There are several reasons why we do not pray—disappointed in and disillusioned with God, angry at and bitter toward God, loss of faith and loss of connection with God, etc.  Recently I heard another one that I had never heard of before; it’s from some folks who need medical treatment so costly that they dared not even pray for it.  It’s too out of reach.  I understand where they are at.  It’s not like they have no faith in God, even though we can see elements of it there. It is more personal than that; it’s having no faith in the goodness of humanity.  No one, or only a few, would want to help them out.  So, they dared not pray about it; they’re too sad to see this dark reality.

Hearing that I could’ve churned out Bible verse after Bible verse to remind them of God’s love and power.  I did not because they need no reminding; they’re people of faith and have for the last few years struggled with debilitating health issues.  I wanted to be sensitive to their predicament.  But there is another reason I didn’t.  You see, to a certain extent we should pray with a clear expectation—what it is we hope from God.  But I’ve learned that beyond that point—it is usually when what we hope for is too out of reach—we need not pray for that specific goal.  Instead, we surrender for God’s will to be done.  I call this Prayer of Gethsemane; it is where faith evolves from object-oriented to subject-oriented, where what matters is not the-what-we-want but the-who-we-trust, it is where we no longer swim to the shore, but we float and let the waves of God carry us.

In his book, With Christ in the School of Prayer, Andrew Murray makes a note about Jesus in Gethsemane, “It was in that “Father! not what I will,’ that He obtained the power for the ‘Father! I will.’“  We can never cease praying; how can we, children, stop talking to our Father?  We will always pray, but we do not always ask.  There’s time to swim, there’s time to float along to wherever He takes us.

Pastor Paul