Where do I even start? (Prayers)

“Please pray that we will make it through this tough time with our sanity intact,” emailed friends whose situation seems unsustainable.

“It’s really hard. Please pray for me,” messaged another friend.

“People are dying of starvation or lack of medications.” A friend described the effects of lockdown on his country, asking for prayer.

“Most of our church members have lost their jobs. We can’t go back to our villages. Please pray for us.” That message came from a beautiful part of the world where many people work in the tourist and hospitality industry.

I’m happy to pray. Of course. But where do I even start?

Praying Scripture

We often present a list to God of what we think would be wise courses of action for him to take. I do it myself, and also send out regular prayer notes asking people to pray for X, Y and Z. But perhaps there are better ways to pray.

Lifting people and situations before God as I turn Scripture into prayer is one way of praying I find helpful. How can I pray Scripture for these friends and the people amongst whom they live who are finding life so exceptionally difficult just now.

‘All things work together for good’

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

Romans 8:28 NIV

Surely this is a good verse to pray for my friends who feel like they are at the ends of their tether. It’ll all work out well in the end, right? There is a song that I often hear on Christian radio right now, which draws on this verse and contains the catchy line, “Every little thing’s gonna be all right.”

But will it? I think of earnest prayers offered by early church members for Peter and James when they were imprisoned by King Herod. (The tale is recorded in Acts 12 … we studied this passage in Bible Study Fellowship last week. That’s why it’s fresh on my mind.)

Oh yes, God worked for good when the apostle Peter was miraculously freed from the clutches of that evil monarch. But did God also work for the good of the apostle James, brother of John, when he let him be executed?

I’m not questioning God … that would be foolish … but just want to say that these matters aren’t straightforward. God’s idea of ‘good’ doesn’t always equate to our ideas of ‘comfortable’.

‘We must go through many hardships….’

Acts 14:22 is not a verse I have ever memorised in my half-century of Christian life. It’s probably worth memorising though, because it summarises the parting message that Paul and Barnabas left with each of the new churches they had established during their first missionary journey. (This passage is fresh on my mind because we studied it just today in the Bible Study Fellowship class I attend online these days.)

Then they returned … strengthening the disciples and encouraging [the believers] to remain true to the faith. “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God,” they said. Paul and Barnabas appointed elders for them in each church and, with prayer and fasting, committed them to the Lord, in whom they had put their trust.”

Acts 14:21b-23 NIV

To pray along these lines for my friends will require prayer and fasting if I am to follow the excellent example of Paul and Barnabas.

Ouch … fasting and praying … now the rubber hits the road, in a metaphorical sense, of course. Since we are all staying at home these days, ‘the rubber hitting the road’ is probably not the best analogy for having to put my words into action.

‘The Spirit helps us in our weaknesses’

As I consciously sit quietly in God’s presence and bring my friends to him, I sense a divine nudge to pray that verse about the Spirit helping us in our weaknesses.

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.

Romans 8:26-27

Did you know that this verse comes immediately before the ‘All things work together for good…’ verse?

Hearts and minds

My friends are confused, frustrated and upset at the way things have turned out for them. Even those of us in comparative stability and comfort find ourselves perturbed by all that is going on around us.

It’s okay to be 忐忑不安 … a phrase without an exact English equivalent. It means ‘perturbed’, ‘disturbed’ or ‘upset’. If you look carefully, you can see that it is made up of a heart – 心 – flip-flopping around, sometimes facing up -上- and sometimes facing down -下. Regardless, our hearts are not – 不 – at peace – 安. The character for peace – 安 – incidentally, is a pictograph of a woman – 女- under a roof – 宀.

God searches our hearts (Romans 8:27). The ups, the downs, the confusion, the grief, the frustrations … he sees it all. I don’t understand even the complexities of my own heart, let alone those of my friends who are going through really hard times. But God does.

God not only knows our hearts but he also knows the mind of the Spirit (Romans 8:27). The Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God (Romans 8:27). God is getting the full picture – the state of the heart and the mind of his Spirit. And we have the privilege of praying along with the indwelling Spirit of God.

How do I pray?

Having sat with this verse for a while, I have changed the way I pray … some of the time, anyhow.

First, I come to the one who searches our hearts and I just present myself. “Here I am, Lord.” I don’t need to pretend to have it all together, or to work at coming in a sensible frame of mind. He searches my heart and understands it better than I know it myself.

Then I name my friends for whom I am praying. I name them in the presence of our all-seeing God. I don’t try and tell him what to do in their particular situations … not first up, anyhow. I just lift them in my prayers before the throne of Almighty God.

The Spirit is already interceding for them … and for me … in accordance with the will of God. I consciously commit them … commit us … to the care of El Roi, the God who Sees.

Conclusion

I wish that there would be ‘happy endings’ to the stories of my friends in terms of what the world sees as ‘happy endings’. I wish that God would intervene and made everything better.

Maybe God will do something miraculous for my friends. Whatever the outcome, the conclusion is actually going to be good … but not necessarily comfortable.

The Bible lays it out clearly in a passage in Romans 8 which comes just a few verses after the sections about how the Holy Spirit prays for us in our weaknesses and how all things work together for good . Paul, who warned new believers in the early church that there would be hardship, later sets out this powerful truth:

If God be for us, who can be against us? …. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:31b, 37-8

Right now it’s tough for many people – if not most people – in our world. But those of us who belong to God have a hope that keeps us going.

Hardships have come. God searches our hearts and knows the mind of the Holy Spirit who prays for God’s people. All things work together for good. Nothing – not a virus, not economic disaster, not racial discrimination, not travel bans, not relationship breakdowns, not even death – NOTHING can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ.

And so I lift my friends before the throne of the One who Sees.

Amen.