Only by prayer - SEND International

Only by prayer

July 2014

By Anna McShane — We had finished our tea and I was answering her questions about the summer team she was joining. She is a young 20-something and this will be her first major overseas short-term trip. In just a few weeks she’ll be teaching a class of university students in East Asia. She rose to go, packed up her things, and then turned.

“I do have one more question,” she said.

“Yes?”

“You have done this for years. How DO you handle the stress? What do you do when it gets really tough?”

I pondered a minute. It seemed such a simple, yet profound question. This girl with the big eyes wasn’t looking for simple. She wanted truth. She wanted reality, not easy answers.

“Prayer,” I said. Profound, yet simple. As I said it my mind went to the questions she’d asked us before about getting personal prayer partners for her trip. And to the many times when prayer has been the only possible solution to a problem.

There was the time our foreign administrator was in a panic because we needed to keep 150 students busy while all our teachers were testing them, but one by one. What did we do with those not being tested? We told the boss we’d give him an answer in half an hour. Then, we stopped our orientation time and asked the entire team to take five minutes of personal silence and pray for ideas. When we lifted our heads the ideas flew. In less than 15 minutes we had a plan the administration liked.

Or the year that there was earthquake-proofing construction all over campus and we didn’t know from day to day if we’d have classrooms to teach. Somehow the building we were using was spared day after day. The “boss” kept coming by, poking his head in the team room, and saying, “OK for tomorrow…” The team turned to prayer, fervent prayer, and called on their prayer partners at home. Walking by our classroom building one night the final week with another administrator, he said, “It is like there’s a wall of protection around this building so your program can’t be touched.” Yes, that was God’s wall, built by the prayer of his people.

Another time one of the team was hit with a serious back disorder. We gathered around her at lunch, prayed God’s healing over her back, and put her to bed. Another teacher covered her afternoon class, and by supper the pain was gone. She taught the final week without further pain.

Last week we got word that a VP was asking to split the program between two campuses. We knew that would devastate the team unity that makes the program work well, and we just don’t have enough manpower to run two programs simultaneously. We called on prayer partners and at the end of the day wrote a letter explaining why it wouldn’t work. At 9 PM, we got our three administrators together in a virtual meeting. “We read your letter,” they said, “We think it’s powerful, and we’re going to the president’s office to ask him to overrule this VP.” We told them we appreciated their hard work on our behalf — and we’d be praying for them as they went.

The next morning we had an email back. “The president read the letter and ruled in your favor. It seems your prayer has worked.”

I’ve read about the prayers of Elijah and know I’ll never be Elijah. I’ve read the “magnificats” of Hannah, Elisabeth, and Mary, but I’ll never be like them. I pray more like David in his imprecatory psalms. I dump it all out on the table, shake my fist a bit, ask God for quick solutions, and finally get around to praise.

But God listens. God hears. God works. In a recent message on James I was reminded that there are many interpretations about what James is saying in the last chapter, but the one concept NOT up for interpretation is that prayer is effective and God wants us to talk to him.

So, my young friend got the simple answer, but prayer is never simple. It is calling on the Lord of the universe to show Himself powerful, to intervene, to handle life when we are totally powerless and out of control.

That may be the most important lesson she learns this summer.

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