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Praying When You Don’t Know How to Pray Anymore

I really miss my childhood faith.

When I was younger I never questioned my prayers.

The idea that God heard me, that God would intervene in a difficult situation, that God could alter painful circumstances made perfect sense to me. I knew the power of God, I knew the love of God, I memorized the Bible’s instruction to pray without ceasing, I read the many stories of God moving directly in response to the prayers of the people—and so I too prayed.

When someone’s child was sick, I prayed for them to recover.
When a natural disaster struck, I prayed for God to bring victims rescue.
When my cousin committed suicide, I prayed for God to heal our family.
When someone I knew survived a car accident, I prayed in gratitude to God for *His mercy.
When a stranger’s home burned down, I prayed for their comfort.

But little by little, gradually cracks began to appear in the stabilizing peace I had about my petitions. I started to wonder how this could all work, how it made any sense, how it aligned with the character of a fully loving God. It seemed I was being told to speak to an infinite Creator who played favorites and who could somehow be swayed; one Who would remain indifferent and distant in our tragedies unless enough of us sufficiently begged Him enough to move.

Worse than that, I began to question the idea of appealing to a God who could have prevented the horrors we endured to begin with:

A God who numbered the hairs on our heads, could have spared that child from Cancer.
A God who controls the winds and waves, could have silenced the hurricane before it ever began.
A God who healed the demon-possessed man, could have given my cousin enough joy that he wouldn’t have pulled the trigger.
A God who parted seas, could have nudged the steering wheel three feet to left and allowed safe passage.
A God who commanded fire, could have extinguished a blaze and protected a family’s home.

That God didn’t do these things with any regularity or predictability, and yet still demanded that I repeatedly ask Him to help, didn’t ring true anymore.

And even though I couldn’t name it for a very long time, I began to resent a God I needed to persuade to help fix things that He had broken—or at the very least allowed to break. It felt like asking the maker of the wounds to now bind them up.

Now 44 years into a life as a Christian and I wish I could say I’ve reconciled these things. I wish I could say I’ve reached a place of resolution about all of this—but I haven’t. There is a profound disconnect in my spirit now when I think about prayer that asks for any assistance from God that isn’t internal. It makes sense to ask for God to do things within me or others, but beyond that it gets really muddy.

I read social media pleas for “prayer warriors” to assist a young man fighting for his life in a hospital room, and wonder about the woman in the next room, whom no one is praying for. How does mercy get doled out in hospitals and war zones and poverty-ravaged slums? How does a loving God decide who to save and who gets to be overtaken? Is it based on numbers and links in prayer chains and liked FB posts, because it certainly feels that way.

Are the prayers of 120 faithful people more powerful or persuasive to God than the prayers of 30 or 6 faithful people—or one?

I see the hashtags of #PrayersForHaiti, and ask myself what we’re supposed to be praying for. I wonder why God allowed Haiti to be deluged at all and why 1,000 beautiful people were drowned, and what my prayers are supposed to be now for them and their families.

I hear prayers of gratitude for God sparing a teenage girl in a terrible car accident, while the young man in the seat next to her didn’t survive—and feel a bit sick to my stomach as I cheer God for bringing wholeness to one family and leaving a hole in another.

And this all sends seismic tremors through the bedrock of my faith.

I still believe in a God who is all-powerful and all-loving, but I also sit contorted inside the cramped, stifling paradox of prayer; asking how this God could allow the terrors we endure or how that God could be convinced to bring relief to some and not to all. 

And if this God is all-loving and all-knowing, why do we need to ask at all? Is God playing some mind game with us, where He will not move until we plead with just enough urgency, in just enough numbers, with just enough frequency?

How and when does God move in response to prayer, and why does God sometimes chose not to move? 

I still pray, though I confess these nagging questions hover over my shoulders as I do.

And yes I also know that the Bible commands us not to be double-minded when we pray—and I confess that I am and wish that I weren’t.

I want that childlike faith again.

I want to just believe that prayer works without questioning it.

I want to see God as healer of wounds and never the enabler or source of them.

I want it all to make perfect sense again.

But right now none of that is happening.

And as inconsistent and stumbling and conflicted as they are, I guess those are my prayers right now. They are the only ones I have.

These honest, unsteady, tentative petitions are the best I can offer. I don’t know if they’re enough, but I pray that they are.

If you think of it and if you’re so inclined—maybe you’ll pray for me.

 

* I use the masculine pronoun to describe God here to reflect the concept of God I had growing-up.

 

 

 

 

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