Do We Ever Get a “Prayer Pass?”

This past week has been hard on this dog-mama.  My sweet 10-year-old Winnie couldn’t keep anything down for about three days which meant a trip to the emergency vet last Sunday morning.  I’ll spare you the majority of details, but my poor girl spent 5 days in the hospital with high blood pressure, GI issues, a possible leptospirosis bacterium, and most seriously, acute and/or chronic kidney disease.

It felt like virtually every update from the vets was more bad news.  Still not eating.  And yet somehow still regurgitating. Blood pressure still too high.  Numbers that had been improving now going back up.  Add to that a few visits to see her that had me leaving the hospital in tears because she looked so very pitiful.  All she wanted to do was crash in my arms.  The above picture is worth a thousand sad words.

Throughout this time, I had great support from friends who wanted to be kept posted on how she was doing.  Lots of messages of prayers being sent up on her and my behalf.  I absolutely felt this support.  A couple of my friends felt very strongly about praying for complete healing for Winnie. 

That led to a conversation about how we sometimes fail to trust God with big things, especially when the outlook doesn’t seem to support that. So our prayers can become pretty feeble and not necessarily worthy of an all-powerful God.

I had every intention of joining them in praying for big, seemingly impossible requests.  But truth be told, by mid-week, my tank was on empty, and I didn’t feel like I could pray those big prayers.

My thinking was, “I’ll let Friend 1 and Friend 2 handle those big prayers.  I just don’t have it in me.”  And I went back to my paltry little prayers that were essentially settling for anything, and mostly not even putting any real prayer effort into the circumstances.

Hence our title today.  Is it really OK to just check out of the prayer process?  That’s essentially what I was doing because I was weary and discouraged and so sad over what Winnie was going through.  I just didn’t have any prayers in me.

Ironically, I’m currently reading a devotional on my YouVersion Bible app entitled “Breakthrough Prayer” by Guillermo Maldonado (highly recommend).  On one particular day, these statements jumped off the page at me and straight into my heart. 

“Our flesh is weak; therefore most of the time, it doesn’t want to pray.  Yet if we want to see people’s lives transformed for Christ, we have to voluntarily submit our spirits to God and pray, regardless of what we ‘feel’ like doing.”

Yikes!  Talk about getting to the heart of the problem.  Unquestionably, I didn’t feel like it. Granted, my prayers weren’t about transforming people’s lives, but the sentiment still stands.  If I want to be in communion with God for any need, I must pray!

Now, you might ask, “What about the verse in Romans 8:26 which says, ‘Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness.  For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.’?”

I had the same thought.  Couldn’t God give me a pass here and let his Holy Spirit fill in for me when I didn’t have my own strength?

It’s a bit of a conundrum, isn’t it?

As I meditated on this question, here’s where I believe God helped me land.  Yes, of course, it’s scriptural that the Spirit does pray for us when we often are too weak to pray, or have no words to express our heartache.  I’ve often felt like that during my darkest days, and likewise felt the comfort of knowing that God clearly saw my heart.

Here’s where I went off track.  Yes, I was sad.  Yes, I was tired. But was I really not able to pray?  The truth is that I just didn’t want to.  I didn’t feel like it.  I wanted my friends to do it for me. I wanted to take the easy way out.

What should I have done?  Even if I genuinely had no words, I still should have been quiet before the Lord, silently pouring my heart out to him and expecting him to fill me with his peace and comfort.  I believe that’s when God’s Spirit will pray for us.  When we’re still longing for communion with him.  Not when we’ve just decided to give up on the whole prayer idea.

It’s all about our posture before God.  Staying engaged with him despite our weakness is critical.  That’s when the Spirit will work on our behalf.  Not when we want to walk away from the whole situation.

So, is Winnie completely healed?  Unfortunately not, but that doesn’t minimize the powerful prayers of my friends.  They still had the right idea.  Ask a big God for big things. Winnie likely has a long road ahead of her, but I‘ve learned my lesson for now.  I’m not bailing on her. Or my crucial prayer life.

Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.

Romans 12:12