ARE YOU THERE, GOD?

by Heather McGillivray

“Prayer Traffic Control, this is Celestial Response Team. Request permission to go ahead with scheduled response, do you read?”

“Copy, Celestial Response Team. Permission denied.”

“With all due respect, Prayer Traffic Control, we’re three weeks behind and, seriously, it doesn’t look like we can hold our positions much longer. Requesting reevaluation.”

“Request denied. There’s no way anybody’s getting through on this channel. Eleven units are backed up waiting to be redirected. We’ll be cleaning this mess up for a while.”

“Copy, Prayer Traffic Control. Awaiting redirection orders; and, Sergeant… It isn’t..?”

“Yes, C.R.T., she’s at it again.”

“I thought Master Command was handling her cases from now on.”

“Seems she threw a curve ball at them when she began praying against the Master’s will…”

“Not again…”

“Unfortunately. The confusion is more than we handle, with playoffs season and post-Christmas spending petitions overload we’ve reached critical capacity, and, you know Heather—getting through to her is never an easy task, even for Master Command. Word has it Gabriel, himself, is preparing a little visit… that is, once he can find his way through the disaster.”

“You think she would have learned by now—over.”

“Roger that, C.R.T. Over and out!”

Okay—so maybe ‘another day in paradise’ doesn’t quite play out like that, but I think it’s fairly safe to say we need not at all fear praying; we need to fear not praying at all. Sometimes the inhibitions about what might happen when we pray can keep us from praying.

We’ll call out in a crisis, bless our meals, and wrap up the day with reassuring requests for loved ones before nodding off to sleep.

But pray something through? From beginning to end—with all the clashes and combats, long nights of waiting and watching, perilous plummets, and giving-up-of-one’s self along the way? That kind of praying takes faith, and that kind of faith takes believing God is willing and able to handle even the biggest of blunders we make along the way.

To find that out we need to get started, and God provides the fodder for us to break through our predictable patterns and get us going in the right direction. Life is loaded with heartache and distress—in our own lives and the lives of those around us are insurmountable obstacles, grief, and suffering. It’s not enough anymore to simply offer up a ‘hope and a prayer.’ God calls us to live out the adventure and let Him take us deeper in our battle to overcome evil with good—on our knees.

Praying is so much more than something we choose to do whenever it suits us. It is a manner of living that changes everything. Along the way we learn to be corrected and built up; changed and healed—so that God can trust us enough to pour His heart out to us. What a privilege for a sinner like me to be made God’s confidante, and He is no respecter of persons—we choose how far we will go in letting God in.

Is the Father calling you to lead a more focused and determined prayer life? Nothing could be more exciting!

Prayer:

Lord, please encourage us to respond to your promptings to pray with passion. To go beyond what we’re comfortable with, and let you shift our thought patterns toward living a life of constant prayer in place of praying only when we feel a need to. We want to be the Daniels of this day; the Esthers and Mordecais; the Hudson Taylors who turn nations around; the Hezekiahs who prolong life; those Elishas whose dead bones, even, give life long after we’re gone—and we know that only You can accomplish that in us as we surrender daily through prayer—in Jesus’ name.