How Do I Pray?

Faith 2 Minutes

It’s the middle of the night here in the UK but I can’t sleep. I’m sitting here drinking camomile tea and tossing up between ironing or ordering food shopping 😝. I don’t really want to do either of those things so instead I’m writing this post.

Don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten how to talk to God. I talk to Him a lot. I share my feelings with Him all the time and I tell Him even the things that no one else knows – I mean why not? He knows anyway.

My difficulty is that once again we have a friend who has cancer. The doctors can do no more. They’re using words like ‘palliative care’ again. We’ve been here before. More than once. Each time my friends have been asking God for a miracle. Each time I’ve prayed for that with them. I know God heals (I’ve seen this before too). I believe He wants to heal. I’ve expected God to heal. So far (if I’m remembering correctly) only one out of many friends and family members has been healed from cancer.

So how do I pray? Am I doing something wrong? I remember a few years ago teaching on this very subject in church. It was a difficult time. We had not long since lost a young friend to cancer. Many of us were struggling with continuing to ask God to heal. I’d go back and reread that sermon now but I lost it when my hard drive packed in so I don’t know if there’s anything that God was saying to me back then that would have helped me now. Probably. I remember that in essence I felt that I shouldn’t stop asking.

It gets harder to keep asking though. I mean I still do. I still know God can. I just don’t get why so often it doesn’t happen. I know God isn’t a genie in a bottle but He is God and He tells us He’s willing to heal and I know He’s able to heal so what am I missing?

I guess I’ve heard most of the answers to my question already too. I’d be surprised if you can give me an answer I haven’t heard before (feel free to try though). I’m just putting this out there because it’s on my mind tonight. Someone gave a word this morning about keys at church (related to something different) and I feel like there’s a key somewhere to be discovered where healing is concerned. I’d love to know where it is. I’m sure I’ll keep looking because it feels like I need to find it.

Pray… but how?

Published by JustBeingMe

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16 thoughts on “How Do I Pray?”

  2. This is such a beautiful post.

    I just see my Creator as my Father. I have a wonderful Dad, so it’s not hard for me to know how much it means to trust him.

    When I was five, some very close friends of our family were killed in a tragic accident. I read the scriptures from cover to cover and it has shaped my prayers ever since. I saw that He has a wonderful purpose that was interrupted by the issue of who should rule. So everything He originally wanted for us has had to be on hold, while the question is answered.. But He has never abandoned His original purpose.

    I see Him as longing to put things right. The Father who is pained to see the tears of His children and is looking forward to undoing the painful suffering we have experienced. So when I pray, I see that everything that I want most…for those of my friends and family who have died to be back here with me, for an end to war, crime, abuse, disease, pollution and all manner of distress that they answer from Him is “Of course I will do that…I can’t wait to do that…just a little while longer.”

    Which leaves me with other subjects, will he help me to cope now? I ask for strength to keep doing what I know is good and right. I ask for help to think clearly and not be overpowered by harmful emotions. I ask Him to help me see where I have made a mistake that might have hurt Him and hurt someone else. I always see Him as a Father who wants me to be happy, wants me to be healthy…and cannot wait to wipe out my tears and see me thriving in the kind of life that he originally intended for all humans.

    I want to make Him proud and to feel that when He sees me going about my life, He is smiling and saying to Himself , “that’s my girl!”

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    1. Thank you for reading and for sharing these thoughts. I totally agree with what you’re saying. I don’t find it hard to trust my Father. It’s just sometimes difficult to understand why some get their healing here in this lifetime and not others. I know our Father wants what is best for us and I’m pretty sure that you DO make Him proud my friend. X

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      1. ❤ ❤ ❤

        …this might sound odd, but when i think of how much I want to see my friends who I have lost again, I assume He wants to see them alive and healthy a thousand times more than I do. But I know they are in the safest place in the universe, fast asleep in His perfect memory, until it is time to wake up on a clean earth, to be welcomed back by a peaceful human family.

        JOB 14:14,15: If a man dies, can he live again?… You will call, and I will answer you.
        You will long for the work of your hands.

        I often think of how seeing human suffering up close provoked tears from Jesus, even though he had been empowered to heal people and raise them back to life. It must be deeply distressing to see humans suffer. I have worked in palliative care with terminally ill patients for years. I have wept many tears because of what I have seen, and I am sure our Creator feels it even more powerfully. I am convinced He and we will feel deep joy when the effects of Adam's decision are undone. Life without end at last!

        REV 21:4 He will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore.

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    2. “Of course I will do that…I can’t wait to do that…just wait a little while longer.” LOVE, L O V E this response! I always think in terms of the resurrection—that we too, will have our Sunday morning—but I love how you put words to what my heart knows. 🙂

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  3. Another thought-provoking post; another post in which I feel you’ve expressed what my own heart has at times wrestled with.

    In reading through the responses, I think what crushedcaramel said was so right on! In fact, I think I’m going to need to say her words on loop until my mind can recall them quickly in times of utter turmoil—in times when my mind does not have the ability to look up on its own!

    I love that you’re on this quest. I love that you’re sharing your raw thoughts and feelings here. You, I promise, are in good company! 🙂

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  4. Thanks for sharing your heart. I was diagnosed 17 years ago with a very advanced, very aggressive cancer and my doctor did not give me much hope of surviving. Yet here I am 17 years later still cancer free. So my question is a little different than yours perhaps. I sometimes wonder why God healed me and so many others I know did not make it. I used to even feel guilty for making it. But a friend of mine -who had gotten cancer before me and had been such a support to me when I first found my cancer and then ended up with cancer coming back and dying – told me that she wanted me to not feel guilty about surviving but to rejoice in my healing and be an encouragement to others that they could make it too. I think sometimes our problem is that we think too highly of this life….to lose it seems such a tragedy….but then if we believe there is a heaven….perhaps those who did not get healed in this life have received a greater blessing…

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  6. Healing means wholeness…and what can be more whole than being with God. In the end, we all have to die, and so to die – whenever it is, whatever age – is just taking that next step. We don’t expect God to give us immortality (as opposed to eternal life) and so, really, why should we ask him to “heal” someone in our way of thinking. I’ve survived cancer, through the skill of the surgeon and the efficacy of the drugs. I don’t necessarily think it was God healing me – I just think that he gave me wholeness again through life. But if he had chosen the other way, well, I’d’ve not wanted to go, but it would have been healing in another, fuller sense. If that makes any sense…

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