I have an app on my phone called Ceaseless. Every morning at 8:00 it pings me and asks me if I would like to pray. Sometimes I say, “later.” And that is okay, because it is always there for me.
It gives me focus for my prayers. Each day this app randomly pulls three people in my contact files and suggests I pray for them. I never know whose name will pop up.
So it happens, sometimes, that it is the name of a person I am angry with. Or it may be the name of someone I am deeply concerned about or anxious for. It could be someone I haven’t thought about in ages, someone I’ve lost touch with and I have no idea what is going on in their lives.
And Ceaseless asks me to pray for them. Sometimes, though, I don’t know how to pray for them.
If it is someone I am angry with, how can I pray for them? Maybe I should be praying for myself, that my heart would be more forgiving and the anger would go away – but how should I pray for them?
If it is someone I have lost touch with, I look at their name and I wonder what in the world is going on with them. Where they are, what their life is like, if they are even still living. I have no idea what they need, and I wonder, how should I pray for them?
But I think sometimes the hardest of all are the ones where I do know what’s going on in their lives. Sometimes I know the challenges they are facing and I am sure I know the many ways they make their challenges even more difficult. And I think to myself, if only they would do more of this or less of that! And a part of me would like to pray, God, make them do more of this and less of that. So when their names pop up on the screen, I wonder, how should I pray for them?
Have you ever thought that you just don’t know how to pray? Annie Lamott said the most common prayer in the world is “please, please, please,” or “help, help, help!” And the second most common is “thank you, thank you, thank you.” But I think it’s a distant second, because we are just more likely to turn to prayer when we feel the need for something.
Perhaps you have had the occasional night of little sleep, when something is weighing heavily on you and as you toss and turn you make your fitful prayers to God. Little cries to a supreme being who, you feel, may or may not be listening. And they might sound like,
“Make it stop!”
“Save him!”
“Make this pain go away!”
“Keep her safe!”
Whatever is keeping you awake, whatever is giving you great anxiety, this is your focus and your sole desire is to fix it. Asking God to fix it. Our cries of desperation, these are the rawest form of the “Please, please, please” prayers.
And then, if God does make it stop, save him, make the pain go away, you might return to God with a deep sigh of “Thank you.”
But if not … If not –
What happens to our prayers when we don’t receive the answers we wanted? What happens to our faith when we are disappointed?
When the addict keeps on using. When the pain does not cease. When the problem doesn’t get fixed. Then we might wonder if prayer is worthwhile – just a tiny drop in the ocean. Or, if we still hold on to hope, we might wonder: If not like this, then, how should we pray?
I remember a man who had prayed ceaselessly for his grandson who was an alcoholic. It seemed like nothing could stop this poor soul on his path toward self-destruction. The grandfather said, “I don’t know how to pray for him anymore. All I do now is say his name and offer it to God.
Scripture gives us a lot of examples to help us with our prayers. The first thing I believe we can learn from them is that all kinds of prayers are good prayers. To pray what is in your heart is not wrong. There have been times I have tried to second-guess my feelings and muster up what might be a proper, respectable prayer. But I am not fooling God. I am only hiding from myself.
Opening our hearts to God is the beginning of prayer.
But here in this portion of the letter to Ephesians, we find an astonishing example of prayer that both strengthens our hope and gives us something to aspire to. This prayer for the church is that they might begin to comprehend God’s powerful love.
“I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
Consider this.
He does not pray that the Ephesians will be healthy. He does not pray that they will be wealthy or successful. He does not pray that they will live their best life now, as we might have heard some preachers say. He does not pray that they will triumph over enemies, whether they be people, corporations, nations, or diseases. He simply prays that they will know fully, deeply, completely, the power of God’s love through Christ.
And to know the breadth and length and height and depth of this love is not to take its linear measure. It is not to know its precise dimensions. To know its measure is to know that, for us, it is immeasurable.
His prayer for us, God’s beloved, is to know God’s power is love and that love is immensely powerful – so powerful that it is beyond anything we can ask or imagine.
Beyond anything we can ask or imagine.
It would not be a bad thing for us to think of these words when we pray – for ourselves or for others. When I try to pray for someone I am harboring a grudge against, I might recall that the power of God’s love can accomplish far more than I can ask or even imagine. And when I am trying to pray for someone I want to fix, because I can see several ways they might live their life better than they currently are, I might recall that the power of God’s love can accomplish far more than I can ask or even imagine.
When I am losing hope for someone, I might recall that the power of God’s love can accomplish far more than I can ask or even imagine.
When I don’t know how to pray, I might recall that the power of God’s love can accomplish far more than I can ask or even imagine. And this may strengthen my hope: To know the answers are not in my hands; they are in the power of God’s love. God seeks to put his power within us, rooting and grounding us in love.
Imagine, if you will, how much we could do with the power of God’s love.
This, my brothers and sisters, is the beginning of living the life we have been called to. God has drawn us together under the banner of God’s love.
The letter to the Ephesians will go on to speak more in detail about how we might live in the likeness of Christ. There are parts of this letter that might irritate us, parts that might puzzle us; but, while the details might change over time, the fundamentals remain the same: God’s power is love and God is still seeking to fill us with this love.
Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
