Earlier this summer my wife and I received an alarming phone call from someone in the congregation. It was about a young teen in the community, which we all knew because of her friendship with the caller’s daughter, and this teenage girl had visited the church. This young girl’s parents and brother were vacationing out of state (the teen stayed home due to commitments to her job) and they were involved in a horrific car accident. The mom broke both legs, both arms, her back, 4 or 5 ribs, and was fighting for her life. The dad broke an arm, leg, jaw, and had head injuries, but he was being released soon. The brother, who is blind, deaf, and autistic, had a punctured liver and needed a liver transplant, but there wasn’t any available so they didn’t think he’d make it. To add to this, the daughter, still back home in Virginia was not allowed to go and see her family in the hospital due to COVID. Death was knocking on the door of her mother and brother’s hospital rooms, and she couldn’t go see them.
You may know a story that falls close to this one in one aspect or another. This is real life. The next morning in our worship service, the church had a special time of prayer for this family. And we continued to pray for this family throughout the week and beyond.
I’ve never been in an accident of this magnitude, maybe you have. When you’re in a critical situation, whether it be medical or relational or (fill-in the blank), you’re hoping someone, somewhere is praying for you, right? You’re hoping that many are praying for you, often. This story reminds us of how much others depend on us to pray. This story illustrates that others need us to learn more about prayer and then pray. Over the years I have pursued the subject and the practice of prayer. And yes, I’ve barely, at best, scratched the surface. I’m still not sure I see a scratch mark on the surface, because the subject is so deep that we’ll never penetrate the reality of the effectual prayer of a believer. But that should never discourage us from pursuing. If we get a hold of just one lesson, one truth, our eyes will see the kingdom of God in a whole new way. Therefore we pursue to learn, and we learn so we can grow, and in growing, we minister to others.
The teen and her family? The Lord answered the multitude of prayers with healing. It was a very tough journey, but eventually all members of the family were released from the hospital and came home. They were not the same physically, nor will they be psychologically. Trauma, like this incident, doesn’t vaporize from our memory, any more than our memories just drop such trauma and move on. These events affect us deeply in ways we rarely come to realize. There is healing that needs to continue beyond the initial event and beyond the release of the hospital, as in the case.
The obvious prayer is for their immediate needs. Yes, we pray for the immediate! We need our Father God’s grace and power NOW! But too often we stop praying for someone after we hear good news of a physical rescue or recovery. Yet, doesn’t there remain the need to continue to pray for that person, or persons? A leg may be on the mends. A broken relationship and the two people begin talking again. Stop and think about that for a moment. Does that mean it’s all better now and the work is done? Perhaps we stop praying for someone too soon. It’s like we’ve got the ball rolling towards recovery and the ball will continue to roll down the road of recovery on auto-pilot. But should that be our view of prayer, and how our compassion for the person(s) should be lived out? I guess we need to be slow in checking a person or situation off our prayer lists. Done. Erase. God answered. Next. Is that the love we are to have? Done. Next.
Praying beyond the obvious is praying beyond the immediate. We all pray for the crisis at the time of the crisis. We need to pray beyond the outward crisis. Another way to think of it is, we need to pray below the surface. Most often there are needs deeper than the surface that need our prayers. The Lord wants our compassion beyond the immediate and the surface. Where our true compassion is found, so are our prayers and tears. This is the difference between band-aid prayers and surgery prayer. When you know of a need, a deep need, don’t just put a single band-aid on, go beyond the obvious. Pray, my brothers and sister. Help carry that burden with the wounded one.
I think you can take my point and expand on it on your own from here, then apply.
Ephesians 6:18 (ESV) — 18 praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints,
Leave a Reply