When we're on the road we listen to tapes and read a lot. One set of tapes we listened to were from Dee Brestin, the speaker for the Cole Women's Ministries Conference in 1997. (She'll also speak to the IMM Pastors Wives Dinner.) One thing she said as she related an incident from her own life had to do with prayer. Dee was talking to God about something extremely important to her and the well-being of another. Her prayer as she told it went something like this: "Dear Father God, You know how hurtful it would be to her if I was not there for this once-in-a-lifetime event. Could you please work it out that I would be called to come on the one week I don't have a speaking responsibility, unless You have a better idea."
Unless You have a better idea. At that point I started thinking about the events that come into my life or the life of someone I care deeply about. I started thinking about the way I analyze and pray about them.
Am I quick to say, "Well, Lord, I sure didn't expect or want this, but I guess You had a better idea!" Not just an idea that might work or that I must adjust to, but a BETTER IDEA. Is this my perspective on His good wisdom and love? Or do I more often become His counselor and tell Him how everything should go so that I'm sure to have the life of my dreams? Do I present Him requests held in open hands with childlike faith or do I badger Him with childish demands? I didn't have to think too long before I faced the fact that I have lots of room to grow both in my immediate response to unplanned and difficult events and to the way I pray about things.
Prayer is a mystery but one foundational principle is that my Father knows perfectly the greater good. I don't just need a God to make me comfortable. As Donald McCullough puts it, "We need a Great Physician with perfect knowledge of the good, passionate love that wills it, and adequate power to accomplish it." When I make my requests do I consider and rely on the reality that our Father just might have a better idea? Jesus understood this. Do I?
Elisabeth Elliot asks, "Does our faith rest on having prayers answered as we think they should be answered, or does it rest on that mighty love that went down into death for us? We can't really tell where it rests, can we, until we're in real trouble." Do I use prayer to try to influence God and manipulate Him into getting my way, the way I would get water from a pump by working the handle longer and harder? Or do I see prayer as a way "to draw me into God's involvement in the brokenness of the world on God's terms, not [mine]"as Mulholland says.
Pray for me. I want to face today and tomorrow with a growing conviction that if things happen in ways I would never have planned God has a BETTER IDEA. I want to offer my prayer requests with the heartfelt caveat, "unless You have a better idea." Psalm 131 holds out to us the peaceful, composed posture of a weaned child at rest if we can say--
O Lord, my heart is not proud nor haughty my eyes.Below are two books we have both recently read and found immensely helpful. I've quoted from each above.
I have not gone after things too great nor marvels beyond me.
Truly I have set my soul in silence and peace.
Invitation To A Journey: A Road Map for Spiritual Formation by Robert Mulholland, InterVarsity Press, 1993.
The Trivialization of God: The Dangerous Illusion Of A Manageable Deity
by Donald McCullough, NavPress, 1995.
Carolyn Roper
August 1996