Be Careful What You Pray For

Copyright 2007 by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

It is not unusual to hear individual prayer along the following lines in our church’s today:

“Oh Lord, make yourself known to me and move in power in my life. Come into my life in a radical new way and change my heart. Make me completely yours and use me for your glory. In Jesus Name, amen.”

Such a prayer is orthodox enough and certainly sounds like the petition of a person who totally seeks to be surrendered to Christ. In fact it is a good thing to ask the Lord to do what this prayer asks Him to do in our lives. The problem is that when we request such a thing of Him many, perhaps most, of us are terrified that God will actually answer the prayer and show up!

Human beings are not very comfortable with change. This is because change, even change for the good, is often painful. It is amazing how often we choose the misery we know over the possible solution we do not. This is especially true if our lives have been marked with more loss than most. The tendency is to try to hold on to what we have left, sometimes at any cost. The popular phrase “Let go and let God” applies here in the negative sense that far too often we do just the opposite. “Grip tightly and keep God at a distance” might be a better description of our practical theology. What we have trouble understanding is that anything we try to hold on to above holding on to God eventually slips through our fingers anyway.

The other thing is that the idea of an infinite and omnipotent God truly manifesting Himself to us is a potentially terrifying prospect. One is reminded of the character in C.S. Lewis’s “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” who, upon asking one of the denizens of Narnia if the Christ-figure Aslan the Lion is “safe” is informed that he is not safe, but he is good. When we ask our Lord to come into our lives in power we can expect some things to happen that will make us feel anything but comfortable. Just the presence of a holy God is something that would destroy us if it were not for the fact that we are made acceptable to Him by our appropriation of the shed blood of Jesus Christ. While God’s presence can be a comforting thing it can also be profoundly disturbing to beings that are still capable of sin.

The fact is that the Father intends to change all of us into the likeness of His Son and a prayer that asks Him to truly change our hearts will be answered by Him doing just that. The life of Christ was painful and if we open ourselves to being made like Him we can expect plenty of pain too. The issue is not whether such pain is worth it, it is, but we are still not thrilled at the prospect of enduring it.

Someone once said that if we all must come to God with pure motives none of us would be able to come at all. I believe this is true not only at the time of our salvation but during our ongoing sanctification as well. The truth is that sometimes our prayers are not 100% pure. We desire God’s will in our lives, yet we also fear it. We believe, yet we need help with our unbelief. This is where our Lord’s understanding of, and patience with, our “creature-liness” comes in. His grace covers our faltering hearts if we have indeed come to love His Son in spirit and in truth. Beyond that, God’s perfect love for us can progressively cast out our fears about Him answering so audacious a prayer as the one that began this essay.

Prayers for God to fully possess our lives should not be entered into lightly it is true. But God does desire us to pray in such a way because He longs to possess us as only the true Lover of our souls can and should. We do well to pray such prayers. What is important to know is that, while the answer may be hard to bear for a time, the final result will be our entering into the bliss of God’s perfect love.