While compassion moves us to pray for our loved ones to be delivered from pain and failure, seeking their deliverance rather than their perseverance is a short sighted perspective. Actually, praying for the worst in someone’s life may be the truest act of friendship or love.
Oswald Chambers rocks the boat of love with his devotional on our need to decrease in the lives of others, so the Lord may be exalted in their eyes: that God may be the wind in their sails. Though it goes against our instinct to want to help or fix our loved one’s problems, sometimes it is imperative to their salvation or spiritual growth to endure the travesties of life: for we are all refined through the fire.
The vast trials and tribulations we suffer may be the very instruments God purposes to use for His glory. Chambers puts it this way; “And when you begin to see that person in the middle of a difficult and painful struggle, don’t try to prevent it, but pray that his difficulty will grow even ten times stronger, until no power on earth or in hell could hold him away from Jesus Christ.”
This perspective hit me some time ago when a friend asked me to begin praying for her child. This young adult was deeply entrenched in a sinful lifestyle and was rejecting the family upbringing of Christianity. Week by week her child drifted farther and farther away, carried off by the lusts of the flesh into the deepest and darkest waters. Unwilling to allow the Spirit of God to direct life, the headstrong and deceived soul dropped their sail, becoming vulnerable to the terrors of the sea: a loving mother’s heart, broken and desperate left in her child’s wake.
No amount of input would penetrate the hardened heart. Prayer was our hope. We realized if waters were smooth and skies were sunny and clear, what need would there be for God? Repentance would likely come through peril and pain. So we vowed to pray for storms and rough waters to tip the boat, knowing we would be there to extend comfort and support. We sought the Lord’s wrath to awaken a godly fear and awe in a rebellious heart. Life and limb were willing sacrifices for redemption. For what good was a body if the soul was doomed for hell.
How true are these words of Chambers; "You may often have to watch Jesus Christ wreck a life before He saves it". The Lord's own words testify to His righteous purpose in our lives; "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword...anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me..." (Matthew 10:34-37NIV).
People don’t like to watch someone suffer or struggle. Sometimes it is out of compassion, often it is because we transfer their pain to ourselves, and it makes us feel uncomfortable. Truthfully, people avoid discomfort at all costs. This is why those who risk their own lives to help others, or endure hardship and pain for the good of others, are heroes in our eyes. They do what most are not willing to do.
Watching someone we love struggle is extremely difficult, seeing our children suffer is agonizing. Yet, we should be more uncomfortable witnessing someone go to hell than suffer the pains of this world: for life is but a flash compared to an eternity of horror.
Therefore, our prayers for those lost and struggling with strongholds should be focused on God’s purpose rather than deliverance. Likewise, we need to apply this same concept to our own life: praying for the Lord to inflict you if necessary to help you break free from sinful patterns and practices. The adage; “no pain, no gain” is a spiritual principle. We must die upon the cross of Christ to be resurrected with Jesus into a new life and eternity.
Unfortunately, the term, “your will…not mine,” has become a silly tag on to our prayers of deliverance. Only after an outpouring of our desires and our wants in prayer do we consider what God desires. How would lives be transformed if only we would have the courage and selflessness to pray for the Lord’s refining fires in our lives? What miracles would we see? Most important what glory would be God’s?
Father, grant us the strength to follow you through the valley of death with our hands holding fast to your love and goodness. Bless us with the ability to see you in the fiery trials of life . May our prayers for others reveal our trust in you to save those lost at sea by whatever means. We ask hard hearts would throw away their oars, hoist their sail and make a tack into the wind: may they come under your guidance and remain eternally surrendered to your will.
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