To Pray or Not to Pray by Andy McDonald

Let me begin by telling you that I am a praying person. I believe it is important for us to pray. Scripture is filled with the prayers of faithful followers of God. When Jesus was on earth, he taught his disciples to pray, and he was often in prayer. The Bible also tells us that we don’t know what to pray for as we ought, and so the Holy Spirit interprets our prayers into some heavenly language. We are counseled to pray for the sick, to be unceasing in our prayers. The Bible is clear in its directive that we should pray.

While I believe in the importance of prayer, I must be completely honest; I don’t have a clue as to how it works. God is present everywhere and is all knowing, so when we pray for a sick friend undergoing surgery, we certainly aren’t informing Him. We don’t catch God off guard making Him say in surprise, “Really, your friend is in the hospital?” Undoubtedly, he already knows. Also, God defines himself as love. So the God who is perfect love loves the person we pray for even more than we do. It doesn’t seem, then, that we are talking God into “saving, healing, protecting” or doing something for them that God wouldn’t want to do whether or not we intervene.

I think about poor John the Baptist in prison. Jesus isn’t that many miles away, and John sends his disciples to ask Jesus if he is the one they were expecting, or should they look for another. Maybe John’s faith is slipping a bit with prison life. Jesus isn’t rescuing him. Surely John prayed for safety, protection, escape, but he died. Was God less faithful to the beheaded John the Baptist than to the apostle John who is only banished to an island prison? However it works, it’s different than a vending machine where we put in our prayer and get our blessing. It is different than some benevolent Santa Claus-like God to whom we send our list of blessings desired, and he delivers them on just the right day!

When we start trying to figure it all out, the web only seems to get more tangled. Maybe we do best when we pray, trust and endure whatever comes because Jesus has conquered death and hell. All the things he said and did in his life, and the sacrifice of himself in death, were authenticated with the resurrection. It is that resurrection reality that validates all the claims of Christ and initiates the Christian church. Regardless of whether or not we “get our answer” or a seeming silence or even a no, the reality is we still go on trusting that, in his time and from his perspective, the resurrected Christ will set all things straight. In the meantime, with a word of courage and hope, we are changed as we support one another with our prayers. It’s the right thing to do!

Andy McDonald