Prayer: Wrestling with what it’s not
by Jared Johnson
The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful to be reckoned with.
James 5.16 (Message)
There are hundreds of references to prayer in Scripture. Being an irredeemable nerd, I searched and actually made a spreadsheet of all references to “pray*” in 5 different translations. (These references, because I searched only the root word, include everything with those first 4 letters, like “pray,” “prayer,” “praying,” “prayed,” etc.) Those translations are NLT, NIV, NASB, ESV, and HCSB. I then put all matches onto an Excel spreadsheet as a manipulable matrix (so … hopelessly irredeemable nerd).
This interesting detail came from that exercise: across those 5 translations, 553 total verses use “pray.” When I filtered to see only those book-chapter-verse references where all five translations used “pray,” that list fell from 553 to 278 – almost exactly half. Said another way, half the time “pray” shows up in your Bible, it’s abundantly clear to 5 different translation committees. The other half the time it appears, there’s a bit of fudge factor in the background. (For example, Genesis 25.21 has “prayer” or “prayed” in all 5, but only NIV uses “prayed” in Exodus 10.18; the other 4 are “pleaded”/”appealed.”)
No wonder we struggle with prayer!
In one of e2’s early books, Dr Roadcup made the point that (I’m paraphrasing) when we struggle in prayer – struggle to start, struggle with distractions and wandering thoughts, etc. – we aren’t failing in prayer nor struggling in our faith as a Christian, we’re just people! Everyone struggles in one way or another in prayer.
Two of my favorite Christian authors are Dallas Willard and Philip Yancey. Years ago, I read Yancey’s Prayer: Does it Make any Difference?. I glanced at it again just now to begin writing this piece and noticed that I made no notes or highlights. Just as well. It was long enough ago that I’d probably be distracted rather than enlightened by whatever comments I would have made. If you never made your way through that book, get yourself a copy; it’s worth every minute.
I appreciate the book primarily because of his back-and-forth, “wrestling” mindset evident throughout. One chapter is specifically titled “Wrestling Match” (ch 7). We all know prayer is a dialogue of sorts between limited us and infinite Yahweh. Can I say prayer is rarely straightforward? No doubt we have all heard prayer helps like “ACTS,” “PRAY,” and more. I just used the word “helps” but how often do we use acronyms and other things more like “hacks?” When I read our Bible’s prayer book (“Psalms”), the last word I think of is “hack.”
Prayer is, well, many things. But I can tell you briefly and certainly what it’s not: formulaic, guaranteed, sure, predictive.
While I admire Elisha’s exceptionally close connection with God, such that he could make 3 1-liner prayers that were all answered completely and instantly (“God, open my servant’s eyes that he can see / Strike this enemy army blind / Give their sight back” 2 Kings 6.8-23), my prayer life shows no such straight-ask, straight-answer pattern. After all, "the prayer of an upright person is powerful and effective," sooo... where’s that leave me, exactly?
Biblically, Elisha’s simple prayers were the exception, but we crave simplicity. And it doesn’t help that we live in a culture that demands we takes sides on contrived, imposed binaries. “You’re either pro-Trump or anti-America!” “Your silence is implicit approval of that travesty!” “You’re either all-in with me, or you’re against me!” Whatever, y’all…
But prayer’s give-and-take demands nuance, patience and incredible fortitude. Yancey’s “Wrestling Match” chapter opens by relating several prayers from people in terrible predicaments.
[The South African minister] took the liberty of reminding the Lord that some of His subjects were more downtrodden than others, that it sometimes seemed as though He was not paying attention. The minister then said that if God didn’t show a little more initiative in leading the black man to salvation, the black man would have to take matters into his own two hands. Amen. (from Nelson Mandela’s autobiography)
Oh God, you know I have no money, but you can make the people do for me. You must make the people do for me. I will never give you peace till you do, God. (Sojourner Truth)
God, I hated you after that! How could you let this happen to me!? And I hated the people in this church who tried to comfort me. I didn’t want comfort – I wanted revenge. I wanted to hurt back. Thank you, God, that you didn’t give up on me, and neither did some of these people. You kept after me, and I come back to you now and ask you to heal the scars in my soul. (a young woman in Yancey’s church during public prayer)
“When we work, we work. When we pray, God works.” That’s a fine sentiment and more or less true at face value, but I’d add 1 word: “…usually.” Just because I pray for a thing ≠ God working on thing (that’s “does not equal”). “Work like it all depends on you; pray like it all depends on God.” I find a little less to poke at in that one, but still, its simplicity can ring hollow.
With prayer we can’t fall into “survivor’s bias.” When a celebrity stands up at a podium during an award show and happy-crying-shouts into the mic “follow your dreams!” we have to recognize the absurdity of the situation. Thousands of actors and actresses are represented at any given award show. One person gets called up. Millions work in our entertainment industry – just in these (sometimes) United States! Few of those millions will stand on that stage. When someone says “follow your dreams” in that context, they might as well be promising success if you “always eat your Wheaties for breakfast” or “wink your left eye at the sky at precisely 10:19am every day.”
Weirdly enough, that’s also true in prayer. We can hear someone – rightly – give all the credit to God for a Kingdom/ministry success and say it came through prayer, but what about that small-church minister who sweats and weeps in his prayer closet on behalf of the people he loves but doesn’t have his face plastered all over social media posts and magazine covers?
We crave clarity. We strive for simplicity. When we can have both and get simple clarity, so much the better!
Prayer makes no such promises.
Abraham wrangled with God about how many upright people were enough to save Sodom.
Job wrestled hard in his heart and mind for we don’t know how long with all that happened to him and much of his protest is spoken directly to God – he prayed it aloud in the hearing of his friends.
Moses heard God’s pronouncements against wayward people and protested – and God relented (Exodus 32.14).
When King Hezekiah and all Judah faced a terrible reckoning from Assyria’s army (2 Kings chapters 18-19), King Hezekiah prayed on his own and his people’s behalf and God Almighty spared them in dramatic fashion.
David, as king, begged God in agony to spare his youngest child. The text is ambiguous enough that I believe he prayed for multiple days and nights consecutively without food nor water “on the bare ground” on their baby’s behalf. Nevertheless, “…on the 7th day the child died” (2 Sam 12.18).
Paul’s thorn in the flesh prayer went unanswered (answered with “no”).
In stark contrast, multiple believers asked God for Peter’s release from prison in Acts 12. That prayer was answered in the positive and amazingly. I find a massive disconnect in that story; they prayed for Peter’s release – and he was. But then he showed up to their prayer meeting – and they didn’t believe it (Acts 12.15)! I can be thick. I hope I’m never so thick that I miss a literal answered prayer standing physically at my front door.
While Jesus gave us a pattern (Matt 6 / Luke 6), prayer is never a formula. We shouldn’t ramble (Matt 6.7), but we should speak, and do so intelligibly (Matt 6.7, 1 Cor 14.19).
At this point of my life it seems prayer is, as much as anything, persistence (Luke 18) and humility (Matt 6.6). That in mind, we’ll finish by letting Philip Yancey and CS Lewis have the last words.
Somehow we must offer our prayers with a humility that conveys gratitude without triumphalism, compassion without manipulation, always respecting the mystery surrounding prayer. (Yancey, Prayer: Does it Make any Difference?)
“The only way we can understand the missionary graveyard at Miango [Nigeria], is remembering that God also buried His Son on the mission field.” For a missionary couple who stand beside a mound of earth in a garden in Nigeria, no logical explanation of unanswered prayer will suffice. They must place their faith in a God who has yet to fulfill the promise that good will overcome evil, that God’s good purposes will, in the end, win. To cling to that belief may represent the ultimate rationalization – or the ultimate act of faith. (Yancey; 1st sentence quoting Prof. Charles White)
The dryness and dullness [of religious experience] through which he’s now going are not, as you fondly suppose, your workmanship; they are merely natural phenomena which do us no good unless you make good diabolical use of them. … It may surprise you to learn that in His efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, [God] relies on troughs even more than on peaks; some of His special favorites have gone through longer, deeper troughs than anyone else. … [God] cannot ravish. He can only woo. … He will start people off [as new believers] with faint communications of His presence which seem great to them, with emotional sweetness and easy conquest of temptations. But He never allows that state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws all supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs – to carry out from their will alone duties which have lost all enjoyment. It’s during such trough periods, much more than during peaks, that the creature is growing into the sort of thing He wants it to be. Hence, prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. (CS Lewis, portion of Screwtape Letter #8, emphasis added)
