Faith Works 9-1-18
Jeff Gill
A prayer intentionally incomplete
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Wiser pastors than I have pointed out the dramatic offer we make to God if we pray for ourselves the Lord's Prayer, and include the words "thy will be done."
Whether on earth or in heaven, to pray "thy will be done" is to put ourselves in the hands of God entirely. That's the pivot point of the well known prayer, and a hinge we tend not to focus on, looking ahead to what's on the other side of the door.
If we are truly praying "thy will be done," we're putting our faith in God, and we're stating our acceptance in advance of what will come, even before we know what it is. That's hard, unless we don't really mean it . . . in which case, they're just words we say.
Recently I've had a hatful of experiences that remind me of the need to have, at the very least, a different approach to prayer as petition. When we ask God for certain blessings, when we're making requests, there's a kind of request we could make that I don't think we often remember to ask for.
There are areas in my life where God has been remarkably faithful. I've been blessed with the ability to speak and preach and write and serve. That doesn't mean that the ideas or inspiration or messages just show up fully developed on command. They take time.
Likewise, my journey in ministry has gone from the shores of Lake Michigan to small country frame buildings to brick churches in, say, Newark, Ohio. I've always had a sense of where in general God wanted me to go, but often the next steps for getting there have been obscured, or even invisible.
What I've learned to pray for, and have to keep relearning to request in prayer, is a sense of confidence that the answer will come. Does that make sense? Do you see what I'm asking for? Not the clarity of "where will we move to next" but a holy sense of "there will be a place that will be right for us, and we will know it when that time comes."
There's a practical side to the theology behind this, as I read it. God has granted us freedom, a gift of grace to be part of creation; that freedom we can use to choose to follow God's highest desire for us, or we can use it to serve ourselves, and separate ourselves from God's intention . . . for a season. The tendency to choose for selfish reasons is what we call sin; the impetus to choose for heavenly purposes we call holiness. But we do choose.
And in every hard choice, I am rarely involved alone. There are others involved, other choices and choosers to take into account. Perhaps God can't show me a specific outcome no matter how sincerely I ask because there are other free souls at work to make their own choices, and God's path for me could be in one direction or another. Even in wrestling with a sermon, there's the possibility that God is ready to use the moment in one way or another depending on what certain hearers need to receive. I want an answer Tuesday, but God may want to see what someone is going to do with their life on Wednesday before giving me clearer guidance on Thursday.
What I can ask for, and what I do get more often than I deserve, is a sense of peace with the outcome. I can ask in my intercessions for the gift of confidence that the answer will come. In some of the hardest decisions of my life, the time when I felt the Lord's hand most directly on me was when I received the blessing of knowing that there would be a clear answer, one that would be right for me . . . and that this had to be enough.
And it was.
It's something I not only try to remember to ask for, but I want to help remind others about: not just to ask for an answer, a sign, a choice to be made, but to ask of heaven that I find peace in knowing that an answer will come, in God's good time. When I've gotten that, it's an impact like fireworks going off; when the answer comes, it can be downright anti-climactic – oh, yeah, right, of course.
But the peace of knowing "answers will come" passes all understanding.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he knows what silence sounds like in prayer, too. Tell him about your prayer practices at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
