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so, i'm sitting here thinking about prayer requests.
and i'm wondering. what is it about the universally requisite Small Group Prayer Request Time that seems to get us all hyper-focused on -- and this is going to sound SO wrong, but just keep reading -- other people? i'm not saying there's anything wrong with praying for your cousin's sister-in-law's babysitter's mom's car troubles. but. i find it curious when no personal prayer requests are offered. now, i understand that a request on behalf of certain situations involving one's husband is sort of like a request for oneself... but... not really. what about YOU? surely there are things rolling around inside of you, inside all of us that we can accept prayer for...
are we too afraid? not willing to be so vulnerable with one another? i'll be the first to admit that it's far easier to bring up someone else's troubles instead of my own. perhaps we don't believe our own requests are important enough. or we want to let everyone believe that everything is just fine. or we don't want people to feel sorry for us. or we believe that we don't deserve prayer. hell, i don't know. maybe we really are all compassionate humble creatures focused on everyone else's needs, and i'm just a cynical oaf.
i put myself out there a couple of weeks ago and shared my thoughts and struggles with my group as a prayer request. in a room full of married and/or engaged women, no less, which of course did nothing to ease my insecurities. at the time it seemed odd [not to mention frightfully intimate] to offer... so abstract, so open-ended, so ridiculously vulnerable. in hindsight, it now seems odd that it would seem odd. if not there, then where else? in what other situations could it possibly be more appropriate? but now i'm feeling a little gun-shy. a silly little well, i put myself out there, now how about you guys? game in my head. stupid. but there it is.
at any rate, i'm certainly not implying anything about this particular group. it's merely one in a long line of groups where i've pondered the same. does anyone else share similar thoughts? or am i just a dirty heathen that doesn't care about the needs of others during prayer request time?
mdog
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Reader Comments (8)
I also struggle with asking God for things. Example, years ago I prayed and prayed that God would give me this job I really wanted. When I didn't get it I got all emotional, cried and questioned my self-worth. A few years later after I had a different job, I reflected on that job I had wanted to very badly and I realized how much better off I was because I didn't get it. God's will and direction for my life seems so much better than the things I think I want in my life that I have trouble asking for things for myself and I get tired of asking that God's will be done. Broken record syndrome.
I also agree with Jared that not validating your own feelings makes it a lot harder to ask someone else to do so.
But I'm trying to learn that to refuse to be vulnerable, to refuse to confess my struggles to those who are there to support me is as much of a wrong as to refuse to be compassionate when they are vulnerable and confess their struggles to me. Not an easy lesson to put into practice. But perhaps living that lesson will do more good than prayers for my cousin's sister-in-law's babysitter's car trouble.
1. Making it seem like you never have any struggles.
2. Avoiding a perception of selfishness. All these other people are sharing about illnesses and requests on behalf of other people, and here you are saying, "I just haven't felt like reading my Bible over the last weeks." How can you think about yourself when all these other people have *legitimate* problems.
3. Fearing that you are the only one.
I think these three are obviously related with a good bit of overlap, but somewhat different. And I think people who knowingly engage in #1 often contribute--inadvertently or vertently (is that a word?)--to the self-doubt of people who are engaging in #2 and #3 out of legitmate but ultimately groundless fears.