Prayer-Worrier or Prayer-Warrior?

I was on my way home from a frustrating rehearsal one night, and I called Paul to talk with him as I made the drive.  As soon as he answered I immediately unleashed my tirade of who said this and who did that and why this is all a bunch of malarkey.  About 15 minutes in I suddenly became aware that this was the first time I had spoken to my husband that entire day, and I hadn’t even said “hello”.    I stopped myself, apologized, said “Hi honey.  I love you most,” and reset the tone of our conversation.    Instead of anxiety and anger ruling the conversation, I was able to share my frustrations in a calm manner and receive his comfort, insight and wisdom in return.

It got me thinking about how I often pray.   Somewhere along the line I picked up that prayer was simply asking God for different things.   Prayer meetings always meant kneeling for an hour at a pew and running down your checklist:  Lord, please bless the pastors; Lord, please help the missionaries; Lord, please be sure our unbelieving friends and family get saved before they die; Lord, please help dad get a good job; Lord, please heal my cat; CRAP, it’s only been 10 minutes, better go through the list again; Lord, please bless that pastors; and so on and so on and so on.  

Outside of prayer meetings, prayer was a crisis hotline.   Whenever anything went wrong I would frantically cry out to God to intervene, and then I would wring my hands worrying until an answer came.   Sometimes it took a while for the answer to come, so I would cry out again and again until I was sure He heard me and the situation was resolved.

It’s no wonder that when someone who was praying for me said that I had the gift of intercession I asked if I could exchange it for something that I would actually use.  I had been convinced that prayer was good for “intercessors”, but for those of us who weren’t “gifted” it was more of a request line to Jesus.   I always believed that there were people whose prayers were “always” answered, and I was not one of those people.  Therefore, praying could not be my gift. 

Then I met some really cool people who loved to pray and they were always happy while doing it.   This was completely foreign to me, so I had to learn more.   These men and women taught me that prayer is simply asking for God’s perspective and then setting my agreement with Him.   This is based on “The Lord’s Prayer”, found in Matt 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4, where Jesus teaches His disciples to pray, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.”     Since we have been raised with Christ, and are seated with Him in heavenly places, we can get His perspective, His will, His plans rather than getting lost in the storm of the current situations (Col 3:1-3). 

 

It’s a little like flying in a thunderstorm.   There is always a little turbulence as you take off through the rain, and the plane shakes as you ascend, but when you reach cruising altitude, it’s bright, sunny, and completely calm.   My first experience with this made me very anxious, grasping the armrests until my knuckles were white.   The man next to me just laughed and told me it would be alright when we got above the clouds.    It was more than “alright” when we got above the clouds, it was beautiful!  There is something spectacular about seeing the red and orange hues of the sun shine bright about the fluffy clouds that are as white as snow, a stark contrast to the foreboding charcoal color of the clouds below.   And there is peace. 

How does this relate to prayer?   James gives us some insight in chapter 4, verse 3 when he says, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives…” 

When we stay in the storm, our tendency is to pray about how the storm is making us feel.  For example, when I am in the midst of a hard day at work, I might pray that God will give me a new boss or open the door for me to leave or remove the pain in my &%*(# that has been driving me nuts for the last month.   All the while, I will remain in a state of agitation, frustration, discouragement and all around bleh.   Often these circumstances and resulting emotions cause us to question the goodness and kindness of God.  We hear that little voice whispering in our ears, “If God really loved you, you wouldn’t be stuck in this job you hate,” or worse, “It will never get better than this, so you’d better just learn to live with it,” and we are soaked to the skin by the lying rain of the enemy.   

But (isn’t that a great word? It means there is good news around the corner), then came Jesus!   With His death and resurrection, we are now hidden with Him, seated in heavenly places.   We get to come to Him in all the craziness and emotion of life, lay it out before Him, and talk to Him about what He’s doing. Often He uses the very storm that we’re in to call us higher so that He can reveal a part of Himself we’ve never seen before.    He is good, and His plans are always good.  He is perfect love, and His ways are always bigger than we can fully understand.   He is sovereign, and nothing takes Him by surprise.   Think about that for a minute…NOTHING takes Him by surprise.   He knows every minute of every day, and He has a strategy for expanding His kingdom through every circumstance, and we get to be a part of it!

The Word tells us, “The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results” (James 5:16 NLT).   Righteousness is “right-standing with God”.  Since God is heavenly places, doesn’t it make sense that “right-standing” with Him would mean standing with Him in heavenly places?   Since we are hidden with Christ in God, and we are seated with Him in heavenly places, we have been made righteous, which means prayer is for all of us, not just for the “gifted”!  

Storms will always happen, that’s just part of life, but we have the choice of perspective.   We can stay on the ground worrying about the storm soaked by the rain, or we can make the choice to put up with the turbulence of our emotions rising above the storm and cruising in His peace and in His power.  When you choose to trust Him, you get to fly with Him, and He is a master pilot, and HE ALWAYS brings us to a new place in Him!   

The Father offers each one of us an invitation to embark on a new journey of discovery, excitement, and relationship with Him.     Will we be prayer-worriers, grounded in fear and anxiety begging Him to meet our needs, or will we be prayer-warriors, soaring with Him above the storms to new destinations in His kingdom, trusting that He has every provision for every need already prepared?

“…an eagle knows when a storm is approaching long before it breaks. The eagle will fly to some high spot and wait for the winds to come. When the storm hits, it sets its wings so that the wind will pick it up and lift it above the storm. While the storm rages below, the eagle is soaring above it. The eagle does not escape the storm. It simply uses the storm to lift it higher. It rises on the winds that bring the storm.”         (From “Eagles in A Storm”, author unknown)