Difficult Praying

Prayer. Mel and I were talking about prayer this morning while I was working on my latest woven scarf. I have a feeling that I don't have the same view of praying that many other people have. I've written here before that it bothers me that so often we pray that God will make someone we care about well, or the friend or relative of someone we know, or someone we heard about on tv or the news, and on it goes. It's like it's become God's job: to make people well. Like we boss Him around and tell Him what to do.

There is another issue that is bothering me right now, too, about how we sometimes pray.

I want very much for both of my sons to marry, and to marry well. To have happy marriages. To have Godly wives. To raise Godly children. To be content in that aspect of life.

But...

Neither one of them are married at this point. So - how should I pray?

I already pray for their future spouses in general ways. But that is future. This is now.

I listened to someone pray the other day and again heard the phrase - bring Godly spouses for the singles in our church. And I thought - wait a minute! What if they are destined to never marry? Then what? Do we keep praying that God will bring Godly spouses simply because underneath everything we think and say about "God's will for our lives", we truly believe that unless we are married, we have a second rate life? Ei yi yi. How horrible! I've known too many happily single people to ever believe that is true. Older single people who have wonderful lives, busy, adventurous, fruitful in ministries, happy. Yet, if all we ever pray for them is an order for God to bring them spouses and then they can have Godly children, we are in essence saying that God has given them second best and we know what is better for them than He does. I've known too many unhappily married people to think marriage is always the best for everyone.

Why don't we pray that God will make our singles content where they are for the time period they are in, and if it be God's will, for God to please bring them Godly spouses? If marriage is held up to them as the end all and be all (is that how that phrase is said?), then they will be discontent and lose the blessings God is giving them in their singleness. In unhappiness at being single, they could so easily fall into sexual sin of one kind or another, desperately searching for a spouse.

From now on I am praying - God, please help our singles to be happy and content where they are now in life, and if it will bring more glory to You, please bring them Godly spouses. (And for my sons as well. Make them content where they are, but please bring them Godly wives. :-) ).

I Thessalonians 5:16-18 "Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

The second thing I've been thinking about is praying for healing. A person we know has been at death's door now for quite some time. It's like she's just hanging there on the edge of death, suffering incredible pain all the while. People pray and ask for God to heal her. I think to myself - if God heals her now, she will only have to go through this whole dying process again! No one lives forever, not even Lazarus did after Jesus raised him from the dead. I do not want to pray that this woman will die - NO!!! That is not my point at all. I have begun praying that God will help her to die well, to die with grace, bringing Him glory throughout the whole process. The funny (not haha kind of funny) thing is - now it looks like she may have treatments of some kind that could maybe bring her back to some sort of better health. I think to myself - so close to Paradise, and snatched away, only to look forward to the dying process all over again.

Would I want to do that? Am I so afraid of dying, something that we ALL must go through, that I am willing to go through all of whatever it is before the actual step across the threshold, all of that over again? The pain, the suffering? Is living better than what is ahead of me? Or is it just the fear of the unknown that would cause me to cling to physical life with every ounce of strength and every known healing practice?

I don't know. I pray for her, that whether she lives or dies, she will bring glory to God.

I have come to the point where I don't know how to pray for specific groups of people. Singles. The ill. The dying.

No, I don't know how to pray, other than - Father, what ever brings glory to YOU. And - help us all to submit to your will.

Romans 8:26,27 "In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God."