Do you ever try to dictate to God in prayer? When you pray, do you tell God just what you want, giving a list of instructions, like you’re ordering dinner from a take-out menu? I know, people say you should be specific in prayer. But there’s also enormous power in just giving up, echoing the Lord’s Prayer’s words, “Thy will be done.” Let me give you an example.
When our younger son, Timothy, graduated from college he wasn’t sure at all what he wanted to do. Of course I had tons of suggestions, like any dad. “Why don’t you call so-and-so? Have you ever thought of doing such-and-such? I would be glad to set up an appointment with X or Y.”
He worked as a babysitter – he’s great with kids – and then took his hard-earned money to hopscotch around the globe on the cheap. I was cool with that. You might as well see the world when you’re young, but as soon as he came back, I planned to make more of my suggestions.
All the while I told God just exactly what He should do for Tim. The minute I closed my eyes, my head was brimming with suggestions, my brain on overload. It’s not that I didn’t trust God, it’s just that…well, what did the good Lord know of the real world?
It was Tim, though, who offered a suggestion. He sent me an email from India: “Dad, when I come back to the States, I think I’d like to spend some time in a Christian monastery to figure out what I believe.”
Wow, I never would have come up with that tantalizing idea. Where did it come from? (Guess!!)
Indeed, upon his return, he wrote to the Holy Cross Monastery, an Anglican Community of Benedictine Men up in West Park, New York, and asked if he could stay there for a while, worshipping with them, reading, praying, helping out. Yes, they said, and he ended up staying for a life-changing six weeks.
Lots has happened to him since then, and Tim would be the better one to write about it and explain it – hey, Tim, you up for that? – but the really exciting thing is that he’s heading off in September to do mission work for a year in South Africa at the Mariya uMama weThemba Monastery in Grahamstown.
He’ll be working with underprivileged kids and also worshipping and praying with the Benedictine Brothers of the Holy Cross there. What a year it’ll be. I look forward to giving you updates.
In the meanwhile, the message to myself, the prayer advice, is to let go in prayer, to not dictate, to listen, to wait, to trust in God’s love and realize that any of my brilliant ideas pale compared to what God and the Holy Spirit might have in mind. There could be no greater power than that.
