If people still have accidents, sickness, and other tragedies even when we pray for them, why pray? Recently, a friend asked me about prayers for divine healing and protection. In their own health journey, and in light of a recent neighborhood tragedy, they found themselves wrestling with how to pray. Here’s my response:
Those of us who grew up in church learned from an early age to pray for protection and healing for those we love. We took for granted that God would work wonders if we prayed for them. I remember hearing accounts of miraculous protection and healing, both at church and in family circles. When I was growing up, my parents told one such story, from back when they were dating.
Divine Protection
They had been out on a double date. Dad dropped Mom off at her house, and the other couple off at their houses. He was driving drowsily back home. Suddenly, he saw a stop sign in front of him. He slammed on the brakes, skidding to a stop. Shaken up but now wide awake, he continued safely home.
The next day, he returned to that spot because he wanted to measure his skid marks. That’s when he realized that there was no stop sign there, and there never had been. But his skid marks were there—stopping just short of an embankment. Concluding that the stop sign had been an angel, Dad recounted that story of divine protection for years. Christian kids who grow up on tales like this absolutely believe in praying for protection.
Miraculous Healing
Our parents also raised us to believe in miraculous healing. When I was young, Dad was in a collision and broke his neck and five ribs. It was January, and the doctors predicted he would be in the hospital until Easter, at least. Due the extensive damage, doctors were concerned that he could end up paralyzed from the neck down. So, he was in a traction bed, with Frankenstein bolts screwed into the sides of his skull.
I remember Mom gathering my brother and me on the floor of our unfinished house and praying for our father to be healed. And—thanks be to God—Dad was out of the hospital in half the time they predicted, with no permanent damage! We definitely called that a miracle.
Can We Expect Protection and Healing?
Are divine protection and miraculous healings something Christians can expect all the time? When I was young, we sure believed so! Not a school day went by when Mom didn’t lay hands on her boys and pray that God would keep us safe. She trusted in that divine protection and felt even more sure of it when her two sons announced they were going to seminary. Certainly now, God would protect her children since they had a future of serving God ahead of them!
When It All Came Crashing Down
All that came crashing down for my mom the day she witnessed a horrible car accident. The driver in the car in front of her went off the road and hit a concrete driveway culvert in just the wrong way. The car burst into flames. There was nothing that anybody could do for the driver, who perished in the fire. Later, Mom learned that the driver had been a seminary student. This shattered any idea she had that God kept people safe when God had a plan for their life.
Bible Promises?
What do you do with that kind of thing, when you grow up believing in Bible promises? We were taught that God guards those who ask for a hedge of protection—or at least, those who have faithful people praying for them. We’re taught scriptures like Psalm 91:11-13, which says:
Because you have made the Lord your refuge,
the Most High your dwelling place,
no evil shall befall you,
no scourge come near your tent.
For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways.
On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.
You will tread on the lion and the adder;
the young lion and the serpent you will trample under foot.
I could list scripture after scripture, promising divine protection for those who count on God for their safety. The Bible is also full of examples of miraculous healing. And yes, the word-of-faith people do have scriptural grounds for their beliefs. All this sounds great and gives many people a sense of assurance. The problem comes when it doesn’t work.
Divine Healing?
Faith-shattering reality hits the same way when you pray for someone you love to be healed, and they aren’t. We’re reassured by verses like James 5:13-16, which says:
Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.
But what happens when the prayer of a righteous person isn’t powerful and effective? Do you blame the person who’s praying, for not having enough faith? Do you blame the intended recipient of the healing, for not believing enough? Or, if they’re so incapacitated that they can’t believe anything, do you simply resign yourself to the idea that God is done with them—that it’s just their time?
When a Life is Shattered
I remember when a nineteen-year-old in my church was shattered by horrible car accident. Suffering from massive brain trauma, she clung to life for something like nine months. Everyone in the church prayed. The whole community banded together to support the family. Churches she’d never visited put her on their prayer lists. People she didn’t know lifted her young life before the Lord, pleading for healing. But she died, all the same. I can’t speak for anybody else, but that really rattled my faith.
Deconstructing Prayer
It shouldn’t have shaken me so much. I’d been in ministry a quarter century, and in all that time I never once saw the kind of miracle that you hear pastors proclaim from the pulpit. Oh, sure, I’d heard stories of near misses where people could have died but didn’t. I’d prayed for people who subsequently recovered through the “miracle of modern medicine” and the body’s natural ability to regenerate. But I never witnessed a certifiable miracle, outside of my dad’s accelerated recovery. So, it shouldn’t have shaken me so much. But it did. It made me deconstruct everything I ever thought about miracles of divine protection and healing.
Maybe you’ve done some deconstructing of what you were always taught about praying for divine protection and miraculous healing. It isn’t as simple as our Sunday school teachers would have us believe. After a lengthy reconsideration, I’ve come up with not one, but a variety of answers. Not all of them will satisfy you, but perhaps one of them will. Here are the first two perspectives on prayer.
A Matter of Perspective
“Good” and “bad” are matters of perspective. I love the Taoist story of the man whose horse ran away. When his neighbor told him how unlucky he was, the man said, “Well, maybe.” The next day, the horse came back with a herd of wild horses following it. The man and his son quickly corralled all the horses. The neighbor said how fortunate the newly wealthy man was. “Well, maybe,” he replied. The following day, the son was trying to tame the horses, and he broke his leg.
The neighbor sympathized, saying what a terrible thing it was. The man replied, “Well, maybe.” Not long afterward, the army came through, conscripting new recruits for a hopeless battle. When the son was passed over because of his broken leg, the neighbor declared this to be a great thing. To which the man replied, “Well, maybe.” The moral is simple. Good and bad are matters of perspective. We tend to call pleasant things “good” and unpleasant things “bad,” but we have yet to see the bigger picture. We don’t know how things will turn out.
God Does Not Show Favoritism
God doesn’t decide to harm some and help others. Jesus said in Matthew 5:45 that God “causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” This means that good and bad, harmful and healing things happen to everybody—regardless of who prays for them or who deserves them. In the words of Connie Elbe (Not Forrest Gump), “Shit happens” to everyone, because “God does not show favoritism (Acts 10:34).”
Yes, this is a Teaser…
And here, Dear Reader, is where I will take a break from writing and enjoy my time at the beach. (Here’s the view from the chair where I’m writing.) I invite you to read my next article, “If People Struggle Anyway, Why Pray?”
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