Why do we pray? What is it that moves us to intentionally take time to talk to God? Do we have a daily longing to enter into conversation with the Lord? The Psalmist expresses assurance in receiving an answer. "I'm praying to You because I know You will answer." Do we always have confidence that God will respond to our prayers? David, the writer of Psalm 17, is very specific. He desires the answer to give evidence of God's unfailing love in some wonderful way. But what if God's wonderful doesn't reflect the definition of our wonderful?
Do you ever sit with a list of huge prayer requests? These are the big ones. Without the intervention of God, certain situations are not going to change. We pray with intensity and expectancy. We earnestly contend in combat, pleading for the Lord to step in, answer in our favour and alter the outcome. It makes me recall when my nephew received a Wii for Christmas. For any who don't know, a Wii is a machine that enables you to play interactive games on the television. One of the first activities I engaged in was a boxing match. I couldn't believe how exhausting it was physically. I mean, basically, I was fighting air, but I was doing it with vigour. I couldn't give up, back off or let down or my "opponent" would overpower me and win.
Wrestling is a sport that requires strength, stamina and unceasing exertion. Have we ever strived with God like that over a prayer concern? How quickly do we give up and relent, discouraged that we haven't seen any activity in the heavenlies, so we assume it's best to abandon the ask? Do we find God's silence easier to handle than His 'no'? At least, without a response, there hasn't yet been a definite end. The hope of an answer is still out there.
It's hard when God's "wonderful" involves teaching us to persevere, trust, endure, have patience and wait. His unfailing love in wonderful ways towards us is felt most deeply in the middle of all those things we desperately don't want to touch our lives. We know He loves us on our good days, but it is in our dark days when our experience of His care for us is more profound. I think we all know that, but we often hate the journey involved to reveal this truth. I read a young woman's testimony recently who admitted to God, "I'm so tired of being a test subject for Your faithfulness." We maybe haven't voiced that before, but I for one have felt it.
Being raised in a home where the character of God was never doubted or debated, there was an unarguable acceptance that if God allowed some calamity, heartache or pain, there was always a reason and our response was to be joyful in affliction. Sometimes that joy is a hard burden to bear.
The equation sounds so simple at first. Prayer equals answer. Is that any answer or just our answer? What if years have passed without seeing any response from God? What if the formula the Psalmist is suggesting fails? We then wonder, is this the only faulty calculation we believed or are others in jeopardy now too? Our theologies must be tested to discover the truth. God isn't a formula who makes sense to us, and He never will be.
I worry sometimes that prayer becomes only a transaction. We read scriptures that reassure us that those who ask, receive and so we make prayer an agreement. I need this. God can do anything. I pray. God is supposed to answer. The end. God is not a genie in a bottle that we rub the right way to get a desired outcome. Prayer isn't about the answer. Pray is about communion and relationship. Does He, in unfailing love, answer in wonderful ways? Yes, and He has lavished significant, life-changing, miraculous answers on me to which I give witness with great praise. But I have also begged Him with other requests that challenged and deepened my faith when His quiet whispers invited me to walk a road I wanted to avoid. A road now lined with Ebenezers of His presence. His coming near is His greatest answer of unfailing love.
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