a heart of prayer.

I finished my 5th cycle of chemo! Yay! And although a lot of my tweets, instagrams, and messages I sent to people were shockingly embarrassing this morning I'm still okay with it because now I just have one official cycle left (and hopefully will never have to have chemo again). However, one of the drugs I'm on called predisone, which I wrote about in an earlier blog, always makes me shaky and anxious and sometimes makes it difficult for me to sleep. Last night was one of the nights where I had trouble sleeping so I continued on reading Eugene Peterson's "A Long Obedience in the same Direction" and I must admit it is quite a gem. While reading his book I had an eye opening experience and I wanted to share it with you today, so here it goes!

Since my diagnosis I've had a few (not many) people tell me that if I just had more faith, believed stronger, and prayed harder I would be healed. Whenever people told me something like that it took all the strength I had not to punch them in the neck. I don't think I got cancer because of anything I did in my life physical or spiritual, I also don't think I can manipulate God into healing me by shouting louder when I pray, praying longer, or believing and convincing myself I will be healed. I'm reminded of 1 Kings 18:16-39 when Elijah had a god-off against Baal's prophets to prove to the people which god was real: his God, Yahweh, Jehovah; or Baal, the pagan god.

The opposing prophets gathered on Mt.Carmel and both set up sacrifices for their gods (vs.24-25). Both cut up bulls and put them on their alters and then proceed to prove which god was real by seeing which god would bring fire on their sacrifices (vs.26). Elijah then allowed Baal's prophets to go first to see if their god would respond to their sacrifices and requests (vs.26). After a day of shouting, crying, dancing, and cutting themselves to sacrifice their own blood nothing happened (vs.26). Baal's prophets didn't know what to do to get their god to respond, they where literally trying to manipulate a response out of him. I don't really blame them though, they were desperate. I think sometimes out of desperation we have this exact same response. We so badly want something to go our way that when our simple, genuine prayers don't work we try to sing louder, cry harder, and even sacrifice pieces of our lives to try and manipulate a response out of our God. However, I don't think God wants this from us, Psalm 51 says that the acceptable sacrifice to God is a, "broken spirit and a contrite heart" (vs. 17). By writing this I am by no means judging the people that shout their prayers or cry out to the Lord in the middle of the night, I am no more able to see the state of your heart than to see the state of Florida from my house, but I humbly believe if our hearts are in a place of manipulation instead of a place of humility, there is no reason for God to do anything for us. Why would God allow us to control him like that? He wouldn't, because then we would be god and he would not. Furthermore, as Evan Allnutt says, why would we want to live for a God who does everything we ask him? If this were the case then we would be god and he would not.
So how are we meant to pray if not through shouting louder, dancing, crying, and sacrificing pieces of ourselves? I honestly don't think I can answer this question right now because it would be hypocritical for me to write a blog about how there is no formula for having God answer our prayer and then give you a formula to have God answer your prayers... but I will leave you with the rest of Elijah's story to contemplate, struggle, and mull over as I do so as well:

³⁰ Then Elijah said to all the people, “Come here to me.” They came to him, and he repaired the altar of the Lord, which had been torn down. ³¹ Elijah took twelve stones, one for each of the tribes descended from Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord had come, saying, “Your name shall be Israel.” ³² With the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord, and he dug a trench around it large enough to hold two seahs of seed.³³ He arranged the wood, cut the bull into pieces and laid it on the wood. Then he said to them, “Fill four large jars with water and pour it on the offering and on the wood.”

³⁴ “Do it again,” he said, and they did it again.

“Do it a third time,” he ordered, and they did it the third time. ³⁵ The water ran down around the altar and even filled the trench.

³⁶ At the time of sacrifice, the prophet Elijah stepped forward and prayed: “Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. ³⁷ Answer me, Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you, Lord, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again.”

Stay tuned for part two of this blog in the days to come when I've had time to wrestle with this scripture myself.