Embarking on a deeper spiritual journey through prayer, I found my thoughts consistently drawn to the profound impact of consistent prayer practices this past week.
First, my eldest nephew (Paul, 21) started coming home later and later from work. Then my youngest nephew (JR, 11) – very unlike him – started throwing tearful tantrums every time I tried to discipline him or asked him to do something, especially when we were in public. Then my boss (a foreigner, 53, who’s a micromanager at the best of times and a racist at worst) complains about how expensive the cost of living is nowadays while earning more than half what we her employees earn has full health insurance, gets more than a month of paid annual leave and doesn’t have any dependants except for her husband who is also the company director. Then there’s a coworker whose favourite topic is her latest shopping finds, things her husband buys for her and how she calls her husband, ‘My lord’.
All these people and my interaction (and reactions) with them, in a way, made me think about answers or non-answers to prayer.
How I’ve prayed for my nephews, that God will keep them safe and guide their paths. How I’ve prayed in the past for God to show Himself to my boss, who has often professed to believe in ‘god’ but has never read the Bible. And how I used to pray for and admire my coworker for their faith until the Covid-19 pandemic showed me how shallow their so-called faith was.
Personal Reflection On Prayer
What God, thankfully, showed me this week is that it’s okay to keep praying for my nephews. I must never give up praying for them. No matter what they do, no matter how much their behaviour might hurt, I must remember that I’ve also hurt God. And I must allow them to live their own lives, make their own mistakes and trust God to lead them back to Himself. He’s the One who placed them here in the first place, and they’re here for His purpose, not mine.
At 53, my boss is old enough to learn things on her own and is free to seek out the truth for herself, if she truly wants to. I used to pray for her repentance, but the Holy Spirit then showed me the true selfish motives behind my prayers. For I was only praying for her (and her husband’s) salvation as a matter of pride, and to make my life easier – as a born-again Christian she will come to realise how racist she was, ask her employees for forgiveness, give us all a raise, and improve our work environment and stop micromanaging. The Holy Spirit convicted me of my self-serving piety, and I released her into God’s direction for her life.
Only two of us, me and another coworker, never got the COVID-19 vaccine. I refused because of my faith, and my coworker for her health. The rest of my coworkers, all professing Christians, got vaccinated, and a few even had booster shots. And when I listen to their conversations now, all I hear is them trying to surpass each other in talking about their latest outings, shopping, and new favourite things. There’s a touch of immaturity about them that I hadn’t noticed before. Their talks of things of faith sound forced to my ears, as if they’re trying to convince others and themselves that their decision about one of the global and most public tests of faith was of no consequence. Now, I could be wrong about them. I could be indulging in self-righteous arrogance. But what I do know is that I can never trust them ever again because they’ve shown that they lack conviction and are easily swayed.
What I’ve learned is that everything becomes clear in prayer.
After my nephews started behaving badly, I couldn’t even pray the words out loud, the words that were to describe the hurt in my heart. It was a jumble of Fijian and English, of the prayers from my childhood and the prayers I’ve heard preachers pray. Most of the time, my prayers were groans, with the words I wanted to speak scrolling across my mind as on a screen. The rest of the time, all I could do was to thank God for my nephews, for blessing me with them, for bringing them into my life to teach me to care and enlarge my capacity to love.
An Honest Conversation With God
God showed me that prayer is indeed meant to be an honest conversation with Him. A conversation where both parties, me and Him, and not just I and me, are to share what is in our hearts. God is good at that. He’s very good at listening. He’s such a great listener that I’ve often (read: always) taken advantage of (what seems to me) His silence and have gone on and on about my problems, big and small, this and that, woe is me.
Unlike me, God is, thankfully, patient, merciful and loving. Unconditionally so.
He is teaching me to be kind, even to those whom I feel have let me down. He’s reminded me that I’ve often let people down, and (more) often let Him down. To be honest with my feelings, and tell Him all about it, and stop pretending that everything is well when it isn’t. To be more forgiving because He’s forgiven me of so much.
God loves me. And He loves everyone else, you, the whole world, just the same, just as much. He truly does. And because He loves us so much, He always wants us to get better, do better, be better than who we are right now.
And on our knees in prayer, is where and how we can, and must begin. Amen.
Photo from Pixabay.
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