Most Americans pray, and many pray every day; but what do we pray about? Not surprisingly, according to Lifeway research, 74 percent of Americans pray for their own needs and difficulties. Predictably, most people pray for their own problems, since troubles and challenges are common to everyone.
In fact, our problems are not substantially different than those shared by our neighbors. For instance, Pew Research finds that a majority of Americans see inflation, the inability of Democrats and Republicans to work together, the cost of healthcare, drug addiction, the rising federal deficit and illegal immigration as the top problems facing the country in 2024.
In addition to the cost of living and the border crisis, all these national problems have driven 9 out of 10 of us to believe America is in the throes of a mental health crisis. The old spiritual says, “Nobody knows the troubles I’ve seen;” but in today’s America maybe the better line would be, “Everybody knows the troubles I’ve seen!”
Of course, over and above the challenges most of us face, each of us has a long list of personal troubles unique to us. Our relationships are fragile, we worry too much, and we struggle with personal temptations. In light of all this trouble, what should we do? In reality, there are only two ways to face troubles: God’s way or your way, and God’s way always involves prayer.
A praying king’s trouble
In Jerusalem about 2,900 years ago, King Jehoshaphat knew two things: He knew he was in trouble, and he knew prayer moves the hand that moves the world. His problem was that he had a small window of time to prepare before he faced an oncoming Transjordan coalition of ferocious soldiers, representing multiple enemy armies and kingdoms.
King Jehoshaphat had never been so strategically unprepared or logistically overwhelmed by military power in his entire life. He had only one real option – he prayed. His prayer was straightforward, “…we are powerless against this great horde that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you” (2 Chronicles 20:12).
No believer has to passively surrender to trouble. In prayer we can fight back!
Desperate prayer fights trouble
Have you ever prayed desperately for God’s intervention? Leonard Ravenhill once said, “God doesn’t answer prayer, He answers desperate prayer.” King Jehoshaphat prayed because he was in an urgently desperate situation. He prayed admitting that he was “powerless” against the rapidly approaching enemy insurgents.
In our competitive, style-over-substance culture where signs of weakness are aggressively avoided, it seems counterintuitive to approach God with a prayer of weakness – yet it’s the only kind of prayer He promises to answer. For example, the half-brother of Jesus had experienced moments of doubt and weakness through which he learned that “…God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6). Jim Cymbala has even made the astounding claim, “God is attracted to weakness.”
The question is, therefore, are you desperate enough in prayer? Desperate prayer demands a humility that repudiates our personal confidence, strength, intelligence, denominational advantages, or any other perceived leverage that masquerades as the primary answer to the dilemmas only prayer can address.
Are we willing to allow ourselves to look weak in the eyes of others in order to experience God’s help? Remember, the king humbled himself in the presence of the entire nation. Fortunately, his desperate, humble prayer led to God’s miraculous answer. If our pride won’t allow us to be broken before God and others in the face of overwhelming trouble in order to seek God, we have to ask ourselves this question: Do I really want God’s help, no matter the cost?
Dependent prayer fights trouble
One reason we resist desperate prayer may be because we are secretly relying on other sources of help. Our church governance models, our comfort with the status quo, or even our fear of extremes may temper our passion for a supernatural intervention. Long-time pastor and Georgia Baptist leader Larry Wynn may have accurately assessed our unwillingness to depend upon God when he recently said, “The church in Acts handled in a prayer meeting what we try to handle in a business meeting.”
The King of Judah had no choice but to depend upon God. He prayed, “…We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.” He knew his army was ill-prepared, his arsenal was underdeveloped, and he was massively outnumbered by the enemy. So, he prayed, “…our eyes are upon you.”
During terrible circumstances we have all heard someone say, “All we can do now is pray.” That statement is true when we first recognize the problem, not just when we have exhausted all other options. Instead of a last resort, depending upon God in prayer can be our first response.
Our instinct is to depend on strengths, powers, and resources other than God’s provisions, and that is the oldest and most demonic temptation of all. For instance, in the Garden of Eden the serpent convinced Eve she could not enjoy a full life until she relied upon something other than what God provided (Genesis 3:4). Likewise, in the Judean wilderness Satan launched the same attack against Jesus. The Devil attempted, unsuccessfully, to convince the Lord to resort to immediate gratification, shortcuts to power, and false worship rather than trust in what God was offering (Matthew 4:1-11).
Depending upon God in prayer is not a small victory. Instead, in dependence we actually resist and overcome our most basic urges toward sin, and we look more like Jesus.
Desperate and dependent prayer obviously appears to many secular Americans like the weakest available response to trouble – but it’s not, because God hears prayer. As Wheaton College President Philip Graham Ryken recently said, “One of the things we should do when we’re in trouble is just pray as well as we can and even when we can’t pray very well, God understands that and will answer our prayers a lot better than we can pray them.”
You’re not helpless in difficulties as long as God is the hearer of prayer. When trouble comes, therefore, don’t just sit there; pray something!
