Honest Prayers

We discussed the topic of prayer tonight in small group, and one of the questions we ended up discussing was how we struggled with knowing which of two prayers to pray – the one where we pray for what we want and desire in a particular situation, or the one where we pray to God for faith and strength to handle the situation no matter the outcome. There exists a tension in the decision between these two prayers – a seeming tension between ‘my will be done’ versus ‘God’s will be done’, a tension between the active and passive role in a situation.

I believe the tension between these two types of prayers points to a realization of what prayer is for. One of the purposes of prayer is to move our hearts from where it’s currently at to where it should be at. What I mean is, prayer often starts with the struggle between desperately wanting what we desire to come true and wanting to want God’s will despite our desires. And I think God intends for our prayers and soul wrestlings to draw us into the presence of God in such a way that we can balance both – that we can be honest of what it is we want and also be honest when asking for His will to be done. Jesus models this state of prayer in his prayer at Gethsemane – within the same prayer he asks that the cup be taken away and that God’s will be done, and he fully meant both. And God answered.

One of the most defining moments in my prayer life also happens to be one of the defining moments of my relationship with Vinayak. I was at home for spring break, and during one of my quiet times when I was praying for our relationship, I started to really question myself and question God if I had made the right decision in continually pursuing this relationship despite the judgment and questioning I’d been often challenged with. I questioned if I had become so biased by my feelings for him that I had become blinded to what God was actually doing and was instead insisting on making something happen that was just not meant to be. I had prayed that he’d stayed in the Bay area for MBA school, and instead he ended up in Chicago. We had prayed so hard that he’d be offered a summer internship in SF, and instead he was offered one in Chicago and was informed they had no open spots in the SF office. What if in all my prayers about asking God for clarity on our relationship, these had been answers and clear signs of where the relationship was headed? What if one day God says to me “Christine, I kept taking him from you and placing him far, and you kept clinging to the relationship, and you kept thinking and insisting to others that you had a clear idea of where I was taking you, but you really just saw everything the way you wanted to see it”? This terrified me; I’ve always been a proponent of being honest and truthful with oneself and letting the consequences be what they may, and suddenly I was realizing I might have been living in an illusion all along. And so I prayed one of the most difficult prayers I’d prayed during our relationship – I was honest with God about my hopes and dreams for the relationship, but I also prayed that I would really gain clarity, not be biased, and would be open and at peace to what God may say to me, even if it meant that I would need to give up the relationship because it was not the best for him and me. It was a difficult prayer, but I left feeling both more honest and at peace with God, because I had reached the state where I was truthful about my heart’s desire but I was also fully at peace and ready to face whatever may be the outcome. Meanwhile, Vinayak didn’t know anything about this prayer.

I was woken up early the next morning with a call from Vinayak. He excitedly told me that his internship had just called him to tell him that a spot opened up in the SF office and to ask him whether he’d want it. He had of course agreed. This experience floored me. Vinayak getting an internship in SF didn’t mean that our relationship would definitely work out, but what it meant was God had heard, had shown up, and had answered me, and that was enough. This has become a defining point in my prayer life not because it was an answered prayer request or because I had received a small confirmation that God was still working in the midst of our relationship, but because I had finally experienced the peace and freedom that comes when one is able to move within and through prayer from a state of desperateness to a state of balancing honest desire with honest ‘Thy will be done’ and the ecstasy of having that tension dissolve when God answers yes and yes to your heart’s desire and to His will being done in your life.