A Powerful Prayer
“Dear God, please make it snow tomorrow. But if that’s not what you want, please help me to be okay with that. Amen.”
That was a prayer said by my son quite a few years ago when he was 5-years-old.
Prayer is an amazingly powerful gift that we have as believers. We can come before God Almighty and ask of Him our requests. Yet I think it is highly under-used among Christians. The reasons for this are probably many, but I believe one of them is we have a misconception regarding how we should pray. We tend to make it harder and more complicated than it needs to be.
I know I have been guilty of this. I mean, God is Creator of the universe. He is God! It is intimidating to come and tell him what I want or need! Plus, He is a “busy” God. Some things I may want are inconsequential and insignificant compared to things others in the world need.
But the Lord used the sweet simple prayer above to remind me of just how simple prayer really is. In that three-sentence prayer, God taught me three solid truths.
1.Nothing is too small or insignificant to talk about to God.
My son really wanted it to snow. He loved playing in it, and he thought that the next day it would be a fun thing to do. So he didn’t hesitate one bit to ask God for what he wanted. In the grand scheme of things, it didn’t really matter if it snowed or not. But it was a desire on his heart and he knew that God could make it happen, so he asked.
The same should be for me as well. Even if I think that praying about something small - like to find missing keys - is silly compared to those praying for healing from cancer or deliverance from a terrible situation. Yet God still cares. He tells us in the Bible that He takes care of even the little sparrow (Matthew 6:26), that He knows the number of hairs on our head (Luke 12:7). If He cares to take notice of those small things, He surely cares about the “little” things that you may have on your heart.
2. God’s answer may not always be what I want.
My son knew that he wanted it to snow, but he also recognized that may not be in God’s plan. His young 5-year-old heart acknowledged that God’s plans are not always our plans, and His ways are not always our ways. (Isaiah 55:8-9)
This is a hard one for us to swallow. We all have our ideal of how we want the next day, week, and month to go. We know what we envision for our life. But sometimes that doesn’t match up with what God sees (spoiler alert - it often doesn’t match up!). God is not bound by time, which means He sees the past, present, and future all at the same time. He knows what is to come. Sometimes what we want to happen now may not line up with what needs to happen, and therefore His answer will be “no.” He sees the entire picture while we only see one small, tiny piece. The sooner we recognize that His thoughts are so much higher than ours, the easier it will be when things don’t go our way.
Which leads me to the next lesson I learned from that prayer...
3. I need help to accept when God does not answer the way I want.
If we went through the next day and it didn’t snow, my son knew he would be disappointed. He knew he would struggle and be sad. And he knew that he would need help to be content with the fact that he didn’t get what he wanted.
This is another hard one to accept. When God says “no” to what we ask for, or even “not now,” we get frustrated, disappointed, angry, or even bitter. Believe me, I know.
I have always had issues with my health, but in 2016 it took a turn for the worse and walking became a struggle. Each day, I saw my legs slowly stop working, and I was terrified. I asked, pleaded, and begged for God to bring the strength back to my legs, to improve my walking. Every single day I prayed that way. And every single day I would look for signs that He was answering that prayer with a “yes.”
But instead of improvement and strength return, I saw the strength slowly wane. Until one day, it was gone. I could no longer stand, let alone walk. God’s answer was “no” (or perhaps, it was and still is “not yet” - that remains to be seen). That was (and often still is) hard to accept. In my own strength I can’t handle it very well. But with the Lord’s strength, I can get out of bed each day and do what I need to do, even though it may be hard.
It’s difficult to accept not getting what we want - whether it is big or small. We all like to get our way. So our natural human tendency is to react in the wrong way. We struggle with the “why” of God’s ways. In and of ourselves, we can’t properly deal with the disappointment. Even my 5-year-old knew that. And so we need strength greater than ourselves to help us deal with it properly. It is through the Lord’s strength that we can say like Jesus said in the garden, “Not my will but thine (Luke 22:42).” Oh, what an incredibly hard thing to pray, but completely and utterly freeing when you do!
Prayer is a powerful gift - one we should take full advantage of - and often. It isn’t hard, it doesn’t have to be complicated. While there are times we should spend quite a while seeking the Lord’s face over a tough matter, there are other times when we can bring even the simplest requests to Him - because He cares about it all. We also need to approach prayer with the knowledge that God may not always give us what we want, but that He is able to help us work through the answer that we get.
It was a simple prayer spoken with the faith of a child. But the truths it taught me will stick with me for the rest of my life. It was a simple powerful prayer.
Oh, and in case anyone is wondering - it did snow the next day (we live in Canada, after all), and my son did get to enjoy a day of having fun playing in it.