The Paradox of Prayer

When I was a little girl, some friends of my aunt and uncle had a baby boy who had heart problems.  We prayed for that baby boy for months at every meal and every night before we went to bed.  Then, one day, my father broke the news to us: the little boy had died.  We attended the funeral, and the first hymn that was sung was “Great is Thy Faithfulness.”  I can still picture my elementary school self standing in the pew with my fists clenched and tears rolling down my cheeks, refusing to sing.  How could all these people be singing those words?  It wasn’t true!  God had heard us pray day and night and still hadn’t answered.  My father noticed my distress, and that night we talked.  He was never one to give a glossy Sunday School answer or to brush past the theological musings of his children, and he did his best to explain how he could still say that God is faithful, even though God had chosen to say “no” to our prayers.  Thus began a tumultuous journey (that I am still on!) to understand prayer.  

There is an inherent paradox to prayer that I struggle to grasp.  On the one hand is the truth running through the pages of Scripture that God is sovereign – He is all-powerful, all-knowing, and as the King of the universe, has the right to do whatever He pleases.  Nothing happens outside of His plan.  On the other hand is the idea repeated over and over, by both example and explicit instruction, that we should come before this King and implore, beseech, request, supplicate…all nice ways of saying “beg”.  We are told that God wants to hear our requests and that He answers our prayers.

In my experience, those who pray tend to overemphasize one of these two truths.  Some pray nothing but an emotionless “God’s will be done” or don’t even pray at all.  Theirs is a deterministic acceptance of whatever happens.  Others boldly tell God how things are going to be.  They seem to believe that God is beholden to them in some way.  While these are the extremes, you may see yourself leaning more toward one side or the other.

I could tell you story after story from my life of trying to understand this paradox, of wavering between these extremes.  I could use a concordance to begin listing every Bible reference to prayer and start unpacking all the truth therein to show how the whole of Scripture deals with the tension of a sovereign God who tells us to pray and says He will answer prayers.  While both of these approaches could be instructive, I think I can communicate my best understanding of prayer through one story from the Bible.  Isn’t it so often true that a simple narrative can teach us better than pages of propositional truth?

That story is the record of Jesus’ prayers immediately before He was arrested, tortured, and crucified.  It can be found in three of the gospels: Matthew 26:38-44, Mark 14:34-40, and Luke 22:41-46.  I’d like to draw attention to how Jesus prayed – after all, He should be a pretty good model, right?

• His emotional state.  “My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death.”  Grieved, distressed, very distressed, troubled, in agony.  Those are the words chosen to describe how Jesus was feeling.   
• His persistence.  Two of the narratives point out that He prayed the same prayer 3 times in a row, each time praying for long enough that His disciples fell asleep while waiting for Him! 
• His request.  Jesus asked God to find some way, any other way, to accomplish His redemptive plan.  He begged God to spare Him from that the next day held.  
• His submission. Jesus adds the following onto His request: “Not my will, but Yours be done.” 

Of the extremes above, I tend toward fatalism - God knows what I want, He is all-powerful, and He doesn’t (usually) intervene miraculously.  Why waste all that emotional energy begging Him for something He probably won’t give me?  And yet if I have a right to be fatalistic, Jesus had even more of a right.  After all, He was there with God the Father before time began as they laid out their plan to redeem humanity.  He KNEW there wasn’t any other way.  He KNEW the answer to His prayer was no.  And yet He still prayed it.  Over and over.  For a long time.  Sweating with agony.  How dare I, one who does not have the mind of God, refuse to beg and plead, try to avoid being distressed in prayer?  If God the Son prayed with this kind of emotional intensity, with this much willingness to bare His heart, with this much illogical humanness, who am I to do less?

Jesus’ example also corrects the other extreme.  While begging, He did not demand.  And if anyone has a right to demand something of God, He does.  While asking over and over for His heart’s desire, He did not hang His hopes on receiving it.  He knew He would not.  Plus, He added that phrase "Not my will but Yours" at the end of His prayer.  If God the Son prayed with this kind of humble submission to the will of God, surely I must do so as well.

So, distress with trust.  Longing with acceptance.  Begging with submission.  Hoping and wishing with the full knowledge that the answer could be no, and resting in that answer.  It’s still a paradox, but at least I have a picture of One who prayed as I should pray.  If He could hold that much pain and that much peace in His heart at once, maybe I can too.