Susan's Homeschool Blog

Well, here I’ve felt all this freedom by smashing the huge prayer structure and front-ending the people I promised to pray for every day. In other words, I pray for the missionary family in the Czech Republic that I promised I’d pray for – I pray for them first. You know, and that pastor and his wife that cried when they knew I prayed for them daily. And, of course, there are others. Then I pray for my family, then I open myself up to God in freedom, and the fun begins, because God brings to mind people I haven’t thought of in ages, and I say, “What should I pray for them for?” and God shows me. Deliriously happy I am in the freedom of having smashed the structure, the one that had kept me faithful to pray, the one that had resulted in saved souls and sanctified lives. The structure that was necessary for me not to forget the 200 people I was praying for daily (although, remember, I dumped 100, being led by God to do so.)

But I gasped to see a leak in the new freedom: some people aren’t being prayed for, and the people I was praying for don’t get consistent prayer. Let’s take for example a friend who kept thinking about men. She asked me to pray that she wouldn’t think about men. I prayed against this every day for years until a few days ago. Guess what? This woman had NO PROBLEM with thoughts of men (for a couple of years) until the past few days when I didn’t pray that particular prayer request because of my freedom of prayer.

I feel personally responsible.

Like the time I was praying for a teenaged girl to not sleep with anyone. I prayed every day about it for years except for one day. ONE DAY. The one day I forgot to pray it, she lost her virginity. I bawled. I confessed to my friend (the teenager’s mother) that I had skipped praying for her that one day, and that I was so sorry.

She said, “Susan, your prayers just held off the inevitable.”

I bawled anyway. I bawled for days, feeling responsible. My husband said, “Don’t you think God is in control of what happens, that He can have other people pray, and that it’s not all up to you?” In other words, he was saying that it wasn’t my fault.

I still feel responsible.

I’m not sure if I’m going to keep my newfound prayer freedom, since there’s collateral damage to pay, but I don’t want to go back to the structure. At least not yet. I love the joy that is intermixed with the freedom of being open to the Spirit’s leading during prayer. I just can’t give that up.

All I can say, people, is that prayer is powerful. Please pray. Pray for your family, for the people around you, for anyone God burdens your heart for. Pray for at least ten minutes. I dare you. You owe God that much. You can build from there. You will get chills as you see God answer prayer in people’s lives in a powerful way. I guarantee it.

I decided to write down what it is that I’m saying in my prayers, just so that I can look at them. Maybe God will show me what’s wrong with them.

As I started writing my prayer, I looked at how beautiful it was. Once upon a time I had opened my heart to God and asked Him what to pray for each person. I waited, and God showed me what to pray. I felt so much joy to be praying right in the center of the will of God, and I saw God move. I saw God answer prayer left and right. I am certain of the power of prayer, which is why I’ve made a lifetime commitment to do it, so help me God.

“May I not be ruled by anger but by Your Spirit. Please grant me a servant’s heart, graciousness, maturity, and wisdom.” Stop. This normally takes me less than ten seconds to pray, and I rush over it because I’m tired of it. But has God actually answered? Has my life been transformed – do I see spiritual growth in these areas of my life? And the answer is yes. I wept because God was paying attention even when I wasn’t. I hardly ever get angry any more, not like I used to. I have a deep servant’s heart. I remember one church camp when I said to my mentor, “I don’t want a servant’s heart!” and she just laughed at me. “Of course you want a servant’s heart,” she said.

I suppose I should explain this scenario. I was at a church camp for our family-integrated church, (which means that there is no Sunday School, and that our children sit with us through all the services). No matter how tired the children are, what time of day it is, or even if they can’t possibly understand anything in the sermon, they have to sit there, quiet and still.

I arrived at church camp, and I wasn’t allowed to look forward to the sessions, or it would be sin. Because when my children are tired and cranky (which they always are when sleeping away from home), it’s a full-time job to keep them under control during the services. So I learn nothing, and because of my deep love for God and WANTING so desperately to know Him in a deeper way, I resented my children. I resented them because they kept me from God.

Yet that was sin. You see, I knew in my soul that each service, I was going to clock in work and learn nothing. So when my mentor said how much she looked forward to the sessions at the beginning of church camp, I said, “Please stop it, or you’re going to make me cry. I’m not allowed to love God and look forward to learning about Him. Otherwise I become furious with my children, and that for sure is sin.”

She paused and realized that I was right. She said, “You can get the CD’s.”

“Why am I here? If I’m just going to get the CD’s, why don’t I just walk away and get the CD’s later?”

“Susan, your job right now is to train your children. God wants you to have a servant’s heart.”

“I don’t want a servant’s heart,” I said.

And now we’ve come full circle, because she knew me well enough to know that I want holiness above all else in life, so of course I wanted a servant’s heart, so I threw that phrase into my prayers for myself.

And now, years later, I see that I have a servant’s heart with more than my own children, with everyone around me. So you see, God is answering my prayers, because I meant them once upon a time, and I still mean them, because I want holiness, and I will keep asking forever until I get it.

I can’t list what I pray for other people, because it would be a breach of trust, but I was amazed at how God has answered the vast majority of the prayers that I’ve been praying. My eyes are opened. I feel joy. And I can finally open myself up to God and ask for new prayer requests, because He’s been such a sweetheart, He already answered those others without me noticing. That’s why my prayers were stale. They had expired.

Now let me pause for a second to Scripturally defend praying the same thing over and over. Remember the widow who kept knocking on the door of the judge until he finally granted her request? She kept asking the same thing. And Jesus told us to pray that way. No kidding. Out of the mouth of Jesus.

For example, I knew of a man who wasn’t saved, and I prayed for his salvation every day for years until the day that God saved his soul. And on that day I felt so much joy that tears streamed down my face, even though I had never met him. You see, a woman I loved asked me to pray for this man, and I loved that man through her.

And yes, the prayer sounded identical every day. But I was being faithful. And God was pleased. It wasn’t a sin for me to keep saying the same thing over and over. God says to do that.

And yet when your entire prayer structure has become this way, any creative person wants to grab it and smash it against the wall, shattering the prayer structure into a million pieces.

Where are the people that I loved from my previous church, that I handed over to someone else during the summer? I miss those people so much. The burden wasn’t so bad. I LOVED that burden, even though it depleted me. I got updates every week at church, so my prayers were always fresh. And the continuing prayer requests didn’t seem trite and hollow. Not like now, when I’m sick of praying the same things. But it’s not like I can stop. I am a woman of my word.

I miss feeling connected to a church body. “Susan, it took you ten years to get that close to people. Give it time,” my husband said gently when I wanted to scream over the fact that I haven’t connected to my new church.

It’s just too much work, and I don’t really care, so I’m probably not even trying. And if you get close, they will only stab you in the back and twist it, and it will take you at least a year to recuperate from the damage.

Maybe that’s it. I’m not praying for the ones I’m supposed to be praying for, because I don’t want to get close to them.

Forget it. I don’t want to do it. Wow, that’s sin. Here I’ve been sinning and didn’t even know it. Not connecting to the body of Christ is sin, no matter how much I want to protect my heart from pain.