My post about Morning Weights and Prayers last week got me thinking about another lesson I have learned about praying. Questions about prayers are numerous; how to pray, when to pray, what is it okay to pray for? Type any of those questions into a internet search engine and hundreds upon hundreds of answers pop up, and in this post, I'm not trying to add to these answers, but to simply share with you one of my biggest struggles and what it helped me learn.
This time of year can be hard on me as it is the time of year when a lot of people come together to raise money for cancer and celebrate those who survived; it is also very near to my father's birthday. (For those of you new to this blog, bout three years ago I lost both my father and grandmother to cancer within eleven months of each other.) As those around me rally against cancer, I look back at my personal battle with the disease, and the thing my father told me a few months before he died stands out. I was very angry at the time, and I asked my father why he wasn't mad at God for bringing this upon him and not answering our pleas for healing. He calmly answered me by telling me,
"Glorydawn, God can't be put in a box for our convenience. He is not a vending machine that we can just put prayers into and get what we want out."
I thought what he said was ridiculous, we were all earnestly praying and trusting God to complete His will, which at the time I thought was to do a miracle and heal my father. My prayers weren't selfish! And I definitely wasn't treating God like a vending machine! With this way of thinking, naturally I was quite upset when my father died. I had done everything right, begged, pleaded and bargained; asked God to heal my father, to guide the doctors' hands. Why? Why did such a loving God cause the cancer to be unresponsive to treatment and for surgery to go wrong? Why? I like an enraged child shook, rattled, kicked and pounded on my God 'vending machine'.
Thank goodness, God has been patient with my demanding questions. And even though He hasn't shown me the answer to why, He has revealed some of His characteristics and feelings to me. In Hosea God says with a broken heart, "When I fed them, they were satisfied; when they were satisfied, they became proud; then they forgot me. [Their] love is like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears." (13:6 & 6:4). Jeremiah gives an account one of one of the times this happened. The people of Judah had prayed the 'perfect' prayer, saying exactly what they need to say in repentance and God looked into their hearts and saw that their love and repentance was not strong and true. (14:11- 15:1) The people of Judah were shocked that the Lord did not take their perfect prayer and return to them what they wanted, and when God told them that if even if they found the 'perfect' people to say the prayer for them He won't give them what they wanted, the people still didn't understand that it wasn't in their power to control God.As my father tried to teach me, and I what now understand, God is not a vending machine into which we can insert what we deem are 'perfect prayers' and then receive what we want, when we want it. There are no number combinations to punch in to turn on showers of blessings, and prayers aren't like coins we can insert into a lifeless machine. We have the opportunity to talk directly with an amazing God, and when we pray we can tell Him exactly how we feel without having to cover it with a mask in fear of offending Him.
I now spend my prayers, talking on a personal level with my Savior. I tell Him my worries, excitements and fears. And while I still ask for blessings, no longer stand around impatiently kicking a dead machine for the blessings I thought I paid for.
