Monday, April 13, 2009

The Hangnail Prayer


As I curled up under my sheets, I made up my mind. I was going to give God a fleece—just like Gideon. What to ask?

It all started when I read a book about God’s miraculous answers to George Mueller’s prayers. I was ten, and I knew that I wanted to see His power manifest in my life the same way.

Something small will be safe. I wasn’t going to ask for much; Mueller prayed for food for his entire orphanage and God granted it, so a little request should be a snap. I closed my eyes, scrunched up my face to believe as hard as I could, and eventually drifted into peaceful sleep.

Next morning, I opened my eyes with eager anticipation, and looked down at my thumb. Seconds ticked by as I stared, wide-eyed, aghast.

The hangnail— the very hangnail I’d prayed away in faith the night before— ah, how could it be? But there was no question. It was still there.

I shook myself out of devastated disillusionment a few days later, but it did throw a wrench in my childhood conception of the nature of prayer: insert prayer of faith, spin the wheel, retrieve God’s prize. If that is faith, I am master and lord. Not He.

With that single humorous incident, I learned that God was not a miracle-toy to be tested by His capricious children. With any humility, how can we think to exercise the bristling impudence of demanding blessings from the Almighty, as though He were ours to manipulate—as though we, mere "grasshoppers" according to Isaiah, have any rights of entitlement? It was an excellent lesson to learn early on.

And yet, in my zeal to avoid heresy and sin on one side, I transgressed in the opposite extreme early on as well. Around thirteen, I opted for a "realistic" view of prayer.

Realistically Faithless

Perhaps you know the kind of prayer I’m referring to. "Realistic" is what I called it. "Faithless" is what it actually is.

Here’s how it works: I tentatively project my desires into a humdrum, cookie-cutter prayer mold. I add a piously precautionary, "if it is Your will, Oh Lord." Then I proceed to worry and live just as if the prayer had halted mid-ascension to the throne room.

The conventional solution? Pray more often. But it’s hard to remember to do, this kind of prayer. No matter: I pray more often. That is—I murmur requests more often, hope vaguely for a “yes”, and again proceed to worry and live as though I hadn’t bothered.

Really, why do we bother? Why pray at all, if we cannot bring any needs or desires before God with confidence, conviction, joy, and strength? Is this really the model set forward for us in Scripture? Surely not.

But then—well, if we pray with surety, aren’t we slipping into my initial childhood error of mistaking God for a cheap machine? James 4:15 instructs us not to fall into arrogance by thinking of future events as though they were graven in stone, but to acknowledge God’s ultimate control over all life’s circumstances. And then James 5:13 references the healing "prayer of faith." Wait. What? How can we have faith in something we’re uncertain of happening, if "faith is the assurance of things hoped for," according to Hebrews 11:1?

Perhaps you’re beginning to see just how frustrating this prayer-dilemma can get.


Coming Soon, Pt. 2: How Then Shall We Pray?

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