Out of Order

My microwave broke this week.  And as a result, it's like the express commuter train that I drive each day was derailed and all the cars were crashing into each other.  You don't realize how dependent you are on a time saving appliance until it breaks.  Fortunately, I have a second microwave in our basement and, after taping a "Do not use" sign to my now defunct appliance, I was making frequent trips up and down the basement steps carrying hot chocolate, tea, steamed broccoli and other items I regularly cook, usually without second thought and fewer steps.

After the appliance guy declared it unrepairable, I lugged the old one upstairs from the basement.  I had lived without a microwave for a whole week, I needed one more accessible to get through the weekend.

This whole scenario reminded me of a laughable sign I saw last January while my family and I were visiting the Young Life ministry headquarters in Colorado Springs, CO.  They were renovating the humble office space, adding some additional cubicles and painting some walls, but as we walked by one room that had recently been updated, I read a sign that stopped me in my tracks. The room was labeled "Prayer Room" and the office maintenance workers had posted a sign below that read, "OUT OF ORDER, sorry for the inconvenience".

I snapped a picture that I now keep in my office/prayer closet. First, to make me laugh, and second to let the irony remind me that our prayer room shouldn't ever be out of order -  although appliances may break down, our prayer lives don't have to.

But honestly, there are times when my prayers feel as ill equipped to reach God as my microwave is in heating up a cup of water.  Hard as I try, at times, I can't seem to carve out enough silence or solitude to focus enough to allow my heart to formulate a genuine prayer, let alone be in a position to receive a leading from the Lord.  Do I just need to heat up my prayers?  Try harder?  I just don't know.

When my microwave started going out, we noticed that the food wasn't heating up as quickly as it did before.  But why is it that the subtlety of my luke-warm prayers go mostly unnoticed? It's as if I need a maintenance guy to place a sign on me somewhere visible, "Out of Order, in Need of Maintenance."

Matters of the soul should be treated with the same urgency as an appliance repair. I need to make a call to the 24/7 maintenance guy and schedule a house call.  My prayer life should be something upon which I am just as dependent the ability to as my cup of hot water or my steamed broccoli.

But that's the challenge with soul care - it's largely done by me, for me for my own benefit. And yet, when I neglect matters of the soul, it's not only to the detriment of myself, but to the detriment of all those around me.  Like the derailed train - all the cars crash into the other.

Lord, I need you to be the maintenance repair guy and make a house call.  Teach me to pray. Not just before meals or at bedtime, but teach me to pray throughout the day without ceasing.  Help me to prioritize spiritual disciplines like study, journaling, prayer, worship, solitude above matters that are more tangible and are seemingly more urgent.  Please give me the discipline to pursue you first thing in the morning and last thing in the evening.  Help me to seek your face throughout my day. And please heat up my my defunct devotion. Let me realize my dependence on my healthy prayer life.  Let my prayers not remain Out of Order.

When God Says No

I set a new goal this year to read all of my children’s core Language Arts texts in school.  Which led me this week to asking my son if a certain book he had just finished about an eighth grader, whose brother is dying of cancer, would make me cry.  He said, “No, he doesn’t die in the book.  You’ll be fine.” 

Boys and moms are so different.  

I found myself at midnight blurry-eyed still balling, still page-turning.  In the midst of the patient’s cancer treatment in the book, the older sibling tries to bargain with God to take away his brother’s cancer.  He prays that if he does such and such, then God will heal his brother.  And that if x, y, and z happens, then God is confirming to him the cancer will be gone.  

Those prayers ‘don’t work,’ and apparently my son didn’t read the epilogue because the cancer patient who inspired the book does die from cancer.  As do many loved ones.  

Thus, my tears.  The pain is real, the prayers are real, the bargaining with God is real for so many people in a variety of situations.  Life and death prayers bring us face to face with the questions of Who is God?  Can He and will He change my circumstances?

We all want a fool-proof way to obtain our desired outcome through prayer.  Maybe there’s a formula that works?  Maybe enough faith will guarantee healing or security?  Maybe enough generosity on our part will overwhelm God with our goodness and humility and then surely He'll answer as we desire?

There are great examples of people in the Bible who prayed fervently and then the Lord provided exactly what they prayed for.  Moses cried out to God to supply drinking water for the Israelites and God made it flow from a rock.  Elijah called down rain from heaven—and it poured.  Jesus healed multitudes.

Then there are stories of righteous followers of God who did not have their prayers answered as they wanted.  Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane prayed for the ‘cup’ (dying on the cross) to be taken from him.  Yet he still endured severe beatings and a gruesome death.  Even though Paul prayed for a ‘thorn in his side’ to be removed, he lived out his life suffering in some sort of agony.  Did these men not have enough faith?  Did they pray incorrectly?  Was God unable to answer their prayers?  

These are the questions we ask when our prayers aren’t answered in the way we hope.

But we know these men had great faith, humbly sought God, and desired God’s will above their own.  God’s will for us in a broken and sin-filled world often extends beyond our comprehension.  Unfortunately, not all prayers will be answered like we want.  

If God says ‘no’ to our prayers, does it mean He doesn’t care about us and our circumstances?  If we want to know how God responds to our suffering, then we only need to look to Jesus, who is the exact representation of the Father (Hebrews 1:3).  Whenever Jesus encountered someone in pain, he consistently showed compassion.  For example, after Jesus saw a widow whose only son had just died, “…he had compassion on her and said to her, ‘Do not weep,’” and then he raised her son to life (Luke 7:11-17).  

In another example, Mary and Martha, friends of Jesus, sent for Jesus when their brother was ill.  But Jesus delayed in coming, and their brother died.  When Jesus arrived and saw Mary and those with her weeping “…he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled” (John 11:33).  And he wept.  

How does God respond to us as we pray in our times of greatest need?  With a heart of compassion.

God lavished compassion and strength on Jesus and Paul when they prayed and yet didn’t receive the answers they requested.  When Jesus prayed for God’s will to be done in the Garden of Gethsemane, “there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him” (Luke 22:43).  Paul received reassurance from God that “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (II Corinthians 12:9).  

Whether with an angel, or a word from the Lord, God strengthened these men and let them know He was with them in their time of weakness.  And He will be with us in ours.

Is there a formula for how to pray?  

Did the eighth grade boy in the book use the wrong words when he prayed and that's why his brother wasn't healed?  He's not the only one to try bargaining with God.  Abraham bargained with God when he was concerned about a loved one (Genesis 18).  The Bible is full of different types of prayers.  What about if-then testing prayers?  Gideon wrote the book on them (Judges 6).  And these men stand out as examples of faith in Hebrews 11.  

God knows the heart of all who pray.  If anything, at least part of a formula for prayer is this:   God works on behalf of those who love Him and humbly seek Him in faith according to His perfect will.

How will we respond, though, if we don’t get what we pray for?  Will we still trust and follow God?  When Daniel’s friends were about to be thrown into the fiery furnace, they reasoned, “our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king.  But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up” (Daniel 3:17-18).  

Does that represent our hearts?  

Would we willingly walk the path of suffering if that is where God is leading us?  

I’ll always cry when I think about children dying of cancer and losing loved ones way too early.  But I take comfort in knowing that my compassion pales in comparison to God’s.  Jesus wept with mourners.  His heart ached with the death of loved ones.  In fact, the description we have of the future beyond the grave is one where “[God] will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelations 21:4).

As we humbly seek God in prayer, God may not give us the answer we want.  

However, like those in the Bible, we will likely experience His compassion, strength and grace in unimaginable ways.