Are you too shy to ask for prayer? Do you hesitate to let others support you in prayer? Do you tend to bear your burdens alone rather than tell someone else about your needs?
Join the club. We all have those friends who request prayer as a matter of course—for themselves, for others, and for needs large and small, from the sublime to the ridiculous. But I’ve been a follower of Jesus for decades, and a pastor for much of that time. I pray with people, for people and even sometimes against people. And I have a few people I turn to when I am feeling desperate for prayer. But I am usually reticent to start prayer chains or post prayer requests on social media.
But a recent Facebook post reminded me that people love to draw close to others in prayer.
Prayers for Families |
My 7-year-old granddaughter, Calleigh, has cystic fibrosis. She was hospitalized in April after the failure of various attempts to heal a nagging infection. Unfortunately, that infection lingered and, apparently, weakened her lung function. So, when her doctors decided that another hospital stay was called for—the next day!—I did something I almost never do: I asked for prayer on Facebook.
Over the course of the next 48 hours, more than 400 people pledged to pray for Calleigh. Some of them even wrote a prayer as their comment on my post. Others followed up with notes of encouragement and two of my friends even sent a fun “care package” to Calleigh and her parents! And, of course, Calleigh’s parents and other family members also mentioned her hospital stay on social media and received great encouragement from people’s responses.
I know that technology and social media can be sources of stress and even conflict at times, but I was inexpressibly uplifted by the way so many people responded to our family’s challenge that week. And those prayers were answered—Calleigh took the news well, responded well to all her treatment, and came home after just a few days. She was even doing so well on her next-to-last day in the hospital that she was allowed to take a short trip to the zoo with her parents!
I said in a recent blog post on this site that “praying for someone is an act of friendship; it is a form of caring.” I truly believed that. But now I believe it even more. So why wouldn’t I reach out to others—and let them reach out to me—through prayer?
