Audacious Prayer

The Sears Catalog. I don’t know if they still print them, but those catalogs are enshrined in my childhood hall of fame. I spent hours each November and December pouring over the toy section. Paper and pencil on my right, catalog on my left. I flipped the pages back and forth, first scanning then scrawling product codes and page numbers as I crafted my Christmas wish list. Cheered-on by colorful images that screamed “buy me!” my list expressed my deepest desires to my parents and the mysterious Santa.

Those catalog memories came back to me this week. That’s because I’ve been thinking a lot about my desires, and God’s desires. Over the past few months there’s been a steady tightening of tension between God and me. A tension over what I want versus God’s plan. The awful realities of life have hit me fresh and taunted my faith. Sickness. Disease. Disappointment. Frustration. All cursed guests that squeeze from me either a humble brokenness or prideful bitterness.

So I’ve been talking to God, and He to me, about this convergence of human and divine desire. What I’ve been hearing from Him has upset my prayer life. More truthfully, it has upturned everything and knocked me backward.

God made it clear I was to stop the lip service prayers. Put an end to the shallowness. Be done with compulsion and manipulation. Don’t pray from a position of guilt or qualify successful by result. Pray expectantly. Fervently. Hopefully. Express to Me the cries of your heart. Give wide berth to the trap of fatalism – the “come what may” attitude. Tell me what you really want; what you really feel.

I had no rebuttal.

Richard Sibbes said, “It is atheism to pray and not to wait in hope.” Ashamedly, I’m sometimes guilty of slipping into dutiful but empty prayers. Joyless, task-list praying. Prayers offered because I have to, not because I get to. Such praying reflects unbelief in God’s character and capability. A disrespect of His holiness. A subtle form of atheism. God knows it, and He called me out.

A bit rattled by my holy reprimand, I went through some introspection: how do I express my desires with expectancy? How do I rally my hopes beyond reason? What if my desires are unreasonable, unrealistic or unlikely: should I still express them? If God has already determined the outcome, is it still worth the effort to express the yearnings of my soul? To lay my heart bare and vulnerable? To ask for the miracle?

Then I heard, “Absolutely!”

Victor Frankl suggests, “Sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment instead.” When I think about the desire expressed in my childhood Christmas lists, and now the lists crafted by my children, there is little cleverness. Wish lists are pure bewilderment. Great expectations and audacious requests. Requests made even when fulfillment is unlikely. Hope and desire live through such requests. And in the requesting are expressions of the heart that give opportunity for relationship to grow and ripen.

I believe that’s what God wants from my prayers: big, bold, audacious requests. Prayer laden with my greatest hopes and craziest dreams shot straight from the pain of life’s brokenness. A conversation where my desires mingle with His. There’s still tension, but it’s a healthy tension blanketed by joy between the Creator and his child as they delight in their open and honest relating.

So with the Spirit’s help I’m working toward a bolder humility to express my desires. To “approach the throne of grace with confidence” (Heb 4:16). A confidence heavily coated with hope-filled bewilderment to petition for mercies that might be unreasonable, ridiculous or miraculous. Audacious at times. But I know God can handle it.