all those prayers spoken for so many Sunday mornings? Click to Tweet
I was so angry, I couldn’t pray.
I cried. I wanted to hit the journalist. I wanted to shake Faye. I was terrified my sweet friend would learn the truth. But what could I do?
Nothing.
I was bereft. My faith, my confidence in prayers, in tatters. Pointless.
And yet, I longed for the comfort of climbing into Jesus’ lap and crying.
What could I do with this hurt, this fear, these emotions, if I couldn’t bring them to the God I’d worshipped for so many years?
Where could I turn to comfort?
On August 28, not knowing what else to do, I opened my copy of Oswald Chambers‘ My Utmost for His Highest.
The title that morning? “What’s the Good of Prayer?”
I wept.
“Prayer is the way the life of God is nourished. Our ordinary views of prayer are not found in the New Testament. We look upon prayer as a means of getting things for ourselves; the Bible idea of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself.”
I’d had a laundry list of things I’d asked God for, on behalf of Faye. When my list turned up crumpled and torn, nothing accomplished, I felt bereaved.
Sure, I mourned her loss of innocence and the choices Faye had made, but I resented the seeming-result. I felt ineffectual in all those prayers, a fool.
Chambers thought differently:
“It is not so true that “prayer changes things” as that prayer changes me and I change things.”
I had no contact with Faye. She would not have welcomed me arriving on campus and “cleaning up” the mess she’d made with her life.
All those prayers I had spoken for Faye, were they really about changing me? Click to Tweet
I metaphorically curled up in my God’s arms and cried.
I mourned Faye’s losses. I sought my comfort in the heart of the one who loves me and Faye both, with a love that stretches to the end of time and beyond.
Weep with those who weep. Mourn with those who mourn.
Even if it’s God.
How did the prayers change me?
I lectured at my local Pregnancy Counseling Center at what I had learned from the book. They talk with young women every day; they needed to know what was happening on college campuses.
I prayed in specific ways when other loved young women went to college.
And I never forget the point of prayer: to change me into Jesus’ likeness.
I don’t judge Faye’s choices; I weep over them.
I never told Faye’s mother what I learned. When I contacted Faye a year or so later, I told her I’d recognized her and that I’d be praying for her.
I still pray for her. (Won’t you pray for her right now, too?)
Another year has come around and it will soon be October 17. That’s the day I learned from Oswald Chambers, about the point of prayer:
“Prayer does not equip us for greater works— prayer is the greater work.”
Thanks be to God.
The post What’s the Point of Prayer? appeared first on Michelle Ule, Author.