Prayer: It’s a Fearful Business

I've been meaning, for the last three days, to return to the subject of prayer which I happened to bring up on Friday in a moment of full blown hysteria. I said that the homeschooling nut shouldn't pray in fear, expecting God to send more suffering as a result of the prayer, but should just pray because God is a gracious God and will answer that prayer. A very nice person in the comments then went on to articulate exactly the problem, namely, that sometimes God does actually send more suffering, and so a modicum of fear is not totally out of place. So I wanted to follow my thought through more carefully because, well, I'm doing seven posts in seven days so I have to blog about something.

A couple weeks ago Matt preached on Jesus' warning to Peter that he, Peter, would deny Jesus three times and that all of them would fall away. And in response to that warning and prophecy Peter said, “No I won't” or words to that effect and then Jesus admonished them to pray, ” pray that they might not fall into temptation”, which of course they didn't do. So they fell away. Matt wondered, in the sermon, what would have happened if they had prayed and begged for help to not do what Jesus said they would do.

And something clicked into place, finally, that had been jangling around in the back of somewhere. I am in the habit of praying a lot all the time (because I'm so holy, don't you know…just kidding) but I generally pray with little if any faith or belief. I ask God for stuff all the live long day–healing for people, timing in the circumstances of my life, money for stuff, growth for the church, faith for the children, bla bla bla. My vision of myself, in prayer, is from that old old SNL sketch where Sally Fields is standing in her kitchen praying and Will Farrell, playing Jesus, comes in and asks her not to pray for a few minutes because it's so exhausting and stupid. In other words, as I'm praying, I'm thinking, 'God could answer this prayer but he probably won't because maybe it's a bad prayer and definitely he doesn't love any of us anyway.' Now, I know, intellectually, that that's not true, God does love us and me, and so I continue to pray, even as I emotionally doubt. But I'm not expecting anything to happen.

Some people think this lack of expectation is a grave moral and theological error and that God can't answer my prayer because my belief is what makes the prayer go forward to be answered. I can, they might say, get God to do something he might not ordinarily do by praying and believing. To that I say, 'fooey'. I can say that because God answers my prayers all the time, sometimes the most spectacularly when I haven't believed at all (I can also say this because that view, that God's work depends on something in me, is not a good reading of scripture but I will leave that for another day, see the raising of dead Lazarus).

For example, I was pretty sure God wanted Good Shepherd never to have nice music because he hates us all but I prayed lackadaisically anyway for roughly five or so years for a particular person to desire to come and do our music and he finally did, at the end of the five years. Now, it wasn't just me not believing. When I told other people of my prayer they joined me in my super low expectations and we would chat merrily about how 'it would be awesome if God did that' but we all knew he never would.

So that's piece number one. Low expectations. Piece number two is Fear. Because anyone who has prayed at all knows that sometimes God sends suffering and sometimes God sends big big suffering, and we all hate to suffer. Hate to suffer. I could say that a few times. Loath suffering. And for those who say they really love to suffer, I don't believe them. I mean, the cross is Of Course a consolation and bringing our suffering there to Jesus helps us to bear it, but we have to do that because it's so awful and that's the place of God's greatest most glorious power in destroying sin and reordering the cosmos. But just because it gives us the opportunity to unite ourselves more completely with Jesus that doesn't make me ever want to have more of it. Maybe everyone in the world is holier than I am. I seriously doubt it though.

But the Christian knows that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces strength and strength produces love or something, and we know that God brings suffering so that we will grow strong and lean on him. And sometimes, woe is me, when the Christian prays for humility or patience, God answers that prayer with a nice big dose of suffering so that the prayer is really truly answered. You end up humble and patient. And grateful for Jesus. But also not wanting any more of either of those things.

I should stop saying 'you' and 'us' like my experience is gloriously universal. But I'm on a roll so don't sue me.

But that fear, that Jesus will bring us suffering as an answer to prayer and so better not to really pray, completely misses the point. When Jesus answers your prayer for more patience with a day of frustration and stupidity, he's not saying, 'you're not trying hard enough to be patient. Try harder. Come one. Be patient.' He's saying, 'you're going to sin and not be patient, cry out to me. Cry out. Pray. Ask me for help. Let me help you in the middle of this difficulty. OBVIOUSLY you can't do it, as we are both witnessing right now. I'm right here, I can give you patience. CRY OUT TO ME you fool' (well, maybe he doesn't say 'you fool' to you but he does to me all the time) or words to that effect. It's in the bible, you're just not reading it carefully enough (not in those exact words). When the disciples were on the Sea of Galilee about to perish in the hurricane and they cried out to sleeping Jesus, Jesus did not say 'row harder, believe more'. He rescued them. If Peter had, upon discovering that he was going to fall away, fallen down and begged Jesus to help him not fall away, well, I think that would have been better. Instead he took it as a challenge to work harder and just not fall away.

So lately, as this has been working through my poor disbelieving low expectation fear driven spiritual life, I've been crying out to Jesus in the midst of the suffering I'm already in. And I count Homeschooling as some kind of suffering. It's not like God needs to send you too much more suffering, you are well frustrated already. But it could be any life circumstance. So your office atmosphere is a real drag, or you live in Arizona and are beating off being forced to bake a cake for someone's “wedding”, or you are very very sick, or you have lost your job, or anything–you are suffering. When you cry out to God and really ask for help, the answer from Jesus is not that you should work harder and just succeed, it's that he will save you, he will help you, provided you don't take the suffering as a challenge to further self reliance.

And now I've exasperated my starving children who will die if they don't get to have breakfast, which is Apple Crisp, because I hate them and want them to suffer.

Have a great day!