By Hal Green
Pondering Prayer
It is important to be aware of your expectations about prayer. It is also important to beware of them. We all have expectations about many things, from the weather to the behavior of loved ones. Much of our daily life is preceded by and lived through the prism of, and silently evaluated by, our expectations. It has been said that, “Relationships go awry when you either don’t get what you expected or what you get, you did not expect.”
This is the case regarding your relationship with God, including your prayer life. As you have developed an attitude toward God over time, you have also developed expectations regarding what might happen during and as the consequence of prayer.
Speaking for myself, I find it easy to set the bar either too high or too low regarding what I hope for and expect from this or that prayer. I will never forget a “word of the Lord” that came to me back in 1980, when I was becoming doubtful and down about the apparent direction my life was taking. I did not realize I was actually praying until experiencing God’s unexpected “voiceless echo”: “Expect less, accept more.”
That does not mean to give up your expectations regarding what you want out of your faith life; it means to focus more on accepting and appreciating what you already have, rather than what you do not have but want. As psychologist Abraham Maslow said, “We tend to undervalue what we have, and overvalue what we do not have.”
Approach prayer with faith, hope, perseverance and acceptance. Hold on tightly to all four of these. Focus your faith on what you are asking, rather than your doubts about receiving. If God seems not to be answering your prayer (at least in the way you want), do not lose hope, which must always be in God rather than this or that prayer outcome. Jesus instructed us: “Pray always and do not lose heart” (Luke 18:1). Show God through your perseverance what is really important to you.
Remember, all prayer needs to conclude with acceptance, which Jesus modeled for us in the garden of Gethsemane. He concluded his passionate prayer with “My Father . . . your will be done” (Matt 26:42).
Do you have unanswered questions about prayer? I certainly do. I hope to ask God, respectfully, to answer them when I get to the other side, at least to the extent that I can understand God’s possible answers.
I have prayed for and with persons across more than four decades. I have witnessed both healing miracles and apparent unanswered endings. The one thing I absolutely will not do is give up on God or on prayer. Pushing aside expectations, I continue to press on to pray for God to be God manifestly among us. I believe that, as the Beatles song put it, “there will be an answer, let it be.” In the meantime, trust God and keep on praying.
(Hal Green, Ph.D., is author of Pray This Way to Connect with God. You can contact him at drhalgreen@gmail.com.)
