Prayers and Punctuation

Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy.  May your Kingdom come soon.  May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.  Give us today the food we need, and forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us.  And don’t let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one.  Matthew 6:9-13 NLT 

Chances are, if you are a Christian, you have at some point memorized these scripture verses.  This was the example that Jesus gave his disciples in Matthew as a model for all his followers to use as a pattern for prayer.  As a disciple of Jesus, are you following the prayer model of our Lord and Savior, or have you drifted away from this precious gift of communication with our Heavenly Father?  It’s so easy to fall into passive prayer patterns.  Sometimes you may recite prayers more as a repetitive duty, taking for granted Whose presence you stand in. Or maybe you feel as though your prayers are bouncing back off Heaven’s Gates because requests go unanswered, and you just give up.  Sadly, I know I have been guilty of both at different times in my life, but God’s Word tells us in Colossians 4:2, “Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.”  Those are not passive words but require action on our part.

“Quotation Marks” Being raised Lutheran, the Lord’s Prayer was one of the first memorizations in catechism class.  Every Sunday, as a congregation, those red-letter words would echo throughout the sanctuary between the stained-glass windows and amid worn wooden church pews. But I was merely reciting those words at that time, never comprehending the relational part of this vital communication privilege.  I was speaking to the Holy Creator, Jesus’ Father, MY Father.  I was asking for His will to be done on earth, but did I truly mean that? Did I really crave His will or my own selfish desires?  I was requesting daily bread - the same manna He provided to meet the needs of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness after delivering them from Egyptian slavery by parting the Red Sea with Moses’ raised staff. But was my hunger satisfied with what he provided, or did I desire more, just like the Israelites who seemed to have forgotten previous, undeniable miracles?  I was requesting forgiveness for my sins from the God who willingly sacrificed His One and Only Son, Who paid my debt in full so that I could have a relationship with him.  But did I truly repent?  Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection opened the door for communication with our Heavenly Father, but was that conversation one-way or two?  Or what happens to those lines of communication with our Heavenly Father when passionate pleas are prayed in desperation, only to be answered with periods, exclamation points, question marks, or commas?

Periods. – Have you ever prayed and made requests to your Father, and He answered with a definitive yes or no? The answer is clear.  PERIOD.  There have been many incidents in my life when I knew I had clear answers to specific prayers.  1 John 5:14-15 says, “This is the confidence we have in approaching God:  that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us – whatever we ask – we know that we have what we asked of Him.”   Don’t be misled by these verses, though.  God is not a genie of whom we can make a request, and He grants us everything we ask for.  Many choose to ignore the four vital words embedded in this promise, “according to His Will.”  God is omniscient; He knows our stories before conception until our final breaths.  He knows His will always trump our requests.  His ways are much higher than ours, and He knows exactly what we need to bring Him glory.  In Isaiah 55:8-9, we read, “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts, says the LORD.  And My ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.  For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so My ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.”  Maybe, just maybe, those clear answers are for our good and His glory, even if they are not the answers we were looking for.

Exclamation Points! – In December of 2007, my husband, Brent, was at his annual cardiologist appointment.  He was born with a heart defect and had already undergone two open-heart surgeries before graduating high school to correct his aortic valve.  Due to this issue, he had to have his blood drawn monthly to make sure it wasn’t too thick or too thin to prevent clotting or excessive bleeding.  Needless to say, because of the lifetime of the doctor visits, he had an aversion to all things medical!   But at this appointment in 2007, he requested a test to check for any build-up of plaque – miracle number one - HE requested a test, not the doctor!  The results that followed were startling.  He had no plaque build-up, but the test showed an unusual “shadow” on his heart.  He was sent for a cardiac MRI, which showed an aneurysm on his heart the size of a knuckle.  Another miracle!  Had he not requested this test, the aneurysm may have never been detected.  Five days later, he was undergoing open heart surgery number three to repair the aneurysm and replace the aortic valve again.  During those five days, our family prayed for God to intervene and restore his heart.  Our life group at church literally encircled us, laid hands on us, and prayed over us for a miracle.  We claimed Psalms 51:10, “Create in me a clean heart, O God.  Renew a loyal spirit within me.”  After what seemed like an eternity in the St. Joseph’s waiting room, the doctor met with us to give us the news of miracle number three!  He had made it through the surgery, but the aneurysm had grown to the size of a fist, A FIST!  They were able to remove the aneurysm, replace the aortic valve again, and repair another area of his heart as well.  We witnessed scripture literally leaping off the pages as God performed Ephesians 3:20-21 right in front of our eyes, “Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to His power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”  AMEN!!

Question Marks? – For the next ten years, we lived our lives differently.  We had witnessed the Hand of God in action.  We had seen Him move the proverbial mountain.  But then came the question mark moment in my life.  We had just celebrated his 10-year anniversary from his open heart surgery, as well as our 20-year wedding anniversary.  The phone rang.  My heart sank.  “Honey, I’m pulled over on the side of the road.  I can’t see.  My head is killing me.”  I tried to stay positive while I ran through the house, heading out the door to find him. Surely this was one of his debilitating migraines he was experiencing.  He will be ok.  Lord, just let me get to him.  My thoughts raced.  All I knew is that he was on Hwy 16 on his way home from work.  My cell phone never works on that stretch of 16, but “somehow” I was able to remain on the phone with him the entire drive.  The next two days are still a blur in my memory.  An ambulance rushed him to the hospital, only to discover a brain bleed from an apparent stroke.  Lifeflight flew him to another hospital for emergency surgery to try to stop the bleeding and release the pressure.  Surrounded by family and friends once again, prayers were being lifted non-stop for another miracle.  But this time our miracle didn’t come.  Two days later, my husband was in the arms of Jesus. “WHY, GOD?  You answered our prayers before.  Why did you take my husband?  Why did you leave our children without a father?  Why did you abandon us?  WHY, WHY, WHY?”  There are times in our lives when the prayers we lift leave us in puddles of tears with “Whys” deafening our minds, questioning our faith, and devastating our cores.  It is in those times that our faith is tested beyond what we humanly can comprehend.  We want to believe that God is good and that he is our loving Father, but there are times questions will remain unanswered.  As difficult as it is to trust someone when you feel that they have hurt you or abandoned you, you can trust your Heavenly Father.  My favorite verses have always been Proverbs 3:5-6, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him and He will make your paths straight.”  I had to literally claim those verses day by day, sometimes even hour by hour, so much so that I even had it tattooed on my right wrist so that it would constantly remind me to trust in God’s sovereignty. Has it been easy? NO. Definitely not.  But He continues to show me through what I call his “God Winks” that He will never leave me, and He is still a good, good Father.  At Brent’s Celebration of Life service, Pastor Benny shared the gospe,l and over 40 people came to know Jesus that day!  There was a miracle after all – over 40 of them!  Will you trust Him in your question marks?

Commas – These are the unanswered prayers.  The pauses.  The wait.  God hears our prayers, but no answers come.  No change on the horizon.  No healing.  No exclamation points or periods. YET.  For over five years, I have been praying something specific for someone in my life.  I know I am praying my Father’s will because the Lord wants all to know Him.  1 Tim. 2:3-4, “This is good and pleases God our Savior, Who wants everyone to be saved and to understand the truth.”  So, I know what I am requesting is His will, but I must keep praying UNTIL.  Romans 12:12 declares, “Rejoice in our confident hope.  Be patient in trouble, and keep on praying.” Jesus even shares a parable with His disciples in Luke 18 about a widow (pretty ironic) that kept going to a judge with a plea, and the judge finally grants it.  Luke 18:1 and 7 reads, “Then Jesus told His disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up…And will not God bring about justice for His chosen ones, who cry out to Him day and night?”  This parable was about persisting in prayer, continuing to keep our requests before our Father.  God’s delays always have good reasons.  So even though I am still laying my request at His feet daily, I know He hears me.  He will answer in His perfect timing, and even when things go from bad to worse, He is faithful, and I must trust in His promises.  I follow a precious woman in ministry online, and to quote her, “I will not believe what I see; I will believe what He says.”  The wait is difficult, but His timing is divine.  And as Pastor Benny recently shared in a sermon, “Keep on Singing,” Ps. 40:1-3, I will let those verses be my anthem, “I waited patiently for the LORD to help me, and He turned to me and heard my cry.  He lifted me out of the pit of despair, out of the mud and mire.  He set my feet on solid ground and steadied me as I walked along.  He has given me a new song to sing, a hymn of praise to our God.  Many will see what He has done and be amazed.  They will put their trust in the LORD.”

Heavenly Father, thank You for punctuating our prayers - thank You for the example of how to pray, for yes and no answers, for doing exceedingly and abundantly more than we could imagine, for allowing us to ask questions when our faith is tested, and for Your perfect timing in all our petitions.  May we praise You in every storm that blows our way and keep on singing no matter how You answer.  May Your will be done, and may Your name always be kept Holy.  We pray this in Your Son’s Name, the Name above all Names, Jesus, Amen.