The following meditation was written by Dr. Leo S. Thorne, retired associate general secretary for mission resource development for the American Baptists Churches USA.
“Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.’” Luke 11:1
When I served as a senior pastor in Kansas City, Missouri, a parishioner asked me a question that had been troubling her for a while: “How long should I continue praying about a request?” I sensed urgency and seriousness in her voice. I affirmed her interest in this important matter of prayer, and we fell into an enlightening conversation. Let me place her question aside and ask if you have questions or concerns about your own prayer relationship with God.
You may be asking: Why does God take so long at times to answer my prayers? Truth be told, I am not sure that anyone can tell us how prayer works; much about prayer remains a mystery. But this we know. The Apostle Paul reminds us in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 to “pray without ceasing.” (KJV) When we visit our local supermarket, we often do an expiration-date-check on some of the products we intend to purchase. Prayers do not come with an expiration date for an answer. You see, the heart that has wisely made prayer the indispensable spiritual food for its daily sustenance never stops praying. Prayer becomes the habit of the heart. It is not that other activities in our lives stop receiving attention; it is more that prayer becomes our necessary energy for healthy spiritual wholeness.
By practice, though we may never become perfect at it, the holy work of prayer accompanies our power walking, our driving or our being driven, our banking transactions, our silent reflection in navigating office politics, our taking the kids to and from school, our companion at the checkout line, our joy in the morning after a night of weeping. Our tapestry of life becomes intertwined with communication with God. Prayer helps to bring our hearts in alignment with God’s time and God’s purpose for our lives.
Your concern about prayer may be that as you are praying you have in mind a preconceived answer, and this is the answer you want God to immediately affirm. But it may be that in God’s seeming delay, God is tampering with your patience, or impatience. One of the helpful quotes accompanying me since my teenage years comes from Act 2, Scene 3, of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The playwright has the wise Friar Lawrence speak this line of counsel to the love-struck Romeo: “Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.”[1] The Friar was seeing disaster ahead for the passion-driven young lovers.
It just may be that God’s grace is nudging you to not be so urgent in seeking a specific answer, but to examine and adjust your request. The Revised Standard Version of the Bible expresses in this way a helpful thought from Psalm 27:14: “Wait for the Lord, be strong, and let your heart take courage, yea, wait for the Lord.” Tap the brakes, slow down, wait for God. Examine the heart. Or, as a dear pastor would often tell his congregation: “Let go and let God adjust your prayer perspective.” The Rev. William Sloane Coffin offers this thought: “The longest, the most arduous trip in the world, is the journey from the head to the heart.”[2]
How long should I continue praying for a request or waiting for God’s answer? If prayer at its core is about seeking to develop a one-to-one relationship with our all-loving and all-wise God, it seems that the act of praying is our primary objective. Some years ago, the Greyhound Bus Company employed a catchy marketing phrase to encourage us to leave our cars and allow their buses to take the stress out of driving: “Go Greyhound and leave the driving to us.”
At the center of our prayer relationship lies the question: Who occupies the driver’s seat in our lives? The answer that echoes back, front, and center addresses our trust level in our God. A trust-filled way of developing a prayer relationship with our God invites us to throw open widely the doors of our heart and mind and surrender to the leadership of God in our lives, even when the mind and heart do not now get it. The humble act of building a continuous relationship with God through prayer becomes more important than when God answers.
Joy,
[1] Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. Edited by Dympna Callaghan. 3rd ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 2018.
[2] Coffin, William Sloane, Jr. The Courage to Love. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1982, 20.
