The One Person I Forget to Pray For
It seems strange to admit that I rarely pray for myself. As a list-maker, I found that creating prayer lists and assigning them to certain days really helps me get focused. Every day of the week is dedicated to a different group of people. Mondays I reserve for my husband, Tuesdays for my children and so on. But recently the Lord convicted me of prayerlessness. I was a bit astonished. After all, I pray for my country, my family, my church, etc. with regularity. I can’t go to bed at night without making sure I hit everyone on that day’s list.
Except there is one person I rarely intercede for. I rarely, if ever, ask for things for myself. I guess I figure that my prayers for my family are prayers for myself. I earnestly desire their blessing, salvation, healing, etc. Really the only arena of prayer for myself that I do not neglect is petitioning for forgiveness. And I do often pray for guidance.
But when I look at both the Old and New Testament, I find that the kings, prophets, priests, and disciples weren’t afraid to ask God for specific gifts, solutions, and even a way out of their circumstances. So I had to ask myself why I am reluctant to petition the Father of lights for my own needs. I came up with two answers.
Dependence vs. Independence
The whole idea that God helps those who help themselves is problematic. In Exodus, the Hebrews found themselves trapped between the Egyptian army and the deep, blue sea. God tells them to do nothing, absolutely nothing. He has it covered. In other
situations, God gives the Israelites very pointed instructions on how He wants them to fight. But He reiterates over and over that He is the one who goes before them and wins the war.
In fact, God encourages dependence on Him. That is not how I was raised. My parents raised me to be independent. I passed that on to my daughters. I even attribute a certain amount of righteousness to the idea of being independent. It is a thoroughly American value. But what this looks like in real life is that I have not because I ask not.
So I struggle through the pain of the car accident that I was in several months ago. I try to plan out my finances wisely. I make to-do lists and feel good about crossing out the tasks. So much of my time and energy is taken up with being good. A good wife, a good mother, a good teacher, and friend; those are all wonderful things. But my self-reliance means that I will hit a limit beyond which I cannot go without God. I might be able to get myself to the edge of the water, but I can’t part the seas.
Or perhaps I am like Peter. I’m in the boat with Jesus, but it is a whole other thing to get out of the boat and walk on water with Him. Perhaps that is the fear independence creates in us. I know I can’t walk on water by myself. But getting out there on the water with Him looks a lot like drowning sometimes.
I Don’t Deserve It
The other reason why I rarely ask for things is that I am not sure I truly deserve them. This is legalism, of course. But it is disguised as humility. I don’t mind asking for a parking space and yet contending in prayer for my book to be published is filled with doubt. What if it isn’t good enough? What if no agent likes it ever? I can pray for the energy to clean my house, but the larger issues of destiny often go unaddressed.
I have come to understand that this is really a spirit of poverty. Moses refusing the staff that God is giving him because of his lack of skill in speech-making isn’t much different. When we refuse to pray over those talents and visions that God gives each one of us, we assert our judgment over His. We tell Him that we know better than He what we can and cannot do. And like Moses, we don’t want to look like a fool in front of Pharaoh. Who knew that a spirit of poverty is really pride disguised as humility?
The Call to Pray
My challenge to you, as well as to myself, is to enter into a new dimension of self-care. I often notice that the word, self-care, is too often used to mean a mani/pedi and a piece of chocolate. But the idea of spiritual self-care is rarely if ever mentioned. So here is a list of items the Lord has recently laid on my heart; all of them concern me and my own cares and concerns.
1: I pray over my body.
I take this to mean for healing from pain, but also the wisdom to care for my body. This means surrendering my ideas of what is healthy and submitting my lifestyle to Him. And not just once in a while. Every day.
2: I pray over my work.
I need His favor, not just concerning what I write, but in every complicated aspect of my work. I need His favor with my students, with my readers, and within the various social media outlets. If God has called me to do this, then shouldn’t I involve Him in the entire process? I have recently started asking Him to help me hit the 75k mark in terms of followers. I cringed as I asked for this. His reply was that He had called every one of my fifty thousand followers across social media and that He was not done yet.
3: I pray over my emotional needs.
My prayers usually focus on how I can meet the needs of others, forgetting that without His life flowing into me, I have nothing to give. Even worse, sometimes my prayer is for others to fill those needs for me. I often ask God to change others for my satisfaction while thinking it is for theirs. But if I am lonely, overwhelmed, or depressed, I can ask Him to help me through the darkness.
My first impulse is to dismiss my emotion and cowgirl up. I am now experimenting with embracing the emotions in the presence of my loving Father. Not only do I move more quickly through downturns in my mood, but I learn a little bit more about myself and Him every time I pause and ask for some company.
I suppose one reason why we often don’t lift ourselves up in prayer is that we listen to the enemy telling us we are selfish. But we forget that the Christian walk doesn’t end with the sinner’s prayer. In fact, that is just the beginning. Jesus asked for provision. He asked for a different path than the cross. And He asked for relationship with each of us. If I am to become like Him, I should not neglect myself in prayer. I want to become one with Him and He and the Father are one. The only way I can do that is to let down my guard, my hesitancy to receive, and my pride and start asking about the one life for which I am completely responsible: my own.
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