Radical Christianity

At our village, we have a midwife ministry. There’s around 250 people living here, so two or three children are born in the village every year. Over the last year, however, we had nine young couples that had children, which I’m sure is some sort of record. The last of those nine ladies had her baby last night.

Our babies are usually delivered at home with the midwives. Whenever there are problems—which is not that often; believe it or not, birth is a normal, natural process—we’ll get the village praying. Because the electronic age has arrived, we often have a record of those prayer requests.

Here’s the ones from last night:

8:01 pm: Pray for her water to break

8:04 pm: Water broke!

The baby was born not too much later. Then:

9:20 pm: Please pray, mom’s blood pressure dropped

9:22 pm: (From grandma, the mother of the mom, a bit more urgent) Pray!! Her blood pressure dropped. Using oxygen. Not critical.

9:36 pm: Blood pressure better. Placenta passed. Thank you for prayers!

All of that is a bit personal, sorry, but the texts going around provided such a wonderful opportunity to testify that God still answers prayer.

There have been actual studies done on prayer. A couple have been famous, one backing up the fact that prayer works, and one indicating it doesn’t. Such “scientific” studies are meaningless. God is not subject to man; man is subject to God. You will not “catch” God in a double-blind study, and God doesn’t answer everyone’s prayers.

If you don’t believe that, read Psalm 18 sometime. In that Psalm, when David prays, the whole heavens move. When his enemies pray, there is no deliverance. They are beat as fine as dust.

When disciples pray, they should know when they are asking for something specific. There are general prayers that we pray for leaders of the world, the growth of our brothers and sisters in Christ, and for the ongoing health of our family and friends. We pray general prayers for missionaries. There are a lot of such general prayers that it’s important to pray, but for which it’s very hard to “see” the answers. It’s simply a work we Christians must do as part of our role as the salt of the earth.

For specific prayers, however, disciples ought to know what they are praying for and whether they have the faith to pray. If they don’t, they need to ask first for faith from God. There are Christians who are used to having most of their prayers seemingly ignored by God. This is not right. It is not the way we are meant to live. It’s not okay to excuse it by saying, “God answers all prayer: sometimes he says yes, sometimes he says no, and sometimes he says wait.” That’s a copout.

Look at Paul. He was told no by God in 2 Cor. 12:7-9. However, he got an actual answer. He heard God tell him no, and he heard God give him a reason why. We should be the same way. It should be normal for us to have all our prayers answered. When God does not intend to answer our prayer—with yes—we should know it inside, and we should adjust our prayers accordingly.

In the church here, we have prayed for the severely injured and seen them recover so fast the doctors were astonished. However, I remember another time that we labored in prayer for a desperately sick sister, and the word came from God that he intended to take her home to himself. It was the next day before she died, but in the meantime we were not meaninglessly laboring in prayer against the will of God. We were thanking him for what a gift this sister had been, and we were praising him for his gift of eternal life.

God does answer prayer, but it is the effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man that avails much. It is him who asks in faith, nothing doubting, who can expect to receive from the Lord. Let us learn to know God, and to be righteous.

Tomorrow I want to address a rather surprising way that Jesus said we should build our faith.