To every prayer, there is an answer. For me, it seems that answer is no, a lot. In fact, I remember every no and can barely recall the yes. This is why atheists are professional prayer teachers. It’s how a world so big and beautiful can have so much ugly in dark street corners. The longer I live the more I’m convinced that the point of prayer is not in the answer but the seeking. I have more unanswered prayers than I can count. But I keep coming back. I keep speaking into the silence of thoughts. I keep rushing to the borders of grace. I keep requesting the ink of hope will blot out my rough nights. The reason I keep finding myself coming back is not that my life is so difficult. It’s actually because I know how difficult the lives of other people are. Here are 3 lives that push me to pray more.
Ruth Graham. The wife of Billy Graham a popular evangelist back in the 1940s until he died in 2018. I’ve heard him preach and knew that I loved his view of prayer and faith. However, I didn’t even know his wife’s name before I picked up the book. Ruth was a missionary child. She dreamed of being a missionary when she grew up. Nothing about that life was easy but she felt called to third world countries and the mission field. Her faith is what impressed me more than anything else. Even after major disappoints in the mission field she still loved God deeply. She hated the idea of being a wife to a preacher in America. She wanted to be a missionary but because of war and unrest, she ended up in America and met Billy Graham. It talks about their relationship and how it almost didn’t happen. The book talks about her prayers to God to keep her in the mission field. She became frustrated with life leading her away from it constantly. The book is a constant reminder of the struggle between prayer and obedience. Can we stay committed to God when a road leads away from the road we prayed for? She eventually came to the conclusion that her children with Billy Graham were her mission field. Her being by his side and being involved in handling missions from afar was her part in life. Once she accepted this you can tell that it was like a weight lifted off her shoulders. To me, it says that one of the hardest parts of prayer is acceptance of our desire for God to be greater than what God can do for us.
Booker T Washington. He was a child of slave and slave owner. He never met his white father and never knew his date of birth. When he was 9 years old slaves were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation. He said he remembered his mother crying when it was announced because it was what they had prayed for, for a long time. It shows a dynamic of prayer. The slaves who prayed for freedom as well as the slave owners who prayed to God to win the civil war. People would use the Bible to promote slavery. Which in my opinion shows the dangers of Bible use. A man can justify anything with or without God. Booker T Washington was self-taught for a while until there were schools for free slaves. Once he got involved with colleges he began to really thrive in his learning and became a leader for the education of black people that were still thought of as less than citizens but no longer slaves. In his book, Up from slavery. He stated, “I have begun everything with the idea that I could succeed, and I have never had much patience with the multitudes of people who are always ready to explain why one cannot succeed. I have always had a high regard for the man who could tell me how to succeed.” What is success in prayer? I don’t think it’s getting an answer but coming back through the frustrations, the no’s, the setbacks, the mistakes. Success is not a matter of winning every time but of coming back with the thought of success. Successful prayers are when everything is fine and everything is wrong. Successful prayer is when you have all the words and when you can’t even find a phrase to pull together. Successful prayer is not about results but impossibilities. Booker T. Washington never saw the world he believed in but today people from all races go to school in America. Your prayer might not be answered in front of you but what your prayer leads you to might be worth more than you know. Even if you don’t see the reason for your prayer it could be the next person you meet or the next generation that benefits from all your years of prayer. Just like Booker T. Washington’s mother, who kept praying. So should we. We keep the faith for those that will keep it after us.
My dad. My mom. My niece and nephews. My Dad told me that he held me up to the star-filled sky, to pray over me after I was newly born. He prayed that God would be with me so I wouldn’t make the mistakes he had made with his life before he became Christian. Well, 30 plus years later I can say without a doubt that I feel God every day in some way. Even when I stopped going to church I still believed in God heavily. During my time away from the church in my 20’s my mom who still went didn’t judge me for not going. She gently reminded me how good church was for me. Even though I didn’t go back immediately I did end up going back eventually. My mother’s persistence in talking to me about faith helped me to stay in church after I went back. Through all the hardships we faced I understood that faith was not the church. Prayer was not a club you belonged to. It was not limited to the elite preacher or the perfect student. I now remember times when God was still faithful to me even when I wasn’t willing to do the simple things he would ask me to do. After getting over the hump of doing versus asking I began to see that my prayer times were not a rigid requirement of hours. God didn’t answer my prayers because I was a good child that week. He answered my prayers because he was and always is a good father. So fast forward to me being in church every Sunday for years now. I felt God leading me to my niece and nephews. To teach them about my faith and why I have it. But they lived in Huntsville and I worked in Birmingham. So I kind of ignored that leading as it didn’t seem possible. But I didn’t stop praying or believing because it seemed that where God was leading me was different from where I felt I thought I should be. Long story short my job fired us and I randomly applied to a job in Huntsville and they hired me right away. I had been looking for a better job all year in Birmingham with different applications. This isn’t to say that Huntsville is better than Birmingham. The difference is when God puts something on your heart it may not happen now. It may be that God is leading you somewhere you can’t see but you can grow to see it. Prayer gives us the vision to believe what we can’t see.
I believe in the power of prayer for all of us. Not just the person who has been in church all his life but the person who never paid attention to the church doors. I remember so many times when I didn’t feel worthy of prayer or church. Ask a parent how much does a toddler has to do in order to be worthy of their attention. Any good parent will look at you confused. No parent expects a toddler to pay for their own diapers. No parent expects a toddler to explain why they have poop in their diaper. In the same way, Jesus describes God as our father and we are his children. God is not surprised by your mistakes and failures. God doesn’t expect you to be perfect in your pursuit of him. He is well aware of the ups and downs of faiths. The hard times of faith and patience. So don’t wait for the feeling of prayer. Don’t hope God will fix everything about your life. Know that He is our father and he cares about us. His plan for us goes far deeper than the everyday battles. His hope for us goes far deeper than one good moment of morality. Our God is eternal, his plan is eternal, His desire for us to be with him eternally. We may not be the best versions of ourselves on this Earth but that's ok. Prayer is not about being the best but looking to the one who has been the best to us. He is our first love. He is our daily bread. He is worth a million unanswered prayers.
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