Previously, we've talked about praying the Father's will and how He loves to answer those prayers. But for this one off teaching I want to look at what to pray when you don't know what to pray. It could be for numerous reasons that you don't know what to pray; you may feel lost, or confused or swayed by opinion and any of these and other things, can make it hard to know what to pray. For myself I have had excessive amounts of emails about the war in Iraq saying this is what we should be praying or that is what we should be praying into the situation in the Middle East. I'm not even going to add anything I think to the growing amount of views but to say this:
When we looked at the Lord's Prayer there was a beautiful line in it that said:
"Your Kingdom come, Your Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven."
Sometimes this is all we can pray and so often saying that can be seen as a cop out or lack of closeness with Abba. If it was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me. Sometimes in times such as this when we aren't sure how to pray, or when we are having difficult times and feel like we re straining to hear His still small voice maybe we need to say:
"God I'm not going to pretend that I am clever enough to fathom out Your ways, because Your word says Your ways are not our ways and that Your thoughts are high above our thoughts So Father I'm just going to say Your Kingdom come, Your will be done in this situation."
Praying this sort of prayer that is in line with God's will is better than praying no prayer at all. So if you don't know how to pray for the war situation or for other issues in your own lives, just say Your will be done Lord.
Sara Hesbrook
2003-03-24