New Prayer

"Do you want to learn the lessons only suffering can teach you? Would you say to God even now, 'If I have to go through this, then give me everything. Teach me everything you want to teach me through this. Don't let this incredible pain be wasted in my life'?" (The One Year Book of Hope by Nancy Guthrie).

I've been asking God for a while now to give me something or other. I've been begging God to give me joy again, to give me peace, to give me a child. God says that "all of the things [I] ask in prayer, believing, [I] will receive" (Matthew 21:22). So why hasn't He given me these things? One possibility is certainly unbelief. Pretty much on a daily basis I utter "I believe, help me in my unbelief" (Mark 9:24). I want to believe, I want to trust, I want to abandon my doubt, but I don't think that is something I can really do on my own, in my weakened human state. So one possibility for unanswered prayers could certainly be lack of belief. But I'm beginning to wonder if I am asking for the wrong thing.

Is it possible? Is it possible to be asking for the wrong thing? I think it really depends on where your heart is. After all the first part of Psalm 37:4 "Delight yourself in the Lord" is crucial to understanding why "He will give you the desire of your heart." If we truly delight in the Lord, if we dwell with Him, know Him, then our desires will echo His. I actually do not think that the prayers I have been praying, prayers for joy, peace, for a child, are not desires of God's heart, but maybe they aren't the desire of His heart right now. Maybe He has a greater desire in this time, maybe He has something for me that can only be learned from suffering.

Let me tell you, I hate that. It sucks. Our God is the God of the universe, if He has something to teach me aren't there a million ways He could accomplish that knowledge in me? Doesn't He have techniques and tactics that would accomplish the same purposes? I don't know for sure, but those questions presuppose that God orchestrated my suffering. Maybe my suffering is a product of a fallen world, maybe my suffering is a product of Satan's manipulation. Maybe, just maybe, God knew this was coming but in living in a free-will-world nothing could be done to prevent it. But now it's here, it is a reality, and regardless of why or how it came about, I have a choice.

I'm beginning to realize that I always have a choice, a choice in how to respond, how to act, what to say, what to do. I don't really like the choice; I often wish the choice was made for me. Because inevitably I have to choose the harder road, the more difficult path, the challenging interaction. Rarely when faced with a choice do I get to say "Ah, this will make life so much easier..." Instead I walk face first into difficulty, and now is no different.

I have to choose a different prayer right now. I have to choose instead of (or maybe in addition to) begging for deliverance from my suffering to beg for God to give me everything, everything that this experience of suffering has to offer. I need to ask for God to use these moments to mold me and shape me in ways that He maybe would not without the suffering. I have to ask for a softer heart to experience more of the pain that I might know more of the glory, rather than hardening my heart to the pain and cutting off all available growth. Essentially I must ask for more suffering, more pruning in the midst of my sorrow because otherwise these moments would be wasted.

So I have a new prayer: "'If I have to go through this, then give me everything. Teach me everything you want to teach me through this. Don't let this incredible pain be wasted in my life'". Amen.