Struggling to Pray: How Do You Pray When all Hope is Lost?

 

Today’s blog is from my Guideposts Daily Devotional - July 20 by Patty Kirk.  As I read this, the Lord seem to say we all needed to hear this story.  Probably most of us have encountered similar situations.  We know that PRAYER is the answer to problems for those in Christ - but sometimes we don’t see the answers as fast as we want - or ever in our lifetime, and we become discouraged. Father God says we are to pray - the answer is in His timing.

 “For when two or three gather in my Name, there am I with them.” Matthew 18:20 (NIV)

 An old friend was diagnosed with terminal cancer.  When I went to see her, I learned that somehow, though a professing Christian and life-long churchgoer until the past decade, she’d forgotten, or never understood, or perhaps never accepted the most fundamental Christian teaching. As we talked, it became clear she considered herself such a bad person that God couldn’t possibly want her with Him in heaven. When anyone around her mentioned salvation - or, really anything about God, she got mad and changed the subject.

 If I wanted to help her, I decided I could not evangelize. But I could pray. And I tried to. But how do you pray for someone whose situation seems hopeless.

 I couldn’t pray for healing. That clearly wasn’t going to happen.  She was getting sicker before our eyes as the cancer moved from organ to organ.  I wanted to pray for peace, but I couldn’t imagine any peace for her besides what she was rejecting.

  My worst impediment to prayer was the conviction that I should be doing something, not “just praying,” -as I thought of it.  I should be convincing her, comforting her with the only message that could help her.

 In the end, all I could muster was the weak, unprayable grunt of faith: that God still loved her and waited close by, eager to wrench her from the cave of misery she’d backed herself into to accept His embrace.

 AND that’s what he did!  In a final moment of prayer. consciousness, barely able to speak, much less resist those around her, my friend suddenly joined us in the Lord’s Prayer.  Not reflexively or reluctantly, but fervently. I could tell from her face she meant every word.

 Thank You, God, for staying with us and hearing even unprayed prayers. 

 Blessings,

Gma J

PS Gramps would say, “Don’t give up praying.”  I wish I could share with you his last notebook  - pages of those he was praying for  - family, friends, blog readers, prayer needs of our church, our Country unsaved, all those in uniform, our Country, Israel and the Middle East - just to name a few.