When Prayer Feels Pointless

[The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are a reflection on Sunday's message, which can be heard here each week: http://www.myencounterchurch.org/#/messages-media]


As someone who grew up in Christianity-saturated community, I’ve been told all of the “correct” answers for when we feel like God isn’t listening to our prayers.

“His ways aren’t like ours.”

“He answers prayer, just not always in the timeline we’d like him to.”

“When the Lord closes a door, somewhere He opens a window.” (Okay, that one might have come from The Sound of Music, but I’m sure someone has said it at some point too.)

At least for me, prayer is one of the most difficult parts of following Jesus. I'd be willing to guess that unanswered prayers have been a catalyst for more than a few people to walk away from faith entirely. For those of us who have ever prayed, even if only a handful of times, at some point we’ve probably all wondered what the point is. We’ve probably wondered if God is actually paying attention, or if our words just fall to the floor, empty and meaningless. Maybe we’ve prayed the same thing for weeks, months, or years, and though we’ve been told that God answers prayers, even if it’s sometimes with a “No,” it seems that he has completely overlooked ours.

As he has for each message in this series, on Sunday Pastor Dirk started by reminding us prayer is not supposed to be about bending God's will to ours, though that's how many of us approach it. Instead, prayer is supposed to conform our will to God's.

This is not something that comes easily to me.

Thomas à Kempis, who was a German priest and author, wrote:

"As thou wilt;

What thou wilt;

When thou wilt."

Which strikes me as perhaps the scariest kind of prayer we could pray. It doesn’t ask God for anything except for what he wants for us.

Because ultimately, prayer is not a way for us to get what we want from God, but a way God uses to form us, ever-shaping us to look more like him.

Which is likely not going to be a comfortable process. It might lead to a life that looks a whole lot different than the one we planned for ourselves, whether it's outward changes like a change of major, job, or location, or inward changes like a change of desire or focus. Those are the things God uses to form us into his likeness.

It doesn't mean he always ignores our prayers or that he doesn't want to hear them--nothing could be further from the truth, really. Prayer is about communication, about building a relationship with God that teaches us how to be more like him and to align our hearts with his.

It’s easy for me to sit here and type these words about how God uses prayer to form us to be more like him, but in the actuality of unanswered prayer, in the heartache and the sickness and the longing, it’s much harder to believe. While it sounds nice to say that we want God’s will to be our will, his will may be for us to simply trust him in the midst of our unanswered prayers--even when we cannot understand what he’s doing or even see it, and when he doesn’t seem to be opening a door or a window. If we allow them to, these places between the yes and the no or the maybe of our prayers can be the spaces God uses to make us look more like him.


[Brianna DeWitt lives, works, and writes in Grand Rapids, MI. Among her favorite things are good people, good books, and good desserts. You can see more of her musings on her personal blog at http://awritespot.wordpress.com and on Twitter at @bwitt722.]

Carrying a Bucket of Dry Ice?

[The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are a reflection on Sunday's message, which can be heard here each week: http://www.myencounterchurch.org/#/messages-media]

Midweek Encounter 9.17.14

On Sunday at Encounter Church the worship space was full of carbon dioxide (and this is no dig at the preaching)—but in an unusual state—carbon dioxide as a solid. You probably know it as “dry ice”.

Dry ice is really cool stuff. It sublimates as it warms, meaning that it goes directly from a solid to a gas while skipping the melty liquid state. Really cool. Surrounded by these vapors, Dirk encouraged us to think about what it would be like to carry the visible glory of God with us everywhere we go. The metaphor was simple enough—the gas as a visual and physical reminder of the glory of God—but as I thought more about it, it became increasingly complex.

What would it be like to carry a bucket of dry ice around for a day? Think about the gas that would accumulate in your car during your morning commute. At some point, you might have to open your windows to let some of the gas escape. What does that mean for us metaphorically—having to open the windows because the glory of God is too powerful to be contained within the car? I happen to be a teacher, so I imagined what it would be like to bring my bucket of dry ice into my classroom. Students, of course, would all want to know why I was surrounded by fog. What would I say to them? And then I imagined myself picking up a few groceries on the way home, or taking my kids for a walk to the park, or going for a run after dinner—all while carrying a bucket of dry ice. At the very least I would get a few strange looks, but more realistically, strangers would ask me why I was carrying around a bucket of dry ice.

Without my bucket, nothing changes. I don’t remember to acknowledge the power and the presence of God more frequently; strangers don’t stop me to ask me about my faith; students are not wowed by the power of Christ within me; everything remains unchanged.

It’s probably unrealistic to carry this tangible reminder of God’s glory with us, but it’s easy to carry the metaphor into our lives. There are a number of references to the glory of the God appearing as a cloud in the Bible, and you can read about some of them here: http://biblehub.com/exodus/13-21.htm. God speaks to his people, leads them, and protects them, all in the form of a cloud. In John 17, where the passage from this past Sunday is found, the cloud of the Lord or the glory of God settles on his people to unify them—not to extinguish their differences, but to use those differences to bring an even more diverse population of unbelievers to Christ. God sends us with his power to reach new people, to live markedly different lives, to bring the cloud of his glory into our every day situations.

So, should we start a #dryicebucketchallenge? Sorry—I literally couldn’t resist.

[Kristin vanEyk lives in Kentwood, MI where she attends Encounter Church with her husband Dirk, and two kids, Lily and Colin. Kristin teaches high school English and otherwise passes the time reading, writing, running, and enjoying all that Michigan's West Coast has to offer.]

Perfect Phil and Terrible Tom

[The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are a reflection on Sunday's message, which can be heard here each week: http://www.myencounterchurch.org/#/messages-media]


This past sunday, Pastor Dirk introduced a new message series called “Red Letter Prayers.” We started off by looking at the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector (or Phil and Tom, as Pastor Dirk called them), as told in Luke 18:8-14.

Phil actually sounds like a pretty stand-up guy. He fasts and gives more money than he needs to, is probably loving and friendly to his family and friends, and seems like the type of guy who helps elderly people cross the street. Meanwhile, Tom sounds greedy, skeezy, rude, and like the type of person you probably wouldn’t want anyone you know to be hanging out with.

Except, when they start to pray, cracks appear in Phil’s seemingly-perfect facade. He stands off to himself, not to avoid distraction, but to subtly send the message that he is better than the rest. The words of his prayer emphasize his message, as he thanks God that he is not like the other people around him.

Meanwhile, Tom separates himself from the crowd, but for a very different reason--he doesn’t want to risk tainting the people around him, because he knows he’s done wrong. His prayer is more of a beg.

And so, at the end of his parable, Jesus says that Tom is the one who goes home justified.

Because Tom understood what Phil did not: no amount of money he gave away, times a year he fasted, or any other works could earn him forgiveness, grace, or answered prayer. Tom knew he had done wrong, and that he had no reason to assume that God would forgive him.

In our human mindset, we often view things in terms of “input/output.” We input money at the store; we walk out with purchases. We go to class and do our homework; we graduate and get a degree. The problem comes in when we try to use the same logic for our spiritual lives: We donate money and go to church; God answers our prayers.

Tom didn’t think this way, though. He knew he had done wrong, and that he had no reason to assume that God would forgive him. Because forgiveness is not something we earn by doing, but something God gives us freely. All of the gifts God chooses to bestow on us are exactly that--gifts. We cannot earn answers to pray through anything we do, no matter how committees we volunteer on, how much money we give away, or how many hours a week we spend reading our Bible. These are all good things to do as expressions of gratitude and ways to honor God, but it is not a system of input/output. Phil’s actions certainly weren’t bad, but he completely missed the point.

While prayer can be a difficult part of the Christian life, one thing we never have to worry about is trying to earn God’s attention through good works. Everything from God is an undeserved, beautiful, gracious gift.


[Brianna DeWitt lives, works, and writes in Grand Rapids, MI. Among her favorite things are good people, good books, and good desserts. You can see more of her musings on her personal blog at http://awritespot.wordpress.com and on Twitter at @bwitt722.]