This morning I am thinking about the lists I made after reading through
one of my old prayer journals. Every now
and then I like to take a look back at the intercessions, the requests, and the
urgent pleas I have recorded. As I pore
over pages and pages penned from a sincere heart, I typically find that there
is a stirring within me—a stirring of compassion, of strength, of joy, and of
hope. This time, however, it was
different. Instead of finding
encouragement, I found myself wrestling with a vicious pair of foes named Doubt
and Discouragement. Their taunts were
unrelenting. “What are you praying for? What
a waste of time! Your prayers don’t
matter. What’s meant to happen is going
to happen, whether you pray or not.”
Well, that’s when I started making the lists. I wanted to have a record that my prayers do matter…at least sometimes. I ended up with four lists. The first was titled “Yes.” It was all the things in the journal that had
turned out the way I prayed they would, like when a dear colleague got the job
she wanted. The second list was titled
“No.” It was all the things in the
journal that did not turn out the
way I prayed they would, like when my big brother passed away. The third list was titled “WIP,” for works in
progress. It was things I still pray
about, like my prayer to have the experience of growing in love with someone
and enjoying a great marriage. The
fourth list was titled “DK,” for don’t know.
It was prayers for people I’ve never seen or heard from again, like the
young woman named Ann who said, “Please pray for me” when I encountered her one
day in a parking lot. When I was done
compiling my lists, I proceeded to tally all the prayers and calculate percentages. Yep, I sure did. I suspect things like that happen sometimes
when geeks meet God. In any case, the No
list represented 5% of my prayers, while the Yes list represented 65%. The WIPs were 17%, and the DKs were 13%. While contemplating my four lists, I got a
revelation of something quite wonderful. ALL of my prayers matter. They matter because the merciful, mighty God
of all creation inclines His ear to me whenever I pray! Far beyond simply keeping a record, I pray
because I believe that God is and I am rewarded greatly when I seek Him. I pray because I have the privilege to pray,
about anything and everything. I pray
because I want to grow in grace, endurance, and faith. I pray because I believe that God encompasses
a breadth and depth of wisdom, love, peace, truth, and freedom that I have scarcely
begun to fathom. So, even in the face of
doubt and discouragement…even with the reality of No’s, WIPs, and DKs…I will
pray. For the record, I will always
pray.
