The One Prayer That God Always Answers, the One We Never Pray.

I’ve prayed for a lot of things over the years: money, relationships, different careers, influence, and the all-too-frequent request that God would show a wayward friend how wrong they are.

Most of the time, God doesn’t answer.

Looking back, I’m not sure I would’ve answered either. With few exceptions, my prayers have historically had nothing to do with what I really want. For most of my life as a Christian, I’ve lived with a bit of cluelessness about what’s most important.

So, as I’ve grown older, and as my values shift, I’ve learned to pray for different things. But these “new” prayers are dangerous. It’s not fun when God answers them.

I began praying like this when I came to grips with something that had been lurking under my personal radar for years; an error that was beyond difficult to admit. I couldn’t believe I was guilty of something so broken.

It got me asking, “what else have I missed?” What other broken things am I walking around with, perpetrating on others, totally clueless about? So many other people walk zombie-like through this life, unknowingly chained to the darkest things.

If so many others wrestle with cluelessness, I might be guilty too.

I’m ready to face my own hidden, underground brokenness. And there’s only one prayer for that, it’s something that the Israelite king David prayed.

Here’s my paraphrase of the most dangerous prayer in the Bible:

“God, I give you permission to root around inside, and to show me the places that are screwed up, broken, scared, wrong, etc. Give me the courage to face them, ask you for help, and step into healing.”

I started praying this, with a not-too-impressive-frequency, toward the end of last year (although I’ve been a follower of Jesus for over 20 years).

Sometime around January, I got an answer, and it sucks.

For most of my life, I’ve been too fuzed to the opinions of others, living with a debilitating fear of rejection. In some of my relationships, when it comes time to argue, or stand up for what I believe, or risk sharing my perspective, I can’t. I’m too scared.

I see it now, with painful clarity. It’s gross. Weak. I’ve always judged weakness in others, now I’m forced to come to grips with my own, and find some compassion for myself that I’ll ultimately have to extend to everyone else.

But the worst thing is, if I want things to change, God’s not going to magically zap me and make everything better. I have to participate, lay some sacrifices on the altar, suffer.

I’ll have to step into arenas that scare me to death.

Thanx, God. I might not take you up on this one.

But this is something that keeps me from being a pure representation of whom I supposed to be, the human that God had in His mind before he formed the cosmos. It keeps me from a deeper freedom, a better happiness.

Personal change isn’t just something I need, it’s something the world desperately needs, especially now, in the US, as we become more divided than we’ve ever been. If we expect things to change, the direction of our finger-pointing needs a massive “about-face,” a solid 180 degree turn.

Unchanged people are the worst at making positive change in our world.

But nobody wants to get intimate with their own personal darkness. We like to feel “right,” like everyone else is the bad guy and we’re the ones fighting the good fight. To consider our own brokenness, much as the Bible compels us to, is anathema in this culture of “you need to think like me.”

And, in our culture, to be wrong is to be bad. A ton of shame comes up whenever we’re faced with our own ugliness. That’s why people get so upset whenever someone tells them they’re wrong. Many don’t have the ability to focus on whatever infraction they’ve committed. What we hear instead of “you’ve done something wrong,” is, “You’re a horrible person.”

To pray “God, show me where I’m wrong,” is to ask God to show me where I’m a miserable human. Who wants to do that?

So, we’ll continue in our error like so many Christian cultures before, rarely, if ever, asking God to show us what’s lurking underneath. Our divisions will widen, and if we destroy ourselves, like so many cultures before us, there will be one side that got it right, and one side that got it wrong.

And when it comes to division, and war, us Christians have a history of getting it wrong.

There are a million reasons why we need to pray like this.

Personally, I can assert with great confidence that this is a prayer that God answers. You and I will always have something lurking underneath, always in need of an audit from the Almighty, who seems to love difficult, heroic, personal change.

He might occasionally answer the “send me a wife” prayer, or the myriad other “make my life better,” or, “give me more” types of supplications, but there’s no better opportunity for a better life than tackling the things that are getting in the way. For most of us, we don’t need “more,” we need to deal with what’s eating away at what we already have.

For those of us who frequently wonder how to pray, this isn’t common, or popular. Maybe we don’t think we need to, or, again, we’ve become too enamored with being “right,” and/or too afraid of being wrong. You’d think that Bible people would be more comfortable asking God to plumb their depths, to show us where we’ve gotten things wrong, instead of so frequently indicting the non-Christian world.

But, in our defense, it’s a hard prayer.

I don’t want to know where I’m screwed up. I like to think that I’ve got my act together, for the most part. And I certainly don’t want to do the hard work of digging out from whatever’s rotten inside.

Recently, I’ve started to pray this prayer with regards to politics. My mind these days is sympathetic to the more liberal way of thinking, which doesn’t jive with my friends who are more conservative. As our suspicions towards one another grow, I’m forced to ask, “who’s wrong?” Me?

Doesn’t feel like it.

I haven’t gotten any answers from God yet. Not much of my politics have changed. Maybe that means I’m on the “right” side. Or perhaps God’s trying to bring me into a deeper, more painful truth and I’m not listening. Or maybe I can’t handle the truth.

Either way, it’s gotten more difficult to point fingers at my political adversaries. These days, I’m poring much less fuel on the fire, fighting less frequently for my own “right-ness,” letting people think the way they want to think and trying to focus on my own stupid broken stuff.

In my very limited experience with praying dangerously, I’ve come to understand that I’ve got a lot of work, and a lot more praying to do. I’m confident that God will always answer these prayers, that He won’t dump too much on me, and that He’ll always help me slog through whatever death infested swamp stands before me.

I’ll not be left alone.

Don’t get me wrong, I often pray the please-give-me-something-I-don’t-have types of prayers, many of which God hasn’t gotten around to yet. But learning to deal with the personal brokenness and pain that keep me from enjoying life is becoming just a tad bit more attractive.

And, for sure, God’s much more reliable when I ask him to change me than when I ask Him to change my life.

Photo Credit: Matthew T Rader