Praying through pain

Susie Larson found hope as she and her husband prayed through a crushing load of family crises, piling up in just six months.

She offers some valuable lessons in persevering prayer as she tells her story in her book Your Powerful Prayers: Reaching the Heart of God with a Bold and Humble Faith.

During that six-month period, her son's marriage broke up, a niece had a life-threatening tubing accident, doctors discovered 30 cancerous tumours in her brother's bladder, another brother's son was admitted to hospital with ulcerative colitis, and finally her brother-in-law was rushed to hospital with inoperable cancer in his stomach.

All this happened just after Larson and her husband jointly launched a special prayer effort, calling on God to act powerfully in six areas of their lives - their children, their extended family, their community, the persecuted, their ministry and their finances.

Many people would be so shaken by the series of family problems that prayer would take a back seat.  But not Susie Larson and her husband.

"Though I went to work every day to do my live talk show, I always felt on the verge of tears, as my heart grieved over so many things," Larson says.  "And yet, as Kev and I worked our way through our prayer list every day and every night, we felt more grounded in Christ than ever."

There came a time when Larson was so broken-hearted during this period that she put herself "in a Jesus-eclipse".

"I took my weary self and drew ever closer to Jesus.  I scooted up so close to him that my only heart's cry was for more of him in me.  I knew I couldn't manage all that weighed so heavily on me, so I gave him every shred of it.  I gave him the deep burdens that plagued our family."

She did the same with the problems of her ministry.  In essence, "I stopped praying about everything and anything except him".

But there was one more stage in this prayer journey.

She interviewed singer-songwriter Wintley Phipps who told her of chance encounters he had which turned out to be designed by God to impact lives for Jesus.

"Nothing happens by chance," Phipps told Larson, "and if we make ourselves available to the Lord, he'll open doors and connect us with people we would never otherwise meet.  He wants to open doors and provide opportunities to use us for his grand purpose."

God wants us to be transformed into the image of Christ, Phipps said. And he uses these opportunities to help us on the way.

So Larson realized that "it was time for me to get back in the game".  She needed to go beyond seeking Jesus' protection to walking the path he had chosen for her.

The author says she believes God is good and that we will find out in eternity all the answers to the questions that puzzle us now.

But already she has seen what God is doing in her family. 

Her son Jordan is becoming the man of God she and her husband prayed he would be and "quite a number of our nieces and nephews have engaged their faith on a deeper level".

One nephew sent her a text message: "Hey, Auntie Susie, this is your favourite nephew.  I just wanted to tell you that I've decided to trust God with my life.  I got down on my knees at work and surrendered my life to Christ.  I just wanted you to know."

"As a family, we are clinging to God's promises on a whole new level," Larson writes.  "And guess what? We're. Still. Standing."

The lesson I take from this for myself and for anyone overcome with sadness or worry?  Hang in there! 

God will work some good out of the hardest circumstances.

"Faithless" prayers matter

Don't discount so-called "faithless" prayers.  They matter.

It's true that Jesus wants the faith of his followers to grow.  It's true that he places great emphasis on faith.

But that doesn't mean that God doesn't hear and answer prayers where faith is weak.

A case in point is John Wimber's experience at the outset of his renowned healing prayer ministry.

He had launched a healing prayer ministry at his California church and for 10 months he and others prayed unsuccessfully for healing of people with illnesses.  In his book Power Healing, he writes that he and other members of the prayer team became deeply discouraged.

Finally, he cried out to God: "You tell us to believe in healing and pray for healing, but you're not doing anything.  It's not fair!"

The very next morning, a member of his congregation asked him to rush over and pray for his sick wife.  He arrived at the house and groaned inwardly when he saw the man's wife.  She had a bad fever and her face was red and swollen.

"I walked over to her and laid hands on her, mumbled a faithless prayer," he writes, "and then I turned around and began explaining to her husband why some people do not get healed - a talk that I had perfected during the previous 10 months."

Then, he noticed the husband was grinning.  He whirled around to see the woman out of bed.

Astonished, he asked her what happened and she replied: "I'm well. You healed me.  Would you like to stay for some coffee or breakfast?"

It turned out to be the first step in a world-wide healing prayer ministry.

Wimber's experience teaches me that God is willing to act if we are willing to turn to him in humble submission.  In fact, Wimber's prayer was not exactly "faithless".  He had enough faith in God to turn to him once again despite many failures in healing prayer.

I realize that it is impossible to understand everything about prayer and why one prayer is answered "Yes" and another is not.

I am encouraged by the passage in Mark 9 where a father asks Jesus to heal his son of a deaf and mute spirit.  The spirit had caused his son to have a seizure and fall to the ground, foaming at the mouth.

The father asks Jesus to take pity on him and his son if he can do anything.

Jesus replies: "'If you can?'  Everything is possible for one who believes."

The father declares: "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!"

And then Jesus heals the boy.

I believe Jesus answered the father's request for a strengthened faith.

 But even a teensy-weensy bit of faith may be enough to see a wonderful answer from the Lord.

So, we must never stop praying.

God's prayer army

Sometimes, I like to think of Christians as God's prayer army on earth.

An army protects the people and invades enemy territory.

In the same sense, Christian prayer warriors call on God to advance his kingdom by bringing people to faith in Christ.  And they battle to fight off Satan's attempts to afflict and destroy believers and the church.

Christ commissioned us to preach the good news and make disciples of people in all nations (Matthew 28:18-20).  That is advancing God's kingdom in enemy territory.  Prayer plays a major role in that effort.

As well, the apostle John tells us in 1 John 3:8 that "the Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil".  Satan was defeated when Jesus died for our sins on the cross and rose again.  But the devil remains active and works to undermine Christians physically and spiritually.

Here, prayer is vital in protecting believers, bringing healing from physical and spiritual wounds, and denying Satan a foothold in our lives.

The apostle Paul makes clear in Ephesians 6 that our real enemies as believers are unseen dark powers under the authority of Satan (Ephesians 6:12).  He urges us to put on spiritual armour such as the Word of God and to "pray in the Spirit at all times and in every occasion" to fight demonic attacks.

While Jesus was on earth, he cast out demons, healed people, and preached the gospel.  He spent long hours in prayer before going out among the crowds to speak and bring healing.

In my eyes, the commander of this prayer army is God.  He sets out the plan of attack and defence and assigns us as his soldiers to our specific tasks.

Our duty as individual warriors is to listen to God and follow his directions.  Some may be called to leadership roles, identifying targets given them by the Lord and leading groups in prayer to achieve those ends.

All armies need trained soldiers.  So, some prayer warriors can be tasked to train others in the great calling of prayer.

And every believer must remember that battles are won when warriors look out for each other.  When we see fellow believers are suffering, we must come to their aid - in prayer and in other ways.

This picture of an army of God helps me visualize the much bigger picture of God's eternal plan.

I may be just one person in one city.  But I am part of a great army of believing prayer warriors around the world, praying that God's will will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Satan cannot stop God's children if we take up our prayer assignments - and pray.

Never give up

We must never stop praying for our country.

It's easy to get discouraged from praying for our country when we look around us.  Society in the West seems to be going from bad to worse. 

Yet that's probably the best time to pray. God has moved with power when the outlook is dark.

The Bible makes clear that God wants us to pray for our people.  And he will answer.

His answers don't always come in our timeframe.  But they do come.

The children of Israel suffered 400 years in slavery in Egypt before God intervened to free them (Acts 7).  I'm sure many despaired of freedom and stopped praying with faith in that long period.  Yet many others did pray.

Even Moses was surprised when God spoke from a burning bush in the wilderness of Midian and announced: "I have certainly seen the oppression of my people in Egypt.  I have heard their cries of distress because of their harsh slave drivers."  (Exodus 3)

Then, the Lord nominated Moses to lead the people to freedom.  It was a task Moses felt was impossible, but he reluctantly took a faith step to obey God.  And he began a time of prayerful reliance on God that achieved the impossible.

On the other hand, God intervened immediately and miraculously in 2 Chronicles 20 when the vast armies of Moab threatened to overrun the people of Judah.  After King Jehoshaphat and the people of Judah prayed for help, the Lord threw the enemy into confusion and defeat when the army of Judah marched out praising God.  God's people won without striking a blow.

The story of the Israelites in the Old Testament is sprinkled with times when God's people were overcome by enemies and later rebounded when they turned back to the Lord.

So bad times can lead to good - if God's people pray.

God pointed out to Solomon in a vision in 2 Chronicles 7 that he would heal the land of Israel if his people turned back to the Lord after rejecting him for a period of time.  In verse 14, he says the Israelites must humble themselves, repent and pray as steps to restoration.

Repentance means turning back to the Lord and away from the sin of rejecting God.

The history of the Israelites after Solomon's reign underscores the truth of that promise.

Indeed, modern Christian history also demonstrates this truth.  The Wesleyan revival in Britain broke out when conditions in that country were as seriously wrong as they were in France in the mid-1700s.  Prayer and turning back to God changed the course of British history while France descended into revolution.

In Luke 18, Luke records Jesus' parable of the persistent widow who plagued the unjust judge until she obtained the justice she sought.  Luke says the reason he told this story to his disciples is that "they should always pray and never give up".

Good advice for us, too.